In his announcement last Friday that he would once again keep the Iran nuclear deal alive by approving the necessary sanctions waivers, President Trump warned that, if the Europeans and the Congress do not agree within 120 days to “fix the deal’s disastrous flaws,” he would terminate it.

Even strong supporters of the deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) recognize that it has shortcomings that should be addressed. But there is a right way and a wrong way to go about “fixing” the JCPOA, and the Trump administration is pursuing an approach that would not only fail to remedy the deal’s shortcomings, but, if the president carries out his threat, would lead to its early demise.

The president’s position has been widely interpreted as seeking to revise the JCPOA itself. But administration officials know that, given vehement Iranian opposition to reopening the deal and European unwillingness to push for renegotiation, the JCPOA will remain unchanged.

Instead, the administration is demanding that the Europeans (in a “supplemental” agreement with the United States) and the Congress (in new legislation) commit themselves to the automatic re-imposition of sanctions suspended by the JCPOA and thus the termination of the deal, in the event that Iran engages in certain activities, including those that would not violate its JCPOA commitments.

Under the JCPOA’s “sunset” provisions, once key nuclear restrictions expire in years eight, 10 and 15, the Iranians are legally free to build up their uranium enrichment capability and thereby reduce the time it would take to produce nuclear weapons.

The JCPOA also does not bar them from developing and testing ballistic missiles. While JCPOA critics and supporters argue over whether these aspects of the deal were unwarranted concessions or necessary negotiating compromises, they can agree that they are deficiencies that ought to be rectified.

But seeking to hold the Iranians accountable for things they didn’t agree to in the negotiations—and threatening to blow up the agreement if Tehran fails to comply with new, unilaterally-imposed conditions—is unlikely to succeed.

In the first place, neither the Europeans nor the Congress are likely to agree to automatically re-impose JCPOA-suspended sanctions in the event of Iranian behavior that does not violate the nuclear deal.

The Europeans share U.S. concerns about the JCPOA’s sunset provisions and the absence of constraints on Iranian missile activities, and they profess a willingness to work with Washington to deal with those problems. But they will see the Trump administration’s approach as placing a time bomb under the JCPOA that would explode sooner or later.

In the Congress, 60 Senate votes, and therefore bipartisan support, would be required to adopt new legislation. But Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key participant in deliberations on a new Iran bill, has insisted that any new legislation have European approval and not put the JCPOA in jeopardy—conditions that would not be met by the president’s currently stated demands.

With the Europeans and Congress unwilling to meet the president’s demands (at least as articulated in the administration’s somewhat confusing rollout last Friday), the JCPOA will be terminated rather than fixed if President Trump follows through with his ultimatum, which hopefully he will be persuaded not to do.

But even in the unlikely event that the Europeans and Congress are browbeaten into doing the president’s bidding, the likelihood is low that it would have the desired impact on Iranian behavior.

The Trump administration apparently believes that the threat of automatically snapping back sanctions would deter Iran from engaging in activities that would be permitted by the JCPOA but inconsistent with new, unilaterally declared conditions.

The Iranians, however, would regard the threat as an unacceptable moving of the goalposts. There would be irresistible domestic pressures in Tehran to defy the United States, proceed with actions permitted by the JCPOA (such as ramping up enrichment capacity when restrictions expire), and place the onus on Washington for re-imposing sanctions and ending the deal.

There is a better way to overcome the JCPOA’s shortcomings. It is to work with the Europeans, Russians, Chinese and others to build on the JCPOA and discourage the Iranians, through a combination of pressures and incentives, from engaging in activities that threaten regional and international security.

It would involve persuading the Iranians that they are better off meeting legitimate reactor fuel requirements without pursuing a large-scale enrichment program. It would also involve relying on a combination of methods, including missile defenses, sanctions, export controls and Iranian restraints (e.g., capping missile range at 2000 kilometers), to reduce the threat from Iran’s missile program.

The United States has considerable leverage to reinforce the JCPOA in these ways. However, that leverage comes not from threatening to blow up the deal, but from the ability to mobilize strong international and domestic support for supplemental arrangements that serve the same goals the Trump administration is trying to achieve with its more confrontational approach.

Mobilizing that support and “fixing” the nuclear deal will depend on keeping the JCPOA in place; ensuring strict compliance; working closely with Republicans and Democrats at home and Europeans, Russians, Chinese and others abroad; waiting for a propitious time to press for key remedies (e.g., on the sunset provisions) and avoiding regular showdowns on the future of the agreement that only increase prospects for no deal rather than a better one.

      

The Islamic State is on the ropes, yet the group may make a comeback. The U.S.-led coalition has driven it from much of its territory in Iraq and Syria, while most of its so-called “provinces” elsewhere in the Muslim world also have lost territory or stagnated. In July, U.S.-backed local forces took Mosul, the Islamic State’s largest stronghold in Iraq, and then in October took the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s capital. The caliphate may soon exist only as an idea. Once the most powerful jihadist group in modern history, the Islamic State is “now pathetic and a lost cause,” claimed Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the anti–Islamic State coalition.

Despite these impressive gains, the United States is not well prepared for the group’s defeat. After losing control of key territory, the Islamic State may repeat the actions of its predecessor when the U.S.-led surge brought al-Qaida in Iraq to the edge of defeat: go underground, disrupt politics and foster sectarianism; wage an insurgency; and then come roaring back. The United States cannot depend on its partners to counter this cycle, as local allies in Iraq and Syria are unprepared to govern and conduct effective counterinsurgency operations, while the very identity of long-term U.S. allies is unclear as Washington lacks a durable coalition in Iraq, let alone in Syria. Finally, the concepts the Islamic State promulgated are dangerous and may be exploited in the future by the Islamic State or successor organizations. As a result, the Islamic State’s campaign of regional and international terrorism, already maintained at a high level despite the group’s territorial setbacks, will likely continue and perhaps even grow in the near term.

The Islamic State may repeat the actions of its predecessor…: go underground, disrupt politics and foster sectarianism; wage an insurgency; and then come roaring back.

President Donald Trump began or continued several positive counterterrorism policies—but also undertook initiatives that risk aggravating the danger the Islamic State poses. The administration improved relations with important allies like Saudi Arabia and continued the military campaign that began under former president Barack Obama to steadily drive the Islamic State from its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. However, the administration’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies will likely alienate some American Muslims, increasing the risk of radicalization and discouraging cooperation between these communities and police and intelligence services. In addition, the administration’s blanket embrace of the Saudi position in the Middle East will heighten sectarianism, which feeds the Islamic State and like-minded groups. Finally, a decline in foreign aid, the State Department budget and the number of national-security personnel diminishes U.S. diplomacy and the United States’ ability to resolve conflicts—all necessary for fighting jihadist groups and preventing them from spreading to new areas. Although many positive changes seem unlikely under the Trump administration, efforts to fight the Islamic State more effectively would include continuing efforts to train allied military and security services (albeit with realistic expectations). The Trump administration and U.S. leaders in general should try to bolster American resilience, which current policies are undermining.

The Islamic State has steadily suffered a series of defeats in the last two years. Most important, its base in Iraq and Syria has shrunk dramatically. By fall of 2014, the Islamic State controlled much of eastern Syria and western Iraq, including Raqqa, Mosul and Tikrit, and by spring 2015, the group captured Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria, while its so-called province in Libya seized Sirte and nearby territory. Since then, a mix of Iraqi government forces, Kurdish militias, local tribal groups and others have pushed the group from major cities in Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State is likely to lose almost all its territory in Iraq and Syria in the coming months.

The so-called Islamic State provinces have also suffered. However, in 2016, U.S.-supported militia groups drove the Islamic State province in Libya from its base around Sirte, dispersing it to southern Libya. Elsewhere, Islamic State provinces demonstrated little dynamism in recent years—a stark contrast to 2014 and 2015 when the group seemed to expand throughout the Middle East. Some Islamic State provinces, like the one in Sinai, are succeeding with a low-level insurgency that includes bloody terrorist attacks, but these have focused on their own societies and governments, not the United States and its allies. Although analysts fret that the Islamic State might relocate—and some fighters will inevitably find a new home—there is no credible substitute for Iraq and Syria as a base, as terrorism analyst Jason Burke contends.

Funding and recruitment also dried up. The Islamic State attracted more than forty thousand foreign fighters; in some months, more than a thousand foreign fighters would join its ranks. In the last year, the number of new foreign volunteers reduced to a trickle, and the organization’s budget, which relies heavily on “taxing” local territory, also declined.

The Islamic State’s decline perpetuates itself. The group appealed to foreign fighters and funders partly by marketing itself as a winner that successfully created an Islamic state with true Islamic governance. Its biggest boasts are now its biggest failures. Fewer foreigners want to join a group incapable of defending the caliphate and clearly losing to the enemies it vowed to vanquish. Additionally, local groups in Iraq and Syria allied with the Islamic State due to its perception of constant success and feared that they would end up vulnerable when the group inevitably triumphed. As the tables turn, even groups that embrace the Islamic State’s ideology have a strong incentive to defect to its enemies.

The Islamic State recognizes its own pitiful position. As the group lost more of its strongholds, its rhetoric shifted to dismiss the importance of territorial control. Instead, the Islamic State emphasized the concept of a caliphate as the driving force behind the group’s success. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s spokesman and senior operational figure, stated in a May 2016 recorded message,

“O America, would we be defeated and you be victorious if you were to take Mosul or Sirte or Raqqa? . . . Certainly not! We would be defeated and you victorious only if you were able to remove the Quran from Muslims’ hearts.”

