The White House previewed Trump’s upcoming speech on Iran policy that will outline how the U.S. will respond to Iran’s “bad behavior”:

“Not just the nuclear deal as bad behavior, but the ballistic missile testing, destabilizing of the region, Number One state sponsor of terrorism, cyber attacks, illicit nuclear program [bold mine-DL],” [Sanders] continued.

Before I get to some of the items on the list of “bad” behaviors, why do any of these things oblige the U.S. to respond? Many of these behaviors are undesirable, some are exaggerated, and some are just made up, but countering them has nothing to do with U.S. security or the security of our genuine allies. The Trump administration isn’t competent enough to counter any of these things effectively, but even a more capable administration shouldn’t be wasting energy or resources on a more confrontational Iran policy. Not only is there no compelling reason for the U.S. to do these things, but it also risks stumbling into new wars and potentially escalating ongoing wars in the name of “rolling back” Iranian power. According to the new profile of Tillerson, rollback is the way the administration is thinking about its Iran policy:

“We inherited an Iran that is feeling as hegemonic as it has felt in a very long time,” the Tillerson aide told me. “We intend to roll back those gains.”

It is debatable how “hegemonic” Iran’s government “feels,” but the larger point is that Iran isn’t in a hegemonic position in the region and doesn’t have the ability to acquire that position. The plan to roll back Iranian “gains” take for granted that great gains have been made, but that is also hard to credit. Insofar as Iran has benefited from incompetent and reckless Saudi-led blundering in the region in recent years, that has happened because the Saudis and their allies have been inadvertently helping to increase Iranian influence through destructive attempts to limit it. If the U.S. tried to “roll back” Iran in the region, it would probably end up harming U.S. interests without anything to show for the effort. And we are brought back once again to the most important questions: why should the U.S. be doing any of this, and what possible American interest is served by reflexive hostility to Iran at every turn? I doubt Trump will offer an explanation, because for all of his “America first” rhetoric he conflates U.S. interests with the interests of regional clients all the time.

The White House claim that Iran’s nuclear program is “illicit” is wrong, and even a minimally informed person would know that. It is possible that many people in this administration don’t understand that Iran is permitted to have a nuclear program under the NPT, just as they don’t understand other basic facts about the nuclear deal and the IAEA, but calling Iran’s nuclear program “illicit” shows how determined the administration is to spin any Iranian behavior as “bad” no matter what it is. When we combine that with the administration’s indulgence of our clients’ destructive and destabilizing behavior, we see how selective and arbitrary the concern about “bad behavior” truly is. Judging from what the administration is saying about its new Iran policy, we should expect that it will likely commit the U.S. to more unnecessary wars and a dangerous escalation of tensions with no discernible benefit to the United States.