Maximum pressure on Iran may be over, but it is still the dominant framework guiding discussions on U.S. policy towards the regime. Despite some internal disagreements over particular elements, this strategy guided U.S. policy from May 2018 through the end of the Trump administration in January 2021. Although the Biden administration has taken a sharply different approach, support among conservative policymakers for the maximum pressure campaign remains extremely strong. More than 100 Republicans in the House of Representatives are currently co-sponsors of the Maximum Pressure Act that seeks to codify its policies into law, while the Senate leadership of the Republican national security committees recently pressed President Biden to adhere to a similar negotiating position as his predecessor.[1] However, maximum pressure cannot be copied-and-pasted from the Trump administration into a future administration’s policy hopper, no matter how receptive that administration’s leadership might be. Evolving circumstances – such as the state of Iran’s economy and the regime’s nuclear program – will require updating our strategy too. As policymakers reconsider maximum pressure and its alternatives, this paper explores and examines both the successes and shortcomings of that policy. Finally, this paper will provide suggestions for a successor strategy’s diplomatic and economic elements.
Maximum pressure was designed with the complementary goals of reaching a stronger and more permanent deal with Iran would address activities beyond the regime’s nuclear program, while also seeking to counter Iranian malign activity by depriving the regime of funds to carry out its foreign policy.[2] Though the underlying principles of maximum pressure were strong, the strategy suffered from a lack of clarity around what it meant to change the behavior of the regime. Specifically, the Trump administration should have clarified internally whether that demand constituted regime change, and to what degree the United States should pursue such a policy.
In 2019, President Trump told the press that Iran “has a chance to be a great country, with the same leadership – we’re not looking for regime change…we’re looking for no nuclear weapons…”[3] Other Trump administration officials hewed to the same line: the United States did not seek regime change in Iran – rather, it sought a “comprehensive change in Iran’s behavior” through a negotiation that met the 12 points Secretary Pompeo laid out on May 21, 2018. However, as this piece explores further, Iran views such an outcome precisely as regime change.
What Counts as Regime Change?
Regime change can be brought about by external forces, internal forces, or a combination of the two. The first type of change, one achieved through external military action, is what previously has been demonstrated by the image of tanks rolling into a foreign capital. This form is the sort that the United States and its allies used to depose Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. President Trump firmly opposed such substantial military interventions throughout his presidential campaign, so this method of regime change was never seriously considered during his administration.
The second type of regime change is internal and could be executed either through the chimeric notion of a reform movement, or more likely through rebellion and massive protests that topple the regime. While as many as three million Iranians took to the streets in the Green Movement protests of 2009, they were overwhelmingly peaceful protests focused on accountability for a particular set of election results rather than a broader effort to topple the entire system of government. However, over the next decade, Iranians increasingly became disillusioned with the prospect of reform.[4] When the protesters took to the streets in November 2019, they overwhelmingly called for an end to the regime and its leaders. An estimated 200,000 Iranians in over 200 cities took to the streets, burning down more than 140 regime buildings, tearing down propaganda banners, and chanting “death to the Islamic Republic” and “death to the dictator.”[5] The regime resolved to suppress the protests through the most severe means. Supreme Leader Khamenei reportedly told his security officials, “The Islamic Republic is in danger. Do whatever it takes to end it. You have my order.”[6] The regime quickly imposed an internet blackout to prevent the spread of the protests and videos from escaping the country. Then, under the cover of digital darkness, the Basij security forces brutally killed an estimated 1,500 Iranians and imprisoned at least 8,000 more – many of whom continued to be tortured in Iran’s prisons.[7]
After the protests were suppressed, many officials and analysts saw the movement as a clear sign that regime change was both possible and likely to come soon. While the protests were a clear demonstration that the regime lacked legitimacy with many Iranians, we should be careful not to overestimate the chances of protesters’ success. The barriers to the Iranian people implementing regime change on their own are massive. As with many authoritarian countries, the regime is perfecting its machinery of repression across three critical areas: internet censorship and control, suppression of opposition figures and groups, and rapid-response systems to break up nascent protests. They are aided in this endeavor by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij, who showed no qualms in mowing down hundreds of their compatriots. While the regime was caught off guard by the November 2019 protests, they made a concerted effort to ensure these could not be replicated. The regime has spent at least $4.5 billion to build a domestic intranet that further tightens restrictions on ordinary Iranians’ internet access—a vast sum considering its total 2021 draft government budget was smaller than $34 billion.[8] In 2020, squads of uniformed and plainclothes security officers descended on any nascent gatherings of protesters—even those as small as a couple dozen Iranians. The obstacles to the success of future protests are significant, as is the willingness of the regime to quash any dissent.