Like so many other Islamic State leaders, al-Adnani is now dead.

As the Islamic State crumbles, its leaders will try to continue fighting rather than surrender. They plan to regroup, maintain their relevance and eventually resurge, through a mix of international and regional terrorism and local insurgency, while keeping their cause alive.

The Islamic State is not a stranger to defeat: it emerged out of al-Qaida in Iraq, which for several years was on death’s door. In June 2010, Gen. Ray Odierno, then the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, noted that in the last ninety days U.S. and Iraqi forces had “either picked up or killed 34 out of the top 42 al-Qaida in Iraq leaders.” The two top al-Qaida in Iraq leaders died in a firefight that year. By 2011, CIA director Leon Panetta declared, “we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaida.”

In response, al-Qaida in Iraq focused on terrorism—in Iraq, not abroad—to stay relevant and to intimidate its enemies. It waged a campaign of assassination against opposing tribal leaders and other Sunnis who cooperated with the Iraqi government, killing more than 1,300 Iraqi leaders from 2009 through 2013. Due to terrorism and local killings, many Iraqis distrusted their government to secure peace and feared openly defying the jihadists. al-Qaida in Iraq’s patience paid off: over time, the Iraqi government stepped up discrimination against Sunnis and the Syrian Civil War offered a sanctuary across the border. Taken together, these two factors allowed the group to rebuild.

The Islamic State will try to repeat this success. Al-Adnani referred to a “retreat into the desert” to rebuild forces in order to prepare for upcoming battles. This mirrors jihadis’ relocation to remote areas along Iraq’s borders after the 2007 U.S. surge.

Unfortunately, both Iraq and Syria offer promising areas for a rebirth. In Iraq, the government in Baghdad repeatedly implemented policies that discriminated against Sunnis while lacking the strength or support necessary to impose order on an unhappy population—in other words, it cannot coerce, and it seems unwilling to coopt. Shia militias are occupying many Sunni areas where the Islamic State once held sway. Already the Baghdad government is exchanging fire with Kurdish forces. Shia militias are committing abuses against local Sunnis in areas they conquered from the Islamic State. Revenge killings are common.

In Syria, the situation is even worse, with the regime of Bashar al-Assad committing unspeakable atrocities against Sunni Muslims. Tribes, Kurdish groups and other local actors that have worked with America against the Islamic State often regard each other as enemies, or at least have different interests, which will inhibit their ability to cooperate against Islamic State remnants. As their shared enemy declines and the competition for local power increases, these groups are more likely to war against each other. As such, the Islamic State will likely find many openings to exploit, allowing it to relieve pressure and ensure at least some sanctuary. In the scramble for power, many local groups may even shift from enemy to temporary ally.

To defeat the Islamic State as an underground insurgency, someone must develop good governance in its former territories in Iraq and Syria, convincing locals to help uproot the group—an unlikely feat for which there are no credible volunteers. Unlike its previous revival, the Islamic State now has two countries where it can exploit problems, as opposed to just Iraq in the past.

To defeat the Islamic State as an underground insurgency, someone must develop good governance in its former territories in Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic State will probably further regionalize the conflict and seek opportunities beyond Iraq and Syria. Already the group regards Iraq and Syria as one theater, shifting assets between the two countries depending on its perceived dangers and opportunities. The group also maintains an extensive network in Turkey, and has attacked Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. The Islamic State will probe these areas for weaknesses, using its operatives and local supporters to conduct attacks and develop an enduring presence.

Most troubling for the long term, the Islamic State has nurtured the flame of jihad around the world. Even as the group declines, the ideas it champions—the necessity of a caliphate, the glory of brutality and the evil of Western states—have spread further, as the staggering volume of foreign fighters suggests. The Islamic State’s propaganda is extensive and almost ubiquitous. It, or would-be successor organizations, will try to harvest the ideas that the early Islamic State leaders planted.

The Islamic State will likely continue, and may even focus on, terrorist attacks in the West. In 2015, Paris suffered the worst terrorist attack on French soil in history when Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people. France and other European states saw smaller attacks that year and the next, and by October 2017, five attacks linked to or inspired by the Islamic State targeted the United Kingdom—its most lethal year in terrorism since 2005. These high-profile attacks allow the Islamic State to maintain relevance to would-be and current supporters, convincing them to fight for the group despite its setbacks in Iraq and Syria. The attacks also signify revenge for the group’s tremendous losses. Although U.S. efforts to destroy the Islamic State’s havens hinder the group’s ability to carry out sophisticated attacks, some attacks involve an Islamic State facilitator who helps recruit or directs the attacker, but does not provide elaborate operational support. Many of these attacks are low-tech but quite bloody: the Bastille Day attacker in Nice in 2016, for example, killed eighty-six people by driving a truck through a crowd.

Internal dynamics make Europe a particularly likely target, and in the short term the terrorism threat may grow as the caliphate collapses. The Syrian conflict has attracted over six thousand European volunteers. Some of these European foreign fighters will die and some will stay in the war zone, but some will also likely return to their home countries. One EU official estimates that approximately 1,500 will return. A fraction of those who return home may commit terrorist attacks or recruit locals to join the cause. The potential size of that fraction is unclear, but even a small percentage out of 1,500 can frustrate local police and security services. Europe contains more radicalized Muslims relative to their overall population, as suggested by the dramatically higher number of foreign fighters from European states. In addition, many European Muslims integrate poorly into their broader communities, which discourages them from cooperating with local intelligence and law-enforcement services. Finally, European intelligence services vary in skill: some, including those of France and the United Kingdom, are highly skilled, while others, such as Belgium’s, are under-resourced and less capable of responding to terrorism threats. Fortunately, with heavy U.S. prodding and support, European states have improved intelligence cooperation and otherwise tightened their defenses. But this will remain a long-term challenge.

In comparison with Europe, the Islamic State poses a more manageable threat to the U.S. homeland. Since the September 11 attacks, ninety-seven Americans have died in jihadist-related attacks in the United States (the figure was ninety-five until the October 2017 truck-ramming attack in New York City, which killed two Americans and six foreign visitors). The two deadliest attacks, in San Bernardino in 2015 and in Orlando in 2016, that together killed sixty-three Americans, involved individuals who claimed some allegiance to the Islamic State but acted independently of the group—often referred to as “lone wolves.” Although any death from terrorism is deplorable, the number of American deaths in the U.S. homeland—ninety-seven—is far lower than many experts, both inside and outside of government, predicted.

Multiple factors likely explain this relatively low level of violence. First, senior U.S. officials overestimated the number of radicals in the United States after 9/11 when they spoke of thousands of jihadist terrorists in the United States. Second, the American Muslim community regularly works with law enforcement, leading to many arrests. As former FBI director James Comey explained,

“They do not want people committing violence, either in their community or in the name of their faith, and so some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim.”

“Lone wolf” attacks will likely continue. The trend towards “lone wolf” attacks has grown: although the absolute number of attacks remains low, the scholar Ramon Spaaij found that the number of “lone wolf” attacks since the 1970s grew by nearly 50 percent in the United States and by more than 400 percent in the other countries he surveyed. The Internet and social media explain part of this increase, as both aid the Islamic State in inspiring individuals to act in its name. The October 2017 attack in New York was lifted straight out of the Islamic State’s propaganda organ Rumiyah, which called for using vehicles to mow down pedestrians and then for the attacker to exit and continue to attack. Would-be fighters who do not travel pose a danger as well: according to one 2015 study of the terrorist plots in the United States, 28 percent of returned foreign fighters participated in a plot, but a staggering 60 percent of those who considered but did not attempt to travel became involved in a terrorist plot. As travel to Iraq and Syria loses its luster or becomes infeasible, frustrated jihadists might attack at home. As one French jihadist told the scholar Amarnath Amarasingam, “We believe that even a small attack in dar ul-kufr [the land of disbelief] is better than a big attack in Syria. As the door of hijrah [going to the Islamic State] closes, the door of jihad opens.” Over time this frustration will decline, as would-be fighters no longer have firsthand contact with friends or family who went to fight, but the short-term danger is quite real.

Although the Orlando attack suggests that “lone wolf” attacks can be bloody, most “lone wolves” are incompetent; they are unlikely to succeed compared to trained foreign fighters who return to their home countries. But “lone wolves” have a strategic impact by altering politics in the United States and Europe, thus shattering the relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities that are so vital to counterterrorism and to democracy itself. “Lone wolf” attacks increase Islamophobia in the West. After the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, concerns about terrorism spiked. In the weeks following the Paris attacks in November 2015, London’s Metropolitan Police Service announced that attacks targeting Muslims had tripled. Meanwhile, in the United States, assaults against Muslims have increased to nearly 9/11-era levels.

This Islamophobia can also begin a dangerous spiral. As communities become suspect, they withdraw into themselves and become less trustful of law enforcement, which results in providing fewer tips. In contrast, if a community has good relations with the police and society, fewer grievances exist for terrorists to exploit and the community is more likely to point out malefactors in their midst. Even though he was never arrested, the attacker in Orlando came to the FBI’s attention because a local Muslim was concerned by his behavior and reported him.

Such problems risk fundamental changes in politics and undermine liberal democracy. Far-right movements are growing stronger in several European countries. In the United States, Islamophobia and fears of terrorism—despite the less-than-anticipated number of attacks on U.S. soil since the 9/11 attacks—have fueled the rise of anti-immigrant politics.

