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      U.S. State Department Special Representative Brian Hook is the Trump administration’s top official handling affairs with Iran.

      Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

      Trump’s sanctions also have blocked international banks from conducting transactions in dollars with Iran, significantly curtailing imports of medicine and food. Although those items were exempted from the sanctions, foreign suppliers and banks have backed away from exporting them to Iran. (See Short Feature.)

      Yet experts say the Iranian economy, for now, is not about to collapse, because it has diversified over the past four decades. The sanctions have not sparked mass demonstrations against the regime. Though polls show a majority of Iranians blame the Rouhani government’s economic mismanagement and corruption for the country’s fiscal woes, a growing percentage blame the United States and have rallied around their clerical leaders.⁷

      “The regime’s narrative about why Iran faces difficulties has shifted from the things that [Iranians are] doing wrong to the difficulties outsiders have created for us,” Mazarei says. “So U.S. responsibility for the sanctions and current conditions has become far more prominent in the minds of ordinary Iranians. And that has created social solidarity.”

      Driving the administration’s sanctions policy are a dozen demands that would dismantle Iran’s strong military position in the region, which the United States, its Persian Gulf allies and Israel view as a threat. Formulated last year by Trump’s hawkish then-national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the key requirements include a permanent end to Tehran’s nuclear program, as well as termination of both its ballistic missile development and its support for Shiite proxy militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Analysts agree that those proxies have helped shift the regional balance of power in Iran’s favor by extending its influence far beyond its borders. (See Graphic.)⁸

      Trump fired Bolton in September after sharp disagreements over signs the president was straying from Bolton’s hard line and softening his position on Iran, among other issues. But even with Bolton no longer in the White House, Trump’s demands and the sanctions remain.

      “If we want to get to a point where Iran’s proxies are weaker and the regime doesn’t have the resources that it needs to destabilize the Middle East, it will require economic pressure,” says U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, the administration’s top official dealing with Tehran. “There is no other way to accomplish that goal.”

      Among the Democratic candidates vying for their party’s presidential nomination, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg have said they would unilaterally return to the 2015 nuclear deal if elected. Former Vice President Joe Biden has made his return conditional on Iran’s full compliance with the agreement, while Sen. Cory Booker has said he will seek “a better deal.”⁹

      Analysts say the administration’s policy of relying on economic sanctions, combined with Trump’s reluctance to use military force, has only encouraged greater Iranian defiance and heightened the chances of an eventual military confrontation.

      “Iran is incentivized to make riskier decisions, such as conducting additional significant attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure,” according to an October analysis by the Eurasia Group, a Washington-based political risk consultancy. “Tehran could also cross, either intentionally or accidentally, Trump’s main red line: the death of U.S. service members.”¹⁰

      Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to five Arab and Muslim countries over a 40-year State Department career, says the intractability of current tensions between the United States and Iran can be traced to Trump’s failure to observe one of the most basic equations in international security affairs: matching means with ends.

      “President Trump has shown himself to be a national security minimalist who is not likely to rush to war,” says Crocker. However, he adds, “He and his team are pursuing maximalist ends by demanding the Iranians give up their nuclear ambitions, their missile program and their support cv bc for regional proxy forces. Those things are absolutely integral to the Islamic Republic’s basic essence.”

      Crocker continues: “When we put things like that out there as demands, what the Iranians hear is that this isn’t about de-escalating tensions and finding common ground; it’s about removing the Islamic Republic. So they’re going to deliver a maximalist response that our minimalist president isn’t prepared to deal with.”

      Amid these challenges, here are some key questions being asked about the increasingly fraught U.S.-Iran relationship:

      Can Iran’s economy survive under Trump’s sanctions?

      Ali Safavi, an exiled Iranian opposition figure living in Washington, D.C., insists the clerical regime in Tehran is close to collapse.

      “Today, the Iranian regime is at its weakest point,” says Safavi, a member of the Mujaheddin e-Khalq, the oldest and best organized Iranian opposition group. “It is extremely vulnerable.”

      He attributes the regime’s fragility largely to Trump’s economic sanctions, which ban any individual, company or country from doing business with Iran from the United States. Trump has said his goal is to block Iran’s oil exports, viewed by Washington as the lifeblood of the Iranian economy. And over the past year, Trump has steadily intensified those sanctions, targeting Iran’s Central Bank, the country’s leaders and its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s most powerful military organization but branded by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization. Iran’s long-standing problems of corruption and malfeasance compound the impact of the sanctions, experts say.

      The resulting inflation and weakening of the rial sparked widespread anti-government protests and strikes in 2017 and 2018, Safavi says, eroding the Iranian leadership’s grip on power. Videos from last year’s street demonstrations captured angry mobs hurling insults at police and chanting “Death to inflation! Death to unemployment!”¹¹

      But an NPR report from Tehran last August told a different story. “Morning Edition” program host Steve Inskeep said: “Stores are well-stocked, though prices have soared through inflation. New stores and restaurants have opened to serve the elite, even if they’re not always full of customers. New buildings are under construction, even if the progress on some has been slow.” The government appears firmly in charge, Inskeep said, and he saw no anti-government protests while he was there.¹²

      Iran experts say the country’s economy is a mixed picture. Trump’s sanctions have hit hard, they say, denying the government billions of dollars in oil export revenues and drastically limiting Tehran’s ability to pay subsidies and fund public projects. Major foreign companies operating in Iran, such as German automaker Mercedes Benz and France’s Total gasoline company, have fled the country. The sanctions also have denied Iran access to the global financial markets, where the U.S. dollar is the premier СКАЧАТЬ