Whoever wins the U.S. presidency must end the war in Gaza to temper the threat of Iran’s rising nuclear program, according to article in Arms Control Today’s September issue.
“The next president’s ability to handle the simmering issue of Iran’s advancing nuclear program will be complicated by Tehran’s growing regional influence and the spiraling Gaza war,” Barbara Slavin, a fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington and former longtime journalist covering the Middle East, wrote in her article.
Whoever wins the presidency next “should embrace a step-by-step approach that diminishes Iran’s incentive to move from threshold nuclear status to nuclear- weapon-possessor state,” Slavin wrote.
“The best approach would be ending the Gaza war in a durable manner,” Slavin said. “As long as that war continues, the danger of a wider conflagration remains, eroding any hope of reaching new understandings with Iran on any topic.”
Current Republican nominee and then-President Donald Trump (R) withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the nuclear deal with Iran, in 2018.
Iran’s newly installed president Masoud Pezeshkian appointed a cabinet in August that includes negotiators from the JCPOA, which would make diplomacy with Iran under a second Trump term “less certain but not impossible,” Slavin said.
In a White House address in 2020, Trump said that “as long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”
Democrat nominee and current Vice President Kamala Harris (D) said in the presidential debate Sept. 10 between her and Trump that if president, she would squash “any threat that Iran and its proxies” pose to Israel. However, she said she wants a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and a ceasefire between both parties.
“Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters,” Harris said Tuesday evening. “Innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children. Mothers. What we know is this war must end.”
When asked about his stance on handling Israel, Gaza, and Iran by a moderator in the debate, Trump avoided the moderator’s question and said, “Iran was broke under Donald Trump. Now Iran has $300 billion because they took off all the sanctions that I had.”