The Trump administration continued the Obama administration’s military campaign against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, and has loosened restrictions on military commanders and deployed additional forces to Syria—nearly doubling the number of previously deployed forces in the fight for Raqqa. Additionally, the administration has maintained the coalition of states and local actors that the previous administration cobbled together. Furthermore, the aggressive global intelligence campaign begun under President George W. Bush and continued under Obama remains robust. Taken together, such efforts have hindered Islamic State operations and steadily forced it underground.

In his first year in office, however, the president has taken several steps that may impede the struggle against jihadist terrorism. First, in his campaign rhetoric and through actions like Executive Order 13769 (the so-called “Muslim ban”), the Trump administration demonized American Muslims and damaged relations between religious communities—a traditional source of American strength, pride and values. Such actions increase the allure of the Islamic State and other groups claiming that the West is at war with Islam, while also adding credibility and legitimacy to their ideas. In addition, these actions increase the likelihood that Muslim communities will fear the police, the FBI and other government institutions, and thus be less likely to cooperate with them. This enables “lone wolves” to remain undetected and offers fodder for Islamic State virtual recruiters trying to convince Muslims that the West is the enemy.

Overseas, Trump embraced the Saudi perspective of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is an important counterterrorism partner, and relations with the Saudis became strained under Obama. Though Trump’s efforts to strengthen ties should be commended, the Saudi government continues to fund an array of preachers and institutions that promulgate an extreme version of Islam, enabling the Islamic State to recruit and otherwise gain support around the world. In addition, Saudi Arabia promotes an anti-Shia agenda that harms regional stability and fosters sectarianism, a key recruiting tool of the Islamic State.

Perhaps most troubling is how the president responded to the first significant jihadist attack on U.S. soil during his tenure—the October 2017 truck-ramming attack in New York City. At a time when a president should provide steady leadership, Trump (inevitably) began to tweet. He tried to turn the attack into a political issue, excoriating Sen. Chuck Schumer for the visa program that let the attacker into the country. He then stoked fears of immigration, called for the attacker to be sent to Guantánamo (and then apparently dropped that), and otherwise appeared erratic, partisan and lacking an understanding of the policy implications of his own words.

Instead of relaxing pressure as the Islamic State prepares to go underground, the United States must redouble its efforts.

Instead of relaxing pressure as the Islamic State prepares to go underground, the United States must redouble its efforts. This will require crafting a sustainable coalition of local allies in Iraq and Syria that demands resources, skill and high-level engagement.

Training allied forces remains vital, but this must be understood as a limited solution rather than a cure-all. In theory, training allies seems a Goldilocks answer to many policy questions: it is relatively low in cost, it minimizes direct risk to U.S. forces and it helps reduce terrorism in the long term when newly capable allies can police their own territory. Yet, especially in the Middle East, these efforts often fail. Despite spending hundreds of millions on training programs in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, U.S.-trained forces have often crumbled in the face of the adversary. Regime corruption, divided societies, politicized militaries and other problems plague the region, and U.S. training can only move the needle slightly. Limited progress is better than no progress, but other policies must supplement training programs.

To prevent the Islamic State from reestablishing itself in Iraq and Syria or spreading elsewhere in the region, the United States also must adopt a broader conception of counterterrorism, recognizing the link between jihadist terrorist groups and civil wars. Groups like the Islamic State exploit civil wars and worsen them: if civil wars in the Muslim world are left to rage, we can expect jihadist groups in the region to remain strong actors. Resolving civil wars is a strategic as well as a humanitarian imperative. Programs for conflict resolution and sustained U.S.-led diplomacy are vital to ameliorate the effects of civil wars.

Furthermore, the United States must also support allies on the front line, like Jordan, that are vulnerable to jihadist meddling. The United States must also strengthen nascent democracies that have a significant jihadist problem, like Tunisia. As such, the administration should rescind the proposed dramatic cuts to the already-small foreign-aid budget, and staff much of the Department of State, the civilian arm of the Department of Defense and other key agencies to strengthen the ability of the United States to use a whole-of-government approach to combating terrorism.

One significant problem is institutionalization. Since 9/11, the executive branch alone has executed counterterrorism policy, with some modifications by the courts. One branch of government, perhaps the most important in the long term, has been conspicuously absent under both parties’ leadership: the U.S. Congress. Under both Bush and Obama, new and controversial counterterrorism instruments—targeted killings, increased domestic surveillance, aggressive FBI sting operations, detention without trial and so on—moved to the center of U.S. counterterrorism efforts without significant congressional input. In addition, the United States is bombing the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria with only dubious legal justification.

Defeating the Islamic State could be the marquee foreign-policy accomplishment of the Trump administration. Doing so, however, will require more than just forcing the caliphate underground. Instead, the administration must maintain pressure on the group in the Middle East, work with allies around the world and shore up efforts at home. Failing to do so will result in at best a respite, not lasting victory.

      

When protesters in the Middle East take to the streets against their regimes, the United States finds itself in a dilemma, particularly when those regimes are allies. The United States, as a statement of policy, is committed to supporting democracy abroad and standing with democracy activists and dissidents. But how does it do that if it’s also committed to the survival of governments that—also as a matter of policy—deny their citizens basic freedoms?

Certain dilemmas remain, though, even when the regimes in question aren’t friends, but rather enemies like Iran, which has witnessed its largest protests in years, spreading across more than 80 cities. The so-called “kiss of death,” where overt American support taints the very protestors the United States hopes to help, invariably comes up.

As Phil Gordon, President Obama’s White House coordinator for the Middle East, wrote days after the protests began: “We can be fairly certain that high-profile public support from the United States government will do more harm than good.” But can we? It’s certainly possible that Donald Trump is such a uniquely toxic figure that he, just by virtue of being himself, transforms the kiss of death into something real. But the premise, especially on the left, is held to apply to all American presidents; it was one of the rationales behind the Obama administration’s relative quiet in 2009 when Iranian protesters braved regime violence to protest a stolen election.

The “kiss of death” hypothesis is intuitive—after all, the United States is held under nearly universal suspicion in the Middle East, even among its proponents. So why give regimes fodder for conspiracy theories and claims of “foreign hands” instigating protests? But these claims will come regardless of what the U.S. does or doesn’t do. Iranian officials, just as they did in 2009, wasted little time blaming the United States, as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even isis. (The CIA’s Michael D’Andrea—interestingly one of the most senior Muslims in the U.S. government—also received an honorable mention.)But it is time to question this intuition, especially since Arabs and Iranians will no doubt be protesting in the years and decades to come. Since when do authoritarian regimes need evidence to assert foreign meddling? After all, if there’s no evidence, it only makes foreign interference that much more nefarious—its non-existence becoming the very proof of its existence.As for protesters themselves and how they might perceive American encouragement, Iran is something of a unique case. Despite (or, rather, because of) a virulently anti-American regime, Iranians are generally less anti-American than other populations in the Middle East. One thing Iranians, whatever their politics, will be aware of is American involvement in the 1953 coup against the country’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohamed Mossadegh—an instance, in other words, of undermining democracy, rather than supporting it.

Even in countries with notoriously high levels of anti-Americanism, such as Egypt, U.S. support, even if it’s primarily rhetorical, can provide a much-needed boost—the knowledge, however intangible, that someone, somewhere, is watching and that your cause will not be forgotten. I was living in Jordan during the first Arab spring, in 2004 and 2005, and I remember how President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda,” as half-hearted as it turned out to be, contributed to a sense of cautious optimism among activists across the region. The Egyptian publisher Hisham Kassem might have been exaggerating when he said that “eighty percent of political freedom in this country is the result of U.S. pressure,” but even if it was 20 percent, it mattered. And it’s little accident that Egypt in 2005 saw what was, until then, one of its largest mass mobilizations in decades.

And it wasn’t just liberals or secular activists. The members and leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood I was interviewing at the time would often (sometimes with a hint of irony) offer thanks to President Bush, privately but also publicly. They may have hated Bush on other things like the Iraq War or Israel, as they were keen to note, but there was generally a grudging respect for his willingness to elevate democratic reform in U.S. policy. As the Jordanian Islamist writer Jihad Abu Eis told me: “It’s the right of Islamists to take advantage of American pressure on reform.”In the second Arab Spring, particularly in the early, optimistic years of 2011 and 2012, protesters across the region, whether in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, or Syria, would turn their attention to the United States, pleading for help and protection. Syrian protesters, who were being gunned down daily, found themselves repeatedly disappointed by the Obama administration’s studied inaction, but that never stopped them from hoping that the United States might finally do something, anything at all, to stop the killing.

One question that the very existence of the Trump administration—and its rhetorical downgrading of democracy promotion—raises is whether America’s moral legitimacy and authority is a renewable resource. Of course, this doesn’t mean the United States was ever particularly able or willing to convert its pro-democracy rhetoric into policy. In fact, the record is mostly one of subverting democracy, rather than promoting it. But there was the pretense—and the rest of us, as Americans, could hold our government to those stated ideals. And, as bad as the United States may have been, it was usually better than the alternatives, whether various European countries, or China and Russia.

