The Trump Doctrine on Iran

President Trump has shown strong leadership on Iran, presenting a stark choice for Tehran: verifiably dismantle your nuclear program—or have it dismantled for you. In contrast to the 159-page long Obama nuclear deal of 2015, with all its caveats and qualifications, this Trump Doctrine carries the advantage of moral clarity, with no room for equivocation and willful re-interpretation. Should it come to fruition, a U.S.-Iran deal could boil down to a single, Trumpian page.

That would be far preferable to the last attempt, which prioritized an accommodation with the Islamic Republic over American moral clarity. President Obama’s nuclear deal was built upon several wrong assumptions and claims, which the dismantlement paradigm should eschew.

First, the Obama administration believed Iran’s leadership was interested in a better relationship with the United States and our allies. President Obama framed the JCPOA as an opportunity for Iran “to take some decisive steps to move toward a more constructive relationship with the world community.” 

In reality, Tehran did no such thing, instead pocketing eye-popping sanctions relief to build up its terror proxies and encircle Israel in a ring of fire that fueled the October 7 massacre which killed and kidnapped Americans. Just weeks into the deal, the Ayatollah and the IRGC detained U.S. marines and continued to take Americans hostage throughout.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rightly stated during his confirmation hearing that “what cannot be allowed under any circumstances is . . . an Iranian regime that has the resources and capability to restart and continue their sponsorship of terrorism.”

Second, President Obama deemed there was a meaningful distinction between Iranian regime hardliners and moderates, noting “that if we sign this nuclear deal, we strengthen the hand of those more moderate forces inside of Iran.”

But they are two sides of the same terror coin, with Khamenei and the IRGC driving foreign policy decisions. As even President Obama’s former CIA director and defense secretary, Leon Panetta, later admitted, “there was not much question that the [IRGC] Quds Force and the supreme leader ran than country with a strong arm, and there was not much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any traction.” A deal will not empower the mythical moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is a loyal functionary of Khamenei.

Third, President Obama framed Iran’s commitments as “not built on trust” but “on verification,” proclaiming that “with this deal, we gain unprecedented, around-the-clock monitoring of Iran’s key nuclear facilities and the most comprehensive and intrusive inspection and verification regime ever negotiated.” But there were gaping holes in the verification regime, which Israel showcased after the JCPOA was inked when a Mossad operation revealed a secret atomic archive in 2018 unknown to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. The JCPOA did not touch Iran’s weaponization program, which has been carried out for years under the guise of dual-use experiments to shorten the timespan for the regime to produce a nuclear bomb at a time of its choosing. 

Fourth, the administration wrongly downgraded the principle of “zero enrichment,” turning to pink this long-standing and UN-enshrined red-line. The JCPOA legitimized Iranian enrichment, which allowed the regime to continue to extort the international community by ramping up enrichment to 60 percent during Biden’s term in office, near weapons-grade. Then-Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman later tried to justify why the U.S. caved into Iran’s demands, saying “I would like there to be zero enrichment, I would like there to be no facilities, I would like there not to be an indigenous program. I think I would like many things in life. But that does not mean I will always get them, and that is not necessarily the only path to ensuring that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon.” But in NSPM-2, President Trump has correctly pointed out “we must deny Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon and end the regime’s nuclear extortion racket.” This must hold.

Finally, President Obama set-up a false choice between a bad nuclear deal or war. But the JCPOA has been dead longer than it was alive, and war has not broken out. In fact, a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program will not necessarily trigger the extreme and hyperbolic scenarios that Islamic Republic propagandists hype to deter U.S. action. Israel twice demonstrated to the world last year that it is possible to hit targets on Iranian soil while avoiding outright war. Israel simultaneously completely decimated two key Iranian terrorist proxies Hezbollah and Hamas – both of which the Obama and Biden administrations warned would intervene should the U.S. strike the regime’s nuclear facilities. In other words: today, the Ayatollah is in no position to fight a war with the United States.

Adhering to the Trump Doctrine would avoid the mistakes of the Obama era. It is the essence of putting America First and peace through strength. 

Jeb Bush is the former governor of Florida and chairman of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). Mark D. Wallace is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and CEO of UANI.