Over a Barrel: Iran Has Us Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Jeff Robbins on Mar 31, 2026

In Washington recently, the Foreign Minister of a Middle Eastern country under attack by Iran argued that Iran must at last be forcefully confronted by the international community, and that continuing to kick the can down the road when it comes to Tehran is unacceptable. "You have to be clear-eyed about the risks that this regime poses," this diplomat urged, "not only to the Gulf and U.S. allies but to the entire economic system as we know it today. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. (Iranian proxies) Hamas, Hezbollah, groups in Iraq, the Houthis, have to be dealt with comprehensively."

And "comprehensively," the Foreign Minister continued, means "You can't go back to a pre-February 28th worldview of Iran. So it means the ballistic missiles program. It means the nuclear program. They've got enough enriched uranium today for 12 bombs ... (We're) working (with international partners) to assist in keeping the Straits of Hormuz open because this is in the absolute interest of every nation around the world."

Think it was Israel's Foreign Minister?

Think again.

It was the United Arab Emirates' Minister of State, Lana Nusseibeh, making the case that the threat that Iran has posed globally -- its massive, growing ballistic missile arsenal, its progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of groups that massacre people and its chokehold on the Hormuz Straits -- can no longer be waved aside with feckless banalities. Minister Nusseibeh's message was the same being expressed either publicly or sotto voce by other Arab countries, among them Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. That message is that the Iranian threat has to be eliminated or dramatically reduced.

This isn't AIPAC speaking. It is Iran's neighbors, who have long known that they are held hostage by a regime that could at any point do what it is doing now: hitting them with endless barrages of missiles and shutting down international shipping. It has been a grave concern that has been top of mind for our Arab allies for many years, even as many in the Democratic Party sloughed off warnings about Iran as the contrivance of America's pro-Israel lobby.

And it isn't only our Arab friends that have made clear that permitting Tehran to continue to terrorize the world while advancing its military capacity past the point that anyone could do anything about it was monumentally irresponsible, if not tragically dumb. Our European allies, who like to blame Israel and utter meaningless mumbo-jumbo, know that, however much one loathes President Donald Trump, preserving the status quo courts disaster. Last week the British Foreign Secretary issued a warning similar to Nusseibeh's. "Frankly," said the UK's Yvette Cooper on behalf of a Labor Government, "Iran cannot be allowed to hold the global economy hostage as a result of a strait that is vital to international shipping routes and the freedom of navigation."

Valid as are so many criticisms of the Trump administration's handling of the Iran war, the Democrats' decades-long penchant for incanting sentences that begin with "Frankly, Iran cannot be allowed to" has done little to deter Iran from using its proxies to occupy foreign lands, slaughter large numbers of people and harden further its offensive military capabilities.

It's of course entirely correct that Trump and Company commenced this war without an articulated "exit strategy." But by the same token, Democratic politicians who mouth word salads about how "I'm certainly no fan of the Ayatollah" and "Iran is certainly a destabilizing force" and "We can never permit Iran to have nuclear weapons" have offered no plan of their own for dealing with Iran. Their preference has been to dodge, duck and delay.

The Trump administration's handling of the war has showcased a miasma of incoherent, non-credible, utterly inconsistent proclamations. It has featured a Secretary of Defense who is truly infantile.

All true.

But Democratic politicians offer nothing that addresses Iran in a way that is even constructive, let alone comprehensive. They ought to up their game. Democrats ought to insist that they do so.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.