Recommendations of the Architect of Sanctions to Trump
Recommendations of the Architect of Sanctions to Trump
Richard Nephew, an American foreign policy expert known as the architect of sanctions against the Islamic Republic, says Donald Trump should give diplomacy with Iran one last chance while also preparing for military action. In an article published on January 2nd in Foreign Affairs, Mr. Nephew wrote that given the risks of military action, the United States should make a final and sincere effort to negotiate at the start of Trump’s term to halt Tehran’s nuclear program.
Richard Nephew also added that caution dictates Washington should now begin planning for military action and ensure that Iran takes this threat seriously. Mr. Nephew, who was previously a member of the U.S. negotiation team during the nuclear talks with global powers, emphasized that an attack destroying the Natanz site and other Iranian nuclear sites will not solve the problem, just as the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020 and attacks on Iran’s centrifuge production sites in 2021 did not resolve the issue.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom the Israeli Prime Minister had named as the father of Iran’s nuclear bomb two and a half years before his assassination, was killed on November 27, 2020, in an attack on his car on the Absard road in the outskirts of Tehran. Richard Nephew, who was the director of the Iran desk at the U.S. National Security Council during Barack Obama’s presidency, wrote in his article that the United States may need to continuously attack Iran to permanently suppress its nuclear ambitions or conduct a larger attack that eliminates elements of Iran’s security forces or regime.
He then argues that if these attacks occur, it is difficult to imagine the Islamic Republic quickly turning to diplomacy unless there is a change in the Iranian government. This senior researcher at Columbia University added that negotiations in 2021 and 2022 to bring the United States and Iran back to full compliance with the JCPOA failed because Iran did not trust the United States and was concerned that a new Republican president might not adhere to the agreement.
However, he added that if Trump himself agrees to a new deal, Iran might believe that this agreement will be sustainable. During his recent election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly emphasized reinstating the so-called maximum pressure policy against the Islamic Republic of Iran and criticized the 2015 agreement between global powers and Iran for not including the missile program and destabilizing activities in the Middle East.
Richard Nephew, who was a senior sanctions expert in the negotiations with Iran between 2013 and 2014, says that if the United States uses the maximum pressure approach to soften Iran in subsequent negotiations, Iran might react by hiding its nuclear materials, building a bomb, withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or all three. He wrote that if efforts to reach an agreement fail, the United States must be prepared to use military force.
Mr. Nephew believes that in this case, while still under sanctions, Iran should simultaneously focus on rebuilding its nuclear program, rebuilding Hezbollah, renewing its missile capabilities, and managing the country’s economic problems. According to Richard Nephew, the Iranian government must make real decisions about its strategic path. The country has lost all its major deterrence systems and methods and can no longer turn to nuclear weapons as a cheap and quick option to regain this deterrence.
He also wrote that if U.S. attacks on Iran occur, the Islamic Republic might receive limited support among the Iranian people, and there is a possibility that depending on the extent of targeting and collateral damage, the Iranian people might see it as an opportunity for regime change. Mr. Nephew concluded his article for Foreign Affairs by writing that the blows Iran has received from Israel, along with its struggling economy, might already be enough to push the country towards a nuclear path.
Following the killing of Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the Quds Force in Syria, on April 14, the Islamic Republic of Iran attacked Israel with missiles and drones, and on September 30, in response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the killing of Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilfrushan, Zahedi’s deputy in Lebanon, it targeted Israel with 181 ballistic missiles.
In response to these attacks, on October 27, Israel carried out attacks on Iran, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims resulted in the destruction of several military centers and also eliminated the defensive capabilities of the Islamic Republic. Richard Nephew, in his article, recommended that U.S. policymakers should adjust their calculations to consider the construction of nuclear weapons by Iran as inevitable and must be managed, warning that there is limited time to prevent reaching this point, and Washington should consider severe actions.