However, the regime’s ability to clamp down on dissent and protests is not infinite. They can only mobilize a fixed number of security officials to respond to gatherings due to staffing limitations, and only some of them will be willing to fire on crowds of their compatriots. The regime normally censors the internet but cannot prevent Iranians from bypassing the firewall through certain proxies. A total internet shutdown is a costly and temporary measure, with one Iranian newspaper estimating a $1.5 billion loss to Iranian commerce over the week-long period it was shut down in 2019.[9] They can jail leading opposition figures but do not have space in their already-overcrowded prisons for mass arrests. Accordingly, success from protests could be achieved through even larger public mobilizations. If a group of protesters as large as was seen in the Green Movement was committed to full-on regimmue change, its chances of success and ability to develop a formal and cohesive organization would likely be much greater than the 2019 protests. However, it is important to note they would still face stiff headwinds.
Senior officials across the Middle East (and some in the U.S. government), often told the Department of State that mass protests leading to regime change were coming in the next three to six months. That same prediction was repeated nearly monthly during my entire two-year tenure at the Department of State. We should not count on this outcome in our planning but must be prepared for it.
What would Iran look like should protesters succeed? It could bring a more friendly or more liberal government to power. Or, radical Islamic forces could stage an insurgency, killing many thousands of Iranians and setting the country into a civil war for years – making Syria’s civil war look tame in comparison.[10] The IRGC has an estimated 190,000 personnel and the Basij has an additional 450,000, while the LEF and Artesh could provide another ~650,000 officers (many of whom are non-ideologically aligned, however).[11] The U.S. government needs to seriously consider how to manage and mitigate this risk when mass protests emerge. Unfortunately, policymakers have consistently failed to consider and plan for this contingency or any other scenario in which the regime collapses or mass protests roil the regime.
Change through Negotiations
Short of regime change is what Secretary of State Michael Pompeo often referred to as a “fundamental change” in Iran’s behavior brought about through negotiated settlement. The Trump administration’s campaign of maximum pressure had two stated goals: first, to deprive the Iranian regime of the money it needs to support its destabilizing foreign activities. Second, to bring Iran to the negotiating table to conclude a comprehensive deal. On the first point, the Trump administration succeeded massively, depriving the regime of more than $70 billion in funds that otherwise could have gone to support terrorism and Iranian proxies.[12] Due to its coffers drying up, the Iranian government could not consistently deliver financial support to terrorist groups. Hamas and Hezbollah both had to lay off thousands of fighters under financial austerity, measures they attributed to their support from the Iranian regime drying up.[13] The Iranian defense budget likewise shrank 10% from 2017-2018, and a further 28% in the 2019 budget, including a 17% cut to the IRGC that caused their cyber command to run low on funds for operations.[14] Given the wide scale and non-public nature of many of the Iranian regime’s malign behaviors, it is difficult to prove one way or another whether their activities increased or decreased during the period of maximum pressure. However, the significant downward pressure on their funding sources made it clear that the long-term prospect for their military and terror capabilities was decreasing under maximum pressure.
But the campaign failed to accomplish its second goal of negotiations to conclude a comprehensive agreement with Iran. Today, many Congressional Republicans have called for a return to the maximum pressure campaign. It is premature to declare that maximum pressure was either fatally flawed or the perfect formulation to reach a stronger and comprehensive deal, as the campaign of strict economic sanctions was only fully operational for the last 18 months of the Trump administration. To understand whether the strategy could be successful on the second try in obtaining a comprehensive deal, we should review lessons and observations from the first attempt.
