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France A French Rebirth? Fourth time’s a charm for Marine Le Pen. Marine Le Pen has a new lease on life. Last Tuesday, a court cleared a path for her to contest France’s presidential election next year. And she took it with celerity. “There is no longer any scenario in which I could not run,” Le Pen announced on TV that evening. “I am a candidate.” This will be Le Pen’s fourth bid for the job, and her chances appear better than ever. Multiple polls conducted over the past several days show her comfortably defeating all comers in both phases of France’s two-round election system.  Of course, much could change in the nine months remaining until the vote. The field is immensely crowded; by one count, there are over 30 declared or potential candidates who could vie with Le Pen (not all with equal seriousness, of course). As their ranks thin, we could eventually see right and left-flavored moderates rally behind a single, unifying figure—Edouard Philippe, say, or Raphaël Glucksmann.  Then there is the unavoidable fact that Le Pen has lost thrice before: Whatever the polls say now, running the same candidate on the same platform obviously risks the same result.  And she’s not entirely out of the legal woods yet. It’s still possible that France’s highest court, to which Le Pen’s case has been referred, could impose house arrest with an electronic ankle monitor, which would massively complicate campaigning and possibly tarnish her image. On this last point, though, it’s interesting to note that most Le Pen supporters don’t seem bothered by the fact that the same ruling which allowed their candidate to run also upheld her conviction for embezzlement. No doubt, many see it in the same light as MAGA voters regarded the charges against Trump: lawfare, plain and simple.  It also helps that the details of Le Pen’s crime—using funds meant for European parliamentary staff to pay party aides working on domestic issues—aren’t particularly lurid or egregious. She didn’t pocket the money; there’s no question of personal enrichment. Besides, as one right-wing weekly observed: It is only natural for the parliamentary aides of a sovereignist party—one that places the nation above all else—to devote their talent, energy, and time to the affairs of that nation, rather than contributing to a bureaucratic and technocratic system whose ultimate goal is, in reality, nothing less than the weakening, perhaps even the subjugation, of that very nation. After a decade of macronisme—that same “bureaucratic and technocratic system” applied to France itself—such energetic, single-minded commitment to the nation clearly has immense appeal. To many voters exasperated by a simmering cost-of-living crisis, a civil society coming apart at the seams from uncontrolled immigration, and a geopolitics that threatens to extinguish French power and sovereignty (whether through surrender to Brussels or vassalization by Washington—or Beijing), nothing less than national regeneration is needed.  This is exactly what Le Pen and her National Rally (RN) promise. Pour la France, la Renaissance is the party’s new campaign slogan. For France, rebirth. And a growing number of voters feel comfortable turning to the RN as the agent of this rebirth, thanks to the success of Le Pen’s patiently executed dédiabolisation campaign—which has seen, over the past fifteen years, the expulsion of her cantankerous and ultra-controversial father, the rebranding of the more menacing “National Front” as the gentler-sounding “National Rally,” and the slow development of a party infrastructure able to notch victories at all levels of French politics. The RN also draws strength from its appeal to the France that lies beyond Paris—which is to say, most of the country. Le Pen made a point of kicking her campaign off in La Flèche, a smallish town more than 150 miles from the capital. And she spent Bastille Day in Nice, on the 10th anniversary of an Islamist terror attack in the city that left 86 dead. (In Paris, meanwhile, Macron condemned “nationalism” in a speech to the military, then convened the latest meeting of the unfortunately-named “coalition of the willing” to commit more money and arms to Ukraine.) The fact that it is Marine Le Pen and not Jordan Bardella—her 30-year-old lieutenant, who would have been the RN candidate had last week’s ruling gone a different way—further plays to the party’s advantages. Some had hoped for a Bardella candidacy, reasoning that a young, handsome, and so far scandal-free figure stood a better chance than the old warhorse Le Pen. But Bardella carries baggage of his own. Compared to his chief, he is significantly cozier with the business community, friendlier to the EU, and markedly less populist on things like pension reform. And he has recently acquired a taste for the high life—dating a literal princess, frequenting all manner of fancy functions—so much so that one analyst pronounced it “a return to the bling-bling style of Sarkozy.” All this sits fine with France’s better-off, of course, but not with the RN’s salt-of-the-earth voters, who vastly prefer the style and substance of Le Pen (and in her absence might well have been tempted by that Gallic Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Mélenchon). Indeed, one of the more interesting dynamics to watch will be the relationship between Le Pen and Bardella—who are, in an unusual arrangement for France, running as a ticket (Le Pen would be president, and Bardella prime minister). At that first campaign stop in La Flèche, some reporters picked up a bit of frostiness from the junior partner. According to Le Monde: [Bardella] seemed absent, his face closed, indifferent to the candidate’s jokes or political arguments. When the crowd chanted “Marine for president,” one voice prompted laughter by responding, “And Jordan too!” What had once seemed likely was now a punchline. Asked about his political mentor’s new status, Bardella responded with a measured formula: “It’s neither relief nor disappointment.” The contrast was striking with the radiant smile he displayed during his last joint appearance with Le Pen the previous Saturday. (Sensitive, perhaps, to the speculation this engendered, Bardella gave an interview over the weekend reaffirming his commitment to the cause—and the leader.) The historian Pierre Gaxotte once compared the French electorate to an Edam cheese: “Red outside and white inside, revolutionary to obtain a pension and conservative to preserve it.” More than anything else, it is the ability to tap into this peculiar left–right dynamic that accounts for Le Pen’s appeal today. She promises both the complete overthrow of a rotten establishment and the restoration of the material and social conditions which that establishment failed utterly to protect. Ever more of her countrymen seem to believe she can deliver. The post A French Rebirth? