On US Iran Policy historically and in the present:
Let me put this into context, the general US approach to Iran since the nineties, when the focus has been on the nuclear issue, has been “nukes to normalization”. The idea has been that you use a mixture of sanctions and interdiction to either slow down or even stop the nuclear program, push the Iranian regime into negotiations. Talk about nukes, talk about regional destabilization, talk about terrorism, talk about human rights, and then it ends up with normalization. And what has happened is, you know, the sanctions have had a very strong economic effect. The political effect has been a little more ambiguous. Interdiction has been extremely effective, although America hasn’t done much of it, it’s somebody else who popped off those Iranian nuclear scientists. It’s somebody else who seized the Iranian nuclear archive. And it’s somebody else who may have been behind that terrible work accident at Natanz in July. You know kids, be careful with centrifuges. And so, that’s been a more effective tool. What Trump and Obama have done very similarly, And I think for Prof Soleimani is absolutely right about the similarity here, is they’ve kind of moved away from that framework. And that’s because let’s face it, both of them are coming at foreign policy from an essentially isolationist stance. I mean, this is the big story in US foreign policy in the last dozen or so years, which is that isolationism has moved from the extreme to the mainstream. It started with the Democrats in George W. Bush’s second term. They deeply regretted supporting the war in Iraq. There were many Republicans who agreed with them, but they kept quiet because, as we’ve learned, partisanship goes a very long way in American politics.
And then of course, in 2016, Donald Trump liberated the Republican party from the shackles of internationalism and human rights. So what’s happened is Obama came in and he said, forget nukes to normalization. We’re never going to get there with this regime. Let’s just focus on the nukes. He disregarded a lot of the regional destabilization. He let regional powers deal with that. And he used human rights as an instrument. And when it came to the nuclear record that Professor Soleimani talked about, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA of 2015. Obama’s approach was to aim low, but the problem was he missed. So the JCPOA deals mostly with the fissile material. But it left out the whole problem of weaponization and it left out the issue of delivery systems, the missiles. And as we found out from when the Israelis seized the Iranian nuclear archive in April, 2018, in fact, Iran had done an awful lot of work on this, was they were planning to make five, 10-kiloton bombs, was looking at sites for nuclear tests, and the best part of it, I think, and it’s worth looking this up, if you know, the I.S.I.S website, is that they actually had in the archive so-called deception folders because they needed to keep their story straight when they lie to the inspectors. So they actually had, “these are the lies you have to tell them the next meeting, so they’re consistent with the lies we told in the previous meeting”, and I have to say, that’s a glory of record keeping. And that’s something that all dictatorial regimes are really good at, and it always works against them. So Obama, as I said, he, you know, he aimed low, and he missed.Trump is similar, but as professor Soleimani quite rightly said, incoherent. So there’s a focus on the nuclear issue, tremendous use of sanctions. I mean, the funny thing about sanctions is that in the last 10 years, the United States has sanctioned the central bank of Iran twice, which is quite an achievement.
People have never sanctioned central banks before, and you’ve done it twice. What Trump also did, which was different however, to Obama, he actually took action on the regional front. And he’s been willing to use force to protect American interests in Iraq. The most notable example was the killing of Soleimani. And I know a lot of the Iran apologists were very upset about this, but look at the positive side, Soleimani missed COVID-19. Human rights have been forgotten, and then there’s been this incoherence. And it’s partly again from that selection it’s stance. So Pompeo gave this speech in May, 2018, outlining 12 conditions for Iran offering normalization, threatening to crush Iranian operatives and proxies in the Middle East, a kind of an S and M approach to foreign policy. And then a year later in June, 2019, he offered talks without preconditions. So not exactly coherent.
Obama and Trump policy towards Kurds:
What is consistent though between Obama and Trump as well is, of course, walking away from the Kurds. Obama did it, actually Biden was involved, with Euphrates Shield. And of course, Trump did it in both Iraq and in Syria. And that sends a very interesting message to the Iranian regime because, as you know, the Iranian regime was very worried about the war, in which a number of Kurds had gone from Iran to Syria to fight against ISIS. And, I’m sure Ceng, you saw the wonderful interview done by the BBC in Kobani, in which an Iranian Kurd said, I’m here to fight ISIS, but the regime in Iran is next. That’s a very worrying thing and an empowered Kurdish movement anywhere in the Middle East worries the Iranians, and the US has done them a huge favor by pulling the rug out in both Iraq and in Syria. So the thing I think we need to think about next and where I think actually a new US presidential term is an opportunity for a rethink of policy is there are two big forces happening in Iran internally right now. And they’re very worried. One of them is coming from within the regime because of internal regime conflicts, and because of the perverse impact of sanctions, what you’re seeing is the emergence of a criminal state within the criminal regime.