President Donald Trump achieved a vision of peace and prosperity in the Middle East none thought possible in his first term. Now, he has an incredible opportunity to reshape the future of the Middle East for years to come.
This week, he took the first step toward realizing this vision by doubling down on his maximum pressure campaign against Iran. His team can complement this sanctions approach by continuing the work of the first Trump administration and expanding the Abraham Accords.
As the past four years have shown, enriching and enabling the malign Iranian regime only leads to war and terror. As Trump demonstrated, the best way to avoid these outcomes is through massive and effective sanctions on Iranian oil exports, which allow the regime to prop up its dysfunctional economy, fund terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, and inflict pain and suffering on the Iranian people.
This is why we in the first Trump administration, at the president’s direction, successfully targeted Iran’s oil exports with historic sanctions. At the end of our tenure, Iran’s oil exports had fallen to just about 400,000 barrels a day. Like an animal caught in a trap, the regime thrashed and tried to break free by escalating tensions and instigating conflict.
President Trump met this escalation with steel resolve in the form of contained, lethal strikes – like that which claimed the life of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani – that maintained deterrence while not putting American soldiers in harm’s way.
By bankrupting the Iranian regime and building a coalition of partners and allies willing to contain Iran through the Abraham Accords, the first Trump administration laid the groundwork for a genuinely peaceful and prosperous Middle East. I was proud to have contributed to this historic effort as secretary of state.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration favored appeasement rather than deterrence. It failed to continue our sanctions program, made obscene ransom payments to the ayatollah, and revived the Obama-era falsehood that the regime would moderate – if only the right deal could be struck.
Led astray by fantasy, Obama’s successors in Team Biden went right back to enriching the regime at the expense of America’s security and that of our allies. At one point in the administration, Iran was exporting roughly 2 million barrels of oil per day – five times more than it had been just a few years prior – and Iran sold $144 billion worth of oil over Team Biden’s first three years.
This infusion of wealth yielded predictable results. Iran resumed funding its proxies, Hamas perpetrated its grotesque attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the Houthis initiated a blockade of the Red Sea that lasted more than a year. Iranian-backed militias killed six American service members over the administration’s last two years in office. Iran built and sold thousands of drones to Russia that bolstered Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and it sold more oil than ever to the People’s Republic of China.
Abandoning our maximum pressure campaign was a disaster for America’s foreign policy and national security.
President Trump’s decision to reverse Biden’s appeasement and bring back our maximum pressure campaign was necessary, and its timing is perfect: Israel’s incapacitation of Hezbollah helped lead to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Israel’s campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas is nearing victory.
These realities have left the regime in Tehran at its weakest point in years. Now is the time not only for maximum pressure to return with support for the organized opposition within Iran, but also for the White House to fully support our ally Israel in its mission to ensure Iran never reaches its goal of creating a nuclear weapon.
This will set the stage for the Iranian people to decide their own future instead of the tyrannical despots in Tehran, and it will give our partners and allies in the region the space and security they need to deepen their economic and security ties.
Whether within Iran, across the Middle East, or elsewhere, the return of President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign is tremendous news for lovers of liberty – but his team should not stop there.
Iran is not our only vulnerable adversary: Putin’s wartime economy is on life support, and the Chinese Communist Party’s centrally-planned economy is under serious strain. Now is not the time to back off, relieve pressure or seek deals – now is the time to secure a better future for the United States and the world.
President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign worked once against Iran, and it will work again; he should expand this strategy beyond the regime in Tehran.