As the second Trump Administration took office, it found a Middle East landscape that had been transformed dramatically in the last year alone. Nowhere is that change felt more profoundly than in Iran, which finds its power and influence in the region reduced – most notably, its ability to use its so-called “ring of fire” of militant groups to threaten Israel. The two most potent elements in that “ring” – the armies of Hamas and Hezbollah – are now shadows of what they were before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the Israeli wars against both groups that followed.
That altered landscape has analysts and policymakers focused increasingly on the one element of Iranian power that has actually been strengthened – its nuclear program – and it has left the U.S. facing profound questions in terms of its policy towards Iran.
Should Israel and the U.S. seize this moment of Iranian weakness to open fresh negotiations on Iran's nuclear program – with the aim of driving a harder bargain than the world was able to achieve in the landmark 2015 agreement? Or does this moment present an opportunity to strike militarily at elements of the Iranian program, given Iran’s relative weakness when it comes to retaliatory measures? That weakness was made worse when Israel struck critical Iranian air defenses last October, including missile production facilities and surface-to-air missile sites.
The Cipher Brief spoke with Norman Roule, former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI); and Paula Doyle, a former Associate Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA.
Their interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
How badly weakened is Iran?
Doyle: It's very significant. One thing to note was that at the Davos events [last month’s World Economic Forum], the Iranian vice president Javad Zarif was, in my view, begging for re-engagement. This is a man who has been part of the negotiating world of Iran for many, many years. He tried to reframe things – he said, we are tough, we are strong, we are resilient, we will continue to pay in blood, sweat, tears, and money. When I looked at that, I saw an Iranian official that the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] clearly let leave Iran to try to reframe a very weak Iran, an economy that is crushed – as somehow standing strong. But Zarif cannot say that Iran is operating from a stronger position, after having lost [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad and its Russian allies in Syria. But it's not their style to come forward in a public venue to say, OK, we're on our backs right now.
Roule: Iran now has a possible threat to regime survival by an external power, beyond the capacity of its military to oppose. It has a lack of external allies of any strength, a disgruntled population, a poor economy, rising inflation, and a need to deflect sanctions.
Iran is certainly weaker than a year ago, but we need to be careful about using such broad adjectives. Iran's ability to project power has diminished significantly, and it's certainly exposed to further attacks by Israel or the United States. The regime is increasingly unpopular, the economy is poor. So if that's your definition of weakness, then Iran is weak.
But just because Iran has lost its proxies, and has reduced confidence in its air defenses, doesn't mean the regime is about to collapse or that the West is about to launch sweeping attacks against Iran. As a result of the Biden administration's decision not to robustly enforce oil sanctions, the regime now has accessible foreign reserves that are much higher than at the end of the last Trump administration.
The regime may be unpopular, but it still appears relatively stable. Unrest could break out at any time, but at present there is no major protest underway. Security forces appear loyal and relatively resourced. And perhaps most importantly, there is no evidence that Iran is yet willing to take steps that would give us confidence that it would accept a deal that would end or temporarily halt its nuclear weapons and regional ambitions - because doing so would require that it change its own DNA.
What should the West should do – on the nuclear front and elsewhere?
Roule: Iran is a very complicated challenge. And this has been a challenge for very smart people in every administration since Jimmy Carter. So we shouldn't expect the Trump administration to perform a miracle overnight. But at the same time, we need to come up with ways to support one more administration as it tackles one of the most complicated challenges in our foreign policy we've had in our country's history.
U.S. pressure can constrain Iran, and bring Iran to negotiations if done consistently and over time. There is no question that maximum pressure has done this in various administrations, and can do this again if applied correctly. U.S. unilateral sanctions can severely damage the regime. Washington does not need Europe to apply these sanctions. These sanctions slowed the nuclear program, and during periods of maximum pressure under the first Trump administration, severely limited resources available to [Iran's] proxies.
There's sometimes an argument in Washington that sanctions don't work. That's completely untrue. You can measure the impact and sanctions to delay Iran's nuclear program, to impact a variety of different things. But symbolic sanctions don't work. The next time somebody puts forward a proposed sanctions, there should be a line at the end that says, this is what this sanction will do. In some cases, it just creates an atmosphere – don't do business with Iran. And that's important. But if that's all you do, you're not going to erode capability in Iran and push the leadership into a debate where they make decisions. And it's been a long time since we've imposed sanctions on Iran that have been more than symbolic and shifting the atmosphere.
Iran is going to seek a deal that undermines the entire pressure architecture, without committing itself to permanent constraints. The Iranians will refuse to discuss regional or missile issues beyond the basics, as they did in 2013. I was there [then], and whenever anyone says you should have done this, you should have done that, you pretty much know they weren't there. Iran refused to come to the table at all if missiles or the region was on the table.
