Former President and President-elect Donald Trump has been tarred, inconsistently with his actual record, with the charge of being soft on Russia. He has never been charged with being soft on Iran.
Trump unilaterally and illegally pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran. He imposed devastating sanctions on Iran. He ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. General Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last Trump administration, says he feared that Trump would launch missile strikes on Iran that could trigger an all out war. “If you do this,” Milley told him, “you’re gonna have a fucking war.”
Trump’s transition team is already working on plans to “drastically increase sanctions on Iran and throttle its oil sales.” According to a former Trump official, “Tightening the economic noose around Iran is going to be a day one foreign policy priority to start cleaning up Biden’s Middle East mess.”
Trump has tapped Brian Hook to lead his State Department transition team. Hook was Special Representative for Iranian Affairs at the State Department in Trump’s first term. He was an architect of the sanction and maximum pressure policy on Iran. Hook recently told CNN that the Trump administration “would isolate Iran diplomatically and weaken them economically.” He stressed that to deter Iran, they have to believe that the U.S. has “a credible threat of military force.”
As Secretary of State, Trump has appointed Senator Mark Rubio. Rubio has been hawkish on almost everything. His appointment could be dangerous for Cuba and Venezuela. But it could also be very dangerous for Iran. Rubio favored illegally pulling out of the JCPOA. He advocated the authorization of force without limits against Iran, including sending U.S. forces. In 2015, Rubio said that the U.S. “should never, ever take off the table the notion that it may be necessary to conduct some sort of nucle – uh, military strike against their nuclear ambition.”
As his National Security Advisor, Trump has appointed Representative Mike Waltz. Waltz is a China hawk. He may simply be a war hawk, having supported wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Waltz once demanded that President Biden “punch Iran in the nose.” He supports threatening to attack Iran. Waltz has suggested that Israel should have bombed Iran’s oil export sites and its Natanz nuclear facilities. He advocates for the U.S. showing Iran “that our military capabilities are such that we could indeed severely damage their [nuclear] program.” Days before the election, on November 2, Waltz promised that a Trump administration would “return to maximum pressure to bring Iran back to the table for a better deal!” On the same day, Waltz co-authored a piece for The Economist in which he argued that the Biden-Harris administration “should put a credible military option on the table to make clear to the Iranians that America would stop them building nuclear weapons.”
Both arguments made that day are strikingly uninformed and unnecessarily provocative. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has already stated that Iran is “ready to engage with JCPOA participants” and that “[i]f JCPOA commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow.” He has even made the bold move of calling for bypassing intermediaries in favor of direct negotiations with the United States. As for stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons, as CIA Director William Burns said in October, “[W]e do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program. We don’t see evidence today that such a decision [to build a bomb] has been made. We watch it very carefully.” In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review concluded that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.”
Trumps intelligence appointments include Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and John Ratcliffe as Director of the CIA. Gabbard was a Democratic congresswoman and a candidate, against Joe Biden, in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary before becoming a Republican. Like her political allegiance, her policy on Iran has been mixed. In 2013, she supported sanctioning Iran. A year later, she called Iran the “world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism.” Later, though, she supported the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran and criticized Trump for pulling out of it and for escalating tension. She would also come to call for ending sanctions.
Ratcliffe is a China hawk, but he has also called for a harder line against Iran. In June, Ratcliffe argued that the Biden administration had not been tough enough on Iran.
Trump’s policy decisions, though, are as unpredictable as his appointments. After speaking three times since Trump’s election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he and Trump “see eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it.” At the same time, there has reportedly been some talk in the Russian media of hope that the Trump administration could reach out to Iran to reduce tension.
Though the roll call of appointments leaves no doubt that Trump has selected a foreign policy team that is hawkish on Iran, The New York Times reports that on November 11, Elon Musk met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations. Musk is an important Trump advisor who joined Trump in some of his phone calls with world leaders since being elected, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and, perhaps, Turkish President Recep Erdogan. He is reportedly scheduled to meet Argentina’s President Javier Milei in the coming days when Milei comes to the U.S. to meet with Trump.
Iranian officials say the meeting between Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani focussed on ways to reduce tension between the U.S. and Iran. They said that the meeting was “good news” and that it was “positive.” Trita Parsi, and expert on Iran’s foreign policy and on American-Iranian relations, says that Trump ultimately may have wanted a deal with Iran in his first term but was misdirected by Iran hawks in his administration, including Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. He reports that Iranian officials recognize Trump’s desire for a deal, but calculate that his ability to pull it off will be determined by whom he appoints to influential positions.
And that’s the question. The appointments are certainly not laden with promise. But, perhaps, the early meeting with Iran is. If Trump’s chosen circle leans once again to hawkishness on Iran, the tragedy of his selections will be that Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected on a platform that included improving relations with the United States. There is a possible path to peace if Trump is not, once again, pushed by those he appointed down the path of animosity.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
