The US and Europe’s Strategic Goals toward Iran

This article investigates the aims of the United States and main stream European countries toward the latest situations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran’s regional role and missile program. The author argues that the US’s so-called “maximum pressure” policy against Iran, which is aimed at diminishing Iran’s power from inside, thereby forcing the country to retreat from its regional policy and limiting its missile program, supported to some degree by major European powers, mainly due to their strategic inability in opposing with the US’s policies under the Trump administration, has not reached its aims and expected consequences and even brought about reversed results. Now, Iran took five steps to reduce its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA terms, strengthened its regional role by extending its strategic depth, enhanced its missile activities to empower the country’s deterrent power, and most importantly managed relatively its national economic resources to avoid any possibility of the collapse of the state under US coercive economic sanctions, right unlike the aspirations of as the designers of the “maximum pressure” policy envisaged. While the US is still believing in the efficacy of its current policy towards Iran, it is likely that the Trump administration continues its political pressures on Iran without any tendency to enter an all-out war. The author concludes that although the US “zero-export-oil” policy has imposed economic hardships on Iran, it has forced the US to retreat from its initial aims toward the country. In such circumstances, Iran should strengthen its relations at the regional level and with Non-Western countries, focusing on “regional multilateralism” and economic integration at the neighborhood region, benefiting from its privileged geographical situation. Concurrently, Iran should resist against the US bullying policy, until the grounds for any possible talks with Western powers under an “equal political term” become prepared.