• MISSION STATEMENT
  • TERMS
  • PRIVACY
The Occidental Observer
  • HOME
  • BLOG
  • SUBSCRIBE TOQ
  • CONTACT USPlease send all letters to the editor, manuscripts, promotional materials, and subscription questions to Editors@TheOccidentalObserver.net.
  • DONATE
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

A Very Bad Sign: Trump team promises ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran, mulls airstrikes

December 19, 2024/4 Comments/in General/by Kevin MacDonald
Air strikes would be a clear sign that the U.S. has been pulled into yet another Middle East war, despite Trump’s general opposition to U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. But war with Iran is exactly what the Israel and the Israel Lobby wants. There are certainly countervailing forces within Trump’s orbit, but there is also a strong contingent of pro-Israel nut cases, several cited in this article. Nothing is certain.  “Like most issues facing the country, it’s difficult to discern what Trump thinks personally as his public comments have been all over the place. In September he seemed to imply that he’d be open to returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal, despite the fact that he destroyed the agreement during his first term and has consistently criticized it. ‘We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible,’ he told POLITICO.”
Mondoweiss: Trump team promises ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran, mulls airstrikes
Members of the incoming Trump team are promising a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, and they’re not ruling out airstrikes.
By Michael Arria  December 18, 2024  3
Michael Waltz speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition's 2023 Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
Michael Waltz speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had a “very friendly, warm and important” discussion with Donald Trump last weekend, during which he told the president-elect that Israel needed to “complete its victory” over Hamas and Hezbollah.

In a statement on the Trump phone call Netanyahu repeated his consistent threat to Iran. Israel, he said, “will continue acting against you as much as necessary, on any front and at any time.”

The meeting occurred shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported that the incoming Trump team is weighing airstrikes on Iran to stop the country’s nuclear program. The paper noted that a military option is under “more serious review” as a result of Bashar Assad’s government falling in Syria and Hezbollah suffering major losses in Lebanon.

When asked about the story by a reporter, Trump declined to answer directly.

“Am I going to do preemptive strikes on Iran? Is that a serious question?,” said Trump. “How could I answer a question like that? How could I tell you a thing like that now?”

Trump recently told Time that “anything could happen” in regards to Iran.

According to the Wall Street Journal report, Trump officials are also working on a “maximum pressure 2.0” plan, that would strengthen sanctions on Iran.

These sentiments have been echoed by a number of Trump’s cabinet selections.

In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump’s national security adviser pick Mike Waltz declared that there would be a “huge shift” on Iran after Republicans return to the White House.

“We have to constrain their cash,” said Waltz. “We have to constrain their oil. We have to go back to maximum pressure, number one, which was working under the first Trump administration.”

Trump’s transition team told VOA Persian that the administration wouldn’t rule out any course of action on Iran.

“The Trump administration is committed to reestablishing peace and stability in the Middle East,” said Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes. “President Trump will keep all options on the table as it relates to the Iran Regime, including Maximum Pressure.”

Alex Pfeiffer, another transition team spokesperson, told CBS News that Trump’s FBI Director pick Kash Patel “was a key part of the first Trump administration’s efforts against the terrorist Iranian regime and will implement President Trump’s policies to protect America from adversaries.”

“The U.S. is ready for a return to President Trump’s MAXIMUM PRESSURE campaign against Iran,” tweeted Trump’s US Ambassador to the United Nations pick Elise Stefanik last month. “For too long, our enemies have been emboldened by the weakness of the Biden-Harris Administration. With President Trump in charge, Peace through Strength is back.”

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that the U.S. goal in the Middle East wasn’t just to reach an end to the conflict in Gaza, but assure that Hamas “is utterly and completely defeated.” Cruz said he believed that defeat would be delivered by Trump, thus dealing an “enormous blow to Iran as well.”

Like most issues facing the country, it’s difficult to discern what Trump thinks personally as his public comments have been all over the place. In September he seemed to imply that he’d be open to returning to the Iran Nuclear Deal, despite the fact that he destroyed the agreement during his first term and has consistently criticized it. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible,” he told POLITICO.

That same month he threatened to blow Iran’s largest cities to “smithereens” if the country was involved in any plots to harm a U.S. president or presidential candidate.

During a phone call with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Director-General Rafael Grossi this month, Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the country was prepared to cooperate with the United Nations’s nuclear regulations.

Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special representative for Iran during his first term, has called on his more hawkish picks to steer the future president away from any sort of deal.

“I’m just hoping that people like Waltz and [Trump Secretary of State pick Marco] Rubio will say to the president when he becomes president again, this is the Iranian game,” said Abrams. “Don’t fall for it.”

Quincy Institute co-founder Trita Parsi told NatSec Daily that Iran might take a different approach to Trump than it did during his first term.

