Trump's Awful 'Return to Maximum Pressure' on Iran

Ramping up economic warfare against Iran is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Trump’s Iran policy in the second term is set to be just as awful as it was in the first. Reuters reports:

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign a presidential memorandum on Tuesday to restore his "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran to stop the country getting a nuclear weapon and drive down its oil exports to zero, a U.S. official said.

Trump and his allies have been talking about a “return to maximum pressure” for many months, and now it is here. Nothing good will come from this, and the U.S. will become even more deeply entangled in Middle Eastern conflicts and rivalries as a result. Ramping up economic warfare against Iran is exactly the wrong thing to do, and Trump is squandering a major opportunity to reach a negotiated compromise on the nuclear issue.

“Maximum pressure” has failed everywhere it has been tried. It inflicted enormous hardship and suffering on the the people of Iran, and it backfired and hurt U.S. interests as well. Trying it again with Iran will just ratchet up tensions and give the Iranian government incentives to expand their nuclear program further. It risks bringing the U.S. closer to direct conflict with Iran for no good reason.

Iran hawks have been worried recently that the Trump administration might be inclined to bargain with the Iranian government, but they had no reason to be concerned. Judging from the latest reporting, Trump is still fully on board with the braindead collective punishment approach that led to the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program. It seems that rumors of Trump’s openness to serious negotiations have been greatly exaggerated.

The U.S. has been trying to strangle Iran into submission for more than six years since the U.S. reneged on the nuclear deal, and it has only caused the Iranian government to become more intransigent. The election of Masoud Pezeshkian last year created an unexpected opening for diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran. Despite repeated Iranian offers to return to talks, Trump is now choosing to spit in their face. More pressure and threats now will play into the hands of Iranian hardliners as they always do.

The Iranian people are the ones that will bear the burden of Trump’s cruel and destructive sanctions policy. Broad sanctions are always an attack on the people of the targeted country. Intensified economic war on Iran will mean more people unable to afford the food and medicine they need more people being driven into poverty. “Maximum pressure” achieves nothing except to increase the misery of ordinary Iranians.

Trump’s Iran policy was a dangerous failure the first time around. He has predictably learned nothing from that failure. The U.S. is preparing to do more of the same thing that it has done since 2018, and no one should expect a better result.