Can Washington strategically isolate Iran while growing further apart from Europe itself?
In early February, the White House formally announced the resumption of “maximum pressure” — the Trump first-term policy aimed at stifling Iran’s nuclear program and regional influence through political pressure and sanctions targeting the country’s oil exports.
And in the wake of a series of reports about an Iranian-backed operation marking numerous targets linked to Trump’s first term for assassination — including the president himself — it also directed authorities to identify and disrupt Iranian front groups within the United States.
But with the world and in particular U.S. relationships with some of its closest allies (Canada, the U.K., France and Germany) strained in recent weeks by insulting rhetoric from the White House including repeated threats to annex America’s neighbor to the north, the effectiveness of a strategy that relies at its core on international cooperation is in jeopardy.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, reiterated this week that Iran was not ready for talks with the U.S. regarding its nuclear program. He also accused Washington of practicing deception by claiming to be open to negotiation. Donald Trump this month claimed to have sent a letter to Khamenei suggesting talks begin, but the Iranian leader said he had not received it.
After four years of Joe Biden’s presidency, “maximum pressure” remains a popular strategy among Republicans of many flavors as well as some Democrats towards the party’s center and conservative wings. Part of that popularity stemmed from the failure of Joe Biden to lay out a coherent vision and strategy of his own, but it also hampered the former president’s work aimed at reaching an improved version of the 2015 JCPOA deal which set limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment.
The 46th president allowed many sanctions enacted during Trump’s first term to continue but enforcement lapsed, despite protests from the Biden State Department. Iran’s oil exports, during Biden’s presidency, shot back up to 3.4m barrels a day, close to pre-sanction levels, by the time of the November election. Iran also normalized relations with Saudi Arabia in an agreement brokered by China under his watch.
“You’ve got to keep at it constantly, because the people trying to avoid sanctions are constantly finding avenues [to avoid them],” former Senator Sam Brownback, an Iran hawk who served as an ambassador-at-large in the first Trump administration, told The Independent of sanctions enforcement.
“You’ve got to constantly be progressive and watching and adjusting how you deploy the sanctions, because people find secondary and tertiary roundabouts,” Brownback said in an interview. “China’s there, Russia is there, trying to help them figure out other ways to kind of launder the oil.”
In the end, the Iranian government’s demands for sanctions relief proved to be more than the Biden administration was willing or able to allow. Talks then collapsed completely after the October 7 attack on Israel and Iran’s support of Hezbollah, which participated in the conflict that immediately followed.
Within a month of reinstating “maximum pressure” in February, the U.S. Treasury designated dozens of targets for their efforts in aiding Iranian exporters trying to evade U.S. sanctions. But amid the fallout from Donald Trump’s disastrous meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and his resumed trade war with U.S. allies, some fear that fraying ties could negatively impact the real-time work of catching sanctions evaders.
An analysis from Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy identified Europe as the likeliest avenue for international cooperation on sanctions enforcement in December.
“I certainly am not a fan of going to war with the whole world at the same time,” Rep Brad Sherman, a senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, remarked on Saturday. “You have to prioritize and the Iran nuclear program should be one of the very top priorities.”
Sherman, like Brownback, spoke to The Independent on the sidelines of a rally held Saturday just off the steps of the Capitol building. Hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a group of hundreds of Iranian-Americans gathered Saturday to call for internal resistance movements to topple the Ayatollah’s regime, with US political support. Organizers said the gathering grew to several thousand strong by the conclusion of the speeches, as the rally began a planned march to the White House.
Led by president-elect Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI has steadily worked to grow political support on Capitol Hill for years. Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of State who served during Trump’s first term, and Mike Pence, the former vice president, are both vocal supporters of the group. Democrats such as Cory Booker and Jeanne Shaheen have also spoken at recent events hosted by the NCRI in Congress.
As a Democrat, Sherman is one of the few supporters of ramping up political and economic pressure on Iran who also acknowledged that U.S. isolationism could endanger their shared objectives.
“We need all the friends we can get, and I'm not sure that we're keeping the friends that we traditionally have,” Sherman said. “For so many reasons, we need to rebuild the ties with Europe that have been pulled asunder in the last month, and Iran is just one reason to do that.”
But some outside Trumpworld still remain optimistic. The reason, they say, is that Iran policy remains a bright spot in U.S.-E.U. relations where both sides of the Atlantic can find common ground, as it was for the Bush White House in the post 9/11 world.
Michael Singh, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Europe still retained some temporary leverage through re-imposing pre-JCPOA sanctions pressure.
“It’s something Iran wants to avoid, and this diplomatic pressure – when combined with the economic and military pressure the US and Israel are exerting – can help bring Tehran to the table for negotiations. But it’s a wasting asset – the SnapBack mechanism expires in October of this year,” said Singh.
“Pressure is always more effective when it has broad international support, and that begins with close U.S.-Europe cooperation,” said Singh, who added: “At a time when the U.S. and Europe have mounting disagreements, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is a point on which they agree vehemently, and can be a point of collaboration amid acrimony.”
Supporters of Trump’s all-or-nothing diplomacy with longtime U.S. allies in Europe and North America are not, however, armchair quarterbacking the president’s strategy. Many, like the president’s former fix-it man Rudy Giuliani, are still warning European powers to get in line or be left behind.
“I don't think western Europe matters,” Giuliani told The Independent on Saturday. The former mayor, past his legal troubles, was another speaker at the NCRI’s rally. “I think it hasn't mattered in 30 years. I can't remember the last time western Europe mattered for anything.”
He went on to stress: “We’re NATO. And we're much better off organizing NATO around members who want to be a part of NATO, who want to have 5% of their GDP in defense.”
Brownback took a more conciliatory note but even he seemed to suggest that Europe risked being left behind simply through its leaders’ potential to ignore the threat he said was posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
He also agreed that European nations understood the threat the U.S. and the west say a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to regional and global security. Like Singh, he argued that Europe had left the JCPOA behind.
“They fully understand, they’re very sophisticated [in terms of gathering intelligence on Iran],” Brownback said. “It's just whether there's a willingness [to act].”
“Europe has long believed that the JCPOA is dead and that efforts to revive it are somewhere between useless and counterproductive, yet [France, Germany and Italy] have not withdrawn from the agreement or moved yet to restore pre-JCPOA sanctions,” added Singh.
A recent analysis of reports from the UN’s nuclear agency (IAEA) by the Institute for Science and International Security found that Iranian scientists would be able to produce enough high-grade nuclear material for a weapon within a few days of launching such an effort, and would be able to complete production of a weapon capable of delivering it within a six month period.
In his interview Brownback warned that while Europe may be disaffected and disgusted by Trump’s treatment of Zelensky and his backing away from western alliances, including NATO, leaders across the Atlantic would need to swallow their discomfort and work with the U.S. in the immediate future in order to prevent Iran from developing those weapons.
“I said, and I really believe it: It's not now or never. It's now or nuclear on Iran,” he said. ”So Europe may not be happy with Trump right now, over Russia and Ukraine, but Iran nuclearized — and a nuclear Ayatollah — is a terrible prospect for Europe.”
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