Foreign Affairs - 11.2019 - 12.2019

The Unwanted Wars

November/December 2019 45

U.S. presence to countering Iran; in Iraq,

where the United States wants a fragile

government that is now dependent on close

ties to Tehran to cut those ties; in Yemen,

where the administration, Áouting Con-

gress’ will, has increased support for the

Saudi-led coalition; and in Lebanon, where

it has added to sanctions on Hezbollah.

Iran has also chosen to treat the region

as its canvas. Besides chipping away at its

own compliance with the nuclear deal, it

has seized tankers in the Gulf; shot down

a U.S. drone; and, i‘ U.S. claims are to be

believed, used Shiite militias to threaten

Americans in Iraq, attacked commercial

vessels in the Strait o“ Hormuz, and

struck Saudi oil Äelds. In June o‘ this year,

when the drone came down and Trump

contemplated military retaliation, Iran

was quick to warn Qatar, Saudi Arabia,

and the ™¬¤ that they would be fair game

i‘ they played any role in enabling a U.S.

attack. (There is no reason to trust that

the domino e
ect would have ended

there; Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria

could well have been drawn into the

ensuing hostilities.) And in Yemen, the

Houthis have intensiÄed their attacks on

Saudi targets, which may or may not be at

Iran’s instigation—although, at a mini-

mum, it is almost certainly not over

Tehran’s objections. Houthi leaders with

whom I recently spoke in Sanaa, Yemen’s

capital, denied acting at Iran’s behest yet

added that they would undoubtedly join

forces with Iran in a war against Saudi

Arabia i‘ their own conÁict with the

kingdom were still ongoing. In short, the

Trump administration’s policies, which

Washington claimed would moderate

Iran’s behavior and achieve a more

stringent nuclear deal, have prompted

Tehran to intensify its regional activities

and ignore some o‘ the existing nuclear

and imperil regional relationships that
had been decades in the making. As he
once put it to some o‘ us working in the
White House, conducting U.S. policy was
akin to steering a large vessel: a course
correction o‘ a few degrees might not
seem like much in the moment, but over
time, the destination would di
er drasti-
cally. What he did, he did in moderation.
Thus, while seeking to persuade Riyadh
to open channels with Tehran, he did so
gently, carefully balancing continuity and
change in the United States’ Middle East
policy. And although he wanted to avoid
military entanglements, his presidency
nonetheless was marked by several costly
interventions: both direct, as in Libya,
and indirect, as in Syria and Yemen.
In a sense, his administration was an
experiment that got suspended halfway
through. At least when it came to his
approach to the Middle East, Obama’s
presidency was premised on the belie‘
that someone else would pick up where
he left o
. It was premised on his being
succeeded by someone like him, maybe a
Hillary Clinton, but certainly not a
Donald Trump.
Trump has opted for a very di
erent
course (perhaps driven in part by a simple
desire to do the opposite o‘ what his
predecessor did). Instead o‘ striving for
some kind o– balance, Trump has tilted
entirely to one side: doubling down on
support for Israel; wholly aligning himsel‘
with MBS, Sisi, and other leaders who felt
spurned by Obama; withdrawing from the
Iran nuclear deal and zealously joining up
with the region’s anti-Iranian axis. Indeed,
seeking to weaken Iran, Washington has
chosen to confront it on all fronts across
much o‘ the region: in the nuclear and
economic realms; in Syria, where U.S.
o”cials have explicitly tied the continued