A new wave of harsh international sanctions are rattling Iranian politics and dragging down an already struggling economy as fears grow among U.S. allies in the region that another round of Israeli airstrikes on the country could be imminent.
The Trump administration says the U.N. sanctions, which European countries agreed to impose as a long-standing deadline approached, are necessary to pressure Iran back into negotiations over its nuclear program. But U.S. allies are concerned that the approach is risky and it threatens to drag the region into a fresh cycle of conflict.
“This is a dangerous gambit,” said Vali Nasr, a professor of Middle East and international studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. The longer Iran and the United States go without restarting talks, the greater the likelihood of renewed conflict, he said. And now that so-called “snapback” sanctions have been reimposed, it could be months before the two sides are talking again.
“The bottom line is this, if the United States actually starts negotiating with Iran, it would be de facto cessation of hostilities between Israel and Iran,” Nasr said.
Reimposing sanctions was not the “preferred option” and attempts to avoid escalation are ongoing, a European official said, who like several others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. “The diplomatic door is still open and we don’t believe in a military solution to the proliferation crisis,” the official said.
In the months since attacks on its nuclear facilities, Iran increased construction at a key underground site, suggesting Tehran may be cautiously rebuilding, according to a Washington Post review of satellite imagery. Iran also threatened to bar nuclear inspectors if sanctions are reimposed and in parliament, lawmakers are calling for the withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a step many believe would precede weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said further military action against Iran has been on the table since the two sides agreed to a truce and this week Israeli officials told local media outlets that they are considering further strikes.
In a sign of heightened regional tensions, local Iranian media picked up open source reporting of U.S. fuel tankers deploying to the region, saying the news coincided with statements that the purpose of the additional sanctions was to “pave the way for military threats.”
Comments like those are particularly concerning to U.S. allies in the Middle East. “The region today cannot go through the same Iranian-Israeli war or the other wars of the last two years. The cost is too high,” said a senior Arab government official close to the Trump administration. He said he is advising his American counterparts that “de-escalation” is the only alternative.
But the Trump administration holds that now is the time to dial up pressure, and that snapback sanctions will “create the environment” for “a diplomatic solution,” according to a U.S. official briefed on the policy.
That pressure is intended to encourage Iran to accept four stringent conditions as a baseline for new negotiations, according to the U.S. official: The talks must be “meaningful” and direct, Tehran must agree to zero enrichment of nuclear material and curbs to its missile program, and it must cease funding its proxy forces. Such conditions were some of the most significant stumbling blocks during the previous round of negotiations and Iran is likely to interpret them as nonstarters.
Iranian and U.S. negotiators met for five rounds of talks over two months this summer, but failed to secure any progress toward a deal. The U.S. official said the Trump administration believes the lack of progress was because the Iranians “weren’t serious” and their negotiating team hadn’t been given the mandate to reach a deal. Those negotiations were suspended when Israel attacked Iran on June 13.
A 12-day war between Israel and Iran followed, punctuated by a single round of U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. It ended in a shaky ceasefire deal brokered by the Trump administration, which did not include a written agreement, monitoring mechanisms or a diplomatic track to a lasting peace. Even as he announced the truce, Netanyahu threatened renewed conflict. “We have no intention of taking our foot off the pedal,” he said.
“We must not allow Iran to rebuild its military nuclear capacities. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, these stockpiles must be eliminated,” Netanyahu said in his address to the United Nations last week.
U.S. partners in the Persian Gulf are particularly vulnerable. The region is speckled with U.S. military instillations, including in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. After the U.S. strikes in June, Iran responded with a missile attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar.
Since then, tensions have not cooled: The Israeli attack targeting Hamas officials in Doha earlier this month increased concerns in the Gulf over Israel’s seeming willingness to carry out unpredictable strikes, even if they threaten to destabilize regional relations - and raised new questions as to the effectiveness of the U.S. security umbrella.
There are many reasons that renewed conflict between Israel and Iran is unlikely, according to Afshon Ostovar, an Iran expert and professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. Israel has already devastated Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure and Iran is disincentivized from rebuilding its damaged enrichment facilities, he said: After Israel demonstrated the extent to which Iran’s security forces had been penetrated by Israeli intelligence, through attacks carried out deep within Iran, the country’s leaders must know such actions would invite an attack. But Ostovar said Iran may start to test boundaries.
“If it does those things, then, you know, Israel might feel like they just need to mow the grass in Iran once in a while. You know, whenever Iran builds these things, they strike them, and that sets Iran back another six months,” he said.
“You could get into the sort of cycle of low-intensity conflict that goes on for some time,” he said.
For years, Israel referred to intermittent military action again Hamas in Gaza as “mowing the grass,” a phrase that critics said justified endless military operations that lacked strategic objectives. And in Lebanon, following the ceasefire with Hezbollah, Israel continued to launch strikes on the country’s south.
The snapback sanctions imposed by the U.N. that took effect over the weekend include a conventional arms embargo, a ban on uranium enrichment and restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program, along with travel bans and asset freezes. The restrictions had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated between Tehran, the Obama administration and other governments. Their reimposition removes one of the last vestiges of the agreement, from which President Donald Trump withdrew during his first term in office.
Iranian officials have downplayed the impact of the new sanctions. “On the economic situation, the reality is that for 45 years we have been under sanctions, if we can resolve our differences, we do have the capacity to leave most of the current crisis behind,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told reporters at the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week.
Pezeshkian said Iran continues to be willing to engage, but cautioned that the relationship with the U.S. has been damaged. “The wall of distrust between us and the Americans is quite thick and quite tall,” he said.
Following the reimposition of the sanctions, Iran’s currency hit another record low, sinking to trade at over 1,100,000 rials to the dollar and causing inflation to spike. Back in Iran, Pezeshkian told local leaders, “Iran will not surrender to pressure.”
Iran’s weakened state is a reason to exercise caution and avoid further military confrontations, in the view of the senior Arab government official. Many in the region fear further military action against Iran could trigger waves of regional instability similar to what followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
“Diplomacy has to be the way forward,” the Arab official said.
John Hudson contributed to this report.
