The Danger of Viewing Iran as Enemy Number One

Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy

In a recent “60 Minutes Overtime” interview, Vice President Kamala Harris called Iran the United States’ “greatest adversary.” Her comments, no doubt influenced by the toxic political climate and the ongoing conflict between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah, were likely shaped by the recent Iranian missile attack on Israel. While Harris may have been responding to the immediate crisis, her statement invites a deeper examination of U.S. policy toward Iran. It underscores the urgent need for a more forward-thinking approach—one that draws on lessons from past mistakes and focuses on resolving the real, yet peacefully addressable, challenges Iran presents in the Middle East while safeguarding U.S. interests.

In approaching Iran and the broader Middle East tinderbox, Harris has the advantage of relying on her experienced national security advisor, Phil Gordon. Gordon has long focused on the region and helped negotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This agreement successfully blocked Iran’s pathways to developing a nuclear bomb through diplomacy, offering a rare example of de-escalation since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the ensuing U.S.-Iran hostilities.

Unfortunately, the diplomatic success of the JCPOA was short-lived. The agreement was implemented in January 2016, but that same year, Donald Trump was elected President after campaigning on a promise to dismantle it. True to his word, he withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. As a result, Iran never saw meaningful economic benefits from the JCPOA, and tensions began to escalate rapidly.

No Great Powers, No Great Satans

Since Trump set the U.S. on this confrontational path, we’ve seen a dangerous cycle of escalations between Iran, the U.S., and Israel, with each action met by a counteraction, driving the region deeper into instability. This tit-for-tat dynamic has steadily intensified tensions, leading to the precarious situation we now face, where the threat of all-out war looms larger than ever.

As Gordon warned in a 2018 article criticizing Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, “It starts with exiting the nuclear deal without a plan, and it could end with a messy, violent, and unnecessary conflict.” He echoed this concern in a May 2019 piece, noting, “Predictably, Iran has responded not by caving to U.S. demands (let alone collapsing) but with a pressure campaign of its own.” Gordon also explored the dangers of U.S. interventions in his 2020 book, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, which highlights the self-defeating nature of America’s regime change interventions abroad.

Gordon’s work underscores that while Iran does present challenges to U.S. interests, framing it as America’s greatest adversary ignores broader strategic realities and risks exacerbating the very tensions a Harris administration would aim to reduce. Reflexive hostility toward Iran has often blinded Washington to the high costs of such an approach. The notion of Iran being the U.S.’s “greatest adversary”—ahead of powers like China, Russia, or existential threats like climate change—threatens to perpetuate this cycle, driving the U.S. further down a path of conflict that undermines both its national security and stability in the Middle East and beyond.

A Moment for Military Realism

It’s important to recognize that Iran is far weaker in terms of conventional military strength than the U.S. and its key regional allies, Israel and the Arab Gulf states. Iran’s military spending and capabilities are dwarfed by these powers. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies outspend Iran on defense by more than 50 to 1. Iran’s military is largely made up of outdated equipment, and its air force and navy are no match for the advanced capabilities of Israel or the U.S. Furthermore, with a population only a quarter the size of the U.S. and an economy just 2% of America’s, Iran simply lacks the resources to be a meaningful strategic competitor to the United States.

Yet Washington’s fixation on Iran has led to exaggerated threat assessments. Trump’s hyperfocus on Iran was especially driven by “political incentives and intensified lobbying by Israel and Saudi Arabia,” according to Daniel Benjamin, former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, and Steven Simon, who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Benjamin and Simon emphasized that this hostility comes at a high cost for the U.S., increasing the risk of armed conflict, alienating allies, and undermining regional stability. According to them, the U.S. has a compelling interest in finding a “modus vivendi” with Iran, much like it did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, by creating incentives for Iranian cooperation. Writing in 2019, they urged the “next administration to, at long last, give sustained engagement a try.”

Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s early signals to Tehran only deepened mistrust. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with other officials like Avril Haines and Jen Psaki, insisted that Iran fully comply with the JCPOA before the U.S. would return to its sanctions relief obligations under the deal, while also demanding additional concessions on regional issues and Iran’s missile program. This approach reinforced Tehran’s perception that the U.S. remained an unreliable partner, further undermining the chances for renewed diplomacy.

Unreliable Partners Make Bad Negotiators

For decades, Iran has experienced disappointment in negotiations with the U.S., with former President Hassan Rouhani’s JCPOA arguably the most egregious example of a moderate Iranian leader undermined by U.S. backtracking. The subsequent years would bear out that the Biden administration’s early belief that Trump’s “maximum pressure” provided leverage was a major miscalculation, missing the opportunity to revive the JCPOA under Rouhani’s government and instead pushing for unrealistic concessions.

By the time nuclear talks resumed in April 2021, Israel sabotaged negotiations with an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, prompting Tehran to increase uranium enrichment to 60%. Iran, wary of U.S. intentions, demanded guarantees of sanctions relief before agreeing to scale back its nuclear program. By June 2021, with the hardline government taking power in Iran, trust further eroded, leading to 15 months of stalled negotiations, with Tehran’s skepticism of U.S. commitment at the heart of the impasse.

However, the situation has since shifted dramatically again, offering a new opening for diplomacy. Kamala Harris, if elected, will have a significant opportunity to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. The death of conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi last April triggered a major shift in Iranian politics, culminating in the election of Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and former parliamentarian, as Iran’s first reformist president since 2005. Pezeshkian ran on a platform emphasizing diplomacy emphasizing diplomacy to resolve Iran’s foreign tensions and has consistently advocated for the revival of a nuclear agreement to lift sanctions. In a notable move, he reinstated much of Iran’s original nuclear negotiating team, including former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif as Vice President for Strategic Affairs.

Pezeshkian’s outreach faced an immediate test when, on the day of his inauguration, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. Despite expectations of swift retaliation, Iran showed restraint for two months, allowing Pezeshkian to attend the UN General Assembly, where he emphasized Iran’s desire for de-escalation and called for the U.S. to seize the opportunity for broader diplomacy. However, the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the lack of progress on a Israel-Hamas ceasefire led Iran to launch a large missile attack on Israel.

Re-Engaging With Iran During The Lame Duck

If Kamala Harris wins the presidency, the lame-duck period and her remaining tenure as vice president will be crucial for setting the stage for broader diplomatic de-escalation with Iran. During this transition, Harris should work with the Biden team to prioritize immediately reducing tensions. A key step would be restoring the informal de-escalatory informal de-escalatory agreement reached in August 2023, which saw Iran freeze its nuclear program’s expansion, release dual-national American prisoners, and restrain its regional allies from attacking U.S. interests in exchange for access to frozen Iranian funds in South Korean banks, which were transferred to Qatar for humanitarian purchases.

This agreement was pivotal because it sought to cap Iran’s nuclear progress, particularly its accumulation of 60% enriched uranium, while also connecting nuclear restrictions to regional security concerns for the first time. Although the deal unraveled after the October 7 Hamas attack, it provides a blueprint for Harris and the Biden team to revive. By offering Iran access to the funds still frozen in Qatar, in exchange for halting its nuclear expansion and committing to regional de-escalation, Harris can lay the foundation for broader diplomacy. Crucially, this should be linked to securing a Gaza ceasefire, which would help reduce tensions in Lebanon and Yemen as well.

Establishing this groundwork would position Harris to engage in serious negotiations with Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, early in her presidency. A new nuclear deal, built on the JCPOA framework, could eliminate the threat of Iran’s nuclear weaponization and stand as a major foreign policy achievement for her administration.

Now, the U.S. and Iran stand at a critical crossroads. The stakes have never been higher, with the specter of total war in the Middle East—along with its far-reaching ramifications, particularly for the global economy—looming large. In this moment, Harris must send the right signals to steer the situation back from the brink. If elected, she must learn from past U.S. failures with Iran, revitalize a diplomatic approach grounded in mutual compromise, and focus on securing core U.S. security interests in dealing with a middling power like Iran.