Kamala Harris Isn’t Listening to U.S. Intelligence on Iran
Who is “America’s greatest adversary?”
That is the question 60 Minutes asked Vice President Kamala Harris. “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran,” was her answer. She gave two reasons for her verdict: “Iran has American blood on their hands” and “what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power, that is one of my highest priorities.” All three claims are strange.
That Iran is America’s greatest adversary comes as a surprise after the U.S. has spent the past two and a half years comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler and painting him as bent on the conquest of Europe. The U.S. has spent in the neighborhood of $175 billion helping Ukraine fight Russia.
As early as 2018, the U.S. National Defense Strategy ranked China as the “primary concern in US national strategy.” Throughout the Biden-Harris administration, the focus has been on “growing rivalry with China [and] Russia,” as the Interim National Security Guidance of 2021 put it. It was China, and not Iran, that was considered “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge” to the U.S. led system. In 2021, it was Russia and China that the National Intelligence Council flagged as “rising revisionist powers,” while the 2022 National Defense Strategy named China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security” and called Russia an “acute threat.”
Up until the moment Harris answered the question, the U.S. had seen Russia and China as America’s greatest adversaries.
Harris did not specify the American blood Iran had on its hands. But her quick description erases the historical record of the second partner in the bloody dance. The history of Iranian blood on American hands traces from the 1953 coup in Iran, which the CIA has formally acknowledged it helped plan and execute, to cyber attacks on Iran’s civilian Natanz nuclear enrichment site, and the 2020 assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
Harris’ third, and strangest, claim is that one of her highest priorities is to “ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power.” But Harris knows that Iran is not pursuing the ability to be a nuclear power. At the same time the Vice President was prioritizing blocking Iran from building a nuclear bomb, CIA Director William Burns was telling a security conference, “No, we do not see evidence today that the supreme leader has reversed the decision that he took at the end of 2003 to suspend the weaponization program.”
Burns added that “We don’t see evidence today that such a decision [to build a bomb] has been made. We watch it very carefully.” He added that, if Iran were to make such a decision, “I think we are reasonably confident that – working with our friends and allies – we will be able to see it relatively early on.”
This is not the first time Burns has made the intelligence assessment clear. In February 2023, Burns said, “To the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003.”
And, as Harris knows, it is not Burns or the CIA alone that assesses that Iran is not in pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense’s Nuclear Posture Review concludes that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.”
Iran never was pursuing one. The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, consistently ruled that nuclear weapons go against Islamic morality. The current supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has consistently reiterated that ruling. Khamenei has insisted that “from an ideological and fiqhi [Islamic jurisprudence] perspective, we consider developing nuclear weapons as unlawful. We consider using such weapons as a big sin.” In 2003, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa that declared nuclear weapons to be forbidden by Islam.
And Khamenei was neither going rogue nor the exception: “There is complete consensus on this issue,” Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei, one of the highest-ranking clerics in Iran, has said. “It is self- evident in Islam that it is prohibited to have nuclear bombs. It is eternal law, because the basic function of these weapons is to kill innocent people. This cannot be reversed.”
In 2015, Iran agreed to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Eleven consecutive International Atomic Energy Agency reports verified that Iran was completely and consistently in compliance with their commitments under the agreement prior to the U.S. illegally and unilaterally pulling out of the agreement in 2018. Despite promises by the Biden-Harris administration to return to diplomacy with Iran, they never have. Instead, despite Iran’s expressions of willingness to return to diplomatic negotiations, the State Department has said that negotiations with Iran are “not our focus right now” and that “It is not on our agenda…we are not going to waste our time on it.”
In July 2024, Masoud Pezeshkian was elected president of Iran. Pezeshkian is a reformist who has called for direct negotiations with the U.S on improving relations and returning to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But, in a July 8 press briefing, when National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was asked if the U.S. is now ready to resume nuclear talks, other talks, or make any diplomatic moves with Iran in light of this new president,” he answered, “No, we’re – we’re not in a position where we’re willing to get back to the negotiating table with Iran just based on the fact that they’ve elected a new president.”
Unphased, in his September 24 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Pezeshkian said that “we have the opportunity… to enter a new era” and declared that Iran is “ready to engage with JCPOA participants” and that “[i]f JCPOA commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow.”
Contrary to her assertion that “ensur[ing] that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power… is one of [her] highest priorities,” the Biden-Harris administration has stubbornly refused to take the easiest and surest road to that end by honoring its promise to “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy.”
