President Donald Trump unveiled an executive order reinstating a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran on Tuesday, coinciding with a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.
Trump voiced that he was “torn” on signing the order and admitted he was “unhappy to do it,” noting that the executive order was very tough on Iran.
“Hopefully, we’re not going to have to use it very much,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.
The order instructs the Treasury Department to execute “maximum economic pressure” upon Iran through a series of sanctions aimed at sinking Iran’s oil exports.
His first administration also adopted a “maximum pressure” initiative against Tehran, issuing greater sanctions and harsher enforcement for violations.
Fox News reported that strict sanctions were reimposed upon Iran after Trump withdrew from the Iran deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in May 2018. The 2015 agreement brokered under the Obama administration had lifted sanctions on Iran, in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Trump signaled in January some optimism about securing a nuclear deal with Iran, when asked if he backed Israel striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Iran hopefully will make a deal. I mean, they don’t make a deal, I guess that’s OK, too,” Trump said.
“We’ll have to see. I’m going to be meeting with various people over the next couple of days,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 24. “We’ll see, but hopefully that could be worked out without having to worry about it.”
President Donald Trump also promised that Iran would face “total obliteration” if Iran tried to assassinate him on Tuesday — even if it succeeded.
“How close do you think Iran is to developing nuclear weapons?” asked Fox News’ Peter Doocy.
“I think they’re close, I think they’re close. They’re too close. But again, you can go back four years, I would have said they would have had it during this intervening period. But they’re pretty close, Peter,” answered Trump.
Doocy then followed up by noting that Iran and its proxies have threatened to “retaliate against you and your team by killing you guys for taking out [Qasem] Soleimani.”
“Well, they haven’t done that, and that would be a terrible thing for them to do. Not because of me, if they did that, they would be obliterated,” mused Trump. “That would be the end of-, I’ve left instructions: If they do it, they get obliterated. There won’t be anything left. And they shouldn’t be able to do it.”
“And [former President Joe] Biden should have said that, but he never did. I don’t know why– lack of intelligence, perhaps, but he never said it,” continued the president. “If that happens to a leader or close to a leader, frankly, if you had other people involved also, you would call for total obliteration of a state that did it — that would include Iran. So I’m saying this and it’s a very powerful document, but hopefully we’re not going to have to use it.”
