U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace overtures toward Iran this week — made as he signed a directive to put the country under “maximum pressure” for malign behavior — signal a revived policy that some analysts say has evolved from his first term as he adapts to Iran’s new circumstances.
Trump made his overture in a Wednesday post on his Truth Social platform, saying he seeks a “Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper” in return for ensuring that the Islamic Republic “cannot have a Nuclear Weapon.”
A day earlier, Trump also told a news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “I would love to be able to make a great deal [with Iran], a deal where you can get on with your lives, and you’ll do wonderfully.”
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and then a senior adviser, made a similar, if more muted, appeal to Iran’s then-President Hassan Rouhani, in an interview with VOA.
“For President Rouhani, I would say it’s time for the region to move forward. Let’s stop being stuck in conflicts of the past. It’s time for people to get together and to make peace,” he said.
At the time, Trump said a key goal of his original “maximum pressure” campaign was to negotiate a new bilateral agreement to end Iran’s perceived malign behaviors that he said were not sufficiently addressed by Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Trump withdrew the United States from that deal in 2018 and started the pressure policy.
Trump revived his “maximum pressure” policy by signing a presidential memorandum Tuesday, directing a series of economic and legal measures to counter Iranian activities that threaten U.S. national interests. The document highlighted Iran’s development of nuclear weapons-related capabilities, ballistic missiles and its regional aggression through support of proxy forces.
‘Higher ambitions and more tools for pressure’
The new Iran policy is “qualitatively different” from what Trump pursued in his first term, Brian Katulis, a senior fellow of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told VOA.
“It has higher ambitions and more tools for pressure,” he said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded to Trump’s new policy Friday, saying Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal shows that negotiating with the U.S. “is neither rational, nor intelligent, nor honorable, and [we] should not engage in negotiations with it.”
Iranian state media said Khamenei made the comment while speaking to a gathering of air force personnel. They also quoted him as issuing the following warning to the U.S.: “If they threaten us, we will threaten them. If they carry out their threat, we will carry out our threat. And if they disrupt the security of our nation, we will definitely disrupt their security as well.”
Iran long has denied seeking nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said Iran suspended an active nuclear weapons program in 2003, but Israel, a U.S. ally, said in 2018 its agents in Tehran stole documents indicating the Iranian government had covertly continued that program.
Trump’s new “maximum pressure” memorandum includes two specific measures that were prominent features of his first term campaign — seeking to drive Iran’s export of oil, its highest revenue-earner, to zero and calling for a snapback, or return, of international sanctions the U.N. Security Council lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.
In the first announcement of new sanctions in Trump’s second term, the U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday, targeted Iran’s oil exports by sanctioning an international network it said facilitates the shipment of “millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars” to China, Iran’s top oil customer.
Trump’s goals of reducing Iranian oil exports to zero and restoring international sanctions on Iran were not fully achieved in his first term.
An October 2024 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Iran’s crude oil and condensate exports reached a low of 0.4 million barrels per day in 2020 “due to the U.S. reimposition of sanctions in November 2018 and the decline in demand because of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Trump’s first administration also unilaterally declared a restoration of international sanctions on Iran in September 2020, but most other U.N. Security Council members rejected the move. They asserted the U.S. had forfeited its right to trigger the return of international sanctions by quitting the 2015 nuclear deal that lifted those sanctions.
One provision of Trump’s new Iran memorandum, setting a goal that was not explicitly stated in his first term, is ensuring neither Iraq nor the Gulf countries can be used by Tehran to evade sanctions.
Trump’s first administration had tried to stop such evasion by Iran, according to Elliott Abrams, a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow who served as U.S. special envoy for Iran at the end of Trump’s first term.
Responding to a VOA question in a Federalist Society webinar on Thursday, Abrams said, “There were points at which we said to the Emiratis, ‘Look, Dubai is being used by the Iranians to get around sanctions. Close that down.’”
He said the second Trump administration appears to be giving that objective more public attention.
Another new feature of Trump’s pressure campaign is its order to “modify or rescind sanctions waivers … that provide Iran any degree of economic or financial relief … related to Iran’s Chabahar port project.”
India has been developing a terminal at the Iranian port under a 2016 agreement and secured a waiver from the first Trump administration in 2018 to continue the project to facilitate humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.
The Biden administration extended the waiver, but when India signed a deal last year to operate the Iranian port for a decade, Biden’s State Department said that “anyone considering business deals with Iran, they need to be aware of the potential risk that they are opening themselves up to … sanctions.”
‘Enhanced’ campaign seen
Jason Brodsky, policy director of U.S. advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran, told VOA he expects to see Trump pursue an “enhanced” maximum pressure campaign that is tailored to the “changed geopolitical realities of 2025, rather than to 2018.”
One of those new realities is a major rebound in Iranian oil exports, primarily due to what Brodsky said was lax Biden administration sanctions enforcement.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s October report, citing data from international energy analytics company Vortexa, said Iran’s oil exports increased to an average of 1.5 million barrels per day in the first eight months of last year.
The Biden administration rejected accusations of lax sanctions enforcement made by critics of its Iran policy while it was in office, highlighting its sanctioning of hundreds of entities for Iran-related activities. But Biden’s treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said in April 2024 that Iran was “continuing to export some oil” and added, “there may be more that we could do.”
Other new factors Brodsky cited as reasons for Trump to enhance his maximum pressure strategy include Iran’s progress in uranium enrichment during the Biden administration and Tehran’s recent regional losses. In the past year, Israel killed the leaders of Iran’s terror proxies Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza, while Islamist rebels in Syria ousted longtime Iran-backed leader Bashar al-Assad from power.
But Brodsky said the new maximum pressure memorandum also raises questions about what Trump wants out of a potential new deal with Iran.
He noted the document calls for ending the “[Iranian] regime’s nuclear extortion racket” and asked whether this means Trump will demand that Iran stop uranium enrichment, as Trump did in his first term.
“We don’t have answers right now,” Brodsky said.
