핵심요약

• 미국과 이란의 관계는 47년간의 역사를 가지고 있으며, 1979년 인질 위기와 1980년대 중반의 이란-콘트라 스캔들로 요약됩니다.
• 트럼프 대통령은 군사적 행동을 통해 이란을 압박하려 했으나, 이는 과거의 실패 패턴을 반복하는 것으로 분석됩니다.
• 현재 미국의 경제적 압박은 이란 경제보다 미국의 신뢰도에 더 큰 위협을 초래할 수 있습니다.
• 이란은 이념적 입장과 실용주의적 행동을 동시에 취하며 미국의 정책에 지속적으로 도전하고 있습니다.

도입

본 기사는 미국과 이란 간의 관계가 단순한 지정학적 갈등을 넘어, 역사적 패턴과 전략적 일관성이라는 측면에서 분석되어야 함을 시사합니다. 투자자들은 현재의 경제적 압박이 지정학적 목표 달성보다는 미국의 외교적 신뢰도에 미치는 영향을 면밀히 살펴볼 필요가 있습니다. 이는 장기적인 국제 질서와 에너지 시장의 변동성에 직접적인 영향을 미칠 수 있기 때문입니다.

본문 1: 지정학적 패턴의 반복과 전략적 실패

미국이 이란에 대해 취한 행동은 과거의 패턴을 끊어내기 위한 시도였으나, 이는 새로운 패러다임의 전환이 아니라 1979년 이래로 지속된 전략의 연장선상에 놓여 있습니다. 1979년 인질 위기, 1980년대의 이란-콘트라 스캔들, 그리고 2015년 핵 협정(JCPOA)에 이르기까지 미국의 정책은 이란이라는 특정 주체에 대한 대응 방식을 반복해 왔습니다. 이러한 반복은 이란 정권이 이념적 목표와 실용주의적 행동을 동시에 수행하며 미국의 정책에 지속적으로 도전하는 구조적 모순을 내포하고 있음을 보여줍니다. 즉, 미국의 군사적 개입이나 경제적 압박이 이란의 근본적인 행동 양식을 변화시키지 못하고, 오히려 미국의 외교적 신뢰도를 훼손하는 결과를 초래하는 패턴이 반복되고 있습니다. 이는 미국의 정책이 단기적인 목표 달성보다는 장기적인 신뢰 구축에 실패했음을 의미합니다.

본문 2: 경제적 압박의 한계와 신뢰도 위험

트럼프 행정부가 이란에 가하는 경제적 압박은 지정학적 목표 달성보다는 미국의 신뢰도에 더 큰 위험을 초래할 수 있습니다. 경제적 수단을 통해 이란을 강제하려는 시도는 이란의 경제에 직접적인 타격을 줄 수 있지만, 이는 역설적으로 미국의 일관성과 국제적 리더십에 대한 의문을 증폭시킬 수 있습니다. 국제 사회는 미국의 일방적인 압박이 국제법과 상호 존중의 원칙을 훼손할 수 있다는 점을 인지하고 있습니다. 따라서 경제적 압박은 이란의 행동 변화를 유도하기보다는, 미국의 정책적 일관성에 대한 의구심을 심화시켜 역내 불안정성을 증대시키는 요인으로 작용할 가능성이 높습니다. 이는 단기적인 경제적 이익을 추구하는 것보다 장기적인 외교적 자본을 보존하는 것이 더 중요함을 시사합니다.

본문 3: 장기적 전망과 위험 요소

향후 이란 문제에 대한 접근은 단기적인 경제적 압박을 넘어선 구조적 이해를 요구합니다. 이란은 이념적 정체성과 실용주의적 행동 사이의 긴장을 유지하며, 미국의 압박에 대해 유연하게 대응할 것입니다. 따라서 미국은 일방적인 강압보다는 국제 사회와의 협력 프레임워크를 통해 이란의 행동 변화를 유도하는 다면적인 전략을 모색해야 합니다. 만약 미국의 전략이 지속적으로 일방적이고 단기적인 이익에 초점을 맞춘다면, 이는 결국 국제적 신뢰의 심각한 손상으로 이어질 수 있으며, 이는 에너지 안보 및 중동 지역의 안정에 부정적인 영향을 미칠 것입니다. 따라서 장기적인 관점에서 미국의 외교적 목표는 일관성과 합법성을 기반으로 재설정되어야 할 것입니다.