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign policy The Real Lesson of America’s Decades-Long Conflict with Iran Washington needs a strategy grounded in realism and reciprocal diplomacy. Donald Trump entered office promising to end America’s endless wars. Instead, he chose a war openly aimed at regime change in Iran that has predictably become a quagmire, trapping the United States in an open-ended cycle of tit-for-tat strikes, economic blockades, and escalating confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, with no plausible military path to victory. The immediate crisis is dangerous enough. The larger problem is that Washington is once again doubling down on a decades-long strategic obsession with Iran that has repeatedly produced the opposite of what American policymakers sought to achieve. My recent report for the Center for International Policy, Beyond Maximalism, examines U.S. policy toward Iran from Iran-Contra through the 2015 nuclear deal, “maximum pressure,” and the ongoing war. The conclusion is uncomfortable but difficult to escape. The current catastrophe was not inevitable. It is the predictable result of a strategy that consistently overestimated what coercive U.S. policies could accomplish while underestimating how Iran would respond. The first mistake has been treating Iran as an irrational ideological actor rather than a state pursuing what it believes are its security interests. This does not mean the Islamic Republic is benign. Tehran supports non-state armed groups across the region, represses its own citizens, and has often pursued policies that have undermined regional stability. None of that should be minimized. But neither should it obscure an equally important reality. Again and again, American military leaders, senior national security officials, and realist scholars have described Iran as a rational actor responding to incentives rather than seeking conflict for its own sake. Its support for Hezbollah has long functioned as a deterrent against Israel. Its expanding nuclear program accelerated after Washington abandoned the nuclear agreement. Today, its effort to consolidate greater control over the Strait of Hormuz reflects a similar logic. Having concluded that American sanctions relief and political commitments are inherently reversible, Tehran views leverage over the world’s most important energy chokepoint as the most durable guarantee it can create against renewed coercion or attack. One need not approve of any of these policies to recognize that they follow a strategic logic. The second mistake has been America’s strategic obsession with Iran. Relative to the threat it poses to core American national interests, Iran has occupied an extraordinary place in Washington’s strategic imagination. Its economy is roughly the size of Connecticut. Its conventional military spending is dwarfed by that of the United States and its regional partners. It lacks the ability to project sustained military power far beyond its borders. Yet for nearly half a century, successive administrations have treated Tehran as though it were one of America’s foremost strategic adversaries, devoting enormous diplomatic, military, and political capital to containing or transforming it. The results have repeatedly been the opposite of what Washington intended. The invasion of Iraq eliminated Iran’s principal regional rival and dramatically expanded Tehran’s influence in Baghdad. Withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal accelerated the growth of Iran’s nuclear program while empowering the very hardliners the agreement had marginalized. The Trump administration’s first-term maximum pressure policy failed to produce capitulation while driving Iran closer to Russia and China. And now the collapse of the memorandum of understanding and the resumption of fighting have only reinforced Tehran’s conviction that it cannot entrust its long-term security to promises of future sanctions relief. Instead, they are attempting to create leverage that rests in their own hands. Trump’s latest decision to restore a blockade illustrates the problem perfectly. Economic strangulation is once again expected to produce political concessions. But if both recent experience and the broader historical record are any indication, renewed coercion is unlikely to produce capitulation. It is more likely to convince Tehran that preserving every remaining source of leverage, especially Hormuz, is indispensable to its security. That should concern Washington. The United States enters this renewed phase of conflict with strategic petroleum reserves still historically low and global energy markets far tighter than in any previous crisis. The room for absorbing prolonged disruptions has narrowed considerably. Continued escalation therefore risks imposing substantial costs not only on Iran but on the United States and the broader global economy. Diplomacy requires credible and reciprocal incentives. Yet American policy has too often assumed that Iran should surrender its principal sources of leverage, from its nuclear program and missile and drone capabilities to its growing leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, in exchange for economic benefits that U.S. administrations remain free to easily revoke. That asymmetry has become one of the central obstacles to diplomacy. Washington continues to ask Tehran to make permanent concessions in return for commitments that Iranian leaders increasingly view as temporary. There is no military solution to this problem. There never was. America’s objective should not be to force Iran’s unconditional submission or pursue another futile search for decisive victory. It should be to manage a long-term rivalry in ways that reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation, regional war, global economic disruption, and an ever deeper strategic alignment between Iran, China, and Russia. That requires a fundamental shift in strategy. As I lay out in my report, Washington must move beyond the illusion that ever greater coercion will eventually produce a more compliant Iran and instead pursue a policy grounded in strategic realism, reciprocal diplomacy, regional integration, and long-term risk reduction. The real lesson of America’s nearly half-century conflict with Iran is not that Washington lacked military power or economic leverage. It is that those tools were repeatedly used to achieve political objectives they could not in fact deliver. Until that lesson is absorbed, America is likely to keep winning battles while losing the broader strategic competition. The post The Real Lesson of America’s Decades-Long Conflict with Iran appeared first on The American Conservative.