Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has gone for gold in the Middle East. He launched a dramatic military operation against Iran’s nuclear program, building on the broader dismantling of the country’s regional power. He then brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Iran and indicated a willingness to talk with the Iranian government. These outcomes have provided hope that if the United States can focus on the essential—the continued containment and further weakening of Iran—and avoid overcommitment to myriad other regional policy objectives, the Middle East might finally have the stability and normalcy it has long lacked.
But the region has seen similar optimism: after the Yom Kippur War in 1974, the defeat of Iran and then Iraq from 1988 to 1991, and after the takedown of the Taliban in 2001. In each case, the Middle East had reached a critical point of danger, prompting successful American intervention, followed by diplomatic campaigns to lock in these moments of stability. The Camp David accords, for instance, normalized relations between Egypt and Israel, and Israel and Jordan later signed a peace treaty of their own.
Yet after brief periods of peace, the region has always devolved back into chaos. First came the Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Oslo accords, which set up a peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians, ultimately collapsed after 2000. The American invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, like the Soviet one before it, stretched on for years, and it ultimately ended with the Taliban back in power. The invasion of Iraq heralded two decades of conflict, including indirect fighting with Iran and direct combat against the al-Qaeda offshoot the Islamic State, or ISIS.
This history represents decades-long American policy failures. For years, the United States has managed to secure the Middle East from hostile dominance, but containment policy there differed dramatically from that in Asia and Europe. Asian and European states eventually established stable domestic institutions and regional cooperation systems, leaving the United States to focus on organizing collective security against China and Russia. In the Middle East, however, the United States has had to intervene repeatedly in internal and regional conflicts that undercut stability and containment—even after the Soviet Union passed from the scene.
This time, though, the situation may well be different. Thanks to a year and a half of war, Iran and its proxies are very weak. New leaders are reshaping the region’s power dynamics in Tehran’s absence. The Trump administration thus has a chance to do what its predecessors could not and truly stabilize the region.
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
Since the collapse of ISIS, Iran has been the Middle East’s primary generator of regional instability. Its proxy groups have unleashed attacks on Israel, U.S. forces, Arab Gulf states, and commercial ships in the Red Sea. But after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Tehran’s tools have largely evaporated. Hamas and Hezbollah were significantly degraded by Israel’s offensives. Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria collapsed, and Iran’s nuclear, offensive missile, and air defense systems have been demolished by Israel and the United States. Iran can still count on its influence in Iraq and on the Houthis, and it has at least the remnants of its nuclear program. But it cannot erase the reality that these setbacks are its fault, first by allowing its proxies to attack Israel and then by joining in the fight directly, in 2024. As a result, the path toward regional stability is now much smoother.
Tehran’s decline has coincided with the rise of new power brokers in the Middle East. Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf states have become major international players, integrating themselves into the global economy and making internal reforms that both advance and reflect their more cosmopolitan populations and economies. Other than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the region’s leaders have not abandoned formal and informal relations with Israel over the huge civilian losses in Gaza. Arab leaders have demonstrated this new self-confidence by largely embracing the new Syrian government, choosing to look past President Ahmed al-Shara’s terrorist history and coordinating with Erdogan to push an initially reticent Trump administration to embrace Damascus’s leader.
For its part, the United States has been playing a far more effective regional role under Presidents Biden and Trump since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. It has neither pivoted away from the region nor dived into every social, political, and security problem. In a speech during his tour of the Middle East in May, Trump declared that the region has the ability to develop prosperity and peace on its own, with only some American support. Trump is handling military threats, if possible, via negotiations. When diplomacy is not possible, he is relying on massive, rapid military force to achieve limited, definable goals that Americans can understand—such as protecting freedom of navigation and stopping the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb. He has, in short, updated the 1980s Powell Doctrine, which held that military force should be a last resort but should be used decisively when necessary, with clear goals supporting national interests and popular support. Trump has benefited from having Steve Witkoff and Tom Barrack as envoys, a knowledgeable team that enjoys his trust. And he does not have to contend as much with Moscow, a perennial troublemaker that has been unable to support its partners in Iran and Syria.
SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM
If this propitious moment holds, the path to lasting stability is to further contain the Iranian threat, with Washington working by, with, and through its partners. Although difficult, this outcome is not impossible. In the 1990s, following its defeat in the Iraq War, Iran was all but supine in the region. The Trump administration thus should pay attention to why Iran broke out after 2000, exacerbating mayhem through the Levant and beyond and building huge nuclear and ballistic missile programs in the face of American, Arab, and Israeli opposition.
There are two complementary explanations for what went wrong. The first is that this loose coalition focused on other, ultimately less destabilizing issues, including counterterrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring, and Israeli-Palestinian relations. The second is that regional actors disputed the nature of Iran’s threat and so they attempted remedies that were both diverse and ineffective.
To handle Tehran, Washington considered both regime change and rapprochement. But ultimately reluctant to address the full dangers Iran posed head on, the United States and others turned to negotiations. They hoped that by treating Iran as normal state, they could both solve specific problems and nudge it toward a broader rapprochement with the region. The assumption here was that when met with enough understanding, dialogue, and concessions, Iran would shed its distrust and insecurity, cease its nuclear and missile projects, and stop inciting its proxy network. This group saw military responses as futile, as Iran was assumed to have escalation dominance. Consequently, Washington and an international coalition struck a nuclear deal with the country in 2015. But the agreement was only temporary, did nothing to constrain Iran’s broader destabilizing behavior, and gave the regime new sources of revenue. As a result, the first Trump administration withdrew in 2018.
Developments in the Middle East since October 7 have demonstrated that Iran will not behave like a normal state, no matter what analysts may wish. Negotiations alone can slow the country down, yet they will not tame it. But decisive military action can cripple Iran’s capabilities and temper its taste for conflict, as Iraq’s offensives and the U.S. confrontation with Iran in the Gulf in 1988, the killing of the Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani by the United States in 2020, and, so far, the Israeli and U.S. military operations all have.
In light of this, Washington should prioritize eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons program and defeating its proxy forces. Victory could lead to comprehensive diplomatic openings or even a different Iran. But renewed dialogue or regime change should not be goals unto themselves. Instead, the United States must focus on making sure Iran retains no nuclear program that it could use to develop weapons.
SEIZE THE DAY
To achieve this aim, Washington should apply economic and, if necessary, military pressure until Iran comes clean on its weaponization programs and abandons all or almost all uranium enrichment for perpetuity. This is the most clear-cut and important mission and one that the United States now completely owns with its decision to use force against Iran. Israel has its own existential interest here, but by necessity it must coordinate with Washington. Critics of military action are correct that the nuclear dispute with Iran will end only with negotiations. But negotiations are not an end in themselves, only a means to prevent any possibility of nuclear weaponization. And in the absence of immense pressure, it will not be achieved.
Washington must also better calibrate its policies to block Iran’s proxies from returning to Gaza and Syria and to reduce Tehran’s influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Proxy pushback is hard, and these countries all have other issues—energy, terrorism, humanitarian relief—that vie for Washington’s attention. But to truly stamp out Iran’s regional influence, the United States must subordinate these concerns and focus on combating Iran’s partners. Regional states, whose security has been repeatedly threatened by instability in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, should play a leading role. Yet Washington must be willing to counter Tehran’s tactic of attacking via its proxies by retaliating not against them but against Iran.
Outside Iran, the United States should heed Trump’s words and allow regional states to exercise their own agency, as it largely does in Asia and Europe. But there are exceptions—issues that affect overall security and in which Americans can clearly help. One is the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, which although not the core source of regional dysfunction, is significant. Until better managed, beginning with a Gaza settlement, it will be a drain on American and Israeli regional goals, including Arab-Israeli integration. The budding rivalry between the two most powerful regional states, Israel and Turkey, also bears attention. They do not have underlying security conflicts. Instead, their rivalry is partly a function of their two leaders’ mutual animosity and partly the inevitable result of realpolitik. Trump, who works well with both leaders, has an interest in calming their relations.
The Middle East requires U.S. engagement in other ways, as well, including ensuring the export of hydrocarbons, maintaining global transport routes, and managing terrorism threats and refugee flows. But the United States now has a chance, in concert with the region’s leaders, to more permanently stabilize the region and dramatically reduce its nonstop diplomatic crisis management and half century of nearly continuous combat operations. It should seize the moment.
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