결론

결론적으로, 이란에 대한 최대 압박 시도는 과거의 지정학적 실패 패턴을 반복할 위험이 있으며, 경제적 수단만으로는 미국의 신뢰도를 확보하기 어렵습니다. 향후 미국의 외교적 목표는 일방적인 강압이 아닌, 국제적 합의와 상호 존중을 기반으로 한 다면적인 접근을 통해 달성될 가능성이 높습니다. 투자자들은 이러한 지정학적 변동성이 글로벌 에너지 시장과 금융 시장에 미치는 파급 효과를 지속적으로 주시해야 할 것입니다.

---

원문 링크: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiggFBVV95cUxNTWsybVJWV0lDY3NDRlkzN3FteGI4U0tDSXp0bzVIeDJzR0dwaXlQVElIZmZmVXVlTi1NWFdOc3JBYkR5cjM0QllnX2otemplNjdLal9PRGJqdDdETDNBam9JRzhId0JhTV9sYnJzUmx0eXV5M2pZN05yVm4xLUdBZWpB?oc=5

Maximum Pressure on Iran Will Fail - Foreign Affairs

For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has bedeviled U.S. presidents. The 1979 Iran hostage crisis helped doom Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid. The Iran-contra scandal in the mid-1980s badly tarnished Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy record. And Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), led to an unprecedented situation in which the U.S. Congress invited a foreign leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to Washington to argue against it.

In February, when he launched his war against Iran, President Donald Trump declared that he intended to break this embarrassing pattern once and for all. By crushing Iran militarily and effecting regime change, he boasted that whereas other presidents had only talked about the Iranian threat, he was taking decisive action to end it. But six months later, Trump has become yet another U.S. president facing a dangerous humiliation related to Iran; the fallout from his excursion threatens his party’s prospects in the midterm elections. Now, perhaps in desperation, Trump is attempting to squeeze an economic noose around Tehran. But as it is constructed, this economic-pressure operation poses a greater threat to U.S. credibility than it does to Iran's economy.

In truth, the multifaceted war Trump has launched is not a break with precedent but the apotheosis of the same flawed strategy that has undergirded U.S. policy toward Iran from the Islamic Republic’s inception, in 1979. Iran’s theocratic regime has continually flummoxed U.S. administrations in part because it contains profound contradictions. It is simultaneously ideological and transactional. Tehran continues to adhere to the core features of its revolutionary ideology, including its anti-American and anti-Israeli foreign policy, but can also act with pragmatism when circumstances demand it. Iran accepted meaningful limits on its nuclear program in 2015, for instance, and reversed decades of hostility toward Saudi Arabia by normalizing ties in 2023. Iran’s relationship to the U.S. national interest is confusing, too. The regime does pose a direct threat to the United States because of its illicit nuclear program. And long before the current war began, the terrorism and proxy militias Iran funded were menacing U.S. citizens and shipping through the Red Sea. Yet for most Americans, Iran remains a distant afterthought. A war that has extensively destroyed Iranian infrastructure, distorted the country’s economy, and killed an entire echelon of leaders, as well as thousands of soldiers and civilians, has had almost no impact on the United States other than driving up gas prices.

To address these dualities, Washington has often stripped nuance from policymaking and oriented U.S. strategy around pressure as the primary tool to contain Iran and compel it to behave differently. This pressure strategy has rested on two pillars: establishing a credible military threat and engaging in economic coercion. But instead of resolving the perplexing paradoxes posed by the Islamic Republic, this approach only deepened them—especially as Trump has sought to intensify the pressure strategy. A wave of domestic protests in January showed that Iran is internally combustible, but the war proved that the Islamic Republic is resilient and will not capitulate. Airstrikes have weakened the regime militarily but strengthened its standing internally. Iran acknowledges that it needs sanctions relief, but it is also learning that time is on its side and that, by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, it can impose reciprocal consequences for pressure.

The irony of Trump’s failed war on Iran—and his stop-start negotiations to try to end it—is that it has so severely weakened Washington’s ability to exert pressure on Tehran that no future administration will ever be able to revert to the traditional U.S. playbook. But that could also be the only upside of a war that has already exacted a heavy toll on U.S. munitions and the global economy. The war could—and should—force a broader reckoning with 47 years of failed strategy and change Washington’s approach for good.

