Former US president Donald Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran utterly failed to enhance regional or global security. His successor, Joe Biden, must not make the same mistake.
The centrepiece of Trump’s Iran policy was his unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—or JCPOA, widely known as the Iran nuclear deal—in 2018. This move, directly and aggressively promoted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, enabled the US to reimpose severe sanctions on Iran.
At the time, Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA’s conditions, and it remained in compliance for a full year after Trump’s decision took effect, to give Europe a chance to uphold its pledge to bypass US sanctions. But Europe didn’t follow through, so Iran began to break the rules.
Now, as an outgoing deputy chief of Mossad recently noted, the situation is worse than it was when the JCPOA was signed. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken believes that Iran is only months away from being able to produce enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon. If it continues to raise limits imposed by the JCPOA, it could get there in ‘a matter of weeks’.
And yet, far from learning its lesson, Israel—together with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—wants Biden to maintain Trump’s failed policy. In January, Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi, warned the Biden administration against rejoining the JCPOA, even if its terms were toughened. He also announced that Israeli forces are stepping up preparations for possible offensive action against Iran this year.
Read the article by Shlomo Ben-Ami in The Strategist.