February 21, 2025
by Warren L. Nelson
President Trump said very little about Iran in his first 10 days back in office, but after that he chatted away about Iran almost every day for a while, variously denouncing the regime or lauding the people. He got the most attention when he threatened to “obliterate” Iran if the Islamic Republic ever succeeded in assassinating him.
On February 4, a reporter asked Trump about the possibility of Iran assassinating him, as it regularly threatened to do before he won election last November, when it backed off the threats and, in fact, started denying it had ever threatened to kill him. Trump replied, “They haven’t done that [killed him], and that would be a terrible thing for them to do. Not because of me if they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end. 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.” It was yet another hollow threat. Congress would never approve “obliterating” a country, and killing millions of people who opposed the regime that launched the assassination. But, furthermore, no president can issue orders that apply to his successor. If Trump is killed, it will be his successor who will decide what to do.
The likelihood is that the US would invade and overthrow the Islamic Republic, but not rate” Iran. The previous day, when Trump signed an executive order (EO) on Iran policy (see jump of oil story on Page 6 for details), he spoke at considerable length about Iran policy.
“Today, I also took action to restore a maximum pressure policy on the Iranian regime and we will once again enforce the most aggressive possible sanctions, drive Iranian oil exports to zero and diminish the regime’s capacity to fund terror throughout the region and throughout the world.” Then he turned to his standard ploy of blaming anything that is wrong on his predecessors “We had no threat [from Iran] when I left office [in 2021].
Iran was not able to sell oil. Nobody was buying oil because I said don’t buy it. If you buy it, you’re not doing any business with the United States,” he said. But that is not true. In Trump’s last month in office, January 2021, Iran’s oil exports rose to 1.5 million barrels a day, about the same as they were all through 2024. Trump went on. “And Hamas was not being funded.
Hezbollah was not being funded. Nobody was being funded,” Trump said. That also was not true. The Islamic Republic was still funding both groups, even though it had to reduce spending on programs for Iranians to do so. Trump then said he took no joy imposing sanctions on Iran.
This was a theme he first adopted a few months ago—and which did not exactly make sense alongside his threat to “obliterate” Iran. Trump said he “hated” imposing sanctions on Iran. “I want Iran to be peaceful and successful. I hated doing it. I did it once before.
And we brought them down to a level where they were unable to give any money. They had to survive themselves. And they had no money. They were essentially broke. And they had no money for, as I said, Hezbollah. “They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for any form of terror. The—if you call it the sites of terror, they had no money for any of it.
They had to do their own and focus on their own well-being. And I hated to do it then. And I hate it—I hate to do it just as much now. And I say this, and I say this to Iran who is listening very intently, I would love to be able to make a great deal, a deal where you can get on with your lives and you’ll do wonderfully. “You’ll do wonderfully. Incredible people.
Industrious, beautiful, just an unbelievable group of people in Iran. And I know them well. I have many friends from Iran and many friends that are Americans from Iran. And they’re very proud of Iran. But I hated to do it, just so you understand. And I hope we’re going to be able to do something so that it doesn’t end up in a very catastrophic situation.
“I—I really want to see peace. And I hope that we’re able to do that. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple. I’m not putting restrictions. I’m not. They cannot have one thing. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if I think that [if] they will have a nuclear weapon, despite what I just said, I think that’s going to be very unfortunate for them.
“If on the other hand, they can convince us that they won’t, and I hope they can. It’s very easy to do. It’s actually very easy to do. I think they’re going to have an unbelievable future…. I would love to be able to make a great deal—a deal where you can get on with your lives.” A moment later, he said of Iranians, “They’re very difficult people to deal with, as you know.
But if we could solve this problem without warfare, without all of the things that you’ve been witnessing over the last number of years, it would be—I think it would be a tremendous thing.” None of these words lauding Iran and making clear all Trump wants is a non-nuclear Iran were published inside Iran, where Trump is pictured as wishing to crush Iran and its people.
Later, in a posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I want Iran to be a great and successful Country, but one that cannot have a Nuclear Weapon. Reports that the United States, working in conjunction with Israel, is going to blow Iran into smithereens, ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED. “I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper. We should start working on it immediately and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed. God bless the Middle East!”
To many of the people who have watched Trump closely for years, it was clear to them that he wants to open talks with the Islamic Republic—as he opened talks with North Korea in his first term. John Bolton, his national security adviser at that time, said Trump is driven to make deals, as he did when he was a real estate developer.
But Bolton says Trump doesn’t understand international relations and may make a very bad deal. As can be seen in the above quotes, Trump is focused exclusively on Iran’s nuclear program, while his foreign policy staff sees Iran’s aid to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and its ballistic missile program as Iranian policies that must also be addressed in any negotiations.