In 2006, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post that Iran’s leaders must “decide whether they are representing a nation or a cause.” He argued that Iran must choose between prioritizing stability and the well-being of its people—by engaging rationally with other states—or continuing to be driven by the revolutionary and ideological ambitions that defined the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This idea reflected U.S. policy toward Iran over the better part of 50 years. Washington wants Iran to abandon its revolutionary origins and aimed U.S. policy toward compelling that outcome. It has continually attempted to contain Iran’s influence and get it to behave rationally using a mix of a few carrots and a lot of sticks; the biggest stick was the threat of a U.S. invasion.

Tehran itself has not seen a need to make such a concrete choice. The Islamic Republic has alternately—or simultaneously—behaved like a cause and a rational nation. For all its public bravado, the Iranian regime long sought to avoid direct conflict with the United States. The Islamic Republic’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, famously asserted that Tehran was not afraid of the American military, but both he and his successor, Ali Khamenei, governed as if they were. In 1988, for instance, Khomeini finally agreed to end his war with Iraq after the United States began engaging Iranian naval ships in direct skirmishes, leading him to fear that Reagan might formally align with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Likewise, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran—fearing that it might be next—sought various de-escalation options with George W. Bush’s administration, including halting its nuclear weapons program and sending emissaries to the State Department and the White House to explore détente.

When I served on the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team in the first half of 2025, I was surprised to find that Iranian negotiators were focused less on gaining sanctions relief than on securing nonaggression pledges from the United States and Israel. An aversion to outright war with the United States is part of the reason Iran developed its network of proxy militias. It knew it could not win a direct conflict and so it pursued advantages elsewhere.

But this year’s war has taught the regime three new lessons. It has learned that it can survive massive U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that annihilate its leaders and inflict significant damage to its military and civilian infrastructure. Despite all that, its drone and missile capabilities remain intact enough to allow it to retaliate and stop maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has also discovered that the United States has no appetite for sending ground troops into its territory. Early in this year’s war, the United States and Israel considered launching ground operations to extract nuclear material but never initiated them, judging them to be highly risky and unlikely to affect the regime’s decision-making. This year’s war showed that regime change cannot be accomplished in Iran without a ground invasion, but even the most hawkish U.S. policymakers have not publicly recommended one—showing Tehran that Washington, in fact, has a limited ability to vanquish it militarily.

Finally, Iran gambled that it could outlast the United States in a conflict of attrition, and this bet has so far proved wise. The Iranian regime is willing to subject its own people to more suffering and economic pain than the U.S. public is willing to bear, especially since Americans broadly view the war as optional and, increasingly, as a quagmire. At multiple points, Trump has threatened to escalate, only to back down when energy prices spike. The threat of military force is now no longer as valuable as it was before the war—which is why Trump’s repeated military threats since the first cease-fire, in April, have not substantially changed Tehran’s actions.

The second historic bedrock of the United States’ pressure strategy has been economic coercion. Some sanctions, such as those designed to restrict Tehran’s ability to sell oil, have had a profound impact on Iran’s economy. But they have mostly failed to effect the policy changes they were designed to drive. Following the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran—and Khomeini’s embrace of the takeover—Carter imposed a series of punitive actions, including an embargo on U.S. investment and trade with Iran. That move ended the two countries’ previously deep trade and defense partnership, but it did little to curtail Iran’s exports to the rest of the world. In 1996, Congress expanded the economic-pressure approach with the Iran Sanctions Act, which limited even non-Americans’ ability to invest in Iran’s energy sector. In 2012, Congress, as well as the European Union, further targeted Iran’s oil revenue and its central bank, cutting Iran’s oil exports in half virtually overnight. Those provisions were relaxed under the JCPOA, then reimposed in 2018 by the United States after Trump withdrew from the agreement and by Europe in 2025 when a so-called snapback clause triggered.

The first Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy was initially advertised as a mechanism to secure a better nuclear deal. Once that failed to materialize, sanctioning Iran became an end in itself. More than 3,000 U.S. sanctions designations now target virtually every aspect of Iran’s government and economy. These sanctions are intentionally complex and layered with overlapping authorities, making them difficult to lift. But many are also symbolic. Over time, economic pressure—sanctions in particular—became an easy default policy for the U.S. government, even if many moves had no tangible impact, because they appeared to show Washington was taking action and Americans rarely bore any direct cost.

