Extinguishing Iran: Trump’s Maximum Pressure Campaign

March 17th, 2025

Sophia Amundgaard

On September 16, 2022, 22 year old Iranian-Kurdish tourist Mahsa Amini was detained by Tehran officials for improperly wearing her hijab. Just 56 minutes later, Amini died in custody following an allegedly medically inflicted collapse. In 2024, UN authorities officially confirmed Iranian responsibility for the “physical violence” that led to her death.

Amini’s death invigorated the rise of an Iranian protest revolution in an attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI,) with more than 80% of 158,000 Iranian respondents reporting a desire for an end to his regime as represented in a 2022 poll. Until mid-spring 2023, more than 20,000 protesters were detained, 551 of whom were executed, leading to the dwindling of violent internal opposition. Yet, externally, the war on Iran was far from over.

Sanction Incentives

In solidarity with Iranians, the international community—headed by the United States—implemented a series of ruthless sanctions targeting the IRI, making Iran the most sanctioned country globally until recently and sending them into a two year recession.

Yet, humanitarian safety was not the prime objective of western sanctions; rather, bolstering them fueled an additional desire to prevent the authoritarian theocracy from obtaining nuclear power. In fact, since 2005, the EU, US, and UN have gradually inflated their economic defenses against Iran after the nation repeatedly violated its 1967 Nonproliferation Treaty and 1974 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Agreement, in which it committed and reaffirmed its agreement to halt the development of its nuclear sector.

Iranian Nuclear Development

Despite international opposition to Iranian growth, the IRI has exponentially broadened its nuclear capabilities, holding 274.8 kilograms of enriched, weapon-grade Ukrainian as of February 8th, 2025 in an astonishing 60% increase since an early November 2024 update. According to the IAEA, “42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb”, signifying that if enriched to 90%, Iran could now maintain a fleet of nuclear weaponry.

Trump’s Maximum Pressure Campaign

The threat of Iranian nuclear power has incentivized recently re-elected US President, Donald Trump, to fully suffocate the Iranian economy by reimposing his “maximum pressure campaign.” Paramount to the plan is extinguishing the entirety of Tehran’s oil exports, which reached their highest output since 2018, racking in $53 bn USD in 2024 largely due to Chinese businesses ignoring international sanctions.

Developments in the suffocation of the Iranian economy have prioritized cutting off the nation's trade opportunities. Most recently, the maximum pressure campaign has severed Iraqi oil trade with Tehran, which formerly supplied 50 million cubic meters of gas daily as established in their March 2024 agreement despite the prevalence of international oil sanctions. Although Iraq was, in 2020, granted waivers exempting them from complying with energy sanctions on Iranian oil for 120 days, on March 8th the US failed to renew former sanction extensions to the nation.

International Responses

Interestingly, hours after Trump re-established his campaign, Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, signaled that if Washington's primary goal was preventing Iran from obtaining an atomic bomb, negotiations were “achievable and not a difficult matter”, clarifying that Iran does not intend to capitulate, and that their commitment to the Nonproliferation treaty remains unbroken.

Somewhat contrastingly, the extension of US sanctions has drawn out a strict response from Chinese and Russian officials in concord with Iranian official Kazem Gharibabadi. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Ma Zhaoxu, “emphasised the necessity of terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions… [to] eliminate the root causes of the situation and abandon… the use of force”.

Implications

The fortification of the maximum pressure campaign will likely have astronomical impacts on the Iranian economy, potentially exacerbating its ever present humanitarian crisis. Its prior 2018 implementation caused a 12% GDP decline in a single year and, by July of 2024, cost Iran’s economy more than 50% of its trade value. Even the threat of its establishment has held serious economic implications, with the value of the Iranian rial plummeting to an all time low following the rejection of negotiation talks with the US by Iranian supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

Additionally, the rescinding of sanction waivers towards Iraq poses a perilous challenge to the nation’s economy. With $6.5bn of its $7.5bn 2025 energy budget spent in February, officials estimate Iraq could lose 8,500 megawatts of energy quickly, especially as the nation will likely struggle to obtain a replacement supplier amid an energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine.

Unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, Trump’s concerns with Iran do not revolve around the salvaging of human rights. Yet, the bolstering of isolation-inducing sanctions on Iran under both presidents has and will likely continue to induce destructive harms on the Iranian public, especially considering the IRI is unlikely to significantly redirect funding to revive its ongoing humanitarian crisis as signaled by a lack of government attention in the past despite more than 800,000 Iranians urgently needing immediate humanitarian assistance.