The forty-seventh president wants a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program and faces a big decision if he cannot get it.

by James M. Lindsay

Council on Foreign Relations

One of the many complex foreign policy problems that Donald Trump will inherit when he takes office in just over two weeks is Iran. It is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power, its robust ballistic missile program continues to progress, and it sees the United States as the main obstacle to its domination of the Middle East. How will Trump respond?

That question is easy to answer because Trump has been consistent about his plans: He will return to his first administration’s policy of “maximum pressure.” That effort sought to turn the economic screws on Iran by expanding U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic and ratcheting up the enforcement of sanctions already in place. The goal was not regime change but rather forcing Tehran to limit its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and curb support for the regional militias that made up the so-called axis of resistance.

Maximum pressure certainly squeezed the Iranian economy. It failed, however, to force Tehran to the bargaining table. Even as its economy faltered and its foreign reserves dwindled, Iran continued its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, expanded its support for its regional proxies, and even launched a missile attack against a U.S. base in Iraq in 2020.

Would the maximum pressure campaign have paid off had the Biden administration kept it in place? Trump thinks so. But that is for historians and partisans to debate. The question now is, will maximum pressure work in today’s very different geopolitical context?

The evidence on that score is mixed. Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, have weakened Iran’s position in the region. Its proxies are fewer and weaker than just six months ago. Beyond that, Israel’s October retaliatory air strikes destroyed much of Iran’s air defenses, leaving it open to further military attacks. That vulnerability, coupled with Iran’s economic woes and domestic unrest, may be why Iran’s foreign minister said today that Iran is looking to resume nuclear talks.

By the same token, however, a maximum pressure strategy takes time to work. That could be in short supply, at least when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program. Iran intensified its uranium-enrichment efforts after Trump terminated the 2015 nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated. By most estimates, Iran can now build a small number of nuclear weapons within weeks of deciding to cross the nuclear threshold.

Other great powers will also undermine the maximum pressure policy. China and Russia have both skirted or ignored existing U.S. and multilateral sanctions on Iran. They are unlikely to comply with them now unless they get something significant from the United States in return. Trump may be unwilling or unable to provide that enticement. If Tehran believes that Beijing and Moscow have its back, resistance becomes a more feasible strategy. Tehran could even use negotiations as a way to buy time to address its vulnerabilities.

Even if Iran enters into negotiations in good faith, Trump’s efforts could stumble over deciding what deal is good enough. The ideological diversity of his team, composed as it is of hardliners and American Firsters, makes it likely they will argue over what Tehran needs to concede to make a deal worthwhile. That internal division could torpedo the effort to get a deal.

All of this raises the question of what happens if talks either do not begin or, perhaps more likely, go nowhere once they do. Calls for the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear sites are likely to mount if the maximum pressure campaign does not produce quick results. Trump will also likely hear calls that he should encourage Israel to attack Iran, though Israel lacks the capability to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.

Tehran will be assessing Trump’s willingness to use military force, as well as Israel’s military capabilities, as it thinks about negotiations. Iranian leaders know he ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, spoke on the campaign trail about blowing Iran “to smithereens,” and has said that Israel should hit Iran’s nuclear sites. But they also know that he campaigned against America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East while boasting, wrongly, that he is “the only president in seventy-two years” that “had no wars.” And they have to assess whether efforts by Iranian agents to assassinate Trump, something they have denied, might influence his thinking about military options.

Resorting to military force, whether with direct U.S. action or by encouraging Israel to attack, would be a major roll of the dice. It might succeed beyond its planners’ wildest dreams and usher in a new, more peaceful era in the Middle East. Or, like the invasion of Iraq, it may open a Pandora’s Box of problems that will haunt the region and the United States for years to come. But, and this is always worth keeping in mind, letting Iran continue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs while it rebuilds its axis of resistance has costs of its own.

So here’s to hoping that a return to the maximum pressure strategy works, and we discover that the Trump administration has indeed mastered the art of the deal.

What Trump Is Saying

Trump is famous for his pugnacious and often uncivil attacks on political opponents. So it is worth noting his respectful comments on the passing of former President Jimmy Carter. Trump first posted his “gratitude” for Carter’s service and extended his condolences to the Carter family.

An hour later, he added that Carer had “worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my highest respect.”

