No matter who wins the presidential election next month, US policy towards Iran seems likely to remain extremely hostile and confrontational. Both campaigns seem determined to out-hawk each other. The Iran policy debate in Washington, such as it is, is focused entirely on the same bankrupt coercive measures of sanctions, threats, and military action that are guaranteed to make things worse. There is no serious discussion of reducing tensions or resuming negotiations in the new year. The persistence of this failed hawkish consensus is dangerous for the US, Iran, and the wider region, and it needs to end.
The failed bipartisan hawkish consensus on Iran closes off paths for resolving disagreements peacefully, and it paves the way for unnecessary wars. The consensus embraces escalation as the solution to each new crisis, and it writes off diplomacy as naïve and useless. It is the same kind of bankrupt, outdated thinking that has dominated US foreign policy in the region for at least the last thirty years, and it is why US Iran policy remains so destructive and dangerous. We are desperately in need of some fresh and different policy ideas.
Unfortunately, both presidential candidates are content to keep the US on a collision course with Iran for the time being, and that means that the US will be stuck with the same rotten foreign policy in the Middle East for at least another four years. Donald Trump recently expressed support for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. During the vice-presidential debate, Sen. Vance said that he would support whatever Israel wanted to do. On the Democratic side, Vice President Harris bizarrely claimed that Iran is America’s “greatest adversary” in response to a question in her interview with 60 Minutes. Harris asserted that Iran was an “obvious” candidate for being the greatest adversary because its government “has American blood on its hands.”
Hellbound and Down 
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