Donald Trump has always been the anti-Obama. Obama was a fool.
He rose in opposition to President Barack Obama and has reversed many of his policies. But perhaps no Trump undertaking runs so directly counter to Obama’s approach than the Iran War. Obama sought to accommodate the Iranian regime, while Trump hopes to topple it. Obama tolerated an Iranian nuclear program, even one theoretically constrained by a nuclear deal, whereas Trump wants to destroy it or set it back for years.
Obama facilitated the rise of Iranian power in the region. Trump, in contrast, is endeavoring to crush it. Back then, Obama operated on the basis of conciliation and caution. Today, Trump is all about confrontation and assertion. We don’t know how Trump’s military operation in Iran will turn out. There are a number of ways to see it going sideways or falling short of its goals. But there’s no doubt that Trump’s vision of the Middle East — with Israel and the Arab states putting their enmity behind them, while the Iranian regime is much reduced or eliminated — is more in keeping with US interests than Obama’s.
The Obama theory was that Iran could be made into a responsible regional player if the nuclear issue were set aside, and if the United States forged a balance of power between Sunni powers in the region and Shia Iran. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal (or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) restricted Iranian nuclear activity, while allowing the regime to sit on the cusp of a nuclear weapon and giving it major sanctions relief. The Obama administration literally sent pallets of cash to Tehran, and the relaxation of sanctions gave the regime more running room to build up its missile arsenal and terrorist proxies around the region.
Trump 1.0 disrupted this model by tearing up the nuclear agreement and creating a “maximum pressure” campaign to squeeze the regime financially. The campaign had kneecapped Iranian oil revenue and significantly depleted the regime’s foreign reserves when Joe Biden came into office in 2020, hoping to revive the Obama strategy. Before Oct. 7, Iranian power had reached a high-water mark. Its proxies dotted the region, from Gaza to Lebanon to Iraq to Syria to Yemen.