The Islamic Republic of Iran and its violent disruptions have hung over my total profession. I took the Foreign Service examination as the regime seized U.S. Embassy hostages in late 1979, and I grappled with the horrific bombing of our embassy in Beirut in 1983. I led secret nuclear talks with Iran three a long time later and countered its proxies throughout the Middle East after Oct. 7, 2023. I’ve realized many classes over a few years about coping with Iran, usually the arduous manner.
President Trump’s struggle of alternative with Iran has paid little consideration to our errors and added many of his personal. He assumed that bombs and assassinations might result in regime change. He misinterpret tactical navy success as a workable technique. He made coverage selections based mostly on presidential id and court docket politics. He negotiated on the fly with little forethought or planning.
These unforced errors have already accomplished an ideal deal of strategic injury. But, with a fragile cease-fire extension in place and the flickering potential for resumed negotiations, there’s a probability to restrict the hurt. Three important classes from the previous eight weeks will help Mr. Trump salvage America’s pursuits.
First, managing troublesome overseas coverage issues nicely takes time and endurance. This lesson will not be about fatalism or avoiding robust selections. It’s about what you’ll be able to accomplish at a suitable value to different priorities, each overseas and home. Perfect is never on the menu in diplomacy, particularly with a ruthless, ideological and entrenched regime. Decapitating management can seem to be an interesting shortcut, however as this administration shortly found in Iran, it may be an phantasm.
President Barack Obama’s logic in pursuing direct diplomacy with Iran was to play an extended recreation, curbing the worst danger posed by Tehran — the potential for nuclear weaponization — and blunting different threats over time whereas supporting political freedoms for the Iranian folks. Like his predecessor George W. Bush, Mr. Obama regarded fastidiously at the dangers and second- and third-order penalties of struggle and concluded they far outweighed the probably advantages.
Mr. Trump, emboldened by his sense of success in the June 2025 struggle and final winter’s Venezuela operation, made a special and tragic alternative. There is not any redo in statecraft. There continues to be, nevertheless, an out of doors chance of addressing the most acute risks that Iran poses in opposition to its neighbors, the United States and the relaxation of the world if the administration can prioritize, focus and overcome its dependancy to fast fixes.
Second, there isn’t a substitute for harnessing all the devices of U.S. nationwide safety. You by no means get very far in diplomacy with out navy and financial leverage. But drive alone — with out affected person, painstaking diplomacy, backed up by good intelligence taken significantly by policymakers — hardly ever delivers. Nor are negotiations dictation. They virtually all the time contain an advanced, drawn-out course of of give and take, in which experience issues and many alternative factors of strain are utilized.
That will likely be vital, if the cease-fire holds, for negotiations on the two core challenges: the nuclear concern and the Strait of Hormuz. At the coronary heart of any whole lot will likely be tight nuclear inspections, an prolonged moratorium on the enrichment of uranium and the export or dilution of Tehran’s present stockpile of enriched uranium in trade for tangible sanctions reduction for Iran. On the reopening of the strait, some settlement involving littoral states and different key world gamers might assist durably defend free passage and generate some income for demining and financial restoration — with out permitting an Iranian tollbooth.
The United States has a robust hand to play, however a long-lasting settlement would require creativeness, mobilizing allies and companions and knowledgeable consideration to element with deeply skilled and sometimes duplicitous Iranian negotiators. Unless the traces are clearly drawn and strictly monitored, the Iranians will paint exterior them. We can’t afford to wing it.
A final and important lesson of the battle is that mowing the grass — utilizing blunt drive in opposition to speedy threats with no long-term plan for fulfillment — has solely seeded the garden with wider issues. The listing is lengthy: The Iranian regime is battered however intact, weaker in many respects however even nastier and extra hard-line in its instincts. The Strait of Hormuz, geography’s strategic reward to Iran, is now a stronger supply of affect for Tehran than its nuclear program, ballistic missiles or proxies have ever been. The United States has eroded belief with the Persian Gulf Arabs and with our European allies. Our mates in the Indo-Pacific are economically broken and shedding confidence in American management.
The struggle has additionally thrown a lifeline to Vladimir Putin, ensuing in extra vitality income and diminished U.S. navy inventories at a time when Ukraine had been making progress on the battlefield and the Russian financial system was going through its personal dire straits. Xi Jinping seems to imagine the battle has put China on increased strategic floor as Mr. Trump prepares to go to Beijing in mid-May, giving Mr. Xi a possibility to extract concessions on commerce, know-how and Taiwan. And there will likely be longer-term challenges in the world financial system, with a big lag in influence even when a cease-fire is sustained.
We didn’t need to dig the gap this deep. Fortunately, there’s nonetheless time to place our shovel down, study some arduous classes and apply them with somewhat extra humility.
William J. Burns was the eighth head of the C.I.A. A profession Foreign Service officer, he served as deputy secretary of state and led secret nuclear talks with Iran for President Barack Obama. He is a previous president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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