After last month’s stinging rebuke at the United Nations Security Council, when only the Dominican Republic supported a U.S. resolution to indefinitely extend the arms embargo on Iran, it is now clear that President Donald Trump’s Iran strategy has failed in achieving its goal.
The president’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal in favor of a “maximum pressure” strategy has battered Iran’s economy but left the deal standing. The harder the administration has pushed to kill off the deal, the more it has found itself isolated and Iran obdurate. There is little chance of a breakthrough before the U.S. presidential elections. Iran, however, could see the benefit in engaging the next president to relax pressure on its economy. Tehran wants the new U.S. administration to return to the 2015 deal. However, even a Biden administration, which has said it would do so, would look to go beyond the current deal to a more comprehensive nuclear agreement. Trump’s failed gambit, however, has made that outcome unlikely.
