Iran Is Loving The Trump Era So Far

[Initech]

If you’re feeling generous, you could say the one organizing principle of Donald Trump’s foreign policy is that Iranian influence must be contained and rolled back. Though the president doesn’t seem to agree on much with senior members of his national security team, like H.R. McMaster and James Mattis, these days, they’re on the same page when it comes to the threat posed by Tehran’s regional ambitions. But far from being rolled back, Iranian influence appears to be spreading. And far from being united, the international community is deeply divided over how to respond. Some of the Trump administration’s policies may even ultimately bolster the Islamic Republic’s growing clout.



Carlotta Gall of the New York Times reported over the weekend on Iran’s growing influence in Afghanistan. Iran “is providing local Taliban insurgents with weapons, money and training. It has offered Taliban commanders sanctuary and fuel for their trucks. It has padded Taliban ranks by recruiting among Afghan Sunni refugees in Iran, according to Afghan and Western officials.” Afghans also fear that Iran “is working to subvert plans in Afghanistan for upstream dams that could threaten its water supply.” Iranian influence has grown as the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has waned. From that perspective, the current debate within the U.S. administration over troop levels in the country presents something of a win-win for Iran: Washington will either commit more troops and financial resources to a fight it has little hope of winning (whatever “winning” means at this point) or it will draw down further and leave a power vacuum behind.

We’ve seen this movie before—in Iraq, where Iran’s economic, political, and military influence is stronger than ever. Just days after the U.S. passed new sanctions on Iran last month, Baghdad signed a deal to boost military cooperation with Tehran. During his campaign, Trump often accused Barack Obama of handing the country over to Iran by withdrawing troops, but that die was probably cast in 2003, when the U.S. toppled the anti-Iranian government of a country that borders Iran and has a majority Shiite population. When the Iraqi military collapsed in the face of ISIS in 2014, Iranian-backed Shiite militias stepped in, doing much of the fighting against the group. Now that ISIS has been mostly ousted from the country after the fall of Mosul, those militias don’t seem to be in a hurry to disband.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/07/iran_is_just_loving_the_trump_era_so_far.html

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