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Trump Set to Reimpose ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
Then-US President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US, Jan. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday plans to restore his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran in an effort to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and drive its oil exports down to zero, a US official said.
The move brings back the tough US policy on Iran that Trump, a Republican, practiced throughout his first term. Trump has accused his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden, of weakening US resolve toward Iran.
Trump had said during his campaign that Biden’s policy of not rigorously enforcing oil-export sanctions had weakened Washington and emboldened Tehran, allowing it to sell oil, accumulate cash, and expand its nuclear pursuits and influence through armed militias.
Iranian crude exports have shot to the highest level in years in 2024 as the country found ways to sidestep punitive sanctions targeting its revenue.
The return to the tougher approach came as Trump prepared to hold talks later on Tuesday with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump will sign a presidential memorandum that, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions, the official said.
As part of the maximum pressure effort, the Trump administration will implement a campaign “aimed at driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero,” the official said.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates, and output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Oil prices were mixed on Tuesday on news of Trump‘s plans.
The US ambassador to the United Nations will work with key allies to “complete the snap-back of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” the official said.
Trump‘s first-term maximum pressure campaign sought to use vigorous sanctions to strangle Iran‘s economy and force the country to negotiate a deal that would hobble its nuclear and ballistic weapons programs.
The Biden administration did not materially loosen the sanctions that Trump put in place, but there is debate about how vigorously the sanctions were enforced.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a so-called snap-back of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 next year when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss whether they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned to power.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said Iran has been “pressing the gas pedal” on its enrichment of uranium to near weapons grade. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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