With the collapse of the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, followed by the Biden administration’s termination of the Trump “maximum pressure” policy, the United States has been left for nearly four years without a coherent or even discernable Iran policy.
The Iran Nuclear Deal (formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) is arguably the Obama administration’s most notable foreign policy legacy, and among the greatest points of contention in foreign policy circles. Agreed to in July 2015, the Iran Deal would ostensibly influence Iran to cease its quest for weapons-grade uranium in exchange for sanctions relief. President Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, citing its failure to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, while affording the expansionist state increasing latitude. This was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s delivery of over $100 billion to Iran—through sanctions relief and unfrozen cash—while Iran’s nuclear centrifuges continued to churn in pursuit of weapons-grade uranium.
Although President Biden has sought to resurrect the Iran Deal, it has not yet materialized, and likely won’t. The President’s effort to draw Iran back to the negotiation table has been all carrot and no stick. Since taking office, the Biden administration has returned over $50 billion to Iran without any assurance or reason to believe they are willing to operate in good faith.
The unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel by the Iranian proxy Hamas came just weeks after President Biden announced the delivery of an additional $6 billion to the Islamic Republic. This brutal assault cemented Iran’s position as the Middle East’s most malign and dangerous state. Iran’s behavior has made clear that it is unwilling to operate as a good-faith international actor, or even honor a transactional agreement.
Following the successful American operation in 2020 that killed Qasem Soleimani, Quds Force commander and terrorist-in-chief responsible for an untold number of American deaths, Iran announced that it would no longer limit its uranium enrichment to civilian use and began construction of a new centrifuge production center at Natanz. Moreover, the Iranian Parliament passed a law to substantially boost uranium enrichment at its Fordow enrichment site. In September 2023, Iran announced that it would bar IAEA inspectors from monitoring its nuclear facilities.
According to a May 2024 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, Iran has achieved over 142 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent. According to the IAEA, it is possible to create an atomic weapon with 42 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. With Iran’s total stockpile of enriched uranium currently at over 6,200 kilograms, IAEA Chief Rafael Mariano Grossi predicts that Tehran has enough near-weapons-grade uranium to produce several nuclear bombs in short order.
Iran’s malign ambition comes as no surprise. Across four decades, a non-nuclear Iran has set the region on fire through its financing, training, equipping, and provision of strategic advantage to proxy terrorist militias spanning the region. In the wake of the October 7 attack in Israel, Iran has grown increasingly belligerent, threatening to expand the conflict throughout the broader region, with devastating implications anywhere else Iran’s menacing footprint exists. Iran’s deadly ambition to control the “ShiaCrescent”—Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, and Yemen—is a clear, yet still very limited, snapshot demonstrating its malevolent geostrategic vision, rooted in religious extremism and archaic concepts of civilizational warfare.
In addition to its geostrategic implications, Iran’s expansionist scheme has resulted in grave outcomes for the remaining, endangered Christian communities of the Middle East. The “Shia Crescent”—Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in particular—also happens to be the indigenous homeland of the Middle East’s beleaguered Christian communities, an ever-shrinking minority. This area, in the Christian context, is historically known as the “Fertile Crescent,” but is now more evocative of desolation and bleakness.
In Lebanon, Iran has created a state-within-a-state through its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. According to the U.S. State Department’s Iran Action Group, Iran funds Hezbollah to the tune of $700 million annually, and remains the “primary supplier of Hezbollah’s military technology, enabling the group’s transformation into a quasi-conventional force.” Hezbollah’s stranglehold over Lebanese society has resulted in a grossly corrupt government, a woefully incapable military, and a collapsed economy of historic proportions, all culminating in a humanitarian and security crisis.
For historical context, Lebanon was once the most successful democracy in the Middle East and a bastion of religious freedom. Over the course of four decades, Hezbollah has effectively brought Lebanon to the brink of state failure, faring only superficially better than Afghanistan and Somalia. Total collapse in Lebanon will afford Iran an unfettered strategic foothold over Israel and fuel Sunni-Shia conflict and destabilization in the Levant.
Iran also supports several terrorist militias in Iraq, including the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), that not only kill Americans but also target Iraq’s remaining native Syriac Christian communities (also referred to as Chaldeans and Assyrians). Following the territorial defeat of ISIS in northern Iraq, Iran’s proxy militias quickly filled the vacuum. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the PMF and other Iran-backed militias continue to inhibit the return of Christians to the Nineveh Plain through harassment, detention, extortion, checkpoint interrogation, and physical violence, ultimately forcing them to remain internally displaced. The U.S. State Department notes that Iraqi officials loyal to Iran seek to bring demographic change to northern Iraq by replacing ancient Christian communities with Shia populations.
Iran’s proxies are not a disjointed constellation. Iran’s “carpet weaving” approach to building its terror network to propagate the Revolution has resulted in a sophisticated, well-orchestrated tool in Iran’s arsenal. In the wake of Iran’s October 7 attack on Israel through its Palestinian proxy Hamas, Hezbollah was the first to join the fight, launching rockets, missiles, and offensive drone sorties into Israel. Iran’s Iraq-based militias followed with upwards of 200 rockets, missiles, and drone strikes against U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. The Yemen-based Houthis also began their campaign to strike Israel with missiles and drones, while launching attacks against nearly 550 commercial ships in the Red Sea. The Houthi movement began nearly two decades ago as an Iran-backed domestic insurgency against the government of Yemen but has since morphed into one of Iran’s most potent and sophisticated international proxies, second only to Hezbollah.
Without a coherent Iran policy, the Biden administration finds itself at a critical foreign policy juncture.
In an encouraging display of resolve, in April, President Biden signed two key pieces of legislation into law, by way of a larger supplemental package for foreign assistance. The Fight and Combat Rampant Iranian Missile Exports Act (known as the Fight CRIME Act) imposes sanctions on countries, individuals, and entities that attempt to acquire, transport, or deploy Iranian missiles, material and technology. The Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum Act (known as the SHIP Act) imposes sanctions on individuals who knowingly transport, process, refine, or otherwise profit from Iranian petroleum, the lifeblood of Iran-backed terror.
While these enactments do not constitute a comprehensive Iran policy, they do send a serious message to Iran and its terror clients.
The Maximum Pressure Act, currently under consideration with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is the toughest Iran sanctions package ever proposed by Congress. The legislation would gut Iran’s ability to fund terrorism throughout the region and sanction the Supreme Leader of Iran. The legislation would also require the U.S. President—whoever is in the White House—to enforce previously enacted sanctions on Iran and restrict executive authority to unilaterally deliver or unfreeze money to Iran as part of a deal.
Regional security and international order cannot be maintained in the absence of a fine-tuned American policy on Iran. Even a theoretical return to the Iran Nuclear Deal—which, by now, seems to be a foregone possibility—would, alone, not be a comprehensive Iran policy. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius noted, “Biden should think bigger, and push back at the bullying regime that’s unpopular at home and feared abroad.”
To preserve American interests and security in the Middle East, the burgeoning Iran threat must be confronted squarely through a foreign policy that severs Iran’s international tentacles. The Biden administration must craft and prioritize an Iran policy that compels the discontinuation of support for its malign regional proxies. Cutting off its petroleum and weapons sales revenues, which directly fund terror, is a good start.