How Iran Defied the U.S. to Become an International Power

Despite decades of Western pressure, Tehran poses a greater threat to U.S. interests thanks to its ties to Russia and China
By Sune Engel Rasmussen and Laurence Norman, WSJ

The winner of Iran’s presidential election will inherit domestic discord and an economy battered by sanctions, but also a strength: Tehran has more sway on the international stage than in decades.

Iran, under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership, thwarted decades of U.S. pressure and emerged from years of isolation largely by aligning itself with Russia and China, giving up on integration with the West and throwing in its lot with two major powers just as they amped up confrontation with Washington. Iran’s economy remains battered by U.S. sanctions, but oil sales to China and weapons deals with Russia have offered financial and diplomatic lifelines.

It also effectively exploited decades of U.S. mistakes in the Middle East and big swings in White House policy toward the region between one administration and the next.

Today, Tehran poses a greater threat to U.S. allies and interests in the Middle East than at any point since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979.

Iran’s military footprint reaches wider and deeper than ever. Iranian-backed armed groups have hit Saudi oil facilities with missiles and paralyzed global shipping in the Red Sea. They have dominated politics in Iraq, LebaIran Defies U.S., Adds To Its Power

Continued from Page One non, Yemen and Syria, and launched the most devastating strike on Israel in decades, when Hamas attacked in October. Iran launched its first direct military attack from its soil on Israel in April. It has also orchestrated attacks on opponents in Europe and be yond, Western officials said.

The consequences-drones for Russia in Ukraine, the threat from Iran-backed militias, Tehran's expansion of its nuclear program-will remain pressing issues regardless of who wins the second round of the Iranian election on Friday or the U.S. election in November.

Inside Iran, divisions have long split moderates who favor engagement with the West and hard-liners who believe Iran is best placed in an alliance with Russia and China. The debate has resurfaced during the presidential election, which will now be contested by reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian and hard-liner Saeed Jalili after neither gained a majority in the first round of voting with low turnout. The election is being held after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a May helicopter crash.

"In many respects, Iran is stronger, more influential, more dangerous, more threat ening than it was 45 years ago," said Suzanne Maloney, director of the foreign-policy program at the Brookings Institution, who advised Demo cratic and Republican admin- istrations on Iran policy. Iran's foreign-policy choices have come at a great cost at home. Its economy lags far behind the growth and living standards of its Gulf Arab rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Islamic regime has lost much of the public support that brought it to power, with numerous protests prompting brutal crackdowns.

"The regime has lost legitimacy, and I don't think they have a good solution for that problem," said Eric Brewer, a former National Security Council director for counter proliferation. "Every time Khamenei has had a choice to open it up...he's clamped down further."

Iran's growing strength marks a failure for the West, whose sanctions have become less effective at isolating Tehran internationally. Iran has responded by deepening an axis with Russia and China, complicating diplomacy with Tehran even more, some analysts said.

Outside the Middle East, Iran's drone industry has helped Russia's war in Ukraine.

Western sanctions have cost Iran billions of dollars, "but what was the objective?" said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former longtime Iranian foreign-policy official, now a research scholar at Princeton University. "Iran is more influential in the region than ever....China has captured the Iranian economy and Iran has moved closer to Russia." For more than two decades, Western policy on Iran has vacillated.. U.S. presidents repeatedly shifted the bal- ance between diplomacy and force, outreach and attempted isolation.

Iran has for decades followed a consistent long-term strategy, which it calls "for ward defense," deterring at tacks by enemies while building out a network of loyal militias. Iran is still short of its goal of pushing the U.S. out of a re gion that hosts thousands of U.S. troops and an array of alliances, with both Israel and Arab nations. Washington remains the pre-eminent power broker in the Middle East. But in Russia and China, Iran now has two heavyweight allies that also have ambitions of turning back U.S. influence across the world.

Iran has built regional strength while staying clear of red lines that could trigger direct U.S. military action. The consistency was possible be cause matters of national security-including the nuclear program and military strat egy are determined by un elected bodies, primarily the supreme leader's office and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has grown increasingly powerful.

Tehran's long-term planning is also evident in its domestic efforts to defend the clerical rule against its own people. For the past five years, a secretive unit under the Revolutionary Guard, known as the Baqiatallah Headquarters, has spearheaded the regime's efforts to push back against secularism and what it sees as corrosive Western influence, according to a new report by researchers at United Against Nuclear Iran, a U.S. based advocacy group.

Iran's nuclear program illustrates how adept Tehran has been at exploiting wavering U.S. policy.

The Obama administration saw a solution to the nuclear issue as necessary to reduce U.S. involvement in the Middle East after more than a decade of war. In 2015, Iran and six world powers, including the U.S., Russia and China, agreed to a landmark deal to impose strict restrictions on Iran's nuclear work for at least 10 years. In exchange, Tehran won relief from international sanctions.

Supporters saw it as a vindication of their dual policy of pressure and engagement. They hoped it would lead to long term containment of Iran's nuclear program and easing of tensions in the region.

Opponents believed the agreement allowed Iran to wait 10 years and resume work on nuclear weapons with most international sanctions gone. Some criticized the deal for not addressing Iran's regional military activities.

Meanwhile, Iran's regional footprint has grown. Iranian support helped President Bashar al-Assad of Syria sur vive the Arab Spring and a war. Iran gained deeper influence in Syria and established a land corridor leading from Tehran to Syria's Mediterranean coast via Iraq, which it used to transport weapons and personnel. It positioned allied militias near Israel's border in Syria and Lebanon.

In Syria, Iran also forged a partnership with Russia, which came to Assad's aid in 2015. The relationship grew with war in Ukraine, where Iran supplies Russia with drones.

Iranian-backed militias became politically dominant in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where the Houthi rebels in 2014 took control of the capital, San'a. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - important regional security partners for Washington-became enmeshed in the Yemen war.

Israel didn't follow through on threats to attack Iran's nuclear sites. The Obama administration, Israel's government and some Gulf Arab states were in open dispute over U.S. Middle East Policy.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed a sanctions policy on Iran that punished foreign firms doing business with the country and largely killed off reviving European trade with Iran.

Despite renewed economic hardship, Iran refused to be coerced into new talks. President Biden made a revival of the deal a top foreign-policy goal, but talks collapsed in August 2022 when Tehran walked away from a deal.

Iran has since rebuilt its nuclear program, going much further than it had at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal and effectively reaching the threshold of developing a weapon-something it said it isn't trying to do.