Secretary of State Pompeo’s guidelines for negotiation entertained the possibility that the Islamic Republic’s government could retain power so long as the requirements set out in Pompeo’s “12 Demands” speech were met. At first glance, the demands do not appear to call for so deep a transformation in the Iranian state – they do not call for any changes to the regime’s internal governance structure and leadership, its constitution, judges, or laws – only regarding their conduct with the outside world. The demands do not require the regime to become a peer of Denmark or Switzerland, merely for its behavior in specific areas of terrorism, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and hostage-taking to match the norms of the international community – a standard successfully met by nearly every other country in the Middle East.
But it is important to recognize arguments that describe these demands as a form of regime change, precisely because Iranian officials view its revolutionary and aggressive activities as inextricable from the survival of the regime. In July 2019, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called Pompeo’s 12 demands “effectively national annihilation.”[15] The demands have no bearing on Iran as a nation, but they do cut to the core of the nature of the regime (the Islamic Republic) and its ideology – which is revolutionary and expansionist. The roots of this mindset grow deep and come from the earliest ideological seeds of the regime. In 1981, Supreme Leader Khomeini described the Islamic Republic’s goals as “the world-wide spread of the influence of Islam…We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world. We wish…to destroy the systems, which are based on these three foundations.”[16]
Given the choice Henry Kissinger first articulated between Iran being a country or a cause, the Iranian regime has consistently picked the latter, and this has not abated over the past 42 years of the regime’s history. In 2013, Supreme Leader Khamenei declared that the regime’s “final goal cannot be anything less than creating a brilliant Islamic civilization,” and is taking great pains to inculcate that thinking within the Iranian power structure and general population.[17] Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideological descendants continue to control the power structures of the regime and, in their minds, Iran permanently ending its nuclear aspirations and its funding for ideologically aligned terror-proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas would be the end of the Islamic Republic’s primary purpose for existing: to spread the Islamic Revolution. The Iranian regime’s core values and goals are in diametric opposition with those of the United States. These observations led many of my colleagues to believe that the only long-term solution for a stable U.S.-Iranian relationship was for our pressure to eventually eliminate all the revolutionary parts of the regime, even as they recognized the enormous difficulty, and perhaps even impossibility, of that path.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration expressed the 12 demands as only seeking to excise the most malignant tumor—the regime’s destabilizing foreign and security policy—and recognized that other areas of serious concern (Iran’s money laundering, cyber-attacks, radical ideology, domestic repression, human rights abuses, etc.) would have to be dealt with later.[18] The regime viewed the same set of foreign and security policies not as chits for negotiation, but as vital organs. In its view, ending them would surely lead to the death of the regime. Even if the United States manages to enter in negotiations with the regime, we should not expect it to give up all these policies—unless, perhaps, the regime were on the precipice of collapse and the lives of its most senior officials were at risk. Even this possibility is doubtful under Supreme Leader Khamenei’s rule, but this dynamic could change under a successor. If a U.S. policy focuses on negotiations alone as the best way to permanently limit Iran’s nuclear program, it is likely to fail.
Conditions for Successful Negotiations
As tensions between Iran and the United States grew in 2019 after the full reimposition of sanctions, the Department of State started receiving strange offers through U.S. allies of obscure Iranian diplomats informally offering to negotiate on behalf of the regime. After investigating the leads, it became clear these were not olive branches, but the intrepid yet entirely unauthorized acts of brash bureaucrats. When maximum pressure came into full gear in the tail-end of 2019 and into 2020, the regime suffered from concurrent economic, political, and military crises, but Supreme Leader Khamenei forbade direct negotiations with the United States on the major nuclear and sanctions questions. The last grasp for a grand diplomatic meeting that French President Macron hoped to broker between President Trump and President Rouhani at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2019 failed to materialize. In December 2019, video cameras captured the U.S. and Iranian Ambassadors to the UN briefly speaking to each other in the UN Security Council Chamber.[19] However, this was an unplanned and unauthorized meeting on both sides. The Iranian Ambassador was excoriated back in Tehran for breaking Khamenei’s instructions and talking to the enemy. The mood at the Department of State was not much happier.
