Now Europe faces a choice.
President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and the restoration of maximum pressure sanctions are best understood not as a rupture in U.S. foreign policy, but as a return to first principles. States that pursue nuclear weapons, export violence, and fund terror cannot be stabilized through financial indulgence. They can only be constrained by denying them the resources that make aggression possible. Iran today illustrates this logic with unusual clarity.
The core claim of the maximum pressure strategy was modest. It did not promise instant regime collapse, nor did it rely on military escalation. Its aim was instead structural. Cut the regime off from global capital, force tradeoffs between guns and butter, and allow internal contradictions to surface. Critics dismissed this approach as punitive or naive. Yet the sequence of events since 2018 suggests the opposite. The policy worked precisely as designed.
When the U.S. withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran lost more than a diplomatic agreement. It lost access to the international financial system. Removal from SWIFT, restrictions on oil revenue, and the inability to borrow externally transformed Iran into a closed economy dependent on monetary expansion and political favoritism. This did not create corruption, but it exposed it. A system that could no longer hide inefficiency behind foreign credit was forced to reveal its internal rot.
Consider the collapse of Ayandeh Bank in October 2025. The institution was not a marginal lender. It was a regime-connected vehicle for elite enrichment, channeling billions into speculative real estate and prestige projects like the Iran Mall. Its balance sheet was sustained not by productive lending but by political protection. When sanctions constrained capital inflows and the rial collapsed, that protection failed. Roughly $5B in losses were absorbed by the state, forcing the central bank to print money and accelerate inflation already running near 50%.
This episode is often mischaracterized as evidence that sanctions harm civilians. The more precise description is that sanctions removed the regime’s ability to socialize elite losses invisibly. The public paid the price only because the regime chose bailouts over reform. That choice belongs to Tehran, not Washington.
The protests that followed subsidy cuts in late 2025 make this distinction even clearer. Demonstrations did not begin as ideological uprisings. They began as market reactions to scarcity. Bread and fuel became unaffordable. The rial reached historic lows. Merchants closed their shops. What turned economic frustration into political challenge was the visibility of corruption. Citizens could see that resources existed, but were misallocated to missiles, proxies, and monuments to regime vanity.
The brief Iran-Israel war in June 2025 intensified these pressures. Twelve days of conflict did not destroy Iran’s military, but they drained its reserves. Billions were diverted to air defense reconstruction and missile replenishment. Capital fled the country. Confidence collapsed. None of this required US escalation. The costs were endogenous to Iran’s strategic posture. Maximum pressure simply ensured that those costs could not be externalized.
This is the central strategic success of the policy. Maximum pressure weakened the regime without firing a shot. It reduced Iran’s capacity to threaten Israel and its neighbors not by negotiation, but by subtraction. Fewer dollars meant fewer weapons, fewer proxies, and fewer opportunities to buy time.
Critics often respond by invoking humanitarian concern. This objection deserves a serious answer. Sanctions do impose hardship. But hardship is not evenly distributed by default. In Iran’s case, it is concentrated only when the regime chooses repression over reprioritization. A government that funds Hezbollah while cutting bread subsidies has made its values legible. Economic statecraft does not dictate those choices. It reveals them.
Over the long run, this revelation is the only plausible path to durable change. External regime change is destabilizing and illegitimate. Internal accountability is slow but real. The protests of 2025 and 2026 reflect not chaos but learning. Citizens are discovering the true cost structure of the Islamic Republic. That knowledge cannot be sanctioned away.
The contrast with the pre 2018 diplomatic framework is instructive. The JCPOA did not moderate Iran’s behavior. It financed it. Sanctions relief translated into regional aggression, not domestic investment. Funds were fungible, and they flowed predictably to the IRGC and its proxies. Diplomacy without leverage did not buy peace. It bought time.
Maximum pressure reversed that dynamic. It treated finance as strategy. By isolating Iran economically, the U.S. forced the regime to confront its own priorities. The result has been instability, but it is the instability of truth rather than illusion.
There is a broader lesson here for U.S. foreign policy. Firmness works when it is coherent. Sanctions are not symbolic gestures. They are instruments that reshape incentives. When applied consistently, they can achieve outcomes once thought possible only through force.
This does not mean diplomacy has no role. It means diplomacy must follow leverage, not precede it. Agreements made under pressure constrain behavior. Agreements made under indulgence enable it.
This lesson has immediate relevance beyond Iran. Europe today confronts a regime that mirrors many of Tehran’s features, a revanchist state, sustained by energy rents, insulated from domestic accountability, and emboldened by external cash flows. Yet while Washington used maximum pressure to deny Iran access to capital, Europe has continued to send Russia billions in exchange for oil and gas. These payments have not moderated Russian behavior. They have financed it.
The contrast is stark. Under maximum pressure, Iran was forced into painful tradeoffs. Guns competed with bread. Patronage crowded out subsidies. Corruption became visible because the regime could no longer launder its failures through global markets. Europe has refused to impose similar constraints on Russia. Instead, it has treated energy dependence as an unfortunate inevitability rather than a strategic choice. The result is predictable. Revenue flows have softened the impact of sanctions and prolonged the conflict.
European leaders often argue that energy purchases are temporary, that diversification takes time, and that contracts will unwind by 2027. But strategy deferred is strategy denied. Every additional year of energy payments delays internal pressure and reduces the incentive for reform. The Iranian case shows that economic isolation works only when it is comprehensive and immediate. Partial measures buy stability for the regime, not accountability for the public.
Trump’s maximum pressure strategy offers a model Europe has so far declined to adopt. Deny hostile regimes the rents that sustain repression. Force domestic prioritization. Allow internal contradictions to surface. These are not reckless steps. They are disciplined uses of economic power. Iran’s crisis demonstrates their effect. Russia’s resilience demonstrates the cost of avoiding them.
Iran’s crisis is not an argument for despair. It is an argument for clarity. The regime is weaker. Its corruption is visible. Its people are asking the right questions. None of this required war. It required resolve.
President Trump’s maximum pressure strategy demonstrated that economic statecraft can advance US interests while preserving regional stability. It imposed costs on aggression, exposed corruption, and empowered internal accountability. Those are not abstractions. They are observable outcomes.
If future policymakers wish to understand how to confront rogue states without endless conflict, they should study Iran after 2018. The lesson is simple. Pressure works when it is real.
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Excellent analysis of why the Trump administration’s policies have worked so far on Iran and why Europe should try the same towards Russia, both maligned actors in the world. Add to that Turkey and North Korea.