Trump's Iran Strategy Would Be Smart—If He Were Credible
President Donald Trump’s October 13 Iran announcement qualifies as maybe his least abnormal national-security action.
On Iran—unlike almost any other national security issue—Trump has overseen something like a policy debate, arriving at something like an intermediate position. The Iran deal will not be canceled, it will be continued. At the same time, new actions will be taken to deal with urgent U.S. security concerns that the deal ignored.
Since the deal went into effect in mid-2015, some of its U.S. authors’ hopes have been realized; other hopes disappointed. The rulers of Iran did surrender most of its enriched uranium stockpile. They submitted at least in theory to nuclear inspections.
But in other crucial respects, the Iranian—to the Islamic Republic. That money has helped fund a radical in Iran's military budget. The Iranian state has accelerated its testing of ballistic missiles. It has fought—and nearly won—a war in Syria to save its client Bashar al-Assad. Its surrogates in Yemen have begun into Saudi Arabia, and Iranian-backed militias inside Syria are to the borders of Jordan and Israel—reportedly 10 kilometers away from the Golan Heights.
