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Foreword

The United States ended a thirty-five-year diplomatic vacuum with Tehran with one objective in mind: to stop it from developing a nuclear weapon.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did precisely that. It cut off Iran’s pathways to a bomb, sharply constrained its nuclear program, and subjected it to an unprecedentedly strict monitoring and verification regime. The JCPOA is far from perfect and required coming to terms with painful realities and making difficult compromises—the inevitable outcome of tough, multilateral negotiations. Nevertheless, the JCPOA was successful in halting, and in some cases reversing, Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon, at least for the next decade. Iran today is much further away from a nuclear bomb, and the prospect of direct military conflict between the United States and Iran is forestalled. We are safer. Our partners in the region are safer. And the world is safer.

The JCPOA, essential as it is to retain and implement effectively, however, must not be the end of the diplomatic road with Iran. It is merely the beginning, the cornerstone of a broader, longer-term strategy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to diminish and counter Iran’s threatening behavior—from its growing ballistic missile arsenal, to its dangerous use of regional proxies, to its human rights abuses at home.

This report outlines the key elements of such a strategy—a tough-minded approach to playing a strong American hand against an adversary that is formidable, but hardly ten feet tall. It calls on the United States to continue to enforce rigorous implementation of the nuclear agreement; to embed the agreement in a wider regional strategy deploying all elements of American power to limit Iran’s ability to meddle in the internal affairs of our regional partners or threaten Israel; and to engage Iran to avoid inadvertent escalation, make clear our profound concerns with Iran’s behavior at home and abroad, address the eventual sunset of JCPOA nuclear limits, and test opportunities to advance shared interests. This is all easier said than done. There will be no avoiding complicated tradeoffs. But it is an honest and realistic guide for U.S. policy today and in the difficult years ahead.

Any strategy’s success will depend in large measure on whether it can keep the burden of proof on Iran, demonstrating American good faith and seriousness of purpose and preventing Iran from painting the United States as the diplomatic outlier. U.S. threats to abrogate the deal or call for its renegotiation, reimposing nuclear-related sanctions, provocatively threatening military action, or otherwise failing to uphold America’s end of the bargain would leave the United States in a weaker, not stronger, position to deal with Iran and other looming crises, especially North Korea.

The Donald Trump administration’s decision to not certify to Congress that the JCPOA’s suspension of sanctions is appropriate and proportionate, and to seek to modify the deal, puts the deal on the path to failure. This occurs notwithstanding repeated affirmations by U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran continues to abide by its JCPOA commitments. Congress, the administration, and our P5+1 partners (the United States, China, Russia, France, Germany, and the UK) must now work together to avert a strategic “own goal” of historic proportions that would also undermine the prospects of dealing effectively with the other challenges presented by Iran. The strategy laid out in this report offers a road map that should appeal to leaders of both U.S. political parties, and all those serious about being tough on Iran and confident in America’s continued strength.

We are pleased and proud that our two institutions could come together to try to answer one of the most consequential foreign policy questions facing the United States. With our shared commitment to independent thinking and our experts’ combined brainpower and decades of experience in the policy trenches, we hope this report will help policymakers build on the achievements of the JCPOA and secure at least a semblance of order in a disordered Middle East.

William J. Burns
President
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Michèle A. Flournoy
Chief Executive Officer
Center for a New American Security

October 2017

Executive Summary

The fundamental premise of this report is that Iran represents a serious and difficult challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East, requiring the United States to adopt a comprehensive and integrated strategy toward it, one employing a multitude of policy tools simultaneously and calibrated to one another. At its heart lies the combined employment of engagement and coercion. Past experience suggests that Iran will not accommodate U.S. interests unless subjected to skillful application of such a powerful combination of approaches.