However, starting at the end of September 2019, quiet negotiations on the release of U.S. and Iranian prisoners delicately commenced through Swiss diplomatic intermediaries. These negotiations throughout the fall led to the December 2019 release of American citizen Xiyue Wang, held hostage in Evin Prison for more than three years. Even during the physical exchange of prisoners off the tarmac in Zurich, the Iranian officials would not speak or even make eye contact with the U.S. interlocutor, Special Representative Brian Hook, requiring the Swiss diplomats to convey messages back and forth in the same small room. The indirect talks ended after the killing of Qassem Soleimani, then resumed around March 2020 and led to the release of Michael White, who had also been imprisoned on false charges. In each case, the U.S. Department of Justice released an Iranian citizen from custody who had been imprisoned for sanctions violations and was nearing the end of their prison term.
This behavior demonstrates that the Iranian regime will not negotiate for its own sake or to curry favor with concerned Europeans – as Maduro’s regime in Venezuela often does – but will do so only when it believes it can extract useful concessions. Senior Iranian leaders are incredibly wary of being perceived as too eager for negotiations with the regime’s so-called “Great Satan.” The powerful Secretary of the Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati, warned his fellow Iranians in 2009, “If pro-American tendencies come to power in Iran, we have to say goodbye to everything. After all, anti-Americanism is among the main features of our Islamic state.”[20] Indeed, peace with the United States is abhorred by the regime, including Supreme Leader Khamenei who said in 2014 that reconciliation between the Islamic Republic and America “is not possible,” and told a former Iranian president that “the revolution needs enmity with America.”[21] Thus, we should assume that this regime will not bend on two areas of negotiation: giving up its expansionist foreign policy, and formally declaring peace with Washington. In the minds of the regime’s leaders, both would kill off the Islamic Revolution.
Regardless of the administration, policymakers need to answer the core question “what is the minimum we are willing to accept from Iran?” before pursuing or engaging in negotiations, not in the middle of them when passions and political pressures to seal a deal can override a logical analysis of the costs and benefits. This should determine how the current or future administration might conceptualize its initial negotiating position. Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton were adamant that any deal had to comprehensively address Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile program, hostage taking, and regional activity. However, at times, President Trump seemed fixated on the negotiations or a potential deal as an end in itself. In August 2020, he told supporters at a campaign event that “if we win, we’ll have a deal with Iran within four weeks.”[22] One of the greatest fears privately shared among administration hawks was that the Iranians would indeed decide to negotiate with President Trump, but that he would agree to a deal that only marginally improved upon the JCPOA. Such a deal might have briefly extended the sunset clauses on Iran’s nuclear activity and perhaps led to the release of more U.S. hostages, but put no limitations on Iran’s terrorist and ballistic missile activity and still have required the United States to lift all sanctions in exchange. This internal disagreement within the administration during the pivotal periods in 2019 allegedly resulted in Bolton fighting to undermine negotiations from starting.[23] Such a national security decision-making process can hardly hope to succeed; it is important for the President to rigorously review the prospective challenges and provide firm guidance on thorny questions so that the interagency officials can carry out the President’s intent in a united fashion.
