Trump and Pompeo may finally succeed in destroying the Iran deal, but that won't get them success with Iran

• The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to argue it can unilaterally snap all sanctions back onto Iran, despite the US's withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
• That argument strains credulity, and the Trump administration's apparent willingness to make it indicates it's still pursuing a failed approach to box in Iran, writes Defense Priorities fellow Daniel R. DePetris.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This October, Iran may be able to purchase conventional weapons systems that are now prohibited by the UN Security Council. The Trump administration is frantically trying to extend the arms embargo before it expires — so much so that the State Department is prepared to use faulty legal interpretations to do it.

Resolution 2231, which codified the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal), bans the supply, sale, or transport to Iran of weapons such as battle tanks, Apache helicopters, combat aircraft, and armored combat vehicles for five years.

The White House has circulated a draft resolution extending the weapons embargo indefinitely, an effort Russia and China are sure to summarily reject. According to The New York Times, the Trump administration is prepared to respond to the Russian and Chinese veto by arguing that it is an original signatory to the Iran nuclear deal and can therefore unilaterally snap all of the sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo, back into place.

The administration's tactic may succeed in destroying whatever is left of the agreement. Washington's tired approach toward Iran, however, will continue to produce the same, empty results.

When the White House announced its departure from the Iran agreement in 2018, it argued that only additional economic and military pressure on Tehran would force the Iranian government to change its foreign policy behavior.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's 12-point wish-list of demands included everything from the withdrawal of all Iranian troops from Syria to the suspension of nuclear enrichment activities. Less than six months later, Pompeo confidently asserted that the enormous weight of the sanctions would eventually compel Iran to change its behavior. In the words of US envoy Brian Hook, maximum pressure was "designed to bring them back to the negotiating table."

The administration's strategy can be generously termed an unvarnished failure. Tehran is less willing to sit down with US negotiators today than they were before the US pulled out of the deal.

Economically, maximum pressure has harmed Iran — revenue streams have been severely depleted over the previous two years as Iran's traditional consumers diversify their imports to save themselves from being frozen out of the US financial system. Iran's crude oil exports have experienced a 90% decrease over the past two years. Iranian officials admit US sanctions are depriving them of revenue; last December, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the various US sanctions on the books have cost the country a total of $200 billion, only worsening Iran's fiscal distress.

None of this economic pain is making Iran's behavior more constructive.

Indeed, Washington's all-sticks, no-carrot approach is having the exact opposite effect Trump, Pompeo, Hook, and former national security adviser John Bolton predicted. Rather than bowing down to the pressure and entering new negotiations on Washington's terms, the Iranians have met maximum pressure with maximum resistance.

Iran is arguably more aggressive today than it has been over the previous decade. In the last year alone, Tehran allegedly targeted Saudi Arabia´s largest oil refinery with cruise missiles, prodded its militia proxies in Iraq to launch mortars at Iraqi military bases where US troops are stationed; seized and impounded foreign vessels for weeks at a time; and conducted the first direct missile attack against US troops in the Islamic Republic's 41-year history.

The latter was a response to the lethal targeting of IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, an operation administration officials claimed would establish deterrence with the Iranians. Tehran put those claims to rest almost immediately.

Recently, 11 IRGC vessels encircled US ships in the Persian Gulf for over an hour. Tensions between Washington and Tehran remain as high as they have ever been, increasing the possibility of an honest misunderstanding mushrooming into violence.

The last thing the United States needs during a global pandemic is another foolish war in the Middle East. US national security interests in the region are limited to protecting the American people from transnational terrorism, ensuring the global marketplace is sufficiently supplied with oil (the market today is so oversaturated that US oil futures last month dipped into negative territory for the first time in history), and preventing the US military from getting sucked into disputes between the region´s major powers.

Maximum pressure has made all three of those interests harder to achieve. And it has made war far more likely.

Reality has proven advocates of maximum pressure wrong countless times since their strategy was enacted. President Trump should stop listening to their advice, bring the US back into the nuclear agreement and use it as a baseline for future (and more detailed) negotiations with the Iranians, and establish the kinds of military-to-military dialogue channels that prevent accidents from becoming crises.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Washington Examiner.