Trump's 'Maximum Plus' Iran Play

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Good morning!

During his first term in office, President Trump asserted that he had exerted “maximum pressure” on Iran, at least in a non-military sense, to end Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The proper description for this week’s latest efforts “is, presumably, maximum plus,” as The Economist wryly suggested.

In all seriousness, perhaps it is. If Trump sought to pressure Iran during his first term in office, this week saw implied threats against other countries that are deemed to have been helping Iran, which was largely expected. On Tuesday, my colleague Hardika Singh discussed the most obvious likely target, China – though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did not identify any countries by name in his remarks. However, the Middle Kingdom is not the only one that experts believe to have provided a (limited) financial lifeline for Tehran. 

Hardika argued that China’s status in global oil markets gives China the unique ability to cause pain to the U.S. economy if it’s forced to  fully comply with U.S. sanctions against Iran. Perhaps more importantly for our discussion today, China believes – correctly, and not just due to its dominance in refining rare-earth materials – that it has sufficient economic leverage to make the U.S. think twice before coming down hard on China for any allegedly illicit oil purchases or financial transactions in which it might engage with Iran. 

China’s not the only one. Other countries that are likely objects of the White House’s ire include Turkey, India, and Malaysia. 

Yet Turkey, which for a millennia has been one of the most strategically important countries in the world due to its key location, has never been one to obediently comply with demand or requests from the West. Or East. Instead, the modus operandi of whoever rules the gateway between East and West has always been to play both sides against each other, and there’s no reason to assume this time will be any different. 

The U.S. still needs Turkey, after all. 

Within NATO, only the U.S. has a larger military, and Turkey is host to the U.S. Air Force’s forward airpower and logistics hub (and, it is widely believed though unconfirmed, several dozen U.S. tactical nuclear bombs). Trump knows this: It’s why he’s signaled a willingness to consider selling Ankara cutting-edge F-35 stealth fighters, even if it received strong opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As for India, the government there correctly sees itself as not just the world’s largest democracy, but also critically important to the U.S. as a counterweight to China. The Trump administration has already been aggressive in its trade stance with India, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reaction to U.S. August 2025 punitive actions over India’s purchases of Russian oil suggest that the U.S. has reached the limit of how much pressure it can exert without consequence: Modi  promptly got on a plane to go visit Xi Jinping and later hosted Vladimir Putin in New Delhi. 

Then there’s Malaysia. Much of the physical logistics surrounding the illicit purchases of Iranian oil involve ship-to-ship transfers in waters off the coast of Johor (where a jurisdictional gray zone complicates enforcement efforts). Kuala Lumpur has far less influence in Washington, D.C., than Beijing, Ankara, or New Delhi. However, the country can very accurately claim that it lacks the military capabilities to do any more to prevent such transfers than it already has. Nor is it a good idea to send U.S. warships to assist, risking a diplomatic incident with both Malaysia and Singapore (a key U.S. defense partner). All of these mean that hitting Malaysia with punitive financial measures is unlikely to have much impact beyond alienating Malaysia. 

That’s not to say Bessent and Trump are wasting their time. The “Economic D-Day” might not cause targeted countries to pay more than lip service to U.S. demands. However, the slight added effect on the already struggling Iranian economy could be a proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Or not. He is almost certainly whistling in the dark, but it’s not unreasonable to consider a question posed by Mohsen Rezaei, the new, hardline Iranian national security adviser. “What does [President Trump] want to do that he has not done before?” It’s clearly not sanctions.

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📧✍️Here’s what a reader commented📧✍️

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