In the current war, Trump has cranked up economic pressure to its zenith by blockading Iranian ports. The war, however, finally imposed consequences on the American public when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and targeted Gulf energy infrastructure, wreaking havoc on global energy shipments. Iran’s economy was already under tremendous strain before the war, and the blockade has exacerbated that strain. But Trump abandoned the first blockade after 66 days. He has recently imposed a second blockade and a broader pressure campaign aimed at curtailing Iran’s remaining trade that he advertises on social media as the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY.” There is no doubt this campaign will hurt Iran and its economy. But it will almost certainly fail to force Tehran’s surrender. Rather than succumb to pressure, recent history suggests that Iran will use its missile and drone program to exact steep economic costs on the global economy—either in the Strait of Hormuz or against Gulf countries—to again shift Trump’s risk calculus. The Islamic Republic believes it can outlast the United States’ will to exert economic pressure, just as it can survive U.S. military pressure.

The failed war and blockades, as well as Trump’s approach to negotiations this year, will permanently alter the utility of economic pressure. Whereas sanctions relief was once the reward the United States could offer Iran for constraining its nuclear ambitions, Trump issued oil-export waivers in March without any Iranian concessions and again in June in return for a vow merely to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

No matter how this war ends, the United States will not be able to return to the strategy that governed its relations with Iran for 47 years. Trump’s potential Republican successors, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, differ strikingly in their views of what to do next. In recent public comments, Rubio has suggested a preference for expanding a pressure strategy, telling Fox News in early August that the Iranian regime “must change” fundamentally and arguing that the United States should further ratchet up “the price” of intransigence A pressure strategy, however, was only sustainable, if not efficacious, insofar as it did not demand much from the American people. And with its newfound control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has far more ability to make the United States and its key Middle Eastern allies pay for applying pressure. Vance, by contrast, appears to favor retrenching from Iran and the Middle East more broadly—an approach that would loosely resemble Trump’s and President Joe Biden’s approach to Afghanistan, which cut the United States’ losses entirely. But Iran is a harder country to walk away from. Its nuclear program and strategic location give it direct leverage over the United States and the global economy in a way Afghanistan never did.

It is too early to know what path a Democratic administration would take, and there are no easy answers for how to approach Iran. There will be justified calls for diplomacy to take a more prominent role in U.S. policy. Like pressure, however, diplomacy cannot serve as an end in itself. A new approach must recognize the Islamic Republic’s persistent dualities, as well as the United States’ changing role in the Middle East. Over 20 years, a substantial U.S. presence in the region has not brought stability, and increasing that presence has not yielded better results. At the same time, the domestic grievances that led to the massive wave of January protests in Iran still exist. The United States might consider stepping back, forcing Iran’s leadership to focus more on governing and less on surviving a war. Instead of taking unilateral action, Washington should first seek the input and cooperation of allied capitals. And rather than try endlessly to build more leverage, it should instead better utilize what it has already accumulated.

The best thing Washington can do at this point is to stop acting without thinking. And U.S. policymakers need to dwell more on lessons from the past. Military and economic pressure did occasionally shape Iranian decision-making. Pressure helped push Iran to temporarily pause its nuclear program during George W. Bush’s administration and, later, to accept the JCPOA. But pressure did not topple the Islamic Republic, make the United States safer, or improve the lives of ordinary Iranians; in fact, the U.S. pressure strategy likely deepened Iranian civilians’ hardship.

Ultimately, what Washington wants most is for Iran to interact productively with its neighbors, abandon an illicit nuclear program, and promote the well-being of its people. But like it or not, the Islamic Republic gets a say in what happens next in Iran. Forty-seven years of prioritizing pressure culminated in a costly war that revealed the limits of what that approach can accomplish. It would be a silver lining if the Iran war’s failure forced a reckoning in Washington about the United States’ preconceived notions about Iran and the well-worn playbook that has led to this morass.

You are reading a free article

Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access.

Source: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiggFBVV95cUxNTWsybVJWV0lDY3NDRlkzN3FteGI4U0tDSXp0bzVIeDJzR0dwaXlQVElIZmZmVXVlTi1NWFdOc3JBYkR5cjM0QllnX2otemplNjdLal9PRGJqdDdETDNBam9JRzhId0JhTV9sYnJzUmx0eXV5M2pZN05yVm4xLUdBZWpB?oc=5