Trump Restores ‘Maximum Pressure’ Policy to Keep Iran From Possessing Nukes
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that reinstates the “maximum pressure” policy on Iran that he implemented during his first term.
The “maximum pressure” executive order was part of a larger package of executive orders that included several foreign policy initiatives, such as withdrawing America from several United Nations agencies including the Human Rights Council and UNESCO. Much of the pressure will be financial, as the executive order tasks the Department of the Treasury to implement sweeping sanctions to keep money out of the pockets of the Iranian regime.
Iran is the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, funding and controlling a complex web of jihadist entities including Hamas, Hezbollah, a host of Iraqi Shiite militias, and the Houthi terrorists of Yemen. In 2o18, a State Department study estimated that Iran spends as much as $1 billion a year funding terrorism.
“Iran spends $700 million a year on Lebanese Hezbollah. It gives another $100 million to various Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas,” then-Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism Nathan Sales told reporters. “Combined with the money that Tehran provides to other terrorists, the total bill comes close to $1 billion a year.”
During his first term as president, Trump similarly implemented onerous sanctions on Iran that significantly limited its malign influence in the Middle East. Trump also designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a wing of the Iranian military, a foreign terrorist organization, and eliminated IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike in 2020. Soleimani was largely responsible for coordination among several major Iranian terror proxies, leaving Tehran’s efforts to control jihadist activity hampered. (Read more from “Trump Restores ‘Maximum Pressure’ Policy to Keep Iran From Possessing Nukes” HERE)
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