The regime’s strong opposition to the United States’ terms were the proximate cause that negotiations never took place, even though a decision to come to the table would not necessarily have meant Iran would capitulate and agree to all 12 demands—they were simply the Department of State’s starting point for negotiations. More critically, however, the regime did not feel that an existential crisis or economic collapse was so imminent as to compel it to seek immediate sanctions relief. Critics called Iran’s resistance evidence that the maximum pressure strategy was a failure. Though the implementation of that strategy has now ceased, the conclusion that maximum pressure would never work in the future is extraordinarily premature. The full scope of U.S. economic pressure was only activated in May 2019, leaving a mere 19 months for the economic pressure to take effect. As former Special Representative for Iran Elliott Abrams recently wrote, maximum pressure was based on the theory that if Trump won re-election and Iran faced four more years of economic pressure, it would have to agree to negotiations.[24]
In contrast, the United States’ efforts to weaken the Soviet Union lasted decades before it succeeded to change the regime. U.S. campaigns to sanction and weaken North Korea, Venezuela, and Syria – with varying ambitions of regime change – have lasted across changes in administrations and, in each case, longer than our policy to weaken Iran. While U.S. sanctions have severely damaged each of those countries’ economies and capabilities, none have succeeded in deposing those regimes. Accordingly, we should temper any expectation that a return to the maximum pressure campaign would collapse the Iranian regime in short order. Unfortunately, despite the United States’ best efforts, over the past 15 years, countries around the world have increasingly trended toward authoritarianism.[25]
If the United States articulates regime change as a primary strategic goal within a limited time span, it is likely to be frustrated. But neither can we assume that a longer sustained campaign of maximum pressure will guarantee the result of a stronger and comprehensive deal. Khamenei’s decision to ignore U.S. negotiators may have been assisted by the prospect that the United States would radically shift its policy in 2021 and support re-entry into the JCPOA, since each Democratic candidate for President had made such a pledge. However, as evidenced by the current breakdown in negotiations to return to the JCPOA, as well as comments from Supreme Leader Khamenei, it appears that Iranian decision making has shifted away from relying on sanctions relief for the long-term success of the regime and is instead emphasizing the nurturing of a “resistance economy” to sanction-proof the Iranian economy.[26] This development bodes even worse for a policy that relies on economic pressure to get Iran to acquiesce to a comprehensive deal.
We may yet see regime change in Iran, and we may reach a longer and stronger deal with Iran. However, while policymakers work towards those goals, they should also examine alternatives.
The Case for Containment
Instead of predicating U.S. strategy and accompanying messaging on waiting for the regime to fall or to agree to a comprehensive deal, the United States should primarily advance and articulate its strategy as a long-term policy of containment. This containment policy would weaken Iran’s regime through a combination of strong economic, diplomatic, and military pressure that can be sustained and bolstered internationally through buy-in from allies and partners abroad, and domestically through support from the congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle.
If the Trump administration’s maximum pressure was designed for a 200-meter sprint to the finish line, a new version of containment would reconfigure maximum pressure into a 1500 or 5000-meter race that could endure changes in administrations. Ensuring that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon should continue to be a firm part of this policy. But such a strategy needs to be more modest about its anticipated outcome regarding Iranian behavior—it may eventually succeed in the regime toppling or agreeing to fundamentally transform its foreign policy, but it should not count on either outcome as a prerequisite for success. Instead, success should be measured in degree of the regime’s economic, military, and political atrophication that diminishes the regime’s threat to our interests, our allies’ interests, and stability of the region.
George Kennan wrote in 1946 that “the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”[27] The United States eventually succeeded in this policy in large measure because there was a prolonged bipartisan and transatlantic consensus to execute and maintain strong pressure to deter, degrade, and contain Soviet power and influence. The United States should work to marshal the same resolve toward undermining the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Maximum pressure was substantially more robust than Iranian containment policies of previous administrations. Even at the height of multilateral sanctions during the Obama administration, Iran was still permitted to export 1.1 million barrels of oil per day. The first year of maximum pressure brought the regime into severe economic contraction and multiple reinforcing economic problems: a fiscal crisis from a lack of oil revenue, a debt crisis from the regime lacking buyers for government bond sales, a balance of payments crisis that left the regime with only $4 billion in accessible foreign exchange reserves, and mounting inflation and unemployment.[28] Economic challenges left Iran without funds to support its military proxies abroad or to support military sustainment at home.[29] In its proposed 2021 budget, the regime had to slash military spending by 25% and its Research & Development budget by more than 80% – sequestration on steroids. Combined with aging and accident-prone military assets, the Iranian military is atrophying in an unsustainable manner.
Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the regime has plummeted among the Iranian people. In August 2019, Foreign Minister Zarif cited the regime’s previously high turnout (73%) in its elections as proof of its support by the Iranian people.[30] In Iran’s parliamentary elections six months later, this turnout plummeted to 42%.[31] Turnout remained at 42% (after “invalid” protest ballots are discounted) at the June 2021 presidential elections, despite the regime’s wide campaign to encourage voting that included Khamenei calling it a “religious duty.”[32]
What are the plausible results of a policy of containment continued in the long-term? Regime change, more likely through Iranians taking to the streets than through an acceptable negotiation, could certainly be possible down the line, though the U.S. should not count on it. On the military side, a weakened Iranian regime gives time and space for Arab states, including Iraq and Yemen, to regain sovereign control over their territory and strengthen their institutions.
