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UANI's
Jeb Bush and Dennis Ross: Donald Trump Should Isolate Iran
Immediately
In
the year since the nuclear deal, Iran's destabilizing presence has
grown
By Jeb Bush and Dennis Ross
TIME
January 19, 2017
Just days before Christmas, as U.S. policymakers were
settling into the holidays, Iran staged
massive war
drills, with one of its top military leaders even boasting that
the Persian Gulf was within
"range" of its fighting forces. At nearly the same
time, Qassem
Soleimani, the Commander
of the Qods Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),
surveyed the battered remains of Aleppo.
Soleimani now appears prominently wherever the Iranians deploy Shia
militias to weaken existing states and regimes in the broader Middle
East. Whether threatening to heat up the Persian Gulf or using Shia
militias as an instrument of their power, we are witnessing a pattern
of Iranian aggression that has accelerated in the year since the
nuclear deal with Iran was implemented.
While Tehran is saber-rattling and threatening our
allies in the region, the response from Washington, unfortunately,
has remained muted. Time and again, the Obama administration has
ignored the comprehensive nature of the Iranian threat and
soft-pedaled non-nuclear sanctions seemingly out of fear that Iran
would walk away from the nuclear deal.
As a result, and much to the worry of America's
traditional allies, Iran's leaders have become more emboldened and
its footprint continues to grow across the region.
In the past, we have spoken publicly about the flaws
of the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which in the end has
not halted but only delayed Iran's path to a bomb-and at the
considerable price of abandoning Western leverage against Iran. To
respond effectively, the Donald Trump administration should not rip
up the deal on day one-that would make U.S. actions and not
destabilizing and threatening Iranian behaviors the issue. We need to
isolate Iran, not ourselves. But we must raise the costs of continued
Iranian intransigence, and to that end, the incoming Trump
administration should adopt a more expansive strategy towards Tehran:
namely by addressing those vital issues beyond the scope of the
agreement, specifically Iran's chronic regional meddling.
While the JCPOA was being negotiated and implemented,
Iranian-advisors with Shia militias from as far away as Afghanistan
flooded Syria, giving Tehran a military arc of influence stretching
to the Mediterranean. Eleven Arab states also recently accused
Iran of sponsoring terrorism and meddling in their internal
affairs all while the nuclear agreement has been in effect. The U.S.
State Department reached a similar conclusion in June, when it
renewed its designation of Iran as the world's leading state-sponsor
of terrorism, citing a "wide range
of Iranian activities to destabilize the region."
A new pressure campaign on Iran can help turn the
tide. The United States has no shortage of tools for affecting Iran's
behavior. A good one to start with: aggressively enforce the existing
sanctions architecture.
Beginning on day one, the Trump administration can
move quickly by pushing for enforcement of the U.N. travel ban
imposed on key figures in the Iranian leadership, like Qassem
Soleimani, who has been pictured in Aleppo, Falluja and near Mosul,
and has met with counterparts recently in Russia.
That's not to mention cracking down on Iran's multiple ballistic
missile launches and its continued shipments
of arms to Yemen, violating the U.N. arms embargo. Such behavior
is in direct defiance of U.N.
Resolution 2231, which enshrines the nuclear deal, and is an
example of Iran's lack of accountability. If Iran continues to
violate the letter and the spirit of the deal, the United States must
be prepared to walk away from the agreement.
The new Administration should also move quickly to cut
off Iran's financial pipeline. The U.S. Treasury Department's Office
of Foreign Assets Control should not provide licenses to Boeing and
Airbus until Iran stops using Iran
Air and other carriers to ferry weapons and personnel for
the Assad regime and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The United States should
also use its leverage with the Iraqi government to restrict airspace
used by Iran for these activities.
The new Administration must also establish
unmistakable red lines for continued Iranian harassment of U.S. Navy
ships in the Persian Gulf, arms shipments to Yemen and other
nefarious activity. According to the U.S. military, Iran has stepped
up its harassment of U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. Earlier
this month, the U.S.S. Mahan was forced to fire
warning shots after IRGC vessels came within 900 yards of
the Navy destroyer and did not respond to requests to slow down.
According to the Pentagon, a total of 35 interactions
with Iranian naval forces were deemed "unsafe and
unprofessional" in 2016-in the first half of 2016, the number of
clashes were roughly
double the number that occurred during the same period in
2015. Providing new and more robust authority to the U.S. Navy to
respond to Iranian provocations would be a significant first step.
Finally, the United States must also become more
aggressive in targeting Iran's aggressions in the Middle East. New
bipartisan efforts in Congress to turn back Iran's destabilizing
playbook should be widely supported. The Preventing
Destabilization of Iraq and Syria Act of 2016, sponsored by U.S.
Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Casey, provides a strong foundation. It
would mandate the imposition of sanctions against terrorist
organizations and foreign countries, like Iran, "that threaten
the peace or stability of Iraq or Syria." Such measures should
also be extended to cover other crucial U.S. allies in the region,
namely Israel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It
will be imperative for the incoming Administration to maintain the
bipartisan consensus in Congress that the status quo in Damascus and
Baghdad-and Iran's role there-is unacceptable.
The Trump administration must broaden the agenda to
account for Iran's aggressive behavior and inappropriate involvement
across the Middle East. Only through a new campaign of pressure can
the U.S. demonstrate to Iran that it runs very great risks if its
policies don't change and if it is ever tempted to pursue nuclear
weapons again. Tougher policies now are likely to reduce the risk of
escalated conflict later on.
Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007
and a 2016 Republican candidate for president, is an advisory board
member of United Against Nuclear Iran. Dennis Ross, counselor at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy and cofounder of United
Against Nuclear Iran, was a special assistant to President Obama from
2009 to 2011.
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