The Hill:

By John Bowden, staff writer

The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran hinges on a particularly flawed set of assumptions regarding Iranian capabilities, decision-making and strategic priorities. Specifically, the overarching goal of the administration’s confrontational approach – halting Iran’s “malign” support for armed “proxy” groups – is unrealistic in the current climate of military posturing and confrontation. Short of a catastrophic war and occupation of Iran, the administration’s attempts to alter Iranian behavior are doomed to fail.

Critically, President Trump and his hawkish advisers ignore a simple, unalterable reality: the Iranian regime and broad swaths of the (largely pro-American) Iranian public view Tehran’s support for regional armed groups as paramount to Iranian national security. In the face of a particularly weak conventional military and only one true regional ally, Iranians see their government’s support for armed “proxy” groups not as a bid for Iranian regional dominance but, rather, as a vital deterrent against attack by a host of well-armed, ideologically hostile adversaries.

By ignoring the critical role that “proxy” groups play in Iranian national security, the Trump administration is ensuring the failure of its risky gamble to modify Tehran’s behavior. Put another way, the administration’s approach toward Iran – itself based on a deeply flawed historical narrative – is roughly akin to demanding that Israel relinquish its own unconventional deterrent against existential threats. In short, no amount of economic pressure will change Iranian behavior. Similarly, threats and military confrontation only reinforce to Iranian leadership the importance of supporting militant groups as an asymmetric deterrent against attack.

Of note, actual Iranian influence over Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Hamas, and Shia-led militias in Iraq is dubious at best. So much for alarmist fears – promulgated by innumerable op-eds and think tank analyses – that Shia Iran is on a “hegemonic” quest to “dominate” the overwhelmingly Sunni Middle East. Similarly, the notion that Iran presents an “existential threat” to Israel is just as fallacious, as confirmed by an Israeli minister of defense and former prime minister. Importantly, his comments came prior to the Iranian nuclear agreement, when an unrestrained Iranian nuclear program presented a far greater latent threat to Israel than today.

Iran’s weak military and proximity to heavily-armed, ideologically hostile states underpins a dynamic of strategic paranoia in Tehran. Moreover, memories of the 1953 U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government, followed by decades-long American support for a repressive regime and U.S. assistance to Iraq during the devastating Iran-Iraq war, loom large in the Iranian strategic psyche. The Bush administration’s rejection of Iranian assistance following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – when American and Iranian strategic interests converged – only alienated Tehran further. A combination of historical foreign interference, invasion, a weak military and few friends in the region make it unsurprising that Iran pursued nuclear weapons in the past and leverages “proxy” groups in the manner that it does today.

Moreover, projecting influence via armed proxy groups is hardly unique to Iran. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have supported no shortage of hardline Sunni militant groups for similar purposes. Unlike Sunni groups, however, Iranian “proxies” generally seek to achieve narrowly-defined state or organizational goals. In the wake of 1979 Iranian Revolution, for example, Iran-linked groups took American hostages to gain strategic leverage; most were released. Sunni militant groups, on the other hand, typically execute hostages for psychological or propagandistic effect.

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