When it comes to autocratic allies, like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the Trump administration has been indulgent. The idea, often unstated, that America should highlight democracy with its enemies but stay quiet with its allies is deeply problematic. But that is not Iranians’ concern, at least not the ones protesting, or the ones who will protest in the future. They need to know that the members of the international community, including America’s European allies, are paying close attention and not merely playing a delicate “both sides-ism” in the interest of an imaginary rapprochement with the Iranian regime. The conversation we need to prepare ourselves for—since this is more likely the beginning than the end—is what can be done to support the forces of reform in Iran, however limited America’s power and leverage might be. But, to prepare ourselves for that conversation, we need to do with away with convenient fictions—too often used as an excuse for inaction—that a better America is a quiet one.

      

We recently put a set of questions to ten expert contributors participating in our Rethinking Political Islam initiative. (See here for the list of scholars.) Participants include leading scholars of Islamist movements, with each having conducted extensive fieldwork on Muslim Brotherhood and Brotherhood-inspired groups in 12 countries.

The first question we posed to our experts was: How likely is it that the Muslim Brotherhood will abandon its official non-violent stance? The second was: How likely is it that an Islamist group will govern in each Arab country by 2020? The third was: How likely is a significant split within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood by 2020?

Our fourth question—and the subject of this post is—by 2020, will more or fewer Islamist groups participate in elections in the Middle East compared to today? Participants were asked to answer on a 5-point scale, with a 1 meaning significantly more groups would participate in elections and a 5 meaning that significantly fewer groups would participate. Overall, our experts arrived at an average of 2.7, meaning they expect the number of Islamist groups engaging in electoral politics to remain more or less stay the same by 2020.

We gleaned a number of key takeaways from respondent comments.

There may be a proliferation of Islamist parties in countries still holding elections, even if the number of those countries has dwindled. As one expert put it, there still remains a “large constituency for the ‘Islamist vote’ and entrepreneurs will form new parties to compete for this vote without the Brotherhood’s baggage…it will be in regimes’ interest to encourage this fragmentation of the Islamist vote into smaller parties.” Along similar lines, one scholar surveyed expects “there to be fewer elections held in 2020 than today, but more Islamist groups participating in those countries still holding elections.”

Some of these projections, however, depend on the extremely fluid politics of countries experiencing civil conflict. One scholar noted, for example, that “the conclusion of several regional wars combined with a growing backlash over ongoing governance deficits will tempt more Islamists into the electoral process.”

Regardless of whether Islamist groups multiply or diminish in response to state repression and ongoing civil wars, a (growing) minority of Islamists, particularly among younger members, find themselves jaded about the very idea of elections. With the exception of Tunisia (and to varying degrees Iraq and Lebanon), doing well in elections, or even having significant representation in parliament, does not—and generally has not—translated into broader societal change. Even in less repressive but still authoritarian countries like Morocco and Jordan, monarchies remain the dominant political actors with veto power over major decisions.

Morocco is one of the few Muslim-majority countries that has had a democratically-elected Islamist prime minister, but even there first Abdelilah Benkirane of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) and now Saadeddine Othmani have been significantly circumscribed in what they can actually do. This can have the effect of further diminishing faith in the electoral process as an effective means for political and social change.

Does the Tunisian “exception” matter? One respondent felt that the example of successful Islamist parties, namely Ennahda, may serve to spur greater electoral participation, but in a softer, more precarious form:

[Ennahda’s] success in gaining credibility with suspicious old regime elites and [its] ability to keep its base on board through highly pragmatic compromises could—if it lasts—decrease fear of Islamist parties from populations elsewhere in the Arab world. It could demonstrate that Islamist parties can be trusted in power, buoy capacity and transnational lesson-learning to other Arab Islamist parties.

Such a self-limiting approach raises questions, however. If this is what it takes an Islamist party to survive post Arab Spring, then what prospects do more avowedly “Islamist” Islamist parties have? This may also contribute to the perception, noted in the previous section, that Islamist electoral success, even in relatively democratic contexts, is “winning” without winning.

Instability and uncertainty can create Islamist opportunity. One expert who was surveyed counseled observers to closely monitor how Islamists adjust when (or if) political space opens up across the region, especially in the Gulf, as “the economic changes that are coming in the GCC states will be destabilizing and may lead to a greater opening of representative institutions in [some of] these countries.”  

Islamists operating in conditions of major instability is another area to keep tabs on, wrote one respondent—especially in Yemen:

I find it more likely that there would be something we could broadly recognize as governing by Islamists in countries where there has been broad collapse in order. Islamists have done (at least somewhat) well under conditions of state collapse: Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

In Yemen, Islamists are well-integrated in the government and have been for years, though this government is contested, [has limited territorial control], and enjoys little legitimacy. It seems virtually certain though that whatever the outcome of the war in Yemen, Islamists (whether the Brotherhood-inspired Islah party or Houthis, or both) will play a formal role in whatever new government develops.

      

The protests that erupted across Iran have thrust a crisis and an opportunity upon U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump came into office palpably itching to take on Iran, but his focus—much like of that of his predecessor—has been squarely trained on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But nearly three months after Trump’s decision to “decertify” Iran’s compliance with its obligations under the 2015 nuclear deal, the abrupt escalation of the country’s long-standing economic, social, and political grievances has shifted the administration’s focus on how to respond to the upheaval.

It is impossible to anticipate how events will evolve inside Iran. The country’s top officials have acknowledged widespread dissatisfaction while also warning against disorder, blocking key communications tools, and mobilizing mass arrests of demonstrators. If such steps fail to restrain the mood on the streets, Iran’s security forces can likely forcefully quash unrest. Still, even if the streets go silent, the frustrations that impelled Iranians to risk their lives and their livelihoods are unlikely to quickly abate. And the rapidity with which the protests spread around the country, and expressed condemnation of the entirety of the Iranian system, leaves the Islamic republic newly vulnerable.

The Trump administration therefore has been presented with a remarkable opening for rebalancing what began as a divisive and ineffectual policy toward Tehran. A judicious American response to the protests could help foster a more responsible Iranian government while rebuilding the partnership with European governments and others around the world, which proved so valuable in shaping the nuclear diplomacy. The developments inside the Islamic republic should also galvanize a remedy to an early unforced error by the Trump administration—the controversial ban on Iranians traveling to the United States.

Iran and the American bully pulpit

The first question the Trump administration should ask itself is: Should Washington weigh in at all?

Many Iranians, and those who know something about their history, maintain that American advocacy is unavoidably counterproductive. The legacy of the CIA-supported ouster of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 has left an instinctive antipathy toward U.S. intervention. To some Iranians, an American embrace seems like the kiss of death—a taint that discredits their integrity and their cause. On this basis, there has already been a chorus of appeals from Iranians as well as other observers to U.S. officials to avoid speaking out on behalf of the protestors and instead to provide Iranians with “the gift of our silence.”

This aversion helped shape President Barack Obama’s approach to Iran during the eruption of unrest that followed the contested 2009 presidential election. As millions of Iranians poured into the streets to protest the dubious re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama responded with his trademark sobriety, emphasizing his respect for Iranian sovereignty and stopping short of endorsing the protestors’ cause. Obama ratcheted up his rhetoric a week later, after Tehran’s violent suppression of the demonstrations, declaring that Washington was “appalled and outraged.” But by then, Iran’s security forces had regained the advantage, and while turmoil persisted for months, the first serious challenge to the Islamic republic in at least a quarter-century languished.

Obama’s reticence in 2009 also reflected his determination to engage Iran’s leadership in a dialogue over the nuclear crisis. In the weeks after the initial unrest in Iran, the two sides began exploring a fuel swap that briefly heralded a diplomatic opening on the issue, but would soon collapse, at least in part as a result of the unrest. It would be another four years, following an intense campaign of multilateral economic pressure, before conditions were ripe for nuclear diplomacy.

Obama’s discretion around the uprising did little to insulate Iranian activists from the regime’s backlash. It also failed to assuage the inherent paranoia of the Iranian leadership, which denounced the uprising as a foreign conspiracy and even scorned Obama’s outreach as an insidious attempt to undermine the regime from within. In this sense, this was a quintessential Obama diplomatic play—analytically astute but at a high moral and strategic cost.

Obama justifiably took a lot of heat for his reluctance to embrace Iran’s protestors, including from activists themselves, and over time many of his own officials came to see Washington’s stance as a moral and tactical blunder. The contrast became particularly acute after a series of popular uprisings exploded across the Middle East; when crowds mobilized in Tunis, Cairo, and elsewhere in the Arab world, Obama overcame his lawyerly restraint and embraced the opposition cause with alacrity.

How America can rally the world

The checkered U.S. track record in the face of the 2009 protests meant that restraint was never in the cards for Obama’s successor and certainly not for an impresario like Trump. The president has made a point to differentiate himself from his predecessor on a range of key issues and has lambasted Obama’s approach to Iran since he launched his bid for office. For this reason, Trump’s Twitter barrage on behalf of Iran’s protestors was inevitable. In a series of tweets over the course of the past few days, the president has blasted the Iranian leadership as “brutal and corrupt” and expressed sympathy for the “great Iranian people” who are “hungry for food & freedom.”

Some analysts have criticized this approach, including a former Obama official who admonished the administration to “keep quiet and do nothing.” While presumably well-intentioned, the critics are wrong. When a grassroots movement emerges to confront one of the most durably dangerous governments in the world, there is no reasonable alternative—and no alternative consistent with American interests and values—other than to embrace, uphold, and defend the activists.

Official American statements can encourage Iranians who are confronting an unjust system and serve as a warning to Iran’s leadership that, as Trump has tweeted, the “world is watching.” However, rhetoric alone is not enough—Washington and the world can do more to assist the protesters’ cause.

