It's been a bad year for Iran — Trump should keep pressing to make it worse

In December 2004, Jordan’s King Abdullah first warned the world of the emergence of a Sh’ia crescent that could destabilize the region’s Sunni states. Initially discounted by numerous analysts, his observation proved prescient over much of the next two decades.

With Iran as its fulcrum, the Sh’ia crescent included Baathist Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas, Yemen’s Houthis, and Iraq’s militias. But today, that crescent is no more.

Over the last year, Iran has seen its proxies collapse, one by one.  Israel’s 2024 pager attacks against Hezbollah were followed up with the killing of long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September 2024, and then his successor. Then came Israel's invasion of Lebanon in October, leading quickly to a November cease-fire, that seriously weakened the terrorist group.

In Syria, the Iran-aligned Assad regime fell in December after thirteen years of civil war. The new transitional government, which came to power in March 2025, ended the longstanding and heavy Iranian presence in that country.

Israel’s two-year war with the Iranian-backed Hamas has led to a ceasefire which, as in Lebanon, has seriously weakened the terrorist group. It is now exceedingly unlikely that Hamas will ever resume its total domination of the strip.

Finally, Israel’s twelve-day attack on Iranian nuclear and conventional military facilities, supported by American air power, demonstrated Iran’s ongoing inability to counter Israeli penetration of its airspace. Tehran might have expected support from some of its putative friends — notably Russia and China — but none was forthcoming.  Instead, the war left Iran’s military in a shambles.

It is true that the Iranian-backed Houthis continue to operate in Yemen. But they are only able to inflict occasional damage on Red Sea shipping or targets in Israel. They are not an existential threat to any state in the region, except perhaps southern Yemen. As for the Iraqi militias, their power is limited to within Iraq’s boundaries. They have little if any offensive capabilities outside that country.

All told, it has not been a very good year for Tehran’s mullahs.

Iran’s economy has been suffering for some time. The imposition on September 28 of the Snapback Provision that was part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal will only exacerbate the country’s economic woes. Whereas earlier this year the World Bank had predicted modest 0.7 percent economic growth for Iran in 2026, the snapback provision has the World Bank now predicting a 1.7 percent contraction in 2026, and an ever steeper 2.8 percent decline in GDP the following year.

With its proxy-based strategy in ruins and its economy in tatters, it might be concluded that Iran’s regime is on the verge of collapse. But that may not be the case. The Mullahs and even more so the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have managed to withstand previous insurrections. The regime is now approaching a half century in power, far beyond the hopeful predictions of its enemies.

Moreover, Iran is not totally isolated. Even though both Moscow and Beijing abandoned Iran amid its recent setbacks, they maintain trade relations with Tehran. They both opposed the reimposition of snapback sanctions on the grounds that the U.K., France and Germany, which invoked the provisions, had no authority to do so. China in particular buys 90 per cent of Iran’s oil production, albeit at a heavily discounted price. The two countries engage in barter, with China providing support for modernizing Iran’s antiquated infrastructure.

Iran has been a major supplier of ballistic missiles and drones to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine, while Russia reciprocates with its own arms exports to Tehran. Iran also manages to export its products through circuitous routes, employing shadow fleets to avoid detection.

Meanwhile, although Iran may be inflating its projections that India will purchase as much as 110 million barrels annually, it is clear that New Delhi is renewing its policy of purchasing Iranian oil that it had halted in 2018.

Nevertheless, U.N. sanctions will continue to weaken Iran’s tottering economy, so long as the Washington, London, Paris and Berlin adhere to them. The Trump administration can be counted on to enforce the sanctions and to punish those who attempt to circumvent them. As recently as this week, Washington imposed sanctions against eight Indian nationals and 10 companies for links to the Iranian oil trade, although this may not deter India.

Some argue that Iran will press ahead with its nuclear program, precisely because of the reimposition of sanctions. That is certainly what Iranian spokesmen have argued. Yet the twelve-day war both exposed and exacerbated the country’s military weakness, and it will remain vulnerable to further attacks, should it press on with its nuclear dreams.

The question is whether the three European powers that triggered the sanctions will have the fortitude to withstand Iranian blandishments and avoid a deal that continues to enable Tehran to enrich its uranium and forge ahead with its ballistic missile program.

Washington can press the Europeans to hold firm by taking a cue from Margaret Thatcher’s admonition to George H. W. Bush. Thirty-five years ago, when Bush was agonizing over how to respond to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the British Prime Minister told him, “This is no time to go wobbly.”

The shoe is now on the other foot; and Thatcher’s admonition should be the administration’s constant message to wavering Europeans.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.