The Guardian:

Michael H Fuchs is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs

The Trump administration is caught in a fever dream about Iran, and the fever is becoming dangerous.

In the wake of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman – which the US blames on Iran, though questions remain about the attack – the discourse on Iran being pushed by the administration and others is reaching fever pitch. Senator Tom Cotton has called for a “retaliatory military strike”. The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens says the US should threaten to sink Iran’s navy.

This, of course, is not surprising to anyone who has watched the Iran debate in Washington. It’s divorced from reality.

Everyone knows that Iran’s government is dangerous. It represses the Iranian people. It sponsors terrorism across the Middle East. The question is not whether Iran is bad – the question is what the best strategy is to deal with the threats.

During the end of George W Bush’s administration and Barack Obama’s terms, the priority was stopping Iran’s nuclear program. After years of a carefully coordinated global sanctions campaign, the Obama administration secured a deal that stopped Iran’s nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency and even the Trump administration certified that the deal was working. Before, during and after the deal, the US has countered Iranian terrorism and bolstered Israel’s defenses.

None of it has been good enough for those trapped in the fever dream. The fever dream convinces policymakers to cozy up to regimes from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates that are themselves awful. It rationalizes support for a devastating war in Yemen. It causes the state department to fund, until recently, a group that attacked journalists and experts for not being anti-Iran. Locked in the fever dream’s grips for years, John Bolton in 2015 called for bombing Iran.

All of this is in lieu of a realistic set of goals or a strategy for actually achieving them. It’s a fever dream, and only those with the fever seem to be able to make sense of the dream. US allies from Europe to Asia are frustrated with how much sway the fever dream has over US policy; they wonder what could possibly drive the US to abandon such a successful deal.

It reminds one of the absurdity and recklessness of those who talked about bombing North Korea in 2017 – which could have started a nuclear war – and how completely they ignored the catastrophic consequences.

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