First, Washington must work to build a diplomatic consensus on Iran, focusing especially on European and Asian partners. European voices are especially important right now: Iranian leaders are counting on the old rules of the game, where the prospect of expanding trade and investment binds Europe to silence around Iran’s worst abuses, to apply. Tehran will be sensitive to any sign that Paris, London, or Rome—as well as Seoul and Tokyo—are willing to reconsider their growing economic and diplomatic ties if the demonstrations are forcefully repressed.

To date, multilateralism has not been Trump’s strong suit, and the administration’s hostility toward the nuclear deal has opened new transatlantic rifts. Still, consensus building on the Iran crisis is not impossible: The White House can look to the example of President George W. Bush, who sought to build bridges with America’s traditional allies on Iran, even amid friction around other issues. Those efforts eventually paid off, serving as the basis for a robust coalition around the nuclear threat that helped persuade Tehran to negotiate in earnest.

In addition to rallying the world, the White House should make every effort to ensure that Iranians can access technology to communicate with one another and access independent sources of information. In some cases, U.S. companies have blocked access to useful applications out of an abundance of caution in respecting the thicket of sanctions surrounding Iran. Several firms have already moving to remove limitations on their own, but new guidance from the Treasury Department may help sustain secure coordination among activists and offer additional protection from Tehran’s vast intelligence and censorship machine.

Finally, the most important step that the White House could take in support of Iran’s courageous opposition would be to remove Iran from the list of countries subject to Trump’s travel ban. Iranians were justifiably affronted by the restrictions, in part because they were disproportionately affected. Despite the long rupture in diplomatic relations between the two countries, Iran sends more of its citizens to America via non-immigrant travel—more than 35,000 in 2015—than any of the other nations included in the ban. Even as the restrictions were put in place, they blocked women’s rights activists, victims of torture by the security services, and other human rights defenders from entering the United States and shattered the hopes of many others who saw the United States as a beacon of hope and freedom.

While their government may be reprehensible, there is simply no evidence that Iranian travelers pose a terrorist threat. The facts show just the opposite: The millions of tourists, students, immigrants, and refugees who have come to the United States from Iran since 1979 have contributed greatly to American society and to the U.S. economy, assuming leading roles in arts, science, business, and even politics.

Removing Iranians from the travel ban—or, better yet, lifting it entirely—would restore American values to their central place in U.S. policy toward Iran and deprive Iran’s leaders of a rhetorical cudgel. Iranian officials have already invoked Trump’s ban in scorning Washington’s expressions of sympathy for the demonstrations.

Ending the restrictions on Iranian travel to the United States isn’t merely a symbolic step. Unfortunately, past experience suggests that the unrest within Iran may force some activists and dissidents into hurried exile. All those who are risking their lives and their livelihoods to challenge Iran’s repressive government should know that American support goes beyond words—that the country can be a place of refuge for today’s human rights defenders, just as it has been for so many before them.

      

Iran is often painted as a powerful monster whose tentacles stretch across the greater Middle East, but the Islamic Republic suffers from array of problems at home and abroad. The latest protests—the most serious the regime has faced since 2009—highlight the regime’s unpopularity among its own people. Iran’s problems limit its power and create openings for undermining its influence. Even if the protesters fail to topple the regime, the United States and its allies should recognize that Iran’s foreign policy is shaky and vulnerable in its structure of political authority, its economy, its military and its diplomatic posture. Iran’s weaknesses will reduce Iran’s clout, foster infighting, and otherwise make it difficult for the regime to increase its sway abroad. Some of these weaknesses may also cause additional internal unrest if not managed properly.

Iran’s biggest problems stems from the unusual, and often unwieldy, dual system of government that mixes elections with a powerful Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, exercises a veto over Iranian decision-making, heads the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the judicial system, and state television, among other powers. Khamenei is almost 80 years old, and rumors say that he will step down. Although Khamenei’s role is supposedly based on his religious authority, his religious credentials were always suspect, and he lacks the charisma of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei. The current leader gained his authority through revolutionary action and political loyalty, not careful theological study, but he was able to cement his power and grow the institution of the Supreme Leader.

Succession may go smoothly—and Khamenei certainly has tried to plan for this—but the possibility of infighting looms. His successor will inherit the institutions tied to the Supreme Leader position, but is likely to share Khamenei’s weak religious credentials: None of Iran’s most learned theologians are revolutionary die-hards, and as a result, succession will go to someone below the top clerical rank. Thus, the supreme political authority who exercises his power in the name of religion is likely to remain distinct from the non-political clerics who are more skeptical of the system. The revolutionary elites are likely to hang together so as not to hang apart, but much depends on the specific leader chosen and the politics of that moment.

Whomever takes power may need time to consolidate it, and in such authoritarian transitions power struggles among competing elites are common. In general, the Islamic Republic has shown a gift for managing these struggles and balancing fierce factionalism, but that balancing act may prove harder under a new and possibly weaker leader.

In addition to uncertainty at the top, Iran’s economy remains vulnerable. The latest protests began over economic issues before turning political. The economy was shrinking before the lifting of sanctions, but sanctions relief—including additional export opportunities and the unfreezing of assets—have improved the economic situation, with the growth rate at roughly 7 percent in recent years and inflation stabilizing. However, Iran’s economy is plagued with corruption, and mismanagement is rife. The IRGC and various religious foundations control much of the economy, stifling competition and making reform far more difficult. Private investment remains skittish, especially outside the energy sector. The low price of oil makes these structural problems all the more painful.

In addition to these problems, popular expectations of prosperity are higher than they have been for many years. The lifting of sanctions fostered hope that incomes would rise and economic problems would diminish—the regime now has less ability to blame the United States or other enemies for its problems. Protests are a fact of life in Iran—few are massive, sustained, or tied to a broader political cause, but all show at least some level of dissatisfaction with the regime. Indeed, Hassan Rouhani’s election and those of his political allies was in part because of his promises to improve Iran’s economy due to sanctions relief.

In addition to a weak economy, Iran’s military power is also limited. The expeditionary skill of the IRGC coupled with Iran’s use of proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen often create a sense that Iran is militarily active throughout the Muslim world. This is true, but it also highlights one of Iran’s biggest weaknesses—its lack of conventional military strength. Tehran lacks the ability to project significant amounts of conventional power beyond its borders. Iran’s regular ground and air forces are in shambles. In addition, although it has acquired and deployed more advanced air defense systems since the lifting of sanctions, many of its weapons systems are old, and at best, it has limited access to advanced systems from Russia and China as well as some missile technology from North Korea. Iran’s military often lacks spare parts, and it cannot maintain many of its systems. Its own military industrial base can produce and support basic systems but not the most advanced ones. As analyst Thomas Juneau contends: Militarily, Iran can deter, deny, and spoil, but it can rarely shape events. As a result, Iran can subvert its neighbors, but it is vulnerable to conventional military pressure.

Tehran’s soft power also has limits. Iran has always presented itself as a leader of a broader Islamic resistance bloc despite being ethnically distinct (as Persians) and a religious minority (as a Shiite Muslim country). To delegitimize the regime after the 1979 revolution, rival powers, particularly Saudi Arabia, emphasized Iran’s Shiite status, funding preachers around the world who emphasized this sectarian divide and otherwise trying to deny the revolution’s religious credentials.

Iran could occasionally overcome its minority status, forging ties to important Sunni groups like Hamas and, at times, gaining support from Muslim publics for its opposition to Israel and the United States. The post-2003 civil war in Iraq, which pitted Sunnis against Shiites there, and especially the post-2011 Syrian civil war, where Iranian help was instrumental in shoring up Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite regime (the Alawites have doctrinal similarities to Shiism) made Iran seem like a far more sectarian actor than previously believed. This led Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others to play up sectarianism even more, precipitating another proxy war in Yemen (despite the Houthis being Zaydi, a different Shiite branch from the Iranian Twelvers branch). Sunni public support for Iran has plummeted—a 2016 poll found that over 70 percent of Arabs had a negative view of Iran, making it only a bit more popular than perennial bugbears like the United States and Israel. Groups like Hamas have reduced, though not ended, ties.

Iran has few friends, and those it has are relatively weak. Syria is one of Iran’s few close allies (and that rarity explains the Iranian leadership’s strong reaction to the threat to Assad’s regime). Tehran also has close ties to Haider al-Abadi’s government in Baghdad, where Iran has successfully prevented a strong pro-U.S. and anti-Iran regime from taking power. Yet even in Iraq, Iran remains unpopular with many in the country, and its allies often try to distance themselves from Tehran as a result. Relations with Pakistan and Turkey, two key neighbors (and historic regional rivals), are cordial but not friendly. Although Iran has stepped up relations with Russia (another traditional rival with historically divergent regional interests) to help the Assad regime, additional cooperation is limited and may decline as the regime moves away from the brink of collapse. In addition, Iran has been frustrated by Russia’s on-again, off-again approach to arms sales, which are often disrupted in response to U.S. pressure. Tehran has at best a transactional relationship with major military powers like China, and, as the poll mentioned above shows, it is loathed by much of the Muslim world. As a result, when Iran is threatened, few countries come to its aid.

Given Iran’s weak conventional forces, the country is vulnerable to U.S. military pressure—but only in narrow circumstances and in response to credible threats. Iran understands both U.S. politics and international political dynamics. If the United States threatens Iran, it carries far more credibility if it has broader support from the Arab and Western world and popular backing, and this support will only exist in rare circumstances—otherwise Iran may call the United States’ bluff.

