Policies blocked, Harris faces questions on what’s next with Iran

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

Kamala Harris has vowed that Iran would never obtain a nuclear weapon on her watch as president.

It’s not clear how she would keep that promise if she is elected to the Oval Office on Nov. 5, especially given the urgency of the situation, the dwindling U.S. diplomatic leverage over the past four years and the Biden administration’s estimates that Tehran can develop a nuclear bomb within one week.

Critics say the general approach of Democrats over the past decade — a willingness to negotiate with the theocratic regime in Tehran and offer economic sanctions relief as a bargaining chip — would almost surely continue under a Harris administration. Ms. Harris has stressed that diplomacy is her “preferred path” to keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear state.

President Biden, Ms. Harris and other key figures in the administration will undoubtedly face even tougher questions about Iran after the disclosure of classified U.S. documents assessing Israel’s plans for a retaliatory strike against the Islamic republic.

On Monday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby did not sugarcoat the potential damage from the leak. “The president remains deeply concerned about any leakage of classified information into the public domain. That is not supposed to happen, and it’s unacceptable when it does,” he told reporters.

Officials said they were unsure whether those documents were intentionally leaked or part of a hack. Either way, the incident is likely to fuel the perception that elements within the Democratic Party are somewhat sympathetic to Iran and increasingly hostile to Israel.

That perception will grow if the documents are found to have been intentionally leaked by someone inside the administration to curb Israel’s appetite for a major retaliatory strike against its regional archrival. The documents, attributed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, were posted to the Telegram messaging app over the weekend.

Israel is expected to respond to an Iranian missile barrage this month after Israeli strikes killed top Iranian military figures and military commanders in Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East. 

Ms. Harris has taken an increasingly tough public line on Iran. She recently dubbed Tehran the “greatest adversary” of the U.S., and she has been unequivocal that Iran cannot acquire nuclear weapons. The vice president has even made thinly veiled suggestions of military action against Iranian nuclear facilities if necessary.

“Make no mistake: As president, I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend American forces and interests from Iran and Iran-backed terrorists,” Ms. Harris said in an Oct. 11 phone call with Jewish voters. “And I will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Diplomacy is my preferred path to that end. But all options are on the table.”

She said in a recent interview with CBS News that one of her highest priorities is ensuring that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

Mr. Kirby said late Monday that the investigation into the leak was just getting underway and administration officials “don’t have any indication at this point that there’s an expectation that there will be additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain.”

An ‘inevitable’ Iranian bomb?

The exact approach that a Harris administration would take toward Iran and its rapidly advancing nuclear program remains a mystery. Mr. Biden pursued diplomacy with Iran in the hopes of resurrecting an Obama-era deal with Tehran that limited its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. In 2018, President Trump pulled the U.S. out of that deal and reimposed harsh economic sanctions on Tehran.

The Biden team hoped to revive the deal or craft a new one, but negotiations between the U.S. and Iran collapsed over Tehran’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and Iran’s crackdown against domestic protesters. The brutal Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel, carried out by the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas, seemed to eliminate whatever chance still existed for diplomacy.

Democrats blame Mr. Trump and his Republican allies for the situation. They say the 2015 agreement — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — was the best bet to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Many of the deal’s key provisions had time limits that would have soon expired anyway, lending ammunition to those who say the agreement was never a way to guarantee Iran would not acquire nuclear weapons.

The deal also did not address Iran’s support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and other groups in conflict with the U.S. or its key regional ally, Israel.

Mr. Trump also has vowed that Iran would never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon, though he may be more willing than Ms. Harris to use military force if necessary. As president, Mr. Trump showed a willingness to be more aggressive toward Tehran, most notably by authorizing a January 2020 airstrike in Baghdad that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force. The incident nearly brought the U.S. and Iran to an all-out war.

People with connections to Iran are thought to be behind a plot to assassinate key U.S. political figures, including Mr. Trump. Iran has sought revenge against Mr. Trump and other national security decision-makers from his administration for the 2020 Soleimani killing.

Even the death in a helicopter crash of hard-line Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the subsequent election this summer of Masoud Pezeshkian, who ran on a platform of trying to improve Iran’s economy by reviving the nuclear deal, has not moved the needle on serious talks with Washington.

Although Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump appear on the surface to agree on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, some foreign policy analysts say the leadership of the Democratic Party has more or less conceded that Iran will become a full-fledged nuclear power.

“I think it’s fair to say that a Harris administration, like the Biden administration, has accepted Iran as a nuclear weapons state,” said Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

“The Biden administration, like the Obama administration, to be frank, more or less accepted Iran going nuclear,” he said in an interview. “In their minds, the dangers of a nuclear Iran to the United States were less significant than the possibility the United States and Iran would go to war. They were simply weary of what they would describe as ‘forever wars.’ They’re deeply dubious about the use of American power to rectify the situation.”

Iran has been trying to decipher the motives behind the intelligence leak, which the Telegram account claimed came from someone in the Defense Department.

The leak “could signal a deep rift within the American government,” analyst Soheila Zarfam wrote in the state-controlled Tehran Times. “This could indicate a significant group of military and security analysts who oppose the current policies of policymakers. Echoing concerns voiced by many experts, these individuals may be deeply worried about Washington’s potential sleepwalk into disaster by failing to restrain Israel’s actions in West Asia.”

The analyst said, “If a government entity is behind the leak, the implications become even more complex. Washington could be seeking to prevent a full-blown conflict by alerting Iran to Israel’s potential attack.”

Some specialists say Ms. Harris’ inner circle, especially her national security adviser, Philip Gordon, would likely steer her away from using military force to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Gordon, like other influential figures in the Harris orbit, has been deeply skeptical of America’s military-centric approach in the Middle East since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment seeking clarification on her position.

The situation is undoubtedly dire. In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that Iran has made great strides in its nuclear program.

“Where we are now is not in a good place,” he told the Aspen Security Forum. “Iran, because the nuclear agreement was thrown out, instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity, producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that. They haven’t produced a weapon itself, but that’s something, of course, we track very, very carefully.”

An analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security, citing United Nations data, said Iran’s stocks of enriched uranium and its centrifuge capacity combined are sufficient to make up to nine nuclear weapons in a month and as many as 15 within five months.