“The Iranians have concluded, perhaps not openly, that they made a mistake during the Trump years,” said Parsi. “They rejected him for a variety of reasons. They didn’t know how to handle it, but it left Trump in a situation in which it became much easier for the Israelis, for the neocons, for the hawks, to convince Trump the only way to get a deal with the Iranians is that you have to sanction them to death.”

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on X
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Share on Vk
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2024-12-19 11:15:222024-12-19 11:15:22A Very Bad Sign: Trump team promises ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran, mulls airstrikes
4 replies
  1. Tim
    Tim says:
    December 19, 2024 at 5:47 pm

    Via RediceTV https://archive.is/6aUq1

  2. Shitting Bull
    Shitting Bull says:
    December 20, 2024 at 3:21 am

    No surprise here, sadly.

  3. Captainchaos
    Captainchaos says:
    December 20, 2024 at 6:02 am

    “A Very Bad Sign” That depends on your perspective. Do you want to stabilize ZOG or destroy it? Attacking Iran could well be the final nail in ZOG’s coffin. If that is the case then I say bring it on. If Trump is a failure, and ultimately his half-measures can only be considered that if nothing more extreme is done, we do have a more radical backup plan. That plan is Red State secession.

  4. Tim
    Tim says:
    December 20, 2024 at 12:00 pm

    As is becoming increasingly obvious, Trump’s election promises are not worth the paper they are written on. There is no longer any talk of the military deporting millions of intruders, as was the case at the beginning of the year, and Trump also ultimately wants to keep the “Dreamers” in the country. https://odysee.com/@gtk:4/WR114:9

    In a recent tweet, his “minister” Musk even explicitly invited “highly motivated and well-educated” immigrants to America, saying it should be made easier. The trick, as everywhere in the West, is now to simply re-label all illegals as legal. This has at least removed them from the all-too-ugly statistics, if not from the increasingly obvious street scene.

    And of course Musk’s pseudo-provocative “Only the AfD can save Germany” is more hot air than the truth. As a member of his cabinet, he himself knows best what his peers, the “populist” faction, are willing and able to achieve. At least not to fulfill the fueled and seduced will of the voters.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14214737/Elon-Musk-tweets-AfD-save-Germany-sparking-fury-countrys-political-groups-linked-Nigel-Farage.html

    Neither Trump nor the AfD will save anything but, as someone aptly remarked, act as an “overpressure valve” to delay and prolong the West’s unbearable decline. Trump’s Jewish financiers knew, of course, that it was necessary to accept his lurid slogans in order to take a significant step towards their main goal of creating Greater Israel through his appointment.

    Has the “Out of Africa” theory, which is supposed to make us believe that we are all descended from “Mother Africa”, now been sufficiently refuted? Perhaps long ago, but this will certainly not meet with the approval of the MSM – that is, the predominantly Jewish and left-liberal media houses – when it comes to publication. https://linkmix.co/32170346

Comments are closed.

Subscribeto RSS Feed

Kevin MacDonald on Mark Collett’s show reviewing Culture of Critique

James Edwards at the Counter-Currents Conference, Atlanta, 2022

Watch TOO Video Picks

video archives

DONATE

DONATE TO TOO

Follow us on Facebook

Keep Up To Date By Email

Subscribe to get our latest posts in your inbox twice a week.

Name

Email


Topics

Authors

Monthly Archives

RECENT TRANSLATIONS

All | Czech | Finnish | French | German | Greek | Italian | Polish | Portuguese | Russian | Spanish | Swedish

Blogroll

  • A2Z Publications
  • American Freedom Party
  • American Mercury
  • American Renaissance
  • Arktos Publishing
  • Candour Magazine
  • Center for Immigration Studies
  • Chronicles
  • Council of European Canadians
  • Counter-Currents
  • Curiales—Dutch nationalist-conservative website
  • Denmark's Freedom Council
  • Diversity Chronicle
  • Folktrove: Digital Library of the Third Way
  • Human Biodiversity Bibliography
  • Instauration Online
  • Institute for Historical Review
  • Mondoweiss
  • National Justice Party
  • Occidental Dissent
  • Pat Buchanan
  • Paul Craig Roberts
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • Project Nova Europea
  • Radix Journal
  • RAMZPAUL
  • Red Ice
  • Richard Lynn
  • Rivers of Blood
  • Sobran's
  • The European Union Times
  • The Occidental Quarterly Online
  • The Political Cesspool
  • The Right Stuff
  • The Unz Review
  • Third Position Directory
  • VDare
  • Washington Summit Publishers
  • William McKinley Institute
  • XYZ: Australian Nationalist Site
NEW: Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition

Also available at Barnes & Noble

Culture of Critique

Also available at Barnes & Noble

Separation and Its Discontents
A People That Shall Dwell Alone
© 2025 The Occidental Observer - powered by Enfold WordPress Theme
  • X
  • Dribbble
Scroll to top

By continuing to browse the site, you are legally agreeing to our use of cookies and general site statistics plugins.

CloseLearn more

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy Policy
Accept settingsHide notification only