Similarly, economic pressure from the U.S. helped drive Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program, but such pressure is far more effective when it is multilateral. U.S. allies and major economic powers like China are skeptical of unilateral U.S. sanctions, seeing them as driven more by politics than strategy. To gain international support for more economic penalties, when possible the United States should highlight Iran’s violations of existing U.N. Security Council resolutions such as those involving transfers of arms to Hezbollah in Syria or its Houthi allies in Yemen or complying with money laundering and terrorist financing rules. International sanctions and financial penalties make it harder for Iran to attract foreign investment, maintain its financial system, and otherwise expand (or even sustain) its economy. Given the IRGC’s massive role in Iran’s economy, pressure on IRGC front companies might yield modest results. In addition, the United States should constantly highlight the cost of Iran’s adventurism in Yemen and support for the Syrian regime to increase popular disgruntlement regarding the regime’s foreign policy.

The United States can also work to chip away Iran’s few allies, though doing so may be unacceptable for other foreign policy reasons. Syria, for example, may be eager to reenter the Arab fold and may be willing to distance itself somewhat from Iran—though in the end, any rapprochement would be limited and Damascus would likely remain dependent on Tehran. In Iraq, resentment toward Iranian meddling is high. Encouraging Sunni Arab states to engage more with Baghdad may be effective in weakening Baghdad’s ties to Tehran. At the very least, this diplomatic campaign will force Iran to devote more resources to wooing these allies and make them less likely to slavishly stand at Tehran’s beck and call. Assisting Iraq in improving governance, its justice system, social services, and security forces can also help: If Iraq develops its institutions, it will be less vulnerable to Iranian manipulation.

The United States should also work to shore up allies, resolve or mitigate civil wars, and promote better governance throughout the greater Middle East. True, Iran has exploited internal problems in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and elsewhere. But it did not create them, and if these fissures can be reduced and new ones, prevented, Iran will have fewer opportunities for influence.

Although politically impossible in the United States, one of the best means of hindering Iran’s economy and eroding the scientific-technical base necessary for its own military industries would be by encouraging a brain drain through migration. Many of Iran’s most productive and educated citizens would welcome the opportunity to relocate to the United States, and, after proper vetting, their presence would enrich America as well.

The Trump administration’s decision to support the protesters is appropriate. The United States should be on, and be seen as being on, those risking their lives to resist an oppressive regime that is an avowed American enemy. Even if the government suppresses the protesters like their 2009 predecessors, the United States should use the occasion to recognize that Iran’s strength abroad rests on shaky foundations.

      

This month marked the 30th anniversary of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada. Thousands lost their lives in the fighting that ensued after four Palestinians were killed in a traffic collision with an Israeli truck in early December 1987. The death toll resulting from a second uprising in 2000 was even higher than the original.

The Hamas leadership is hankering for a rematch. After President Donald Trump conferred U.S. recognition upon Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s most senior political chief, called for a “day of rage” as a launch pad for an “intifada of freedom for Jerusalem and the West Bank.” A spokesman for the Gaza-based organization was even more dramatic. Trump’s decision “opens the gates of hell,” he declared.

But the response of the Palestinian public has been lukewarm. Jerusalem was decidedly calm on the morning following Trump’s pronouncement and it has largely stayed so. International opprobrium notwithstanding, clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian protestors have not escalated beyond the almost perfunctory. While casualties on either side should surely be mourned, there has been no widespread outbreak of hostilities toward Israel. There are good reasons for this.

Natural Causes: It’s winter in Jerusalem. Experience has shown that inclement weather tends to dampen Palestinian (and Israeli) appetites for conflict. The cold and rain have kept many would-be protestors at home, huddled around their warm radiators.

There’s also the fatigue factor. If fruitless peace negotiations have done little to improve the lot of Palestinians, countless rounds of violence have done even less. The security closures, checkpoints and searches with which Israel responds to Palestinian terrorism—stabbings, car rammings, missile attacks—act as a deterrent. No doubt many Palestinians have concluded that rioting actually sets back the cause of their independence.

All by Myself: The days of the Palestinians as the cause célèbre of Arabia appear to be ending. It’s not that the Saudis, Emiratis, and the rest of the Sunni world are indifferent to the plight of their Palestinian brothers and sisters. It’s that life is dynamic and the Palestinians have dropped a few notches on the hit parade.

With bigger ticket items like the Iranian nuclear threat and the fate of Syria hanging in the balance, erstwhile champions of the Palestinians have had to prioritize. And for many, limited bandwidth means that Palestine can wait. And if that isn’t demoralizing enough for the Palestinians, Israel, their nemesis, has even emerged as a key ally for the Arab nations seeking to beat back Shiite influence in the region. Taking on mighty Israel is a tall order for the Palestinians alone.

Much Ado About Nothing: All the enthusiasm in Israel aside, Trump’s words have little practical significance. Israelis are certainly pleased that their foremost ally has bestowed de jure acceptance of its de facto capital, but pretty much everything else remains the same as before. The chances of America’s new position on Jerusalem setting off an immediate, global avalanche of recognition are slim to none.

The U.S. embassy will remain in Tel Aviv for the foreseeable future. The State Department’s point man on the Middle East has clarified that there has been “no change in [U.S.] policy with respect to consular practice or passport issuance,” and that the president’s decision “does not touch upon issues of boundaries, of sovereignty, or geographic borders.” And Trump himself reiterated his commitment to “support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides.” Symbolism is obviously a big deal where Jerusalem is concerned, but smart Palestinian money isn’t getting worked up over mere rhetoric.

Where It Stops Nobody Knows: It’s comparatively easy to start an uprising, but much harder to ride the tiger’s back. Despite all the difficulties, the powers-that-be in the Palestinian Authority feel that they have a relatively good thing going. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confessed back in 2009 that he was in no hurry to move forward. As he put it, “In the West Bank we have a good reality…the people are living a normal life.”

A vicious cycle of Palestinian resistance and Israeli containment operations runs the risk of turning violent. It could spiral into the disintegration of vital security cooperation between the parties, cooperation which helps maintain a semblance of order within the P.A. and the continued control of its government. Abbas and his cohort are as unhappy with Trump’s move as the Palestinian rank-and-file, but will toil to keep the intifada genie in its bottle for the sake of preserving their rule.

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop: Finally, the Palestinians have every cause to show restraint in the immediate term as events play out. An unpredictable administration in Washington might still pull more rabbits out of its hat—and these new ones could be friendlier to Palestinian aspirations.

Trump’s advisers are still at work on his “ultimate deal” for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. His U.N. Ambassador, Nikki Haley, said a little more than a week ago that the Jerusalem decision is even “going to move the ball forward for the peace process.” To the extent that this is true, the White House could yet try to level the playing field by making parallel gestures to the Palestinians, ones that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be hard-pressed to oppose. After praising Trump’s “courageous and just decision” on Jerusalem, Netanyahu can scarcely defy the man about whom he said “there is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.”

With the situation on the ground still fluid, anything can happen. The Palestinians could yet reevaluate their predicament, change tactics and resolve to overwhelm Jerusalem with demonstrations or even take up arms against Israelis. But for the time being, spectacles like Abbas’s diplomatic snub of Vice President Mike Pence are probably the theatrical fare we should expect to see more of. Jerusalem’s residents will be thankful to get on with their routines.

      

Well, he told us he’d do it. As a candidate, President Donald Trump promised to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; and he delivered. Prospects for peace and U.S. national security interests be damned.

As Americans, we should be very concerned about the implications. Not only in terms of U.S. foreign policy interests in the Middle East, but also for our national security interests worldwide.

Here’s why: As the global fallout over Trump’s unilateral decision continues to spread, it is increasingly obvious that the Trump administration failed to anticipate the full scope of negative global reaction and has been caught flat-footed in response.

Protests have erupted around the world, with scores injured and numerous fatalities. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected any U.S. role in peace talks going forward, calling instead on the United Nations to fill the U.S. leadership void.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) organized an emergency heads of state meeting in Istanbul last week, where it issued a statement recognizing “East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine and invite[d] all countries to recognize the State of Palestine and East Jerusalem as its occupied capital.”

European allies gave America the cold shoulder, rejecting and sharply criticizing the move. Even Christian minorities in Egypt rejected a meeting request by Vice President Mike Pence, a very embarrassing rebuke for someone who has campaigned on protecting Christians abroad.

Palestinian Christians are also organizing boycotts of Pence, who had pushed hard for the Jerusalem recognition, and they may not even receive him in Christian holy sites in Jerusalem or Bethlehem.

According to news reports, Pence, Trump senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley supported the decision.

However, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis and their career staff recommended against the move, citing diminished prospects for peace and potential security threats.

On an issue as sensitive as Jerusalem—where emotional attachment to the city is felt by billions of people around the world and international law intersects with diverse political, economic and security interests—we cannot help but think that President Trump did not fully appreciate the sensitivities and risks involved in undertaking a disruptive unilateral move with nothing to show for it in return.

Part of that may have to do with Trump’s personal limitations, and part may be the result of the degradation of the State Department itself.

First, Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian negotiations team was led by individuals who, while being extremely intelligent, had no prior foreign policy experience.

Further, by housing them at the White House instead of the State Department, where one of us worked as U.S. deputy special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, they have not developed the knowledge or the relationships that would have enabled them to understand the deep flaws and of their Jerusalem decision.