What does this basic strategy mean for today’s policy toward Iran? On the nuclear front, it means the United States should not renege on the JCPOA without a demonstrably viable diplomatic alternative in place. While the JCPOA is imperfect, so long as Iran complies with it, it is still the best available mechanism both to contain Iran’s short- to medium-term nuclear ambitions and to free the United States to concentrate its energies on checking Iran’s very disconcerting regional actions. There is no realistic prospect of attaining a better agreement in the near term, which would make abandoning the JCPOA an exceptionally risky strategy. Congress will of course speak out on Iran policy, including the policy embodied in the JCPOA, and it may lay down parameters for U.S. policy toward Iran on nuclear and other issues. But it would be counterproductive to attempt to reopen the JCPOA or impose new conditions that would make it more difficult for the United States to implement its commitments under the deal. Such unilateral actions would make it more difficult for the United States to mobilize international pressure to obtain scrupulous implementation by Iran. Instead of trying to renegotiate the JCPOA now, the United States should vigorously implement the agreement, tackle key outstanding concerns, encourage the peaceful transformation of Iran’s nuclear program, and pursue multiple options to create enduring constraints on Iran’s nuclear activities.

In terms of Iran’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East, a combination of coercion and engagement has never been truly tried and should be. This means increasing the costs to Iran of its support for surrogates and proxies through a combination of direct military and intelligence activities aimed at exposing and countering Iranian actions, applying economic sanctions, and in some cases sending American military deployments designed to increase U.S. leverage and counter specific Iranian aims and actions. These steps must be complemented by a willingness to keep multiple channels of dialogue open. De-confliction mechanisms will be necessary to prevent unintended escalation. The United States should remain willing to discuss disputes with Iran—because ultimately Iran is a player in the Middle East, and will at a minimum have to acquiesce in order for political arrangements to be successful in stabilizing the region.

Finally, even as the United States pursues these policies, it should also expand other tools for engagement with Iran, most notably channels for diplomacy, people-to-people exchanges, and economic interaction. These steps should be pursued in concert with the elements outlined above—to promote U.S. interests in stability and security, and to ensure U.S. ability to communicate its intentions and positions. Such outreach should not strive to change the nature of the Iranian regime, and should not work against containing Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear-capable missile programs or countering its destabilizing regional policies. Diplomacy should leave open the opportunity to slowly improve U.S.-Iran relations with those in Iran who are calling for greater economic and political engagement.

To pursue this integrated strategy, this report recommends taking the following steps:

JCPOA Implementation—The United States can best serve its short- to medium-term strategic interests by sustaining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and vigorously employing its verification tools.

To do so, the United States should:

• Encourage and support the IAEA to fully monitor Iran’s nuclear activities.
• Lead efforts to resolve JCPOA ambiguities and disputes to the United States’ satisfaction.
• Insist on full implementation of the Additional Protocol and judicious application of additional verification powers contained in the JCPOA.
• Remain involved in Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.
• Continue to meet U.S. sanctions-relief commitments.
• Coordinate closely with the European Union (EU) and E3 partners (France, Germany, and the UK), and work energetically with Russia and China.
• Fully participate in the Joint Commission.
• Organize the State Department and the interagency process to implement the deal effectively.

Structural Nuclear Issues—The United States should explore multiple options now to constrain Iran’s nuclear activity after the JCPOA’s provisions begin to expire in 2023, rather than betting on renegotiation of the JCPOA or on any other single approach.

The United States should explore the following four options simultaneously:

• Build a case around current and future challenges to implementation of the JCPOA and related United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, in order to deny Iran the legitimacy to scale up its nuclear activities once the restrictions they impose begin to expire.
• Extend and expand upon some of the JCPOA’s innovations and seek international support for a new global framework for enhancing the capacity to distinguish between peaceful and nonpeaceful nuclear energy activities.
• Develop a regional Middle Eastern (or alternatively a subregional Gulf) regime for handling nuclear fuel-cycle activities.
• Negotiate a follow-on agreement to the JCPOA, well in advance of the expiry of the JCPOA’s uranium enrichment clauses (probably even before Transition Day), which would commit Iran not to scale up its infrastructure for developing nuclear weapons capabilities.

