[Eli Lake] Trump’s tough talk on Iran fails to mask inaction

For anyone baffled by President Barack Obama’s humiliating outreach to Iran in his second term, President Donald Trump’s speech Friday was cathartic.

He spoke plainly about Iran’s “rogue regime,” which seized power by revolution and “forced its people to submit to fanatical rule.” The nation’s Revolutionary Guard will be designated as supporting terrorism and sanctioned. Trump seeks to assure us that he will never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.

As I reported last week that he would, Trump stopped short of withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. He is not pushing the US Congress to reimpose the crippling sanctions Obama lifted, which would void the nuclear bargain. Instead he is urging them to rewrite the 2015 law that requires his certification of the deal every 90 days to spell out the terms of a better nuclear accord with Iran and the consequences for Iran if they violate those terms. While Trump said he reserves the right to withdraw from the deal at a later date if his efforts to improve it fail, his decertification amounts to a rebuke, but not a rejection of Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.

But like Obama, Trump fails to address the greatest threat the rogue regime poses: its expansion in Syria and Iraq. Senior administration officials who briefed reporters Friday acknowledged that there is no policy for now to begin trying to drive Iran and its proxies out of Syrian territory it has taken over. These officials said a Syria-specific policy was coming where these issues would be addressed.

US officials have also told me that at the moment there is no plan for countering Iranian influence among Shiite allies in Baghdad. This policy is also under review for Iraq, but for now US forces will continue to train and equip the Iraqi military as Iran continues to train and equip the Shiite militias that have done much of the fighting against the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq.

In some ways Trump’s decisions to date have exacerbated Iranian expansion, particularly in Syria. As the Washington Post reported in July, Trump cut off a CIA program to support rebels in Syria who were fighting the regime. US intelligence officials tell me Trump’s decision was sudden, and it is still unclear whether another ally will take over the agency’s support for the anti-regime rebels.

A deal the US helped to broker this summer also contributes to Iranian interference. Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me Friday, “Far more detrimental than the covert program issue is the de-escalation agreement because it has allowed Iran’s proxies to focus on the center of the country in the Euphrates River valley without having to contest the southwest part of Syria where the de-escalation agreement applies.”

It’s possible that a new Syrian policy for the Trump administration will commit more US forces and allies to begin to push back Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq as the war against the IS dies down. But to date, Trump has resisted such policies. Senior administration officials on Friday told reporters that the strategy for now is to prepare to push back against Iranian expansion in Iraq and Syria over time.

But time is not on the side of America and its allies. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is close to establishing a land bridge from Tehran to Beirut, giving groups like Hezbollah and other militias access to advanced weapons they can aim at Israel and Jordan. Sanctions are a good first step. But Trump needs to do more, and quickly.


By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist. -- Ed.


(Bloomberg)