In 2016, President Donald Trump entered the White House promising peace through strength. By the time he left office in 2021, Trump had largely fulfilled that pledge without squandering American blood and treasure on endless wars.
But after the humiliating and deadly Biden administration withdrawal from Afghanistan, international bad actors took advantage of American weakness, leaving Trump in his second term to deal with a world even more chaotic than the one he inherited the first go around. Yet, a new Trump doctrine can deal with the now-nuclear threat and stakes that are now existential: Peace through relentless pressure.
No new wars were launched during Trump’s first term. Indeed, he forged the historic Abraham Accords peace deals in the Middle East and destroyed the ISIS caliphate. His maximum pressure campaign weakened Iran, and he eliminated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qasem Soleimani.
While the Biden administration reversed Trump sanctions and enriched the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran today is a regime under immense stress. Its regional proxies — Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and Hamas — have been decimated by Israeli operations. Iran’s homeland, too, is vulnerable at any moment to attack due to devastating Israeli strikes that took out the regime’s air defenses.
And Trump is ratcheting up the pressure.
Inside Iran today, the economy is in freefall, the rial is collapsing, and brave Iranian truckers are clogging the streets in a show of civil resistance the regime cannot ignore. This is the result of the biting sanctions imposed by Trump since his return to office.
Trump understands that the Iranian regime’s greatest threat doesn’t come from abroad but from its own people. He also knows, as former President Barack Obama admitted belatedly in 2022, that the West made a grave mistake by failing to support Iranian protesters in 2009.
This time must be different. From satellite broadcasts to social media platforms, America can be a megaphone for Iranian dissent. The regime fears ideas more than missiles, because ideas are harder to shoot down.
Iran is at the negotiating table because they have no choice. The snapback of United Nations sanctions, initiated by the Trump administration and reinforced by European allies, has further isolated the regime. Even China, Tehran’s would-be lifeline, is feeling the squeeze thanks to the reimposition of secondary sanctions on Iranian oil sales.
These measures are both economic and strategic. Every dollar denied to the regime is a missile that won’t be built, a terrorist that won’t be funded, and a nuclear facility that won’t be finished.
A vital pillar of Trump’s strategy must be dismantling Iran’s criminal-terrorist networks around the world. Iran’s regime recruits gangs in America, spies in Europe, and smugglers in Latin America.
Just last year, Iran plotted to assassinate then-candidate Trump and, in 2022, dissident journalist Masih Alinejad. The regime has intelligence operations in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Its proxy, Hezbollah, has a growing footprint in Latin America through the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina network, sent untold numbers of terrorists into the country during former President Joe Biden’s open border, and Iran is attempting to recruit criminal gangs inside the United States.
Trump must authorize a sweeping, global law-enforcement effort to neutralize these networks. Think of it as Iran’s “Nasrallah moment,” a coordinated takedown that leaves no doubt about America’s resolve.
Still, Tehran continues to act through proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen, whose attacks have targeted Israel and other U.S. allies and interests in the region and Europe. Trump already laid out his vision for a response while visiting the Gulf.
In his speech in Saudi Arabia, he declared, “A modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves … developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way.” In other words, he made clear that Israel and Gulf Arab states have the sovereign right to act in their own interests, including to defend themselves from the Houthis and their paymaster, Iran.
While expressing a desire to reach a deal with the Islamic Republic, Trump vowed in that same speech, “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.” He also warned, “If Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors, then we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero, like I did before … And take all action required.”
The choice is now Iran’s. It can come to the table in good faith, or it can continue its game of deception and destabilization. But the mullahs cannot enrich uranium and also secure sanctions relief. They can’t have their cake and eat it too.
WHERE THINGS STAND ON US-IRAN NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS
While Trump has confirmed that he cautioned Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear sites as the negotiations continue, this actually ups the pressure on Iran. As a master negotiator, he well understands the good cop, bad cop approach. The U.S. is holding Israel back, which implies the U.S. can also give it the green light and join in taking “all action required.”
Trump is not a warmonger but a peacemaker. If he continues applying relentless economic, covert, law enforcement, and diplomatic pressure to Iran, while retaining the options of Israeli and American military action, he may very well achieve the most consequential foreign policy win of his presidency and defuse a perilous global threat.
EJ Kimball is the Director of Policy and Strategic Operations at the U.S. Israel Education Association and a foreign policy and national security consultant.