Coercion—Focused and smart pressure, through military operations, intelligence activities, and targeted sanctions, can deter destabilizing Iranian initiatives, impose costly consequences in response to provocations, slow and complicate Iranian acquisition of the most destabilizing weapon systems, and directly counter Iranian activities in the region.

In particular, the United States should:

• Closely monitor Iran’s nuclear program (in collaboration with friendly partners) to detect any indication of activity to acquire nuclear weapons or otherwise violate the JCPOA.
• Work closely now with international counterparts to pre-plan for a coordinated, proportional response to an evident Iranian breach of the JCPOA.
• Conduct contingency planning and exercises for operations to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
• Maintain a robust military presence in the Middle East.
• Undermine Iranian asymmetric activities in the Middle East and around the world by publicizing them and using their exposure to embarrass and isolate Iran.
• Dedicate more resources to identify and impede the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) economic role at home and abroad.
• Aggressively identify, sanction, and counter Iranian missile procurement activities.
• Take military steps to ensure that Iran-supported militias and Hezbollah are kept out of the Golan Heights and southwestern Syria.
• Dedicate more resources to aggressively identify and sanction leaders, businesses, bankers, and facilitators aiding Hezbollah’s violent operations.
• Limit a so-called land bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean by positioning U.S.-supported forces to retake most territory held by the self-proclaimed Islamic State in eastern Syria.
• Prevent or limit a conventional Iranian military buildup in Syria.
• Aggressively identify and sanction the individuals and entities Iran uses to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
• Maintain a small long-term military presence in Iraq at current force levels.
• Posture military forces to clearly message Iran that any effort to disrupt the flow of trade through the Bab al-Mandeb strait will be met with firm U.S. resolve.
• Engage in close military and intelligence collaboration with Israel and other U.S. allies in the region on checking the most disconcerting aspects of Iranian activity.
• Support targeted maritime interdiction operations to intercept Iranian arms shipments.
• Continue military assistance to regional Gulf partners.
• Proceed with care in addressing evidence that any Iranian entity de-listed under the JCPOA is conducting sanctionable activity.

Engagement—U.S. engagement with Iran, complementing coercion, is essential to convey clear messages, de-conflict activities, de-escalate conflicts when merited, explore opportunities for diplomatic solutions to nuclear and regional issues, demonstrate reasonableness to U.S. partners and to pragmatic forces within Iran, and create incentives for Iran to limit its nuclear and regional activities of concern.

To do so, the United States should:

• Communicate directly with Iranian officials.
• Amplify and echo U.S. messages through indirect channels.
• Expand people-to-people contact between Iranian youth, entrepreneurs, and civil society groups and their U.S. counterparts.
• Keep an open dialogue on the JCPOA and regional challenges, especially with regard to the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
• Pursue a more robust maritime de-confliction process.
• Encourage the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide additional technical support and guidance on market reform to Iran.
• Reinstate the U-turn license to allow foreign businesses to use U.S. banks to conduct dollar-denominated transactions relating to Iranian entities, as an incentive for further nuclear commitments or other Iranian concessions.
• Consider limited options to allow direct U.S. corporate involvement in Iran in exchange for moderation of Iran’s nuclear, missile, and regional policies.
• Encourage the respect of human rights in Iran.

Twin Pillars of the Strategy

Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and from exacerbating instability in the Middle East have been paramount U.S. objectives for decades. Yet they have proven challenging to accomplish, especially as Iran’s capabilities and aims for the region grew after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action replaced an exclusively coercive U.S. posture for containing Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions with an internationally agreed-upon basis for pursuing the nuclear nonproliferation objective. The JCPOA has accomplished for now its primary objective, namely providing a viable diplomatic mechanism for constraining Iran’s nuclear activities. However, the JCPOA is naturally far from perfect, leaving something to be desired in four primary areas. Some of its key nuclear constraints sunset in the coming years. Some of its modalities are challenging to implement effectively. It does not impede Iran’s development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons (though UN Security Council Resolution 2231 does). And it has not tempered Iran’s militant exertions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen. Yet, none of these circumstances would be better without the JCPOA. Indeed, by providing the basis for constraining Iran’s nuclear program for years to come, the JCPOA strengthens the United States’ and other countries’ capacities to more assertively temper Iran’s disconcerting regional activities and its missile program. As the Donald Trump administration seeks revisions to the JCPOA, the United States should in the interim retain the deal and continue to make use of its monitoring and verification provisions.¹

This report, produced jointly by scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for a New American Security, presents an integrated strategy combining coercion and engagement to address these nuclear and regional challenges in both the short and long term.