A Key to Containment – Building a Supportive Coalition
The Trump administration’s efforts to maximize pressure on the regime faltered at a few junctures, including enlisting allies and partners to support economic and diplomatic pressure. For containment to work most effectively, the United States must enlist more partners in this endeavor. The Trump administration had enormous success bringing countries in the Middle East together to push back on Iran. Before COVID ended the viability of large conferences, the Department of State organized the Warsaw Conference and Warsaw Process that brought dozens of nations together to address areas of instability caused by Iran. But too often, the Trump administration pushed European allies away and ignored the small asks they made. The most self-damaging instance was the fight over sanctions on Iran’s civil-nuclear projects.
The JCPOA extended protection from sanctions on work for several nuclear projects in Iran related to Iran’s non-military nuclear industry. When the United States left the JCPOA, it retained waivers on these projects, which Secretary Pompeo on multiple occasions said would “help preserve oversight of Iran’s civil nuclear program, reduce proliferation risks, constrain Iran’s ability to shorten its ‘breakout time’ to a nuclear weapon, and prevent the regime from reconstituting sites for proliferation-sensitive purposes.”[33] That should have been reason enough to retain the waivers, but on top of that, retaining the waivers was a small but important part of maintaining European support for our overall strategy. While the E3 nations (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) strongly opposed the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA, they slowly warmed to the pressure campaign as they saw the economic results, and eventually in September 2019 jointly called for Iran to accept negotiations on a new deal.[34] After the Europeans accustomed themselves to the steeled U.S. policy on Iran, they made few formal policy asks of us; retaining the civil-nuclear waivers was usually at the top of their list. Unfortunately, the waivers were ended in May 2020, not because doing so inhibited Iran’s nuclear program, but because of domestic political pressure from members of Congress who generally lacked a technical understanding of the projects.
While the United States could have used European support and goodwill later in the summer of 2020, it was completely absent when the United States used the snapback procedure in UN Security Council Resolution 2231 to return UN sanctions on Iran. Instead of joining us to ensure the arms embargo on Iran would remain in place, the Europeans voted against the initiative in the UN Security Council and then criticized our effort to unilaterally return the sanctions.[35] While the United States should not expect Europe to be the loudest cheerleader for pressure on Iran, it is imperative to court their support as much as we can for pressure on diplomatic, military, and economic fronts to be sustainable in the long term. European companies overwhelming ceased business with Iran when the United States reimposed sanctions on Iran and are still signaling they will not return to the Iranian market even if sanctions are lifted, in part due to concerns that Republicans will reimpose them in the future.[36]
Containment also requires that our partners in the Middle East and Southeast Asia pull their weight. Iran’s economic lifeline lies in its oil and petrochemical exports to UAE and China, and its non-oil exports (primarily metals and minerals) to UAE, China, India, Thailand, and others.[37] Proper enforcement of sanctions will dissuade much of this economic activity, but Chinese imports of Iranian oil have continued despite U.S. sanctions under President Trump in 2019 and 2020 and repeated exhortations by Secretary Blinken in 2021.[38] Two major steps are required: first, we must be willing to sanction major Emirati business and political entities that support trade with Iran – actions the Trump administration was unwilling to take due to close ties with the UAE – and we must convince our Middle Eastern partners to force an ultimatum with China. Israel and Gulf economic and diplomatic relationships with the People’s Republic of China must be conditioned on Beijing ceasing to prop up the Iranian regime’s economy. The United States cannot care more about the security and stability of the region than the countries in it – but we can and should muster a diplomatic coalition to take on the difficult but necessary steps that are required to properly contain Iran.
