WASHINGTON D.C.– The Trump administration is not interested in negotiations with Iran, but rather wants to contain, deter and impoverish it so that it is less engaged in the region with the ultimate goal of regime change, foreign policy analyst Barbara Slavin of the Atlantic Council told Rudaw’s latest edition of the Washington Perspective on Friday.
“This administration is not really interested in negotiations with Iran,” Slavin said. “They are interested in containing Iran, impoverishing Iran so that it perhaps is less active in the region... the ultimate goal is regime change – that the country will be so impoverished and destabilized that the government will fall. That is the true aim of the Trump administration. It is not negotiations.”
She characterized US policy toward Iran as “completely confused,” warning that there are “a lot of potential flashpoints that could lead to escalation. And once something like that starts, it is very difficult to stop it. So I am worried.”
“Iran is showing it has the ability to retaliate in the way that Iran can through its various partners in the region. And this is of course creating more tension.”
Slavin blamed the United States’ “economic warfare” against Iran for current escalations in the region. The US pulled out from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as Iran nuclear deal, in May 2018. The deal was reached in July 2015 in Vienna between Iran and the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council and Germany on Iran’s nuclear program.
Under the deal, “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”
Slavin didn’t think there was any credible or imminent threat from Iran prior to the US pullout from the Iran deal and that the US administration is not honest about threats from Iran.
“Iran has been in full compliance up until now with its agreement” and the “deal would have kept Iran from developing enough material for a nuclear weapon until 2030.”
“Iran during 2017 had not threatened American troops or naval forces in the Persian Gulf. And things had been relatively calm until Trump pulled out of the JCPOA,” Slavin said.
Slavin questioned the credibility and integrity of Trump and his advisors. “The president of the United States lies every day. … How can we believe about what he says [about] intelligence? How can we believe John Bolton, his national security advisor, who has had a long record of supporting military action and regime change against Iran?”
Slavin said Trump withdrew from the JCPOA because of the promises he made during his election campaign, not because Iran was not committed to the deal.
“The concern this administration had was that Donald Trump made promises during his campaign to his donors that he would get out of the deal. He made promises to Bibi Netanyahu, and to Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia that he would get out of the deal, and to the United Arab Emirates. These are the forces pushed him out.”
By building up military presence in the Persian Gulf, the US wants to deter attacks from Iran and pressure Tehran to beg for negotiations, Slavin argued.
“I suppose the United States is trying to deter any attack from Iran, but in fact the United States is putting more Americans in harm’s way.”
“The whole US strategy, if you want to call it that, is that if we put all this maximum pressure on Iran, they are going to come begging for new negotiations. We haven’t seen that and I am not sure we will see that, not for quite some time. So it is a flawed strategy that simply puts more Americans in jeopardy as well as hurting ordinary Iranians.”
She said the kind of rhetoric Washington is using toward Iran is not the “language of diplomacy”, and disagreed with remarks that Iran is an evil country.
“Iran is not evil. Iran is an important country in the region that has policies that we don’t like, but also some policies that we have agreed with. Let’s remember that Iran has fought ISIS, that Iran helped prevent ISIS from taking both Erbil and Baghdad not so long ago. So let’s try to focus on the areas where we converge and talk about the areas where we have differences instead of calling each other names.”
In response to increasing US pressure and military build-up in the region, Tehran can pressure Baghdad to expel US troops from the country, Slavin said.
Iran can “exert its political muscle in Iraq. And it could basically force the government there to demand that the United States withdraw the 5,000 US troops that are currently in Iraq, which is not something the Iraqi government wants to do. But if hostilities continue to increase between the US and Iran, I mean I think it would be very difficult for the Iraqi government to keep the American forces there in Iraq.
This is true for the KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) as well. You guys don’t want to be stuck in the middle here. You don’t want to be the ground on which a conflict takes place after everything that you have all been through since 2003 and even before, going back to the Iran-Iraq war frankly back to 1980.”
Slavin argued regional countries should step in and try to convince the US and Iran to deescalate tension between the two.
“I think it is very important that Iraq, Kurdish groups, others try to persuade both the United States and Iran to deescalate the tension between them,” she said, adding, “There are a lot of channels for de-escalation if the United States is really interested in that. But they have to send different signals privately than the ones they have publicly. The public demands are just not going to work.”
“The domestic situation I think is very anti-war. The majority of Americans certainly don’t want another war in the Middle East and I think Donald Trump realizes that.”
Tensions between the US and Iran escalated after Washington pulled out from the JCPOA in May 2018, and subsequently imposed sanctions on Iran primarily targeting the country’s oil sector and trade with the outside world.