At the end of the day, the [Trump] administration has got to decide, how do you start shaping the thinking of the Iranian regime? If you're looking at military deterrence against Iran, we have a new secretary of defense, and what are the plans for our sending aircraft carrier task forces to the Middle East? And why are we doing so? What is the purpose of our current aircraft carrier task force in the Red Sea? It seems right now, its primary purpose is to protect Russian and Chinese shipping because there's not a lot of American shipping in the Red Sea. And the last I checked on the map, the Red Sea was neither next to New York nor Los Angeles. So you've got to have a sense of what are our strategic interests in the Middle East? How do we handle military engagement? What are the prioritizations of the issues we're going to address with our always finite diplomatic bandwidth?
Doyle: Anything that happens that can be a breakthrough on the negotiation side needs to be done in private. For eons, our best strategies with Iran have been in private. In private, you can look for cracks in the facade [of the regime] and you can begin to shape and mold. If you try to do it in public, you're just going to steel everybody up, stiffen their backs, and you could get some very unproductive outcomes.
What I would say about what comes next is, don't make the mistake again of separating Iran's terrorism activities from its quest for a nuclear weapons program. If you look back at the decision to separate those two, after the nuclear agreement, Iran ramped up its support for Hezbollah. It ramped up its support for Hamas. It ramped up the violence against the West and with the Houthis. [The nuclear agreement] was well-intentioned. I understand that, but in terms of these other issues, it didn't work. The nuclear issue and Iran’s state-sponsored violence deserve to be on the table together.
How real is the military option against Iran's nuclear program?
Doyle: Governments always have choices. If you go the diplomatic route, you choose some things. If you go to the military action piece, that would probably be looking at not just the nuclear program, but also Iran's ability to deliver a weapon. We are not aware, as far as I know, that Iran has developed a warhead capability. This is really sophisticated stuff. If they should, however, get some help – and they have friends, friends with nuclear programs who may or may not be willing to help – then what we really need to focus on is Iran's ability to project power outside of its borders.
So rather than risking a nuclear warhead on a missile, I would focus on the missile complexes. We know exactly where they are. It's really hard to have a missile complex and hide it under the ground. And I would imagine – I do not know, I've been out of government now for eight years – but I would imagine that war planners are very good at knowing where the missile capabilities are, and some of the bigger drones that could carry something heavy enough to carry nuclear material. So I would urge people to contemplate what an attack might look like if it really just went after mostly the missile complex delivery system.
Roule: In the near term, based on history, what would move Iran would be a demonstration of U.S. willingness to use force in the event of any attacks against U.S. persons, the homeland or the development of nuclear weapons. It's one thing to punish them after an action, but if you can create that debate now within Iran that you don't want to go there, you're going to have a very bad day, you actually will keep people alive – then it helps the diplomacy.
The U.S. is moving towards direct military confrontation if Iran continues its lethal actions against us, but is also looking for a way to avoid a conventional war. If you look at this soup of ingredients, you see similarities in 1999 to 2003, 2009 to 2013, and 2022 to the present. And when that occurred, Iran made substantial nuclear negotiations, halted a weaponization program in 2003, and accepted the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [the nuclear agreement] in the Obama era. I think Iran's going to see if it can run that playbook again, particularly starting with Europe, to see where this goes.
The odds of a new deal?
Doyle: I always believe there's a possibility for a deal. Cracks and fissures happen all the time. And if our instinct and our policy is to drive a new deal, then do it. Drive it. But drive it from a perspective of all of Iran. This notion that you can do a nuclear deal over here and Iran gets to do terrorism over here – that has proven to be very damaging to our national security and to the security of the Middle East. And we have a lot of friends and neighbors in the Middle East.
But this is a beautiful opportunity. Every change of administration is an opportunity to kind of reset, rethink, pull things back, try some new things. We know what the cracks and fissures are. Hezbollah has been decapitated. Hamas has been decapitated, at least on the leadership side.
Roule: Iran's primary goal in negotiations is to fend off the pressure, the diplomatic and economic isolation, and to provide sufficient economic relief to enable the regime to move through a period of time when it's experiencing a leadership transition. We're watching the demise of the revolutionary generation – as the old saw goes, the average age of Iran's revolutionary leaders is deceased. The Supreme Leader is in his mid-eighties, and in poor health. The next generation is about 20 years younger. Their world view is not the revolution or the Iran Iraq war, but the world post-2003. So first Iran needs to maintain stability. Second, it needs to erode the sanctions pressure and provide some financial relief. But when you look at the nuclear program, Iran has always had four red lines or four demands that I don't think they're going to change in the near term.
No requirement that it admit its past weaponization activities; it retains the right to industrial enrichment in its civilian program; it doesn't close nuclear facilities, but it has been willing to dismantle aspects of those facilities. And lastly, the right to continue nuclear research and development. Iran also needs time to revitalize its regional proxies.
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