Reason:

By Bonnie Kristian 

The Trump administration's Iran policy has been business as usual since the spread of the novel coronavirus began, and that's a grave mistake. The president's tweet today warning Iran "or its proxies" against any "sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq" is merely the latest example of misplaced priorities while a pandemic worsens in the U.S.

President Trump's "maximum pressure" approach to U.S.-Iran relations was counterproductive to our security and deleterious to diplomatic progress under ordinary conditions. Now, the United States and Iran are suffering two of the most severe COVID-19 outbreaks on the planet. Keeping up maximum pressure is a dangerous distraction for the United States and catastrophic for the Iranian people, whom Trump administration officials profess to support against their oppressive regime. Trump should abandon maximum pressure once and for all. It doesn't work; it will damage prospects of a free and democratic Iran for decades to come; and it's an unjustifiable distraction from vital U.S. interests in a time of pandemic.

The failure of maximum pressure was evident before the COVID-19 crisis started. After withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran deal, the Trump administration re-imposed harsh sanctions the deal had lifted and deployed U.S. forces and ships (currently including two of our 11 aircraft carriers) as an unmistakable threat to Tehran.

The goal is to force Iran, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo likes to put it, to behave like "a normal country." The entirely foreseeable effect has been exactly the opposite. Again and again it has incentivized escalation by a regime desperate to prove it will not be cowed. It has brought us closer to war, not peace. "Through a series of relatively limited but still dangerous military actions and incremental retreat from the terms of the JCPOA, Iran has signaled that it will not concede to the U.S. demands without a fight," explains MIT's Barry Posen at Boston Review. Maximum pressure is exacerbating Iran's regional troublemaking. It is making us less secure.

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