Trump's likely pressure on Iran

As Trump prepares to take office, his Iran policy shifts focus to nuclear pressure, military actions, and diplomacy.

Listen to article

As President-elect Doanld Trump is planning to take office on January 20, 2025 as the 47th President of the United States, his country's approach towards Iran would be one of the priority areas for his administration. According to David Sanger, writing for The New York Times and published by the newspaper on the Christmas day, "in interviews over the past two weeks, American and foreign officials have said that the menacing dance over Iran's nuclear future could take a dramatic turn in the next few months." That assessment came after the United Nations' top nuclear inspector warned that Iran was accelerating its enrichment of near-bomb-grade uranium.

Iran's new president Masoud Pezeshkian and Donald Trump have indicated willingness to a nuclear deal though neither side has indicated its terms. This was the deal that Trump walked out of when he was president for his first term in office. That deal had been negotiated by then President Barack Obama who was in the White House from 2009-2017. The deal was signed in 2015 by Iran, the United States, Russia, China and the European Union. It had a number of features, most important of which was Iran's agreement to surrender 97 per cent of its enriched uranium to Russia which would store it and charge a fee. It also committed Iran to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, to inspect all the nuclear related facilities in Iran. This the Iranians are not allowing the agency to do after Trump walked out of the 2015 deal.

Pezeshkian and Trump know that the military balance has shifted because of the military actions taken by Israel to weaken, if not altogether destroy, what Tehran had called the "axis of resistance". The axis was made up of the Iran-trained militia men in the groups called Hezbollah active in Lebanon, Hamas based in Gaza and the Houthis operating from Yemen. The change in the Israel-Iran situation was one of the subjects that came up for discussion between President Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and senior Israeli officials.

In the public comments Trump's aides have made, they promised renewed "maximum pressure" campaigns to contain Iran. "The change you are going to see is more focus on Iran," said Micheal Waltz, whom Trump has designated as national security adviser in his administration. "Maximum pressure, not only will help stability in the Middle East, but it will help stability in the Russia-Ukraine theater as well, as Iran provides ballistic missiles and thousands of drones that are going into the theater." Sullivan did not discuss the specifics of his conversation with Israel but current and former Israeli officials have publicly debated whether to cease the moment of a decisively weakened Iran. Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister who was fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over disagreements affecting Israeli Gaza policy, recently said that "there was a window to act against Iran" before it can take the last few steps to producing nuclear weapons.

Experts are of the view that an Israeli strike might only delay Iran's weaponisation programme. Such a move would set back not end the programme. It would harden Iran's resolve and could lead to a change in Iranian nuclear intentions - going from a covert threshold programme to an overt weapons programme. However, "it is highly unlikely that this time Israelis would target Iranian nuclear facilities, especially if they believe Iran has already resumed nuclear weaponization work," said Gregory Koblentz, a professor and nonproliferation expert at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government.

The Iranians are taking their own measures to make their nuclear programme safe from attacks. Under the watchful eyes of American and Israeli satellites, Iran began digging a vast tunnel network just south of a place called Natanz which is believed to be new enrichment centre, Iran's largest. This can make Iran even more vulnerable. In the past - when Israel destroyed not-yet-complete nuclear reactors in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 - that is exactly the moment it chose to mount pre-emptive strike.

There is debate over what it would take to turn the enriched fuel into metal and fashion it into warhead. But a crude bomb that could be delivered by a freighter would probably take only six to eight months. A more sophisticated one that fits atop a ballistic missile would possibly take a year and a half. There is an open debate in Iran about the direction the country should take now that a man who is openly hostile to Iran will be in office in January 2025. His designated Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been known in the Senate as an Iran hawk and he fought against the Obama-era Iran deal.

The argument over the bunker busters led to the development of a huge covert operation known as "Olympic Games", a highly classified Israeli-American programme to destroy the centrifuges using a cyberweapon. More than 1,000 centrifuges were destroyed by what became known as the Stuxnet virus setting back the Iranian nuclear programme at least a year. "The nuclear target is a very difficult target," said General Frank McKenzie, who was in charge of the Iran war plans when he ran the United States Central Command. "There are a lot of other alternatives to that target and many of them - including energy infrastructure - would be easier to hit."

"What is different now is that Iranians at this time are incredibly vulnerable," said Eric Edelman, a former senior US Defense Department official in the George W Bush administration. He recently published an analysis calling Trump to give Iran a negotiated way to surrender its nuclear material and win a lifting of sanctions or face a direct attack on its nuclear facilities mounted by Israel with help from the United States. Since the Iranians are working deep underground, a large buster bomb would be needed that only the Americans have. The bomb would need a B52 bomber to deliver. "They now have coming to office a former president who they apparently tried to assassinate, and a prime minister in Israel who has every incentive to want to strike, partly to restore his rotation," said Edelman. "If together they really crank up the economic heat, the diplomatic pressure, and the military backup, you will really test the proposition that you can end the Iranian nuclear program[me]."

"The perfect pressure campaign must squeeze Iran further, particularly by cutting Iran's oil revenue," Beth Sanner, Trump's CIA briefer during part of his first term, wrote recently. "This means going after the shadow feet that moves the oil." A good part of this is sold to China.

The question is whether Trump would listen to these kinds of advices.