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Donald Trump is back, and so is the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran to “drastically throttle” Tehran’s oil sales.
But 2025 is not 2018. Although Iran was on the ropes then, things are different now.
America’s support for Israel’s campaigns against the Palestinian and Lebanese people has eroded local support for U.S. moves, as many Middle East capitals are doubtful about “maximum pressure” and feel it will increase regional tensions.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are drawing closer since 2023, when they agreed to resume ties. The Saudi crown prince recently spoke to Iran’s new president. Their military chiefs held defense talks last month, and the countries are increasing economic ties.
The presidents of the United Arab Emirates and Iran held their first face-to-face talks in October, and UAE-Iran trade is on the upswing. In addition, Qatar (which shares a natural gas field with Iran) and Iran are trying to broaden their economic ties.
The oil market has changed since 2018 as well.
According to Argus Media, Iran’s oil exports, which were below 500,000 barrels per day through the second half of 2019 and 2020 due to Trump-era sanctions, began increasing in 2021 and have increased every year since.
Iran has expanded its network to bypass sanctions, and has expanded its tanker fleet — so if the U.S. again sanctions Iran, it will find the remaining buyers are “those who do not necessarily fear sanctions.”
After his election, President Masoud Pezeshkian announced his program in “My Message to the New World” and declared his intent to strengthen relations with Iran’s neighbors. He emphasized the need for a “strong region,” said he hoped for “constructive dialogue” with Europe, criticized the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, and urged Washington “come to terms with reality.”
In October, then-candidate Trump declared, “I would like to see Iran be very successful. The only thing is, they can’t have a nuclear weapon.” His running mate, JD Vance, agreed: “Our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran,” he said. “It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”
These are hopeful signs of a desire to reach a negotiated solution, but the U.S. has a habit of abandoning inconvenient commitments, such as its first nuclear deal with Iran.
Iran’s stronger relations with Russia and China have also added to its resilience.
In March 2021, China and Iran signed a 25-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement that enhances bilateral relations and includes $400 billion investments in Iran’s oil, gas, petrochemicals, transportation and manufacturing sectors. In return, China will receive a steady and discounted supply of Iranian oil.
Russia has supplied Iran with Su-35 fighter jets, Mi-28 attack helicopters and Yak-130 pilot training aircraft; Iran has sent Russia drones and ballistic missiles.
Non-military trade is also increasing. The Moscow Times reports, “Russian exports to Iran rose 27% last year, and Russian imports from Iran increased 10%. Both sides have agreed to scale up trade in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, while Russia has pledged to invest an unprecedented $40 billion in Iran’s oil and gas sector.”
Despite its economic problems, Iran increased its military budget. It is signaling it is willing to negotiate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — but not “under pressure.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, clarified that when he told state television, “There is still an opportunity for diplomacy, although this opportunity is not much. It is a limited opportunity.”
In November, the IAEA reported Iran was implementing measures “aimed at stopping the increase of its stockpile [of near bomb-grade uranium]” though IAEA also noted Iran increased its inventory of 60 percent enriched uranium by 60 percent since August 2024.
But the IAEA board is determined to test Tehran’s patience as, two days after the IAEA report, it passed a resolution censuring Iran for insufficient cooperation with the agency.
Iran’s President Pezeshkian says he is open to U.S. engagement: “Whether we like it or not, we will face the United States in regional and international arenas, and it’s better that we manage this arena ourselves.” Shargh, the reformist daily newspaper, editorialized that Pezeshkian must “avoid past mistakes and assume a pragmatic and multidimensional policy,” though others are skeptical anything will change under Trump.
Trump ally Elon Musk reportedly met Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations in November, and addressed “how to defuse tensions between the two countries.” The meeting would not have happened without Trump’s approval.
Trump will not want to start a war with Iran, as he will be sensitive to the impact on the U.S. economy, so sanctions (and the occasional Israeli attack) may be his only options. If so, and if Iran’s economy and oil export scheme is resilient enough, and Russia and China remain constant, we may be looking at years of low-level conflict, to the delight of the American and Israeli hard-liners.
Each side lacks empathy for the other — the result of years of successful propagandizing. All the while, the hard-liners in each capital see conflict as key to their continued influence, and reap economic rewards from the status quo.
There is a deadline for negotiations with Iran: Oct. 18, 2025, sees the end of the sanctions snapback mechanism, “the last opportunity for world powers to return to all the sanctions that were lifted in the [Iran nuclear] agreement.”
If the U.S. wants to expand a new nuclear deal to include ballistic missiles or Iran’s foreign policy, Iran may suggest similar limits on other countries in the region, and then demand the deal be a treaty to bind future U.S. administrations.
The American political class and its media acolytes have only one strategy — more sanctions — and are ill-equipped for peaceable dealings with Iran. If both sides are realistic, throttle the hard-liners, and Iran offers Trump a deal he feels only he could have made, we may see peace, stability and more economic opportunity for the youth of the Middle East.
“Maximum pressure” is a slogan, not a strategy. If Iran says “yes,” what will Washington do?
James Durso is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
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The USA hasn’t lived up to a treaty since the day it came into existence. They aren’t going to start now. They IAEA has been a joke for some time, jumping on Iran for developing its nuclear non-weapons programmes, while ignoring that the US is in violation of the NPT, because it can’t locate all of its nukes. The US led by Zion Don will follow what Israel instructs it to do – attack Iran.
