A major priority of whoever wins the US presidential election will be to set or reset relations with Iran. Whichever way it goes, the result will have huge implications for regional security.
For both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, three primary issues will be on the agenda: stopping Iran from attaining the capability to develop nuclear weapons; limiting Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, including, potentially, nuclear-capable missiles; and stopping Iran’s regional ‘destabilisation’, including support for terrorism.
However, Trump and Biden differ significantly on what they see as a satisfactory outcome and on how they think they can achieve it. Trump’s aim is to renegotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear-only agreement, or to seek a new agreement that covers all three issues. At the heart of any such agreement will be the 12 demands made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May 2018. In essence, Trump’s strategy involves continuing confrontation.
Biden has rejected Trump’s path and would seek resolution though credible diplomacy. His preference is to rejoin a revised nuclear-only JCPOA and negotiate the other two issues separately. He will pursue a tough but ‘negotiable’ pathway that offers a notional win–win outcome.
Trump’s tactics are to force regime change in Iran, through a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign using isolation and comprehensive sanctions to create the level of extreme economic hardship necessary to drive the Iranians to the negotiating table. If that fails, his apparent intent is to precipitate sufficient public dissent to cause the overthrow of the regime, and then to negotiate a compliant policy with whoever takes over.
Read the article by Ian Dudgeon in The Strategist.