Diplomatic resets have a bad name in Washington, D.C., these days, ever since former President Barack Obama promised one with Moscow in 2009, then oversaw the collapse of U.S.-Russian relations, including the never-ending Ukraine crisis and war.
There’s nothing wrong with resetting bad relations between rivals, so long as any reset is grounded in geopolitical reality rather than the naïve wishes of the Obama-Biden foreign policy set, which birthed so many needless reversals in American power over the last two decades.
President Donald Trump’s second administration offers the chance for a reset with Iran, precisely because he was tough on the mullah regime during his first term. The last time he was in the Oval Office, Trump projected strength toward Tehran, including sanctions that limited Iran’s ability to harm American allies and interests, plus scrapping Obama’s cherished Iran Deal on nuclear development. Moreover, Trump applied lethal force against Tehran in a limited but effective fashion.
Cemeteries worldwide are filled with allegedly indispensable people, but occasionally someone turns out to be irreplaceable. The death of Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3, 2020, at the hands of the U.S. Air Force, was a game-changing event for the Middle East. On Trump’s orders, the Pentagon assassinated Soleimani, who for more than two decades was the top terrorist for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, as the head of its special operations arm, the Qods (Jerusalem) Force.
As the IRGC-QF boss, Soleimani directed what Tehran calls “liberation movements” across the Middle East, waging war on Israel and the West, especially the United States. A cagey strategist, Soleimani had more blood on his hands than Osama bin Laden, including hundreds of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Soleimani’s militias. As the second most powerful man in Iran, behind only Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Soleimani had enormous influence over all of Tehran’s interactions with the West.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” strategy to pressure Israel and America across the Middle East through proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, various militias in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus Palestinian resistance groups, preeminently Hamas. Soleimani grasped that while Iran is a weakling in conventional military terms, with dilapidated armed forces incapable of confronting America and its allies on the field of battle, Tehran possesses powerful asymmetric tools to challenge Western might in the Middle East.
What a difference five years make. The IRGC vibrantly mourned Soleimani’s death and threatened to avenge him with murder plots against Trump and top U.S. officials, but he hasn’t been meaningfully replaced. Ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with Iranian-supplied weapons, the Axis of Resistance has fallen apart. Gloves off, the Israel Defense Forces crushed one Iranian proxy after another. Hamas is more down than out, but Gaza has been shattered and the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel hasn’t been this weak in decades. Israel’s assassination of Hamas political boss Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, on July 31, 2024, sent a pointed message to the mullahs. In Lebanon, IDF strikes decapitated Hezbollah, and revealed that group’s military power, despite over 40 years of IRGC investment in training and equipping Hezbollah, to be distinctly limited. Then, the collapse of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, a key Iranian ally, unraveled Tehran’s entire strategic position in the Levant.
IDF conventional strikes on Iran, especially its nuclear program, were answered with Iranian missile barrages that were brusquely blunted by U.S. and Israeli cooperation with timely intelligence and anti-missile defenses. Tehran’s massive investment in ballistic missiles, instead of more conventional airpower, was revealed to be a grand blunder. Simply put, Iran lacks any significant military capability against Israel, much less the United States. Only the Houthis, in faraway Yemen, are keeping the Axis of Resistance alive, hurling Iranian missiles at Western shipping in the Red Sea, yet they have failed to cut off international trade routes.
This strategic shift against Iran offers an opening for Trump, if he wants one. There’s worry in Tehran that the new administration may employ the U.S. military to directly attack Iran’s nuclear development program, which is assessed by Western intelligence to be getting close to weaponization, after decades of fits and starts. Certainly U.S. Central Command possesses precision strike capabilities, including deep-penetrating bombs and real-time intelligence, which the IDF can’t dream of. Together, CENTCOM and the IDF might deliver Iran’s nuclear ambitions a painful blow that would set them back into the next decade.
Then again, they might not. The difficult truth is that if a kinetic solution to the Iranian nuclear dilemma could be assured to buy time — several years, preferably a decade, of delay in atomic weaponization — the Pentagon would have done this long ago. Such a comprehensive strike was considered not just during the last Trump term, but during the presidency of George W. Bush. Every time, the political risks were not deemed acceptable, given the variables at play. Now that Tehran has concluded a mutual defense pact of sorts with Moscow, termed the “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty,” the threat of Russian response to any major U.S. must be considered.
It would be wiser to give the mullahs a bloody nose not at home, but against their last proxy standing that’s seriously fighting the West. Yemen’s Houthis rebels have proved a thorn in the side of global trade, forcing the U.S. Navy to deploy ships on station for months to keep international shipping lanes open. The Biden administration, in line with its broad policy of not challenging Tehran, even when it behaves badly, kept Pentagon pushback against the Houthis on a short leash.
It’s time to unleash the Pentagon against the Houthis. To date, CENTCOM strikes in Yemen against Houthi critical nodes have been restrained. Trump should take off the leash and let our Navy and Air Force take down Houthi bases, command posts, and logistical sites. Iranian shipments of weapons, especially missiles, to their Houthi proxies should be interdicted harshly. That will send the mullahs a clear message without threatening Iran at home.
Hit the Houthis, hard, then seek parley with the mullah regime. Here, Trump possesses one clear advantage over his predecessor, since his White House isn’t penetrated by Iranian sympathizers, as Obama and Biden were through three terms in office. The Democrats allowed suspected friends of Tehran, of dubious loyalty to the U.S., including known Israel-haters, to occupy top national security positions. Some of them can be plausibly termed Iranian agents.
They’re gone now. No longer can Tehran count on having their allies on the other side of the negotiating table in Washington. This changes the game in both intelligence and diplomatic terms.
Tehran is already signaling that it’s open to talking with the Trump administration.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Last week, Supreme Leader Khamenei criticized the White House while signaling that parley is possible, despite tough rhetoric from regime-connected senior clerics. Moreover, another senior cleric who’s deemed a decent bellwether for regime views, Mohsen Qara’ati, just compared discussions with Trump to a difficult divorce: “Even when ending a relationship or in conflict, one shouldn’t destroy all bridges at once,” he explained, “There should always be a path for return.” This week, Iran’s foreign ministry denied that there’s a diplomatic back channel forming between Tehran and Washington, which means that there probably is; it just can’t be admitted yet.
Trump is the master of making threats and showing strength, to induce discussion, and, if possible, then birth a deal that seemed unattainable before. If he confronts the mullahs with strength, a reset with Iran can come into focus.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.