Further, several key senior State Department roles that could have advised as to likely global reactions to the decision seem to have been deliberately left vacant. One such position is the U.S. special envoy to the OIC, which the other one of us held.

An active OIC envoy would have easily advised the administration as to the likely explosive OIC response, allowing the president and his advisors to factor in the risks of those reactions into the decision calculus.

Instead of having a discussion of the full scope of possible negative reactions, all indications are that the president focused narrowly on his political agenda instead of safeguarding U.S. national security interests.

In his announcement, President Trump boasted: “While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.”

Trump is correct: Both President Clinton and President George W. Bush did promise to move the U.S. embassy during their campaigns, but when they got into office, they quickly learned that the consequences would be harmful to both U.S. national security interests and harmful to Israel itself.

The global reactions to Trump’s Jerusalem announcement clearly took his administration by surprise. Vice President Pence’s trip was timed with Christmas to include a stop in Bethlehem to have a theme of embracing Christian minorities in the Middle East. Now, those minorities are refusing to meet with him.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a few days later, amazingly said, “I strongly believe this is going to move the ball forward for the peace process,” and that Trump “just took Jerusalem off the table,” displaying the administration’s utter lack of comprehension of the situation in the Middle East in general and with the Palestinians and Israelis in specific.

President Trump and his top leadership either didn’t understand, didn’t bother to listen or weren’t able to learn. Worse, it may have been all three. Any of the three, though, is very dangerous for the United States, which continues to face a perilous world where China advances economically, ISIS continues to threaten worldwide, and North Korea continues to develop its nuclear and missile programs.

Let’s hope President Trump and his advisors learn from this mistake and, moving forward, start to both listen to the deep expertise that exists within our career ranks and heed their advice. If not, we could be in for a very rough ride in the years ahead.

      

For over two-and-a-half years, the United States has supported Saudi Arabia in a war against the Houthi movement in Yemen. The war has created the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world and threatens to turn into the largest famine in decades.

Yet very few Americans know who the Houthis are, what they stand for, and why they are our de facto enemies. Two administrations have backed the war against the Houthis without a serious campaign to explain why Americans should see them as our enemies.

Yemeni politics are incredibly complex and volatile—rather than get drawn into a quagmire against an enemy they hardly know, the United States and its partners should get serious about finding a political solution.

What you need to know

First and foremost, the Houthis are Zaydi Shiites, or Zaydiyyah. Shiite Muslims are the minority community in the Islamic world and Zaydis are a minority of Shiites, significantly different in doctrine and beliefs from the Shiites who dominate in Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere (often called Twelvers for their belief in twelve Imams).

The Zadiyyah take their name from Zayd bin Ali, the great grandson of Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, whom all Shiites revere. Zayd bin Ali led an uprising against the Umayyad Empire in 740, the first dynastic empire in Islamic history, which ruled from Damascus. Zayd was martyred in his revolt, and his head is believed to be buried in a shrine to him in Kerak, Jordan. Zaydis believe he was a model of a pure caliph who should have ruled instead of the Umayyads.

The Houthis have made fighting corruption the centerpiece of their political program, at least nominally.

The distinguishing feature of Zayd’s remembered biography is that he fought against a corrupt regime. Sunnis and Shiites agree that he was a righteous man. The Zaydi elevate him to be the epitome of a symbol of fighting corruption. The Houthis have made fighting corruption the centerpiece of their political program, at least nominally. The Zaydi do not believe in ayatollahs like the Twelver Shiites—who are the Shiite sect in Iran and most of the Muslim world—nor do they practice the other Twelver doctrine of taqqiyah (dissimulation), which permits one to disguise his or her faith for self-protection.

In short, they are a very different sect than the Iranian version of Shiism that Americans have come to know since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Followers of Zayd established themselves in north Yemen’s rugged mountains in the ninth century. For the next thousand years, the Zaydis fought for control of Yemen with various degrees of success. A succession of Zaydi Imams ruled the community and Zaydis were the majority of the population in the mountains of the north. They fought against both the Ottomans and the Wahhabis in the 18th and 19th centuries.

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, a Zaydi monarchy took power in North Yemen called the Mutawakkilite Kingdom. The ruler, or imam, was both a secular ruler and a spiritual leader. Their kingdom fought and lost a border war with Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, losing territory to the Saudi state. They also enjoyed international recognition as the legitimate government of North Yemen. Their capital was in Taiz.

In 1962, an Egyptian-backed revolutionary military cabal overthrew the Mutawakkilite king and established an Arab nationalist government with its capital in Sanaa. With Soviet assistance, Egypt sent tens of thousands of troops to back the republican coup. The Zaydi Royalists fled to the mountains along the Saudi border to fight a civil war for control of the country. Saudi Arabia supported the royalists against Egypt. Israel also clandestinely backed the Zaydi Royalists. The war ended in a republican victory after the Saudis and Egyptians resolved their regional rivalry after the 1967 war with Israel and lost interest in the Yemen civil war.

A Zaydi republican general named Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power after a succession of coups in 1978. Saleh ruled—or misruled—Yemen for the next 33 years. He united north and south Yemen in 1990, tilted toward Iraq during the 1991 Kuwait war, and survived a Saudi-backed southern civil war in 1994. He had complicated relations with both Riyadh and Washington, but by the late 1990s was generally aligned with both against al-Qaida. The al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in late 2000 in Aden drew the Americans closer to Saleh, although his cooperation against al-Qaida was always incomplete.

The Houthis emerged as a Zaydi resistance to Saleh and his corruption in the 1990s led by a charismatic leader named Hussein al Houthi, from whom they are named. They charged Saleh with massive corruption to steal the wealth of the Arab world’s poorest country for his own family, much like other Arab dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. They also criticized Saudi and American backing for the dictator.

2003: The tipping point 

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 deeply radicalized the Houthi movement, like it did many other Arabs. It was a pivotal moment. The Houthis adopted the slogan: “God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam,” in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The group also officially called itself Ansar Allah, or supporters of God. It was a turning point largely unrecognized outside Yemen, another unanticipated consequence of George Bush’s Iraq adventures.

Hezbollah, the Shiite movement in Lebanon which successfully expelled the Israeli army from the country, became a role model and mentor for the Houthis. Although different kinds of Shiites, the two groups have a natural attraction. Hezbollah provided inspiration and expertise for the Houthis. Iran was a secondary source of support, especially since the Houthis and Iranians share a common enemy in Saudi Arabia.

After 2003, Saleh launched a series of military campaigns to destroy the Houthis. In 2004, Saleh’s forces killed Hussein al Houthi. The Yemeni army and air force was used to suppress the rebellion in the far north of Yemen, especially in Saada province. The Saudis joined with Saleh in these campaigns. The Houthis won against both Saleh and the Saudi army, besting them both again and again. For the Saudis, who have spent tens of billions of dollars on their military, it was deeply humiliating.

The Houthis won against both Saleh and the Saudi army, besting them both again and again.

The Arab Spring came to Yemen in 2011. The Houthi movement was one part of the wide national uprising against Saleh. It was primarily concerned with advancing the narrow interests of the Zaydi community, not surprisingly. When Saleh was replaced by a Sunni from the south—Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, who had been Saleh’s vice president at the behest of the Saudis—the Houthi response was predictable. They were critical of the process and of Hadi.

A national dialogue was instituted to address the future of Yemen after Saleh, with regional and international assistance. It proposed a federal solution with six provinces with some autonomy. The Zaydi-dominated north got two landlocked entities, which the Houthis argued was gerrymandered against them.

In 2014, they began colluding with Saleh against Hadi secretly. Even by the standards of Middle East politics, it was a remarkable and hypocritical reversal of alliances by both the Houthis and Saleh. Much of the army remained loyal to Saleh and his family, so together with the Houthis the two had a preponderance of force in the country. Hadi was deeply unpopular and seen as a Saudi stooge.

The war

After months of gradually moving into the capital Sanaa, it fell to the rebel alliance in January 2015, just as King Salman ascended to the throne in Riyadh. The Houthis opened direct civilian air traffic between Sanaa and Tehran, Iran promised cheap oil for Yemen, and rumors of more Iran-Houthi cooperation spread quickly. The main port at Hodeidah fell to the Houthi forces and they began marching to take Aden, the capital of the south and the largest port on the Indian Ocean.

For the Saudi king and his 29-year-old defense minister and son Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), it was a nightmare. A traditional enemy with ties to their regional foe was taking over the country on their southern belly. The strategic straits at the Bab al Mandab could be in the Houthis’ hands. It was a very difficult challenge for an untried team in the royal palace.

For the Obama administration, the picture was more complicated. American intelligence officials said that Iran was actually trying to discourage the Houthis from seizing Sanaa and openly toppling Hadi. Iran preferred a less radical course, but the Houthi leadership was drunk with success. Moreover, Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers said on the record in January that Washington had a productive informal intelligence relationship with the Houthis against al-Qaida. He suggested that the cooperation could continue.

The Saudis chose to go to war to support Hadi and prevent the Houthi-Saleh rebellion from consolidating control of the country. Operation Decisive Storm began in March 2015, MBS taking the public lead in promising early victory for the Saudis. They forged a coalition to back them including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and other traditional Saudi allies. Two refused to join: Oman, Yemen’s neighbor, and Pakistan, whose parliament voted unanimously against the war.

