This gets to the most fundamental reason that pressure against Iran has failed. It has failed not because the Iranian regime is different from other “normal” governments but because of respects in which it is similar. Many Iranian actions the West considers objectionable are similar to ones that Western leaders—if placed in a similar situation, with everything that means regarding threats, conflicts, and being on the receiving end of attacks—also would take.

There remain other respects in which Iranian conduct is justly condemnable. One could put on that list an apparent return by Iran to extraterritorial assassination of dissidents, as well as election interference and other irregular behavior. Also condemnable, as Zakaria appropriately notes, is a miserable record of human rights violations within Iran. The targeted use of sticks as well as carrots to steer Iran away from some of these behaviors is more likely to succeed if divorced from the wholesale and unrealistic approach that the maximum pressure policy takes toward Iranian conduct as a whole.

Meanwhile, maximum pressure exacerbates the failure of U.S. policy in several other respects. One is that the same sanctions that sock it to the Iranian middle class have encouraged the growth of a smuggling-based economy from which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) profits the most. So much for sanctions supposedly reducing the wherewithal for nefarious behavior by the likes of the IRGC.

Another is that economic strain has pushed Iran closer to, and more dependent on, trade with, Russia. The trade extends to arms, including drones and missiles that Russia uses in its war against Ukraine and that have provided the rationale for the most recent new U.S. sanctions on Iran. 

Yet another disadvantage is that a U.S. policy of only ostracizing and pressuring Iran rather than engaging with it eliminates the possibility of fruitful cooperation on topics where Iranian and U.S. interests run parallel or where Iran must be part of any solution and not just written off as a part of the problem. One such topic is countering radical Islamist terrorism of the Islamic State variety, in which Iran has been a major target. Another is the security in the Persian Gulf region, which could build on Iran’s rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states.

Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier, he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA, covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

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