One of U.S. President Donald Trump's goals on his visit to the Middle East was to establish a broad regional coalition that would see the Arab states, alongside Israel, curb the Iranian threat. In his speeches in Saudi Arabia and Israel, Trump did not mince words when speaking of the Iranian threat, especially when he called Tehran one of the main propagators of terrorism in the region and around the world; a country no less dangerous than the Islamic State group. During his visit to Israel, Trump was even more decisive, declaring that Iran would not become a nuclear power on his watch and that he would counter its efforts to spread across the Middle East. Trump is not all talk. At the start of his presidency, he imposed economic sanctions on Tehran in response to Iran's ballistic missile test. Some of the rockets tested by Iran are capable of reaching the heart of Europe, and some are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Iran may have signed an agreement with then-U.S. President Barack Obama, in which it agreed not to go nuclear in the next decade, but this deal does not include a ban on developing long-range missiles. The U.N. Security Council may have passed a resolution banning Iran from developing long-range missiles in the past, but the Iranians' response has been one of dismissal, and no one, until the election of Trump, has had the power or the willingness to confront them. Trump has taken the Iranians seriously and has threatened to act should they continue their destructive policies in the region and continue to defy the U.N. resolutions forbidding them from developing advanced weapons, even of the non-nuclear sort. In one of his tweets about the Iranians, Trump wrote, "Iran is playing with fire -- they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" In the Arab world, Trump has found a receptive ear to his warnings about Iran. In fact, it was Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states that, for years, sounded the alarm about the dangers Iran presented to peace in the region. Now, someone in Washington is listening. Interestingly enough, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a missile toward Riyadh on the eve of Trump's visit to the Saudi kingdom. Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia coincided with Iran's presidential elections, which were ultimately won by incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, a man despised by the conservatives in his country. During the elections, Rouhani did not hesitate to attack the Revolutionary Guard, which is closely aligned with the country's conservative camp, for the damage its radical policies have inflicted on the country. But in Iran, the distribution of labor is well known. The president focuses on internal social and economic issues and is responsible for the charm campaign directed at the West, while the members of the Revolutionary Guard disseminate terror and undermine stability in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and lately, Yemen. But the members of the Revolutionary Guard have very good reason to be alarmed by the U.S.-led regional coalition against them. They should also be concerned over the Iranian public's rejection of them and disgust with them, as reflected in the results of the election. The response from the Revolutionary Guard, and in effect Iran's response, came last week when the commander of the Revolutionary Guard's aerospace division, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, announced the establishment of a third underground ballistic missile production facility and declared that Iran was determined to continue to develop its missile program. The Iranians, then, have chosen to continue to defy Trump and the world, and the ball is now in Washington's court. The question now is whether Trump will translate his threats into action or, alternately, follow the path of his predecessor, publicly condemning Iran while leaving it to its own devices. All eyes in the Middle East are therefore on Washington, including Iran's. If pressure is not put on those pragmatic elements within the Iranian system, like Rouhani, none of them will dare stand up to the Revolutionary Guard, which has the support of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Moscow and Pyongyang are also waiting to see how Trump proceeds, hence the need for and importance of a clear American response to Iran's defiance.
