With Iran on the nuclear brink, America must end its appeasement strategy

Imagine a world where a fanatical theocracy has access to nuclear missile weapons. In just under two weeks, you may not have to. 

On Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran could produce fissile nuclear material in “one or two weeks.” If Blinken proves correct, this would be calamitous for a Middle East already teetering on the edge of all-out regional war. 

As I argue in a recent report for the Henry Jackson Society, the American strategy of appeasement towards Iran has wholly backfired. Instead of turning the country into a responsible regional power, it has only fuelled successive ayatollahs’ aggression towards Western democracies and their allies. The US has painted itself into a corner and has only one viable option left: to strike Iran’s nuclear sites and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Ground Forces. 

This plan cannot be actualized without the support of Israel. Since October 7th, The Jewish state has had the unenviable task of having to dismantle the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, while simultaneously trying to stop war from snaking to the West Bank and Lebanon, where Iran has strongholds. Netanyahu and Biden want to prioritize localizing the conflict because both are acutely aware that Israel can’t cope with a tri-border conflict. Unfortunately, Iran is also giddily conscious of this fact, which is why their ultimate goal is to create a nuclear umbrella for Iranian proxies neighboring Israel. 

The advantage of Iran’s natural geography with its high rugged mountains means the Islamic Republic can afford to isolate and play powers with their terrorist proxies, projecting influence across the region. The latest iteration of this is the “unification of the arenas” strategy, which would see the birth of a pro-Iranian axis in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. Needless to say, the dismantling of said axis will be nigh on impossible if Iran realizes their nuclear ambitions. 

Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is copying from Putin’s playbook. Russia has long wielded threats of their nuclear capabilities to deter greater Western involvement in Ukraine. The situation replicated in the Middle East would be, in short, disastrous. Israel would have to adopt more coercive fighting tactics, leaving the country severely weakened militarily. Meanwhile, Iran’s state-sponsored terrorism could know no bounds. 

Top of collective concern is Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia terrorist organization. According to the UN, they’re the most heavily armed non-state group in the world, possessing around 50,000 fighters and 150,000 rockets, one of which, an Iranian-made missile with a warhead of over 50 kilos of explosives, hit a soccer pitch in the Golan Heights Saturday, killing a dozen children and teenagers and further raising the possibility, looming for months now, of all-out conflict between Lebanon and Israel, with daily attacks leaving 60,000 Israelis internally displaced. It doesn’t require a great leap of imagination to visualize how emboldened the group will become under the protection of an Iranian nuclear umbrella. 

This does nothing to cool rising tensions in the US’s confused relationship with Iran. Back in 2015, the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accord was signed by a group of world powers and Iran. Under its terms, the regime was supposed to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars of sanction relief — largely from American coffers. But successive White House administrations have flip-flopped on increasing sanctions or offering sanctions relief, despite pulling out of the JCPOA in 2018. So, it was a surprise when Biden took office in 2021 and declared his priority to figure out, “how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the JCPOA.” The bold change in foreign policy made it all the more embarrassing when, less than two years later, Biden quietly admitted that JCPOA was in fact, “dead”. 

As of 2024, the US has not formulated a replacement strategy for engaging with Iran. This has left the country responding to, rather than pre-empting the regime’s threats. And with America on the backpedal, Israel’s hand is forced to be similarly restrained. For example, Israel fails to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the malign actions of its surrogates with direct attacks on Iranian soil. Instead, the IDF prefers to conduct airstrikes on Iranian proxies and prevent the IRGC establishing a military base on its border with Syria.

This softly-softly approach may have staved off war in the short term, however it also means that Iran’s provocations don’t face tangible consequences. Perhaps the starkest instance of this was the US’s initial denial that Iran was the architect behind the October 7th attacks. However, lesser-known examples include the de facto Israeli policy of seeking to delay, rather than destroy the country’s nuclear program. 

American foreign policy’s aim should be destabilizing Iran, domestically and abroad. Instead, they’ve forced themselves and Israel into tit-for-tat shadow warfare — while Iran develops nuclear warheads with impunity. 

This status quo cannot continue. If Iran’s regional dominance is not quashed, chaos in the Middle East will be inevitable. Iran wants this chaos; indeed, it forms a core part of their national strategy because it leaves their enemies distracted and disunited. And make no mistake: the day the fascist theocracy gets nukes, power will permanently tip in their favor. Although that day is alarmingly near, it has not yet arrived. The US and Israel still wield economic, military, and moral might. The time to act is now. 

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Alma Green contributed to this op-ed.