Obama backed the Saudi war. In the choice between the Saudi ally and the Houthis, the president—not surprisingly—took the side of a 70-year old alliance. U.S. and U.K. support is essential to the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF), which is equipped with American and British aircraft. The RSAF has dropped tons of American and British munitions on Yemen since.

Almost three years later, the Saudi air and naval blockade of Houthi-controlled territory has created a humanitarian disaster, with millions of Yemenis at dire risk of starvation and disease. The Saudi-led coalition has tightened the blockade and gradually gained more territory, although Hadi has little if any control over the territory recovered from the rebels. He resides in Riyadh. All sides are credibly accused of war crimes.

Saleh broke with his putative ally this month, signaled to Riyadh that he was flipping sides again, and was killed days later. The Houthis won the battle for Sanaa but are isolated from the rest of Yemeni politics and political parties. Riyadh portrays them as Iranian puppets, but many Yemenis see them as patriots fighting the country’s traditional enemy Saudi Arabia and America, Israel’s defender. Houthi propaganda plays to the line that Yemen is under attack by a Saudi-American-Israeli conspiracy.

A major consequence of the war is to push the Houthis and Iran and Hezbollah closer together. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley underscored that point, perhaps unintentionally, when she presented compelling evidence of Iranian support for the Houthis missile attacks on Saudi and Emirati targets last week. With their own cities under constant aerial bombardment, the Houthis are firing missiles at Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, with Tehran’s technological assistance. The war costs Tehran a few million dollars per month, while it costs Riyadh $6 billion per month.

Tehran and the Houthis are playing with fire, of course. If a missile hits Riyadh, Jeddah, or Abu Dhabi and kills dozens or more, the pressure for retaliation against Iran will be significant. The Trump administration is poorly designed to provide cooling counsel.

This brief and simplified account of the background of the Houthis should underscore how complex Yemeni politics are and how volatile they can be. Saleh called running Yemen to be akin to dancing on the heads of snakes. It is a foolish place for Americans to be drawn into a war and a quagmire against an enemy they hardly know. The administration has recently called for an easing of the blockade. It’s time to get serious about a political solution, not to wade deeper into quicksand.

      

President Trump’s announcement that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that the American embassy will relocate, is—not surprisingly—going over badly with Arab partners, allies in Europe, and beyond. At first glance—and as many analysts have pointed out in recent days—his pronouncement appears somewhat incoherent with the administration’s stated policy of revitalizing peace talks and achieving what Trump has famously called “the ultimate deal.” It contradicts efforts to contain Iranian influence, which might benefit from Palestinian frustrations. Ever since Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, presidential candidates have promised these moves from the stump, only to realize once in office that the Jerusalem issue is a clear third rail, not to be touched. But unlike his predecessors, Donald Trump delivered.

Why would this president move in such a direction, against the advice of his own national security team, including his secretaries of defense and state? As reports indicate, the decision was quite personal, so it is fair to assume that President Trump was simply fulfilling a campaign promise on a popular issue among Republicans, as shown in recent polls. It belongs to the category of Trump’s foreign policy grand gestures that are high on symbolism and low on effective policy change, in that sense similar to his decisions on the climate change accord or the Iran nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, whatever is behind the president’s decision, the move is pleasing many of Trump’s supporters. Prominent pro-Israel Jewish activists such as Las Vegas real estate mogul Sheldon Adelson may be among the loudest to applaud President Trump for his decision, but there is no doubt that the verdict on Jerusalem is of incredible significance for the broader GOP Christian base. Take note, for instance, that the religious right’s chief representative in the White House, Vice President Mike Pence, stood right over Trump’s shoulder during the announcement, evidently elated by a decision he long supported. The Jerusalem decision should remind us of the remarkable influence that Christian fundamentalist worldviews have enjoyed over Republican foreign policy for the past four decades, in particular the views of Christian Zionists, who believe that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land is in accordance with God’s will, and biblical prophecy.

An ancient Protestant Evangelical tradition

Today’s Evangelical support for Israel’s vision is born out of the combination of deeply held religious beliefs, historical evolutions, and the politicization of the Christian right. The term “Christian Zionism” is an oxymoron in a way, yet it encapsulates the paradox of a religious belief supporting a secular territorial objective. This ideology has deep religious roots, dating back four centuries.

Proto-Zionist ideas were already present at the birth of several Protestant sects in 16th-century Europe, when close and inductive readings of the Bible born out of the Reformation renewed interest in eschatological debates. It led to a new understanding of the role of the Jewish people in Christian history, leading some to prophesize a return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Several versions of these theological debates made their way to America, popularized by the Great Revivals of the 1730s and 1810s, and expanded with the growth of Evangelical Protestantism. In America, they encountered a fertile ground of mystique around the Americans’ own “New Jerusalem” experiment.

Many Evangelical Protestants subsequently took action on these beliefs, petitioning Congress in favor of the “restoration of Palestine to the Jews” as early as 1891, five years before Theodore Herzl’s call for a Jewish homeland. Later on, there were signs of Christian longing for the Jewish restoration behind Lord Balfour’s declaration and Woodrow Wilson’s subsequent support, the British Mandate for Palestine, or Harry Truman’s recognition of the State of Israel.

The emergence of Christian Zionism

Only after 1948 did this theology really develop into a political movement. Israel’s birth and expansion convinced Evangelicals that they were witnessing the application of God’s will. Many older Christian Zionists vividly recall their emotion at the creation of Israel, as if biblical prophecies of the book of Ezekiel were fulfilled before their very eyes.

The effects of 1967 were even stronger than 1948. Many Americans were impressed by Israel’s resilience and abilities during the Six-Day War, leaving the lingering impression that the country was enjoying God’s support and blessing. The land expansion that followed, and above all the reunification of Jerusalem, appeared as nothing short of a divine miracle to Evangelical Christians. Quoting from verses such as Genesis 15:18 (“In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates”), Evangelicals considered that the secular Zionist state was actually fulfilling God’s promises to Abraham. For some, it also meant that the countdown to the Apocalypse and the return of Christ on Earth had started.

From 1967 onwards, the pro-Israel nucleus of American Evangelicalism only expanded, slowly coming out of the fundamentalist circles where to which it had previously been restricted. Dozens of pro-Israel Christian organizations were created, providing financial support for Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Territories, and organizing visits for American politicians to Israel. Pro-Israel Evangelical support for Israel appeared prominently on Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority platform in 1979 and has subsequently infused Republican politics at the same time as the religious right gained power within the party.

Gaining respectability

The paradox of this feverish support for Israel from Christian fundamentalists is that rampant antisemitism had long been the norm in this community. The belief in a necessary return of the Jews to the Holy Land often accompanied a rejection of Jews at home and an objective of Jewish conversion to Christianity prior to the unfolding of the end times. However, it did not prevent a rapprochement between Christian fundamentalists and Israel’s right in the 1980s and 1990s, initiated by Menahem Begin and Jerry Falwell, and pursued to this day by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The trauma of September 11 favored the mainstreaming of Christian Zionism in the general Evangelical population. By 2006, Pastor John Hagee, a long-time Christian Zionist, created Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the “Christian version of AIPAC,” with the help and support of several American Jewish organizations, first of them AIPAC, which have understood that there were much to gain in this alliance. Following this Judeo-Christian entente, Christian Zionists have tried to purge anti-Semitic rhetoric from their ranks, even if their most radical readings of theology can sometimes catch up to them. Meanwhile, pro-Israel Christian considerations have continued to gain respectability, inside the Washington foreign policy establishment and within the Republican base. In 2009, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin urged for an expansion of Israeli settlements; and many Tea Party newcomers, such as Ted Cruz, claimed an unapologetic religious support for Israel. Today, portions of the alt-right itself, including Steve Bannon (a Catholic himself) have been converted to Christian Zionism, even when they continue to flirt with antisemitism.

An offering on the Evangelical altar

Being pro-Israel has long been considered both good policy and good politics, on both sides of the aisle, which is why pro-Israel legislation has more often than not enjoyed wide bipartisan support, such as the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, adopted 93-5 in the Senate, and 374-37 in the House.

However, over the past 20 years, Republican support for Israel has become even more resolute and, some might consider, more absolute. Not all are pro-Israel in the same way—many Republicans still believe in the two-state solution and many are critical of Israeli settlements. But under the influence of Christian Zionists, pro-Israel posturing serves today as a statement of cultural and political belonging to the Republican camp, as much as being against abortion has.

There are several religious underpinnings behind the modern Evangelical support for Israel: the “anti-replacement theology doctrine,” which claims that God has kept His covenant with the Jewish people; the “prosperity doctrine,” which Vice President Pence touches upon when he quotes Genesis 12:3 (“I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse”) to explain his support for Israel; and the “prophecy doctrine,” which expects end times to unfold once the Jewish people return to the Holy Land. But Donald Trump has touched a powerful, emotive cord through the specific symbolic power Jerusalem for the American Evangelical community. From the perspective of Christian Zionists, he’s marching in the direction of history.

At the end of the day, it’s a win for Trump politically. While the president might turn off some Evangelicals for his un-holy behavior, he has understood that his Evangelical base can cynically support candidates they disapprove of (including Roy Moore), as long as they deliver on policy items that are high on their religious agenda. He did, and Evangelicals will celebrate him for it. He is also guaranteed to avoid major blowback from the rest of the Republican Party on that topic, because those who do not support Israel for Christian reasons do so for national security reasons or proximity to Jewish pro-Israel camp. There is virtually no opposition to the decision within his camp. So, however risky the move is geopolitically, it will play well in homes around America.