President Trump restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran on Tuesday, using a visit from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as the moment to ramp up an economic campaign intended to force the country into a series of concessions, including giving up its nuclear program.
The details of the executive order were not immediately released by the White House, so it is not clear what form it takes. But Mr. Trump, who has previously indicated an interest in opening negotiations with Iran, professed to be hesitant to sign it.
“So this is one I’m torn about,” he told reporters. “Everyone wants me to sign it. I’ll do that.” But he said he was “unhappy to do it.”
“We have to be strong and firm,” he added, “and I hope that it’s not going to have to be used in any great measure at all.”
He appeared to be all but inviting Iran to negotiate a new deal to dismantle the nuclear infrastructure it has rebuilt in recent years. But any agreement would most likely go beyond that, limiting Iran’s provision of money and aid to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
It is far from clear that a new pressure campaign will work: Mr. Trump also attempted maximum pressure in 2018, after he withdrew the United States from the nuclear accord that Iran had struck with the Obama administration three years earlier. Mr. Trump still claims that was a major victory, but most outside analysts say it backfired. European powers never went along with it, and eventually Iran pulled out of the accord and has since built a capability to race for a bomb.
In recent years, Iran has resumed enriching uranium on a large scale, work that was largely prohibited, except in small amounts, under the 2015 agreement. And by the estimate of nuclear inspectors and outside experts, it now has produced enough uranium, enriched just short of bomb grade, to make four or more weapons.
In an executive order on Tuesday, Mr. Trump called for cutting off oil shipments from Iran, much of them headed to China. The Chinese refused to go along with U.S.-led sanctions, and Mr. Trump has accused President Joseph R. Biden Jr. of looking the other way while Iran found ways around existing sanctions.
But Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu see an opportunity.
In the view of American and Israeli officials, Iran has never been weaker than it is today. Hamas and Hezbollah, which Tehran has funded and armed, have lost their leadership and their ability to strike Israel. Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, has fled to Moscow, and his country is no longer an easy, covert route to supply the militant groups with Iranian weapons.
In October, an Israeli counterstrike on Iran took out the missile defenses around Tehran and some of the nuclear facilities. It also struck the giant mixing devices that make fuel for new missiles, crippling Iranian production. The result is that the residential and office compounds for Iranian leadership would be essentially unprotected in an Israeli strike, and the number of missiles they would have to retaliate would be limited to what has already been manufactured.
Mr. Trump has indicated that he is in no hurry to get into a direct conflict with Iran, and he seems open to a negotiation. When asked just after his inauguration whether he would support an Israeli strike on the facilities, he said: “Hopefully that can be worked out without having to worry about it. It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step.” Iran, he hoped, will “make a deal.”
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who entered office in July after his predecessor was killed in a helicopter crash, has repeatedly said that he, too, would like to negotiate a new arrangement.
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