What began as a year of resilience for Iran ended with the tide unmistakably turned against the Islamic Republic. Its Axis of Resistance is shattered, its currency is in freefall, its major cities face crippling power outages and natural gas shortages, and the shadow of maximum pressure looms large over the regime.
For the Trump administration, this moment presents an unprecedented opportunity to nudge a regime that has long obstructed Washington‘s plans in West Asia closer to the brink of collapse.
With its proxies thriving across the region at the outset of 2024, Tehran appeared poised at the height of its power and influence. Hamas, its Gazan proxy, had executed one of the deadliest terrorist plots of the century, invading Israel, killing over 1,000, and abducting hundreds. Elsewhere, Iran’s allies had secured dominance over their domestic rivals in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria and were attacking Israel on multiple fronts.
No longer.
Today, Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria has collapsed, Hamas and Hezbollah have lost critical capabilities and leadership, the Yemeni Houthis are weakened, and Shia militias in Iraq are under scrutiny. Gutting previous assumptions about the regime’s resilience, Israeli military and intelligence operations have exposed Tehran’s profound vulnerabilities.
Domestically, the Iranian regime is grappling with a collapsing rial, widespread power outages, and significant natural gas shortages. All this despite possessing the world’s second-largest reserves. One U.S. dollar, worth 70 rials before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, now trades at 820,000 rials. This economic turmoil persists despite $450 billion in exports over four years aided by lax sanctions enforcement under the Biden administration. Rampant corruption, the prioritization of funding terrorism abroad, and gross mismanagement have left Tehran in an increasingly precarious position. Public discontent is also at an all-time high, with low voter turnout for elections and three nationwide protests across 150 cities in the past few years.
This provides the second Trump administration a strategic advantage, provided it implements a robust “Maximum Pressure 2.0” campaign from Day One. Unlike during its first term, when the reimposition of sanctions was delayed for 18 months, the administration must swiftly adopt a comprehensive strategy. This new campaign should center on five pillars: economic, diplomatic, military, intelligence, and political measures.
The incoming administration must rigorously enforce existing measures while expanding the sanctions against the regime. Iran’s economy depends on exports of oil, petrochemicals, natural gas, and industrial metals. Despite the restrictions remaining in effect on paper, their enforcement has been inconsistent. The goal should be to reduce Tehran’s export revenues to a quarter of their 2024 levels by the end of 2025.
This demands a far more aggressive, bold, and innovative approach to both designing and enforcing sanctions — one that increases the cost of sanctions violations using all elements of national power. It also requires expanding the scope of designation by systematically targeting shareholders, board members, and major shareholders of previous and future designated entities.
China, Tehran’s largest trade partner warrants particular attention. Simultaneously, diplomatic and economic pressure on other key trading partners, including Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Germany, should aim to restrict bilateral trade that sustains Iran’s economy.
The United States should push European countries to trigger the snapback mechanism and work to return Iran’s nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council. Diplomatic efforts should also focus on isolating Tehran regionally by encouraging Saudi Arabia and the UAE to reverse rapprochement efforts and strengthen ties with Israel.
A critical component of Maximum Pressure 2.0 should be cooperation with Israel to dismantle the Axis of Resistance and neutralize Tehran’s nuclear threat. While the scope of Washington’s direct military involvement should be case-specific, Israel has proven capable of executing effective operations against the regime’s proxies and infrastructure if it receives political and logistic support from the U.S.
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Israel’s recent successes in infiltrating Tehran’s security and intelligence apparatus should serve as a building block for deeper cooperation between the U.S. and Israel in confronting a shared adversary through covert operations.
The fifth, yet critical, pillar of Maximum Pressure 2.0 should be maximum support for the Iranian people. Having demonstrated their aspirations for democratic and secular governance through protests, the antiregime Iranians are crucial to Washington’s policy toward the Islamic Republic. Supporting grassroots movements within Iran not only exacerbates internal pressure on the regime but also reinforces the alignment of Iranian youth with American values of liberty, equality, and democracy, laying the foundation for a future where a liberated Iran stands as a steadfast ally to the U.S.
Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior Iran and financial economics advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst. They contribute to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
