President-elect Donald Trump during the campaign was
clear on at least two foreign policy issues: his opposition to the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (a.k.a. the Iran deal) and his desire to get
along with Russia. We will not know how serious he was about the latter until
he takes office. Likewise, we do not know how he plans to disable the JCPOA.
Sooner or later, however, he will need to confront an unpleasant reality:
Russia and Iran are allies, and both want to displace the United States as the
primary force in the Middle East. Put differently, if we want to turn the
screws on Iran, Russia will not want to “get along” with us.
Russia is a major supplier of arms to Iran and supports its
efforts to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This summer Russian warplanes took off from Iranian bases to strike
targets in Syria.
Russia has publicly warned against
violating the JCPOA; Trump wants to rip it up. If the JCPOA fell by the
wayside, Russia in all likelihood would increase its economic and military
support for Iran, attempting to heighten tension between the United
States and its European allies, and portray the U.S. policy as a failure.
Insofar as Trump thinks he can renegotiate the JCPOA, Russia will likely pose a
problem, as J. Matthew McInnis explained:
Trump will also be aware that any major
confrontation with Iran over the JCPOA must be considered in context of his
policies toward Russia and vice-versa. Russian President Vladimir Putin did
not, and still does not, want Tehran to get the bomb. Moscow, however, has used
the nuclear deal in part to carve out a much more significant role in the
Middle East, including a burgeoning new military alliance with Iran in Syria
and elsewhere. These circumstances likely limit the degree of coercive
diplomatic or even military power the United States could use in any
renegotiation, unless Russia is on board with the White House’s game plan.
If Trump scrapped or forced Iran to scrap the JCPOA, Iran
would likely restart its nuclear program. As events unfolded, we inevitably
would find ourselves increasingly at odds with Russia, as Ilan Goldenberg,
director of the Middle East program at the Center for a New American Security, explained:
As Iran got closer to a nuclear weapon,
the likelihood would increase of an Israeli strike or a decision by the Trump
administration to use military force against Iran’s nuclear program. We would
essentially be back in the days of 2009 to 2012.
In that world, Iran’s most effective
tools against the United States would be its surrogates and proxies across the
Middle East — especially in Iraq and Syria. In recent years, Iran has pushed
its proxies to focus on supporting Assad and fighting ISIL. However, if
Iran-U.S. tensions start to rise the priority would quickly shift back to using
the groups it supports to exact a cost on the United States and deter American
military action. …
Russian-American relations would also
suffer as Moscow would view this escalation and the potential of an
American-led attack on Iran as another example of American superpower
overreach, which it would try to counter and contain. It is simply
inconceivable that in this scenario the United States, Russia, and Iran could
successfully coordinate in Syria and Iraq. And Trump’s rapprochement with
Russia would likely collapse.
Trump will soon find that there are reasons why we don’t “get
along” with Russia. Putin supports our enemies (e.g., Iran) and threatens our
allies (e.g., NATO). His interests and ours conflict in significant ways. Trump
may want, as President Obama did, to withdraw from the world, but he will soon
learn that if we leave, Russia “wins” by increasing its influence. Trump’s
senior advisers likely understand the contradiction — one of many — at the
heart of Trump’s foreign policy thinking. Perhaps he will come to appreciate
the problem as soon as he tries to back away from or force Iran to give up the
JCPOA, which could come within months of his inauguration. The reality is
likely to disrupt his hope (again not too different from Obama’s initial view)
that we can embrace the Russian bear.