The Nuclear Challenge

The JCPOA provides clear and tangible short- and medium-term benefits by imposing strict limits on the most worrisome aspects of Iran’s nuclear activities.² Before the JCPOA, Iran could have produced enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in less than two months (the “breakout” time). Now, under the deal, Iran would need roughly a year. Iran accepted transparency and verification measures for the duration of the deal that go well beyond the standard tools of the International Atomic Energy Agency, giving the agency and the international community greater confidence that a major clandestine nuclear effort would be detected in time.

But the deal faces some implementation challenges. The most difficult tradeoffs inherent in the deal will be felt in the years to come, as agreed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program gradually lift. Iran’s nuclear activities could again develop in a manner that would prove threatening to U.S. partners in the region. When core JCPOA (and related UN Security Council) constraints on Iranian nuclear activity begin to phase out, Iran will be able to increase the scale and pace of its fuel-cycle activity and weapons-oriented research, which would give it the means to quickly make nuclear weapons and reach a virtual nuclear arsenal (consisting of both serial bomb making and delivery capacity). The combination of massive uranium enrichment capacity, possession of nuclear-capable long-range missiles, and the nuclear weapons expertise Iran has acquired over the years, coupled with the international rehabilitation Iran is acquiring as a result of the JCPOA, would afford it the option to get to within weeks of a nuclear arsenal with formal impunity (under the terms of both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, and the new Nuclear Ban Treaty). Iran remains obligated under the JCPOA and the NPT to eschew nuclear weapons in perpetuity; thus, were it to openly and bellicosely resume nuclear-related activities that indicate an ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, international resistance presumably would be remobilized.

The most effective way to retain the deal’s short-term gains while mitigating the long-term consequences would be to rigorously monitor, implement, and enforce the JCPOA now while simultaneously laying the groundwork for later constraints on Iran’s nuclear activity, and on its ballistic missile activities addressed in UNSC Resolution 2231. Like many time-bound international agreements, the JCPOA will need a successor in some form. This report describes approaches to maximize the deal’s immediate advantages while pursuing several options for follow-on constraints.

The Regional Challenge

Over the past fifteen years, the Middle East has faced extensive instability and state failure, from the overthrow of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein through the Arab uprisings and subsequent civil wars. Iran has tried to promote its interests in this new reality primarily through support for local surrogates and proxies in weak states. Part of this strategy has been defensive. Iran has consistently sought to protect Shia minorities’ interests in the region against perceived threats from Sunni actors, and to protect Iran’s borders from potential threats such as the Islamic State. However, these actions also have taken on offensive characteristics meant to increase Iranian influence and leverage throughout the Middle East.³ This approach—and particularly Iran’s support for Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad, Shia militia groups in Syria, extra-governmental forces in Iraq, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen—runs directly counter to U.S. interests in regional stability, counterterrorism, human rights, and the security of regional partners.

A central component of Iran’s strategy has been an effort to reduce American influence and presence in the Middle East. Iran views the United States as its greatest security threat and believes that a reduced American presence would result in Iran assuming its natural role as a leader in the region—though recent experiences with the Islamic State have caused at least some in Iran’s leadership to reevaluate their assumptions and acknowledge that a limited American presence in the region can be useful for meeting some objectives. Iran also views Israel as America’s most important partner in the region and a conduit for pursuing American goals. This security concern combined with an ideological and domestically attractive opposition to Israel’s very existence explains the centrality that the Islamic Republic places on publicly threatening Israel’s destruction while aggressively threatening Israeli interests in the region and beyond.

