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Trump’s Iran Policy: How to Destroy Trust and Alienate People

Iranians are responding to U.S. betrayal in the same way that anyone would.
DC: Donald Trump And Ted Cruz Join Capitol Hill Rally Against Iran Deal

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj calls attention to new surveys of Iranian public opinion, which found that the vast majority of Iranians now have an unfavorable view of the U.S.:

Three new waves of nationally-representative surveys conducted by the University of Maryland over the past six months paint a damning picture of the Trump administration’s Iran policy. Negative perceptions of the United States among the Iranian public are at the highest recorded level in over a decade of public opinion research [bold mine-DL] conducted by the university’s Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and IranPoll.

Long considered one of the most “pro-American” populations in the Middle East, 86 percent of Iranians reported unfavorable views of the United States, of which 73 percent reported “very unfavorable” views. Perceptions of the United States were most positive in August 2015, shortly after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was agreed by Iran and the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China. As frustrations grew over the implementation of sanctions relief and following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal negative perceptions steadily increased.

This steady deterioration in U.S. favorability among Iranians is consistent with previous surveys, and it matches up with the reporting we have been hearing for the last two and a half years. Trump’s decision to renege on the JCPOA and reimpose sanctions is the main driver of these increasingly negative attitudes towards the U.S., and it shouldn’t surprise us that the people who are being strangled by economic warfare don’t like the country whose government has been doing the strangling. The travel ban has probably also contributed to the increasingly negative views that Iranians have of the U.S., but this report doesn’t specifically mention it.

Iranians on the receiving end of sanctions have no illusions about what the administration is trying to do to them. Almost three-quarters of Iranians believe that the U.S. is deliberately trying to choke off humanitarian trade:

Iranians believe that US sanctions policy is intended to cause direct harm to ordinary people. While the Trump administration claims that humanitarian goods and supplies may freely enter Iran, 70 percent of Iranians believe that US policy intends to block humanitarian trade.

As Batmanghelidj mentioned, Iranians were once said to be the most pro-American people in the region, but after being betrayed over the nuclear deal and suffering the effects of economic warfare they are increasingly souring on the U.S. both because of what our government does and because of how they see the country itself. Where more than a third saw the U.S. as a model because of our values, now barely one in ten thinks that:

But the negative perceptions of the United States are not merely shaped by sanctions impacts. More fundamentally, Iranians are increasingly doubtful that the United States offers a model to emulate. In 2005, during the Iraq War, a Zogby survey found 37 percent of Iranians saying “America is a model country for its values and freedoms.” Now, the percentage expressing that view has plummeted to 12 percent.

Iranians are also souring on the JCPOA because Iran has received virtually no benefits despite having fully complied with the terms of the agreement for several years. Now more Iranians disapprove of the deal than support it, and most Iranians think their government should abandon it:

This growing antagonism towards the United States tracks growing disillusionment with the nuclear deal. For the first time, a majority of Iranians (52 percent) disapprove of the JCPOA, and 59 percent believe Iran should withdraw outright.

It’s hard to blame people for wanting to exit a deal that has gained them nothing after one of the other governments broke its promises and attacked them with unjustified sanctions. The current policy of the Iranian government to reduce compliance with the deal step by step has the backing of three-quarters of those surveyed. Most debates about U.S. Iran policy don’t take the Iranian public’s views into consideration when we are considering what concessions the Iranian government might be willing to make. If these survey results are accurate, their government would be hard-pressed to return to full compliance with the nuclear deal without receiving the full benefits they were promised. If the U.S. and the other parties to the deal made good on their promises, there would be broad support for returning to full compliance, but not before.

Far from driving a wedge between the people and the government, U.S. sanctions have had the opposite effect just as opponents said they would. The Iranian public is more resistant now to U.S. demands than before, and their dissatisfaction with the economy has returned to where it was before the U.S. violated the JCPOA:

“One of the main objectives of the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is to increase economic and political dissatisfaction until the Iranian government either acquiesces to Secretary of State Pompeo’s twelve demands or is replaced by a form of government more to the United States’ liking,” said Nancy Gallagher, director of the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), and one of the report’s authors.“Our data, however, indicate that contrary to what US officials anticipated, public dissatisfaction with the economy has gone back to where it was before US withdrawal from the JCPOA. More importantly, public attitudes in Iran are hardening against the types of policy changes that the Trump administration is trying to achieve.”

Indeed, the hardening of their position means that even more Iranians think making concessions is not worthwhile because the other governments can’t be trusted to honor their commitments:

Troublingly for those hoping for a second chance at diplomacy, 72 percent of Iranians now think that the JCPOA shows “it is not worthwhile for Iran to make concessions” because other powers will not follow through—a five point increase from January of 2018.

Iranians are responding to U.S. betrayal in the same way that anyone would. They are naturally less likely to trust our government to honor an agreement when it has been willing to trash previous agreements for no good reason. If a future administration hopes to regain that trust, they will have to make a concerted effort to reverse the destructive policies that have done so much to poison the Iranian public against the U.S.

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