Trump’s ‘Max Pressure’ Policy on Iran Might Finally Work

But that shouldn’t include hasty air strikes on Tehran’s nuclear program.

By Marc Champion

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

Imagine you’re an average Iranian. Statistically, you’re very likely to be under 35, born long after the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran-Iraq war that molded your elderly leaders. You’re not an Islamist, don’t attend Mosque, didn’t vote at the last election, don’t feel safe or economically secure; and there’s a 92% chance you think the country is headed, irredeemably, in the wrong direction.

That’s according to leaked results from the government’s own “Fourth Wave of the National Survey on Values and Attitudes of Iranians.” The poll of almost 16,000 people was conducted in November 2023. That was before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei took on Israel, burning up at least $200 billion he might have spent on citizens but chose instead to give to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria and other so-called “Axis of Resistance” members. This “forward defense” policy has now collapsed, leaving the country vulnerable and in search of a new deterrent.

That’s more than enough reason to be unhappy. Yet things are now looking worse, and the nation’s leaders less competent, by the day. A cold snap has forced brownouts and official appeals to turn down the heating; this, from a government that can pay for and master the technology to enrich near weapons-grade uranium, but can’t seem to exploit the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves well enough to keep people warm in the winter.

Last week, the regime finally published its policy response to the story that had dominated news from the Middle East before the Gaza war: Nationwide protests against female modesty laws so brutal that in 2022, a young woman arrested for wearing her hijab incorrectly died in custody. Hundreds perished in the crackdown that followed. The proposed new law amounts to a plan to re-indoctrinate all Iranians with a religious fervor most don’t share, and to make penalties for failing the dress code still more severe. It was due to take effect Friday, but the backlash was so furious that on Monday President Massoud Pezeshkian withdrew the bill for reconsideration.

All of this signals a regime that's in deep trouble at home and abroad, creating an opportunity for the US, Israel and others as they try to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring a nuclear arsenal that would trigger proliferation across a volatile region. At the same time, Iran has never been closer to having the enriched uranium it needs to make that breakthrough, or had more motive to do so, after Israel's severe degradation of the "Axis of Resistance" Tehran saw as its primary deterrent.

The US and its allies should definitely seize this moment of opportunity and threat. The question is how.

Bombing Iran's nuclear program out of existence is an option, but it's as difficult an enterprise as it always was, because the most important enrichment cascades are buried under mountains. This remains true even now that Israel has destroyed much of Iran's air defense system.

Complete success, therefore, is still unlikely, and the most important asset for an Iranian nuclear arsenal, the technical expertise and experience required to produce highly enriched uranium, would remain. The program could be swiftly reconstituted and might even accelerate, as the regime abandoned pretense.Moreover, while Iran’s ability to strike back is reduced, it’s hardly gone. Both Hezbollah and Iran retain significant ballistic and other missile capabilities that could cause heavy damage in both Israel and the Gulf.

In 2019, drones and cruise missiles were enough for Iran to strike Saudi Arabia’s massive Abqaiq oil-processing facilities."Look at factors on the ground,” Naysan Rafati, a Washington-based senior Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group, told me. “There is a difference between this being the best opportunity there has been (to strike Iran's nuclear facilities), and being a favorable one.”Rafati argues for using Iran’s current vulnerability to pressure the regime into accepting the kind of nuclear deal Trump always said he wanted.

A new Trumpian deal would also cover conventional military threats and eschew the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’s sundown clauses, which would eventually have legitimated the regime’s highly suspect nuclear-fuel program. There’s a risk Iranian negotiators just use the talks to stall while the regime goes on enriching fuel for weapons, but there’s potentially much to gain and little to lose by putting that to the test.

Trump would have Europe on board for this. The so-called E3 – Britain, France and Germany – have been angered by Iran’s military support for Russia in Ukraine and are already threatening to “snap back” the international sanctions the JCPOA lifted - unless Iran plays ball on its nuclear- fuel program. It’s been piling up uranium enriched to 60%, for which there is no known purpose other than to get one step away from the 90% required for weaponization.

This stockpile needs to be eliminated.Perhaps the best question for Trump’s advisers to ask themselves, though, is how would those average Iranians react to being bombed? The idea of Iran having its own nuclear deterrent isn’t unpopular. It’s the sanctions and isolation and clerics that are. Iranians are even less likely to support being attacked in an operation that surely would risk throwing contaminants into the air.

Rather than weaken a regime that’s already in deep domestic trouble, a major air strike on its nuclear stockpiles and facilities could well strengthen it. Because if any rally-around-the-flag effect would likely be temporary, the security emergency created by major airstrikes would allow the state to justify further crackdowns and cast any preference for cooperation with the West as not only anti-regime, but anti-Iran.

Trump’s maximum pressure campaign was designed to get Iran to agree to long-lasting nuclear restrictions as well as less aggressive missile and foreign policies. He will have unprecedented leverage to secure such a deal once he returns to office and should use it to the full. Bombing Iran's nuclear sites, by contrast, should be considered only when all else has failed; the costs will be high, success hard to attain and the consequences unpredictable.