Some advisers even talk about ending repression within Iran as a goal. (After President Obama negotiated the JCPOA in 2015, one of the major GOP criticisms was that it only covered the nuclear issue and ignored all the other issues the United States had with Iran. Trump has clearly forgotten that.) Iran appears likely willing to agree to intrusive inspections that would keep it from building nuclear weapons.
But restrictions on its aid to allies and on its ballistic missiles may be a bridge too far. President Trump has signaled abundantly that he wants to try negotiations with Iran and he is not disposed to use military action.
His reluctance to militarily attack Iran is actually no surprise to analysts. Though many casual observers have assumed Trump is eager to invade Iran, he has long been opposed to wars in the Middle East and has tapped into the frustration of his base with “forever” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His pledge to his base for nine years has been to stop engaging in warfare in the region. (That does not preclude actionsless-than-war, like bombing selected targets or assassinating people like Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleymani.) In an exchange with reporters on his second day back in office, Trump made very clear that his first effort would be to “make a deal” with Iran by negotiations. He did not rule out military action if diplomacy failed to work, but that was a pro forma comment such as he always makes to try to preserve his image of being a tough man.
Trump was asked by reporters if he would support a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. “I’m not going to answer that,” he snapped, adding that he would be holding meetings on the matter shortly. “Hopefully, that [the Iran issue] can be worked out without having to worry about it [war].
It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step,” Trump said. “Iran will hopefully make a deal and, if they don’t make a deal, that’s okay too,” he said in an effort to keep the Islamic Republic unsure of his actions. The Financial Times commented that some of the president’s recent appointments have established a camp in the administration that wants negotiations with Iran and is skeptical of a strike on its nuclear program.
Michael DiMino, Trump’s new top Middle East official at the Pentagon, was a former CIA official who advocated restraint in dealing with Tehran. Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy, the Number Three post in the Pentagon, has cautioned against any military action against Iran.
Others in Trump’s foreign policy team have taken a more hawkish approach, including national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both members of Congress before January.
However, during his confirmation hearing, Rubio avoided the tough-man talk about Iran that he used as a senator, instead saying he supported “any arrangement that allows us to have safety and stability in the region, but one in which we’re clear-eyed.” It was also noteworthy that Trump barred former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo from returning to the administration. Pompeo was one of the “bomb Iran” hands who filled Trump’s first term.
Another issue still to be dealt with by Trump is the possibility of a renewed ban on issuing visas to citizens of many Muslim countries, including Iran. Another Executive Order instructs senior officials to submit a report within 60 days identifying countries whose vetting and screening processes are deemed too deficient to allow Washington to exclude terrorists who seek visas.
That was the argument used in 2017 when Trump issued his first ban on visas being issued to citizens of Iran and a half dozen other countries. But this new executive order includes a new concept, potentially authorizing the Department of Homeland Security to remove individuals from these identified countries who are already legally in the United States, using ideology as a basis for removal. Perhaps the oddest action Trump took his first week back in the Oval Office was to remove the security protection President Biden had assigned to Pompeo, to Pompeo’s top aide for Iran, Brian Hook, and his one-time national security adviser, John Bolton.
The Biden Administration said all three men faced ongoing threats from Iran because of their support for the assassination in 2020 of Soleymani, the head of Iran’s Qods Force. Trump said: “When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life.” That was an odd rationale given that Trump qualifies for fulltime protection for the rest of his life. Prosecutors have already arrested and charged a Pasdar agent with organizing a murder plot against Bolton.
The lifting of the protection was seen by many as bad politics because, if Iran now takes advantage of this opportunity and kills one of the three men, it will be a political disaster for Trump who will be blamed for putting the men in danger. In addition, Trump’s decision “will have a chilling effect on his emerging national security team,” said Dr. Charles Kupperman, who served as a deputy national security adviser under Bolton during Trump’s first term.
“His new team will face many serious national security decisions that will carry far into the future and their post-government security could easily require long-term security protection based on their recommendations to Trump and the decisions that follow,” Kupperman said. “Trump’s national security team must provide guidance based on their assessment of what needs to be done to protect America without regard to their personal security.”
Trump has a strong animus for Bolton, but the smackdown of Pompeo and especially Hook took everyone by surprise. Bolton parted with Trump on bad terms, wrote a tell-all book about his tenure and has been deeply critical of Trump, including publicly opposing his election last year.
But Pompeo and Hook have been supportive of him. Pompeo briefly considered running for president himself, and suggested that voters wanted solutions, “not tweets,” an oblique reference to Trump’s use of social media for rapid-fire posts. But that was about as far as the criticism went. Pompeo endorsed Trump in 2024 and was deeply critical of Biden throughout his presidency. Hook never criticized Trump. And the Trump transition team even hired him to help review applicants for jobs in the State Department in this second term.
