The familiar mantra is getting louder from Iran’s Western apologists, who say President Trump’s sanctions policy is counterproductive, probably because the opposite is true: There is growing evidence that Iran is cash-poor and its Middle East patrons are suffering.
That’s why it is time to declare what seemed unthinkable when Trump ran for president: His Iran policy, focused primarily on pressuring the Islamic Republic to end its sponsorship of militias throughout the Middle East and to renegotiate the nuclear deal, appears to be bearing fruit.
This past winter, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif insisted that U.S. sanctions were not working, that Iran would never renegotiate the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, and that it was the U.S., rather than Iran, that was growing isolated. On April 24, he took an about-turn, announcing to U.S. media that Iran wants to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Washington.
Four days later, Zarif said that Iran might have to withdraw from the JCPOA. But for Washington the JCPOA is already dead; the Trump administration’s May 2018 withdrawal coupled with the inability of European signatories to help Iran recover from the damage caused by the U.S. re-imposing sanctions effectively killed it. And while past negotiations were limited to its nuclear program, the Trump administration is equally, if not more, focused on the Islamic Republic’s destabilizing activities in the Middle East.
As a result, time is on Trump’s side. The more pressure on Iran’s economy, it seems, the more concessions Iran might make in the future.
Sanctions, which have cut Iran’s oil exports from an estimated 2.5 million barrels a day to 1 million barrels per day, are making life difficult for Iran’s regional proxies. Last summer, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’a movement and militia Iran established after its 1979 Islamic Revolution, stated that Hezbollah will be under financial pressure “as long as U.S. President Donald Trump is in power.”
It is too early to tell if this pressure will circumscribe the group’s regional activities on behalf of Iran, whether in Syria, Iraq, Yemen or elsewhere. But the domestic fallout is already apparent.
Hezbollah has been forced to slash salaries and delay payments for thousands of fighters, and many of the employees staffing Hezbollah-affiliated social services such as schools, hospitals and religious institutions have not been paid at all. Increasingly, Hezbollah is suspected of trying to divert state funds to maintain its elaborate patronage networks and vying with allied Shi’a party AMAL for positions in the bureaucracy, a move it has long avoided, and which may sow the seeds for future intercommunal conflict.
U.S. sanctions may also be escalating Iran-Hezbollah tensions. In public, Iranian officials do not depart from the script that Iran’s support for its Lebanese proxy remains unwavering. However, in an unusual letter entitled “Our money is depleted,” reportedly published by Iranian reformist website Saham News, a former officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Mohammad Mahdavi Far, blames Nasrallah for Iran’s economic crisis:
"Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, have you not heard a few days ago the speech of the guide (Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei, who expressed deep sorrow for young Iranians because of poverty and unemployment. Did you not see and hear it? Why should we starve our people?”
The cash flow problem has undercut Iran in Syria too. Both it and Hezbollah have been forced to cut the salaries of fighters protecting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Iranian oil deliveries to Syria have plummeted from 66,000 barrels a day at the end of 2018 to nothing, precipitating gasoline shortages that have forced Syrians to que for up to nineteen hours. Iran’s credit lines to the Assad regime have also dried up. In Washington, the hope is that the loss of Iranian largesse will eventually compel Assad to agree to an inclusive political framework for post-war Syria.
Moreover, sanctions are forcing Tehran to cut back at home. According to Voice of America, the Iranian government plans to cut theMinistry of Defense’s budget by 50% and slash the army’s budget by 8%.
Will squeezing Iran force it to negotiate on the key issues and make painful concessions? This remains uncertain. Despite Zarif’s offer of a prisoner swap, the foreign minister has no say over the issues this White House cares about most: Iran’s interventions in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq, and its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Those are the preserves of Qassem Soleimani, the powerful IRGC commander who immediately undercut Zarif by claiming that “any negotiations under current circumstances is surrendering to America and will never happen.”
Tehran’s policy seems to hinge on the hope that Trump will not be re-elected in 2020. But even if Iran gets its wish, it may prove politically difficult for Trump’s successor to reverse course and, even if he or she could, the damage to Iran’s economy and its proxy network is already considerable. For these reasons alone, so far, Iran is a big win for Trump.