Iran’s deepest investments have been in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. In Lebanon, Iran has spent the past thirty years cultivating Hezbollah as a force to project influence into the Levant and threaten Israel. In Syria, Iran has used Hezbollah, the IRGC’s Quds Force, and other foreign Shia militia groups to prop up President Bashar al-Assad—both to increase Iranian influence but also out of fear that if Assad’s government were to collapse it would be replaced by Sunni extremists unfriendly to Tehran. In Iraq, Iran seeks a stable central government that is dominated by Shia politicians. It has supported various extra-governmental Popular Mobilization Forces to counter the Islamic State and used them to increase its political influence. But there is at least some recognition in Tehran that if it overplays its hand, it could cause a Sunni backlash and a return of the Islamic State. Finally, Iran has viewed both Gaza and Yemen as targets of opportunity to put additional pressure on Israel and Saudi Arabia, through support for Islamic Jihad and even Hamas, and the Houthis, respectively. But Iran does not view either Gaza or Yemen nearly as strategically important as the Levant, in which it is actively trying to build a demographic Shia land bridge.

The Need for an Integrated Strategy

The nuclear and regional challenges Iran poses are closely linked. A nuclear-armed Iran would be able to exert greater leverage in the region and would likely feel that it has impunity to any military response—resulting in more aggressive and adventurous Iranian regional initiatives. Therefore, any U.S. strategy must address the nuclear and regional challenges together. Without the short-term threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, other concerns about Iran in the region become much more tractable. Strictly enforcing the JCPOA while laying the groundwork for future constraints on Iran’s nuclear activities would better position the United States to bolster its efforts to deal with the regional challenges. In addition, the United States would be in a far better position to assertively resist Iran’s regional ambitions were the United States not seen as responsible for triggering the collapse of the JCPOA. A new Iranian nuclear crisis sparked by the collapse of the agreement would leave the United States distracted by the nuclear challenge and far weaker diplomatically to check Iranian misbehavior outside the parameters of the JCPOA.

Neither coercion nor engagement by themselves would provide an effective response to the twin challenges presented by Iran. To maximize the chances of success, the United States should combine pressure on Iran and constructive engagement with it. Such a strategy induced Iran to restrain its nuclear program for an extended period of time. Biting sanctions, interdictions, and cyber operations were deployed along with the threat of the use of force, but these were accompanied by the prospect of dialogue, the prospect of sanctions relief, a willingness to accept a peaceful nuclear program, and targeted economic benefits (such as civilian aircraft sales and an expansion of Iranian crude oil sales). Both pressure and engagement proved essential; sanctions alone would not have compelled Iran to limit its nuclear program, military and cyber operations could not have delayed Iranian nuclear weapons capability indefinitely, and positive incentives would have achieved little without coercive leverage. Whatever one thinks of the substance of the JCPOA, this approach demonstrated the power to bring Iran to the negotiating table. Similarly positive effects have been evident in other areas where such a combination of incentives was applied to Iran.

In designing and implementing this strategy, the United States must remain carefully attuned to the impact of U.S. policies on Iranian domestic politics. This requires eschewing active promotion of regime change in Tehran (the United States has a terrible track record of doing so, and it provides Iran’s hardliners a pretext for repression); rather, it means crafting policies that preserve options to support U.S. interests. In that process, the United States should consider how it communicates to the Iranian people that their interests are best served by pragmatic leaders who prioritize domestic welfare, economic engagement, and acting as a responsible nation—not by hardline ideologues who emphasize Iran’s nuclear program and support for terrorism.

This report first identifies the key drivers of Iran’s foreign and security policy, and describes Iran’s likely reaction to a strategy that combines coercion and engagement. The report then discusses Russian, Saudi, and Israeli perspectives on the Iranian threat and the ways to deal with it. Based on all of these inputs, the report proceeds to present an integrated U.S. strategy that combines pressure and engagement to address the current nuclear and regional challenges, recommends ways the JCPOA’s tools can be best used to limit Iran’s nuclear activity now, and analyzes how the deal could be supplemented to extend nuclear constraints further into the future. Next, the report outlines pressure points that could be leveraged to coerce Iran (including military, intelligence, and sanctions), and discusses areas that offer opportunities for constructive engagement (including economic integration, multilateral de-confliction, and people-to-people exchanges) with Iran.