Conclusion
Developing a “grand strategy” for the United States to deal with the Iranian regime is as difficult a task as it is controversial. Given the stakes for the peace, stability, and prosperity of the world, it is incumbent on current and future administrations to clearly lay out their aims, goals, and the ways and means to achieve them. Only by thoroughly and honestly reviewing, critiquing, and improving our strategy before proceeding upon it can we hope to confront the threats from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Gabriel Noronha is the Executive Director of the Forum for American Leadership. He previously served as the Special Advisor to Secretary Pompeo’s Iran Action Group and as the Special Assistant to the Senate Armed Services Committee under Chairmen John McCain and Jim Inhofe. He was a fellow in the 2020-2021 Security and Strategy Seminar Russia track.
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Image: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Great Conference of Basij Members at Azadi Stadium October 2018, from khamenei.ir. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ayatollah_Ali_Khamenei_at_the_Great_Conference_of_Basij_members_at_Azadi_stadium_October_2018_017.jpg, used under Wikimedia Commons.
[1]H.R. 2718, Maximum Pressure Act,” Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2718/cosponsors?r=8&s=1; Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Letter to President Biden”, 28 February 2021, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/do-not-repeat-past-mistakes-risch-inhofe-rubio-toomey-portman-send-letter-to-president-biden-underscoring-republican-consensus-on-iran-policy.
[2] Brian Hook, “Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee”, 16 October 2019, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/101619_Hook_Testimony.pdf.
[3] Brett Samuels, “Trump: ‘We’re not looking for regime change’ in Iran”, The Hill, 27 May 2019, https://thehill.com/policy/international/445640-trump-were-not-looking-for-regime-change-in-iran.
[4] Abbas Milani, “The Green Movement”, The Iran Primer, 6 October 2010, https://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/green-movement.
[5] Babak Deghanpisher, “Iran says 200,000 took to streets in anti-government protests”, Reuters, 27 November 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-protests/iran-says-200000-took-to-streets-in-anti-government-protests-idUSKBN1Y11PE.
[6] “Special Report: Iran’s leader ordered crackdown on unrest – ‘Do whatever it takes to end it’”, Reuters, 23 December 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-protests-specialreport/special-report-irans-leader-ordered-crackdown-on-unrest-do-whatever-it-takes-to-end-it-idUSKBN1YR0QR.
[7] “Iran: Detainees flogged, sexually abused and given electric shocks in gruesome post-protest crackdown – new report”, Amnesty International, 2 September 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2020/09/iran-detainees-flogged-sexually-abused-and-given-electric-shocks-in-gruesome-post-protest-crackdown-new-report/.
[8] ShareAmerica, “Iran’s regime spends billions to limit citizens’ internet access”, U.S. State Department, 3 June 2020, https://share.america.gov/irans-regime-spends-billions-to-limit-internet-access/; “Iran outlines budget, promises less reliance on oil amid U.S. sanctions”, Reuters, 2 December 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-budget/iran-outlines-budget-promises-less-reliance-on-oil-amid-u-s-sanctions-idUSKBN28C1S8.
[9] Borzou Daragahi, “Massive Iranian internet shutdown could be harbinger of something even darker to come, experts warn”, Independent, 30 November 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-internet-shutdown-protests-communications-tehran-a9226731.html.
[10] Murtaza Hussain, “Trump’s regime change policy for Iran is a fevered fantasy – it will only promote chaos and instability”, The Intercept, 2 February 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/02/02/trump-iran-regime-change-fantasy/.
[11] “Iran’s Military Might”, The Iran Primer, 8 July 2019, https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2019/jul/03/irans-military-might.
[12] Michael R. Pompeo, “The Importance of Sanctions on Iran”, 18 November 2020, https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-importance-of-sanctions-on-iran/index.html.
[13] Elliott Abrams, “Prepared Testimony of Special Representative Elliott Abrams Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Middle East”, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 24 September 2020, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/092420_Abrams_Testimony.pdf.
[14] Brian Hook, “Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee”.
[15] Fareed Zakaria, “On GPS: What did Iran make of Pompeo’s demands”, CNN, 19 July 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/07/19/exp-gps-0721-zarif-on-pompeo.cnn.
[16] Brian Hook, “Special Representative Brian Hook Remarks at Asia Society”, 23 September 2019, https://2017-2021.state.gov/special-representative-brian-hook-remarks-at-asia-society/index.html.