Trump Informal Comments Carter Passing

Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters waged a mini-civil war over the weekend on whether to end the H-1B visa program. That is the immigration classification that allows employers who say they cannot fill skilled positions with U.S. workers to hire foreign workers instead. Elon Musk led the chorus of those who favor continuing the program; Steve Bannon led the chorus of those opposed. Trump eventually weighed in Musk’s side, saying that H-1B visas are “a great program” and his properties rely on “many H-1B visas” to operate. It is unlikely, however, that Trump has made much use of H-1B visas, which are for highly skilled workers, during his business career. He may have confused H-1B visas with H-2B visas, which enable unskilled foreign workers to work legally in the United States. In any event, Trump has not always defended the H-1B visa program. In 2016, he vowed to overhaul if not end the program. He tried but failed during his first term. When pressed on the discrepancy in his views, Trump said: “I didn’t change my mind.”

Trump commented on a post by tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who marveled at a chart showing that tariffs have gone from constituting the primary source of federal revenue to a negligible portion. The incoming president declared that Americans “were never so wealthy as” when tariffs reigned supreme.

Trump on Tariffs as Revenue

No, Americans were not wealthier in the 1890s than they are today. They were decidedly poorer. And higher tariffs will not solve America’s deficit and debt woes. The United States simply does not import enough goods for tariffs to generate anywhere near enough revenue to close the annual budget deficit, let alone generate a surplus that will pay down the debt. Stemming the flow of red ink in Washington requires cutting spending and raising income taxes. Full stop.

What the Biden Administration Is Doing

President Joe Biden announced today that he is blocking Nippon Steel’s proposed purchase of U.S. Steel. The decision fell to Biden after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the government entity charged with reviewing major foreign investments in the United States, deadlocked on a recommendation. Biden justified his decision on the grounds that “we need major U.S. companies representing the major share of US steelmaking capacity to keep leading the fight on behalf of America’s national interests.” Trump said last month that he would also block the deal. The issue will now likely head to the courts. Whatever the outcome of that litigation, Biden’s decision has strained U.S. relations with Japan, which is understandably piqued that the United States would see an investment by a close ally as a threat to national security.

The Biden administration announced on Monday that Chinese government hackers penetrated computer networks at the Treasury Department. The attacks targeted the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which handles U.S. sanctions on countries and individuals, as well as the Office of the Treasury Secretary. The hackers somehow stole a key used by the vendor that maintains Treasury’s cloud-based services and then used the key to “override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO [departmental offices] user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it is providing another $2.5 billion in military aid and $3.4 billion in civil and economic aid to Ukraine. This new package exhausts most of the funds that Congress appropriated for Ukraine last April.

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Iranian and Russian entities that it claimed attempted to interfere in the 2024 election. The Iranians reportedly used social engineering techniques to access the computers of people in both parties who had direct access to the presidential campaigns. The Russians reportedly used generative AI to create disinformation that it distributed across websites.

The U.S. Navy this week conducted additional air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. The periodic airstrikes, which began last March, have yet to succeed in their goal of ending Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

What the Pundits Are Writing

Alina Polyakova argued in Foreign Affairs that Trump needs to first increase the pressure on Russia if he hopes to strike a deal with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. She writes: “Trump has said that he aims to pursue a deal with Putin, and he is right to want to bring a lasting and sustainable peace to a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and has destabilized geopolitics around the globe. But to achieve that aim, his administration will first need to get the Russians to the table with a willingness to negotiate and make meaningful compromises that will lead to more than a short-term cease-fire.”

Newsweek’s Tom O’Connor summarized ten overseas conflicts that Trump will face when he takes office. The Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine conflicts lead O’Connor’s list. He concludes that “given the potential for some of the most volatile of these ongoing conflicts to directly impact U.S. interests at a time when the nation is engaged in a global great power competition with rivals such as China and Russia, the stakes are high in the second Trump administration's efforts to revamp foreign policy in order to ‘Make America Great Again’ on the world stage.”

What the Polls Show

Gallup asked Americans to predict how 2025 will go. They were more optimistic about the U.S. economy than U.S. foreign policy. While they see rising stock prices and full employment in the year ahead, they also see a year of rising Chinese and Russian power and an increasing number of international disputes.

The Election Certification Schedule

The U.S. Congress certifies the results of the 2024 presidential election on Monday (January 6, 2025).

Inauguration Day is in seventeen four days (January 20, 2025)

James M. Lindsay
Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and Director of Fellowship Affairs