It is strange and concerning that after encouraging and supporting two and a half years of war with Russia in Ukraine, that Harris considers, not Russia, but Iran to be America’s “greatest adversary.” It is also disturbing that Harris deletes America’s role in coups, sabotage and assassinations in Iran from history. And it is alarming and dangerous that Harris wants to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, seemingly unaware that her military-intelligence community is telling her that they are not attempting to acquire a bomb, while showing no inclination for returning to the nuclear diplomacy with Iran that was already working.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
Reject the Failed Hawkish Consensus n Iran
No matter who wins the presidential election next month, US policy towards Iran seems likely to remain extremely hostile and confrontational. Both campaigns seem determined to out-hawk each other. The Iran policy debate in Washington, such as it is, is focused entirely on the same bankrupt coercive measures of sanctions, threats, and military action that are guaranteed to make things worse. There is no serious discussion of reducing tensions or resuming negotiations in the new year. The persistence of this failed hawkish consensus is dangerous for the US, Iran, and the wider region, and it needs to end.
The failed bipartisan hawkish consensus on Iran closes off paths for resolving disagreements peacefully, and it paves the way for unnecessary wars. The consensus embraces escalation as the solution to each new crisis, and it writes off diplomacy as naïve and useless. It is the same kind of bankrupt, outdated thinking that has dominated US foreign policy in the region for at least the last thirty years, and it is why US Iran policy remains so destructive and dangerous. We are desperately in need of some fresh and different policy ideas.
Unfortunately, both presidential candidates are content to keep the US on a collision course with Iran for the time being, and that means that the US will be stuck with the same rotten foreign policy in the Middle East for at least another four years. Donald Trump recently expressed support for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. During the vice-presidential debate, Sen. Vance said that he would support whatever Israel wanted to do. On the Democratic side, Vice President Harris bizarrely claimed that Iran is America’s “greatest adversary” in response to a question in her interview with 60 Minutes. Harris asserted that Iran was an “obvious” candidate for being the greatest adversary because its government “has American blood on its hands.”
Harris’ answer that Iran is the greatest adversary of the United States is absurd on its face. Iran is not and has never been that much of a threat to US interests, and it has no ability to threaten the United States directly. Hawks have been exaggerating the power and ambitions of the Iranian government for decades to justify incessant US meddling in the region, but this is nothing but propaganda. Maybe the vice president said this to pander to hardliners, or maybe she believes it to be true, but either way it suggests that Iran policy in a Harris administration will be every bit as bad as Biden’s and possibly even worse.
The US is already squandering an opportunity to reopen diplomatic talks with Iran. The Iranian government has signaled its willingness to negotiate a new nonproliferation agreement following the election of their new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Pezeshkian campaigned and won on a platform of diplomatic engagement and pursuing sanctions relief, and his agenda has received a green light from Iran’s Supreme Leader. The problem is that Pezeshkian has no credible negotiating partner in Washington or in any other Western capital. If the US doesn’t take advantage of this opening to find a compromise, it may not get another chance for many years.
It is clear that US Iran policy needs a complete overhaul. Reviving nuclear negotiations would be a good beginning for establishing better US-Iranian relations, but if there is going to be real improvement in the relationship that lasts US diplomacy with Iran cannot be limited to the nuclear issue. A new nonproliferation agreement could clear the way for closer trade and diplomatic ties, and the US and Iran should build on that foundation to create a constructive bilateral relationship. The absence of normal diplomatic relations between our countries for forty-five years has been detrimental to both. It is past time to remedy the situation.
The US has greatly improved relations with other states that it fought in major wars with much higher American casualties. The United States normalized relations with the same Vietnamese government that it had fought bitterly a quarter of a century earlier. There is no compelling reason why past US-Iranian enmity must endure after almost half a century. If the Iranian government has American blood on its hands, the US government is responsible for spilling even more Iranian blood between its support for Iraq’s invasion of Iran, shooting down Iran Air flight 655, the Tanker War, and decades of crippling sanctions. Instead of dwelling on the injuries that the US and Iran have done to each other, US policymakers would be wise to work on burying the proverbial hatchet and establishing normal ties.
Daniel Larison is a columnist for Responsible Statecraft. He is contributing editor at Antiwar.com and former senior editor at The American Conservative magazine. He has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @DanielLarison and at his blog, Eunomia, here
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