At the conclusion of a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on Friday, President Obama made headlines for his criticisms of Donald Trump’s abysmal ignorance of foreign policy. The president is right about that, especially concerning Trump’s senseless willingness to abandon NATO or to goad Japan and South Korea into going nuclear or even to precipitating a war against North Korea with incalculable consequences. What got less notice, however, was the president’s own egregious comments about Iran. In discussing what he considered to be the “spirit” of the Iran nuclear deal, the consequences of Iran’s post-deal provocations, and by comparing critics of his Iran policy to Islamist “hardliners,” the president revealed that, for all of his sophistication, he can be just as clueless and as blind to foreign policy reality as the GOP frontrunner.
Observers might have taken heart from the president’s comments, in which he sought to pour cold water on the idea of the U.S. further loosening enforcement of the remaining sanctions against Iran. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew had signaled last week that the U.S. would soon allow Iran to conduct business transactions in dollars. But whether that latest concession is put off for a while or not, the president’s comments about the problem of re-integrating Iran into the international economy revealed that his misconceptions about Iran’s goals are as deeply entrenched in his mind as are Trump’s foolish assumptions about NATO and non-proliferation.
In explaining the current situation vis-à-vis Iran, the president sought to make a distinction between what he saw as Iran’s following the “letter of the agreement” and his doubts about whether it would follow its “spirit.” In doing so, he framed the question as one that would decide whether Western firms would be willing to do business with a nation that engaged in “provocative” actions. He hopes the nuclear agreement will give Iran a chance to “re-enter the international community.” But he appears to think the worst that will happen if it doesn’t is that the deal will not prove as profitable as it might have been for both sides.
The president’s assumption was that if Iran continued doing things like violating United Nations bans by testing missiles inscribed with threats to “wipe out Israel,” “shipping missiles to Hezbollah,” or supporting terrorism, the Iranians would pay a price in terms of lower amounts of foreign investment.
But this gets the issue completely wrong both in terms of consequences and Western behavior.
In theory, what the president says about Iranian actions demonstrating that it is not a healthy climate for doing business is right. A nation without the rule of law and where terrorist entities such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps hold sway over much of the nation’s economy is a place where an investment could be lost in the blink of an eye. While politics does exist there in that factions within the clique of theocratic rulers compete with each other for power, there is no security for any foreign firm looking to establish a presence there.
But as has been the case with a host of other tyrannical governments, none of that has or will deter European companies or states from seeking to profit from the Tehran gold rush that followed the end of sanctions. Nor, I might add, has it stopped Boeing — the one U.S. corporation that has government permission to seek Iranian contracts — from getting its share of the wealth that is available for those willing to work in Iran. Such companies will all take their chances that their assets or their employees will be subject to Iranian pressure or worse so long as it brings with it the chance of profit.
But the real problem here isn’t whether Iran will get as rich as it might if it was prepared to behave. The real danger from regime missile tests, Hezbollah missiles, and terror funding isn’t to the volume of trade with the president’s negotiating partners. It’s the very threat that such measures pose to Western security as well as to that of the state of Israel, which remains under sentence of extermination from Iran’s supreme leader.
Having concluded a deal that, at best, postpones the danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon for a decade, the president seems to actually believe that the Islamist regime’s actions are mere theatrics intended for domestic consumption rather than actual threats. He sees Iran as divided between moderates, like President Hassan Rouhani, and “hardliners” who are only eager to spoil the fun. His view of Iran’s theocrats is so benign that he believes it is just a noisy faction. Obama even appears to see American critics of the nuclear deal as their moral equivalent, though, admittedly, for Obama to compare anyone to a Republican is certainly in his view a grave insult.
The ironic part of this is that the Iranians have not been silent about their intentions, as the missile test illustrated. They want Western money and plenty of it because that helps keep their regime afloat after a period when the international sanctions that Obama discarded in pursuit of his nuclear deal created real problems for Iran’s economy. But their determination to keep funding terrorists and working for Israel’s elimination isn’t a gesture intended for domestic consumption; it’s part of the regime’s raison d’être as they seek regional hegemony in a way that scares Arab states as much as the Israelis.
Moreover, their nuclear goal, which the president continues to speak about as if he assumes that the pact has rendered it null and void for the foreseeable future, remains unchanged and very much within Iran’s reach. Even if they comply with its loose terms, that doesn’t stop them from continuing research and keeping the most advanced elements of their program running, now with Western approval. Once the deal expires, even a wiser president than Obama will be hard-pressed to re-assemble the coalition and the sanctions to pressure them that the president discarded, let alone unite the world behind a military campaign to deal with the threat.
Though the president seemed to back off on dollars for Iran now, his refusal to see Iran as it is rather than as he’d like it to be isn’t merely wrong; it is seen in Tehran as a green light for further provocations, since they know he won’t lift a finger to stop them. Seen in that light, the president’s remarks about the “spirit” of the nuclear deal illustrate a view about Iranian actions and intentions that is every bit as disconnected from reality as Trump’s rants about NATO or a nuclear Japan.
