'Sources of conduct' show challenges of Iranian containment

As the United States and Iran have taken a step back from confrontation, the questions going forward are what happens next and is there a path for the United States to achieve its strategic goals vis-à-vis Iran?

Iran has painfully discovered where President Donald Trump's "red line" is. Shooting down an unmanned American drone did not elicit a response nor did an attack on Saudi oil facilities. Killing an American contractor and threatening our Embassy in Baghdad did.

That said, the attack that killed the American contractor was one more incident in a series of incidents carried out by Iran or its proxies to try to impose costs on the United States for its decision to pull out of the JCPOA, aka the Iran nuclear deal, and reimpose crushing economic sanctions.

We should still expect Iranian proxies to launch attacks against American or allied interests - with a large dollop of "plausible deniability" to make retaliation problematic.

The president asserted in his remarks in the wake of the missile strikes that he would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, even as Iran announced that it was taking one more step away from the JCPOA by saying it will no longer adhere to certain limits imposed by the deal.

The president's objections to the JCPOA are threefold. First, that the limits placed on Iran's nuclear program should not expire, but be permanent. Second, that a new deal should curb Iran's missile program. And third, that Iran's support for Shia militias throughout the Middle East, often branded as terrorists, be stopped.

To borrow a phrase from George Kennan, the architect of Soviet containment, what are the "sources of Iranian conduct?"

The eight-year Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), launched by Saddam Hussein, left in its wake some 600,000 Iranian dead and injured. Iran vowed this would never happen again and so it has tried to push its defensive perimeter outward by establishing alliances with militias from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In Syria, they have supported President Assad's government forces. In Iraq they have supported militias formed to fight ISIS that are supposed to be under the control of the Iraqi government, but not so much.

This is the so-called Shia Crescent. It should not be confused as some sort of Shia NATO. The asymmetric warfare employed often meets the definition of terrorism.

Its missile program and clandestine nuclear program were further efforts to create security and deterrence. The George W. Bush Administration first imposed sanctions in 2006 to try to halt it. When Iran got within a few months of producing enough material to create a bomb, the Obama administration struck a limited deal to halt and roll back that program. That is the JCPOA. It took a long time to gain Iranian trust - the two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the overthrown of the Shah and the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. In exchange, the Iranians gained access to some of the funds frozen in overseas accounts and some sanctions relief.

This week, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman explained that various intermediaries - Europeans and others - have indicated that what President Trump wants to do is raze the JCPOA to the ground and build a new, bigger, more comprehensive deal with big gold letters on it that spell T-R-U-M-P. However, the same spokesman indicated that they cannot trust the president.

So, where is the path forward? There are intermediaries who have more trust with the Iranians who could start laying some groundwork, but given what has happened over the past two years, it will take diligence and patience. The term "Iranian moderate" might be an oxymoron, but nations have interests, so getting a new deal not only will have to deal with demands by the JCPOA partners, but Iran's economic and security concerns must be on the table as well.

A nation that sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties during a brutal eight-year war cannot be easily bullied to the negotiating table.

Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.