Views From Tehran, Moscow, Riyadh, and Jerusalem

To successfully counter the nuclear and regional challenges Iran poses, the U.S. strategy must understand the drivers of Iran’s nuclear and regional policies. The strategy must also take into account how it will affect Iran’s domestic politics, and how Iranian actors are likely to respond. In addition, the responses of major players in the region such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Israel will have a significant impact on how the strategy unfolds.

The View From Tehran

Drivers of Iran’s Nuclear and Regional Policies

Since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country’s two enduring foreign policy pillars have been opposition to U.S. influence and Israel’s existence. Virtually every Iranian foreign policy gambit—from Syria to Venezuela—is framed as an effort to resist these twin evils, and domestic agitations are commonly attributed to American and Zionist plots. Various Iranian and American presidents (including most recently Hassan Rouhani and Barack Obama, respectively) have attempted, unsuccessfully, to change these dynamics. The Trump administration, in contrast, has thus far exacerbated this tension.

Iranian politics are authoritarian but not monolithic, and meaningful differences exist among competing political factions about how to best sustain the Islamic Republic. Principlists, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describe themselves as loyal to the principles of the 1979 revolution, such as strict Islamic mores at home and a resistance foreign policy abroad. But while these hardliners cloak enmity toward the United States in the ideology of the revolution and the identity of the Islamic Republic, it is also driven by self-preservation.

Like most revolutionary regimes, Iran’s has sought external antagonism for internal expediency. Khamenei has long warned that compromising on revolutionary principles could weaken the pillars of the Islamic Republic, just as Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts at perestroika hastened the USSR’s demise. “If pro-American tendencies come to power in Iran,” powerful Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati once noted, “we have to say goodbye to everything. After all, anti-Americanism is among the main features of our Islamic state.”⁴ Khamenei has been similarly blunt, saying in July 2014, “reconciliation between Iran and America is possible, but it is not possible between the Islamic Republic and America.”⁵

In contrast, Iran’s pragmatists, led by President Hassan Rouhani, prioritize economic interests before revolutionary ideology and believe the slogans Iran adopted in 1979—such as “death to America”—do not necessarily serve the country’s interests four decades later. For the pragmatists, détente with the United States is a critical prerequisite for sustained economic growth. In reaction to Trump’s hostile rhetoric and refusal to recertify the JCPOA, however, Iran’s pragmatists will distance themselves from Washington and close ranks with Iran’s hardliners.

In light of these dynamics, a combination of pressure and engagement has the best prospect of changing Tehran’s calculus on nuclear and regional issues. This is one of the important lessons of the 2015 nuclear deal: policies of coercion and engagement are often complementary, not contradictory. Such a strategy induced Iran to restrain its nuclear program for an extended period of time. Before the deal, Obama’s unprecedented but unreciprocated efforts to engage Iran helped convince Brussels, Beijing, and Moscow that the obstacle lay in Tehran, not Washington. From the outset of his presidency, Obama was keen to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, but Tehran did not begin to seriously engage until several years later, when it faced a global economic embargo.

Such efforts will be most effective if they are multilateral. History has shown that Iran demonstrates most flexibility when it faces a broad international front. Unilateral U.S. pressure, however significant, will likely fail if Tehran feels it has escape doors in Europe, Russia, and Asia. Iranian leaders know that generating multilateral action against Iran is a particular challenge for the United States now because most major countries in the world (with the notable exception of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia) see Iran as a stable regional power in the midst of an already overly chaotic Middle East and a tactical ally against the more nefarious threat of radical Sunni jihadists, like the Islamic State. Russia is working in unison with Iran in Syria, Iran is central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an