Forgetting the nonsense of the elections. It is quite credible that Trump was again appointed for his hatred of Iran to use it to bomb with nuclear weapons that country that does not have them. He is the ideal candidate for lacking any scruples and would do it as if it were part of a TV show in front of the cameras.
And as much as one observes, that seems to be what is coming now and equally Trump seems the ideal candidate for a new nuclear crime.
In the critical situation that the country is in, it needs a politician like FDR, who did not have a criminal mentality and would not have used nuclear weapons against two defenseless civilian populations if he had lived.
FDR, who did not have a criminal mentality?????
Trumpstein doesn’t intend to “sanction” Iran:
he and his Zionist owners, in concert with Izrahell,
intend to utterly destroy Iran. For which destruction
the IDF air force ongoing liquidation of the former Assad regime’s military assets in Syria is a mere warm-up exercise.
Yes. Iran would love to have some rope back. Things are much worse for the mullahs now:
• Iranian Hamas, crushed
• Iranian Hezbollah, leadership dead or injured, groveling for a ceasefire
• Syria, cowardly Iranians fled
• Palestinian Jews flew F-35’s freely in Iranian airspace
Israel is objectively stronger today than in 2018.
LOL…. No….
Veggie-In-Chief Biden is pathetic. Everyone is stringing him along until Inauguration Day. Trump’s 2nd term is already laying the ground needed for containment of Iranian aggression.
Everyone on every side accepts that Iran abrogated JCPOA while Obama was still in office (1). It is not coming back. Sociopath Khamenei is not negotiation capable. The end of the Iranian theocracy is coming:
-A- Will it become a Monarchy? The enoblement of the current Ayatollah’s son to become Monarch suggests this as a potential outcome.
-B- The other primary option is the “Egypt plan”. Thanks to State Owned Enterprises, the no longer particularly revolutionary Guards Corps are steeped capitalism. And, containment is bad for business.
If you do not like A or B, feel free to suggest your own scenarios for displacement of the pathetic and unloved theocracy. There are other ways for the mullahs to be disempowered.
PEACE 😇
__________
(1) https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14910/iran-nuclear-deal-violations
America took over from Britain. Britain took over from Ottoman. New order in MEwill be incoroprated under the Zionist. Ottoman stayed for long .Britain lost in less than 50 years. America manged to hold it not any longer than Britain did . Both Britain and America faced violent resistance in one form or another .Zionism . will face same . To dilute the ethnocentirc resistance,Zionist will invite swarthy Indians,black Nigerians,Ethiopians,South Sudanese and Eritrean .
Europe will not be able to do much except drowning itself in anti -islamic polemic,conceding to Chinese power, and staying into constant flux of rivarly around history,language,resiurces,and alliances to foreign powers . American jews will migrate because of the realization of the Christians what Ziinist have wrought on them. Chances are the end time Protestants will survive on the fringes totally dependent on lootings by the Ziinists. American demography for years to come will continue to hate Jews .This fissures will lead to creations of puppets by Jews and fragmentation of America. Russia will continue to shrink in power and demography.Its alliances with Jews will suffer but the Jews will impose same system on it that Jews have on US.
In this equilibrium, corruption in Israel will sink deeeper.Religious fights will grow more ferocious and make it vulnerable to foreign meddlings and will lead to many compromises.Israel will be managed by foreign ethnic lobbies as Ottoman in the past was and America in the current are.
It will suffer same fate but much worst unless Jews can purge the history of its behaviors stretching back to 1948. It has already erased the history predating 1948.
The US government needs to start serving the American people, instead of serving Israel.
America’s enemy is Al-Qaeda and its offshoots. They attacked the American homeland on 9/11.
Those who have never attacked the American homeland, including Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi PMF, and the Palestinian resistance, are not America’s enemies. Quite the contrary – they are potential allies against Al-Qaeda.
As part of an urgent strategy to prevent the spread of Al-Qaeda from Syria to Lebanon, Iraq or Yemen, we should immediately cease all hostilities against the Axis of Resistance:
We should end all US military activity directed against the Axis of Resistance.
We should end all economic sanctions against nations which have a history of fighting against Al-Qaeda, including Russia and Iran.
We should end all military foreign aid to nations which have a history of assisting Al-Qaeda, including Israel and Ukraine.
Militant groups which have a history of fighting against Al-Qaeda, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Palestinian resistance, should be removed from the list of terrorist organizations.
(But obviously Al-Qaeda and its offshoots, including HTS, AQAP, ISIS and ISIS-K, must be kept on the list of terrorist organizations!)
Furthermore, an Iranian nuclear arsenal is not a particularly troubling prospect, given Iran’s history of moderation and restraint. The existing nuclear arsenals of Pakistan and Israel are far more worrisome, given Pakistan’s history of harboring Al-Qaeda leaders and Israel’s “Samson Option”. If nuclear non-proliferation is a priority, we should start by pressuring Israel and Pakistan to surrender their existing nuclear arsenals, rather than worrying about a potential future Iranian nuclear arsenal.
Can’t understand why Ron Unz ran this piece. It’s been completely overtaken by the collapse of Syria.
Why not? It’s the only protection against USrael.
So why does the Tribe constantly kvetch about the “occasional attacks” fomented against it over millennia?
Finally, what did WWII Germany do that Matzonia hasn’t for the past 76 years?
Bibi channels Adolf.