The Policy of “Maximum Pressure” on Iran Finds Its Ultimate Conclusion
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Americans should not be fooled or led astray by the corporate media or the Beltway consultant class: fact-free fearmongering and warmongering about Iran have been among the most thoroughly bipartisan positions in Washington for many decades. For all of the turgid language within U.S. government and media circles about rogue regimes and state sponsors of terrorism, we almost never get around to mentioning the fact that the United States has long been the world’s greatest offender and violator of international law. It’s important to be clear about the facts of the matter: Iran is not a real threat to the United States, and it is Washington that has always been the aggressor in the relationship. Iran does not have intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Donald Trump himself has claimed repeatedly that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” last summer.
The U.S. government itself bears much of the responsibility for the theocratic dictatorship that rules Iran today, the seeds of which grew after the CIA helped to overthrow the country’s elected leader in the summer of 1953. A few years later, with the eager assistance of the CIA and Israel’s intelligence services, among others, the Shah’s regime set up a brutal and repressive domestic security and intelligence service, called SAVAK. SAVAK’s extreme censorship and abuses helped to radicalize Iranians, who correctly associated the regime’s violence and authoritarianism with the foreign powers that helped to train and equip it. With rival political parties and civil society groups stamped out, religious organizations became the vehicle for political revolution, and thus for the revolution that ushered in the Islamic Republic.
Today, the U.S. government’s sanctions regime is a direct attack on innocent Iranians, not on an insulated ruling class in Tehran, which can easily and comfortably withstand the costs of Washington’s economic stranglehold. As scholars and commentators have long pointed out, “The breadth and scope of the United States’ ‘maximum pressure sanctions’ pushed Iranians into poverty and increased income inequality, leading to widespread suffering. They also weakened the population and made Iranians increasingly dependent on the state, which has become more militarized and securitized, leading to an overall sentiment of resignation.”
The Solidify Iran Sanctions Act (SISA), which passed the House last year, is part of the culmination of a decades-long trajectory, removing the sunset provision of the ‘96 Iran Sanctions Act. The SISA would make the earlier law’s sanctions authorities permanent unless repealed. (Senate passage of the SISA is not urgent since the ‘96 law will not expire until the end of the year.) The overwhelming bipartisan support for the SISA is one of many examples of how the “maximum pressure” framework toward Iran has become a permanent feature of U.S. law. Human rights groups have long called attention to the fact that innocent Iranians—who despise the government more than any American politician—bear the brunt of this cruel and inhumane maximum pressure policy.
This policy has long united ruling classes in Washington and Tel Aviv, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s maximalist position on Iran has steadily become the consensus in elite American politics. Israel’s prime minister was the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump came back to power, and he has returned more than any other leader, six times in just over a year, with his most recent visit coming earlier this month. This is significant in part because Israel’s longest-serving prime minister (over 18 years over three separate periods of 1996-1999, 2009-2021, and 2022-present) has lobbied the U.S. government for war with Iran obsessively for decades, both inside and outside of his official capacities. Speaking to the Knesset as a member in 1992, Netanyahu warned that Iran would “become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb” within three to five years. He repeated this and similar clearly false claims again and again in subsequent years, including during an infamous address to a joint session of Congress as prime minister in 1996.
But Israel is far from the only foreign country that has pushed the U.S. further toward conflict with Iran. The United States’ key allies in the Persian Gulf, for example, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have maintained deep financial ties with the Washington think-tank and consultancy world, using their immense wealth to influence U.S. policy and press the case for aggressive and militaristic policies toward Iran. More recently, Qatar gave Trump a $400 million Boeing jet described as a “flying palace,” a move widely seen as an illegal and unconstitutional bribe. The UAE, meanwhile, has poured money into the Trump family, raising eyebrows with a “deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded by the Trump family and several allies in the fall of 2024 during Trump’s presidential campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful officials in the UAE.”
The United States and Israel have been meddling violently and illegally in the affairs of the Iranian people for close to 75 years now. Both halves of the Washington uniparty bear responsibility for Trump’s latest imperialist foray and the catastrophic consequences it will bring. Whether they admit it or not, congressional leaders in both parties knew this was coming and could have pushed to ensure that the U.S. government would not enter into another war absent congressional action.
The sad truth is that they wanted this outcome, because it aligns with and serves powerful interests clustered around the Beltway, the military-industrial complex chief among them. They just didn’t want to have to vote for it or against it; they want to be reliable partners for those interests and social media celebrities without having to go on the record on anything important. Hence, the imperial presidency.
Americans continue to be surprised that we don’t learn from Vietnam, Iraq, etc., but the truth is our openly corrupt and imperialistic ruling class has learned a great deal, and they are now sure that we will never stand up to their villainy here at home or abroad. The U.S. government long ago abandoned even the merest pretense that its foreign policy of aggressive wars of choice and mass civilian starvation has anything at all to do with the safety or our concrete interests of Americans. What Americans need to learn is not that Washington’s illegal wars have failed, but that they have failed for us and the world while they enrich a tiny elite of war profiteers.
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