[17] Kyra Rauschenbach, “The Second Step of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: Exploring the Supreme Leader’s Worldview”, Critical Threats, 10 May 2021, https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/the-second-step-of-irans-islamic-revolution-exploring-the-supreme-leaders-worldview.
[18] Michael R. Pompeo, “After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy”, 21 May 2018, https://www.heritage.org/defense/event/after-the-deal-new-iran-strategy.
[19] “US, Iranian envoys share rare private exchange after heated UN meeting”, The Times of Israel, 20 December 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-iranian-envoys-share-rare-private-exchange-after-heated-un-meeting/.
[20] William J Burns et al, Contain, Enforce, and Engage: An Integrated U.S. Strategy to Address Iran’s Nuclear and Regional Challenges, (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017), https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/10/26/contain-enforce-and-engage-integrated-u.s.-strategy-to-address-iran-s-nuclear-and-regional-challenges-pub-73484.
[21] Karim Sadjadpour, “How to Win the Cold War with Iran”, The Atlantic, 25 March 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/how-win-cold-war-iran/618388/.
[22] Gabby Birenbaum, “Trump vows ‘deal with Iran within four weeks’ if reelected”, The Hill, 10 August 2020, https://thehill.com/policy/international/511347-trump-vows-deal-with-iran-within-four-weeks-if-reelected.
[23] David Sanger, “On North Korea and Iran, Bolton Blames ‘the Split between Trump and Trump’”, New York Times, 20 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/john-bolton-north-korea-iran-trump.html.
[24] Elliott Abrams, “Did the ‘Maximum Pressure’ Campaign Against Iran Fail?”, Council on Foreign Relations, 12 July 2021, https://www.cfr.org/blog/did-maximum-pressure-campaign-against-iran-fail.
[25] Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, “Democracy under Siege”, Freedom House, 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege.
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[27] George F. Kennan, “Long Telegram”, 22 February 1946, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf.
[28] “Regional Economic Outlook: Middle East and Central Asia”, International Monetary Fund, April 2021.
[29] Ben Hubbard, “Iran’s Allies Feel the Pain of American Sanctions”, New York Times, 28 March 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/world/middleeast/iran-sanctions-arab-allies.html.
[30] Javad Zarif, “International Law and Unilateralism”, YouTube, 21 August 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_xEHZQ6Dfg&t=4039s&ab_channel=SIPRI.
[31] “Iran elections: Record low turnout but hardliners set for win”, BBC News, 23 February 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51605942.
[32] Parisa Hafezi, “Khamenei says voting in Iran’s election ‘a religious duty’”, Reuters, 18 February 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-election-khamenei/khamenei-says-voting-in-irans-election-a-religious-duty-idUSKBN20C10U.
[33] Michael R. Pompeo, “Secretary Pompeo Imposes New Sanctions on Iran and Extends Nuclear Restrictions”, 31 October 2019, https://2017-2021-translations.state.gov/2019/10/31/secretary-pompeo-imposes-new-sanctions-on-iran-and-extends-nuclear-restrictions/index.html.
[34] “Joint statement by the heads of state and government of France, Germany and the United Kingdom”, 24 September 2019, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-by-the-heads-of-state-and-government-of-france-germany-and-the-united-kingdom.
[35] “E3 Foreign Ministers’ Statement on the JCPOA”, 22 August 2020, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-by-the-heads-of-state-and-government-of-france-germany-and-the-united-kingdom.
[36] Eklavya Gupte, “Too early for Total to consider a return to Iran: CFO”, S&P Global, 29 April 2021, https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/042921-too-early-for-total-to-consider-a-return-to-iran-cfo.
[37] Iran International, “Iran Says Exports Of Steel, Metals Have Increased This Year”, 8 December 2021, https://www.iranintl.com/en/20211208836049.
[38] Arshad Mohamed and John Irish, Reuters, “EXCLUSIVE U.S. has reached out to China about cutting oil imports from Iran, officials say”, 28 September 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-us-has-reached-out-china-about-cutting-oil-imports-iran-officials-say-2021-09-28/.