Aletho News

The Only Way For America To ‘Help’ Iran Is To Lift the Crushing Sanctions

The Dissident | January 12, 2026

On Truth Social, Donald Trump recently promised to “help” protestors in Iran, saying, “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before, The USA stands ready to help!!”

By “help”, Trump meant unleashing a new American/Israeli bombing campaign in the country to enact regime change. According to the New York Times, “President Trump has been briefed in recent days on new options for military strikes in Iran as he considers following through on his threat to attack the country for cracking down on protesters, according to multiple U.S. officials familiar with the matter.”

In reality, the only way Trump can “help” the people of Iran is by removing the sanctions on the country, which were placed on the country with the explicit goal of causing economic collapse and a mass uprising, leading to regime change in Iran.

In its early days, the Obama administration ramped up sanctions on Iran in a “maximum pressure” campaign.

As journalist Max Blumenthal uncovered, Richard Nephew, who coordinated the sanctions on Iran under the Biden administration, in his sadistic book, “The Art of Sanctions” boasted that because of the sanctions, “Iran’s economy went from GDP growth of 3 percent to a 6.6 percent contraction between 2011 and 2012 . Iranian unemployment and inflation remained in the double digits. In 2012, Iran’s currency depreciated threefold in a matter of weeks, resulting in the hemorrhaging of Iranian hard-currency reserves.”

Nephew boasted in the book that the intention was to destroy Iran’s economy, while running propaganda operations designed to trigger unrest against the government due to the economic situation, writing:

The United States took its surgical sanctions approach a step further in June 2013 with a carefully structured set of sanctions on Iran’s automotive sector, denying Iran the ability to import manufacturing assistance but not spare parts for existing autos or whole cars themselves. Iranian manufacturing jobs and export revenue were the targets of this sanction, undermining the Iranian government’s attempt to find non-oil export sectors and ways of employing 500,000 Iranians.

All the while, the United States expanded the ability of U.S. and foreign companies to sell Iranians technology used for personal communications, helping ensure that the Iranian public had the ability to learn more about the dire straits of their country’s economy and to communicate

Richard Nephew boasted that the sanctions were intended to cause “income inequality and inflation” in Iran in order to “drive up the pressure on the Iranian government from internal sources”, boasting:

With Iran’s population technically able to purchase such goods and imports still flowing in, but with the exchange rate depriving most people of the practical benefit of being able to purchase these goods, only the wealthy or those in positions of power could take advantage of Iran’s continued connected- ness. Hard currency streamed out of the country while luxuries streamed in, and stories began to emerge from Iran of intensified income inequality and inflation . This was a choice, a decision made on the basis of helping to drive up the the pressure on the Iranian government from internal sources.

He also boasts that the sanctions deprived Iranians’ ability to purchase medical equipment and “directly contributed to the deprivation of the Iranian rial”, writing:

In Iran, for instance, there were reports throughout 2012 and 2013 that medicine and medical devices were unavailable not because their trade was prohibited but rather because they cost too much for the average Iranian due to shortages and the depreciation of the Iranian currency. The United States and its partners, through sanctions, directly contributed to the depreciation of the Iranian rial and, consequently, played some part – even if unintentional- in the creation of this problem.

In 2015, Obama ended the “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which loosened sanctions in exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear enrichment, much to Benjamin Netanyahu’s dismay, leading him to give a speech in front of the United States Congress in an attempt to stop the deal. [The US failed to actually implement their side of the deal. In the end the EU never resumed normal trade either.]

Benjamin Netanyahu got his wish in 2018, when Donald Trump, at the behest of his Zionist donors, such as Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson, pulled out of the deal and reinstated the “maximum pressure” sanctions against Iran.

Like Richard Nephew, Trump’s then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boasted, “Things are much worse for the Iranian people [with the US sanctions], and we are convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime”.

Human Rights Watch documented at the time that the renewed sanctions on Iran were, “severely limiting Iranian companies and hospitals from purchasing essential medicines and medical equipment from outside Iran that residents depend upon for critical medical care” and “directly impacted families’ purchasing power, contributing to inflation rates of around 30 percent”.

This time, as Human Rights Watch documented, the sanctions were even harsher than the previous sanctions under the Obama administration, “including doing things like designating some Iranian financial institutions not previously designated and that were previously used to facilitate food, medicine and medical imports”.

Human Rights Watch also documented that, “The Trump administration’s September 20, 2019 decision to impose further sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank under its ‘counterterrorism authority’ severely restricts the last remaining Iranian financial institution able to engage in foreign exchange transactions involving humanitarian imports”.

Elliott Abrams, the Zionist architect of the Trump’s administration’s Iran sanctions, boasted to Israel Hayom that because of the Trump administration’s sanctions, “At the end of Trump’s term, Iran was facing bankruptcy” adding, “If Trump had received four more years, the regime would have faced a choice between economic collapse and mass uprising or halting the nuclear program.”

The Biden administration continued Trump’s sanctions on Iran at the behest of the Israel lobby, never renegotiating the Iran deal.

Since getting into office, Trump has ramped up the sanctions on Iran even further, signing an executive order in February that sanctioned any country that buys oil from Iran with the intention to “drive Iran’s export of oil to zero”. The White House statement in February bragged that the sanctions were intended to “restore maximum pressure on the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and “impose maximum economic pressure” on Iran.

In June Al-Monitor reported, “The Trump administration announced … what it called its most extensive set of Iran-related sanctions since 2018, targeting a ‘vast shipping empire’ involved in transporting oil and petroleum products from Iran and Russia” which, “target more than 115 individuals, entities and vessels across 17 different jurisdictions, including the United Arab Emirates, India, Turkey, Singapore and Switzerland.”

Just as Richard Nephew, Mike Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams boasted would happen, the sanctions helped cause the economic collapse that sparked the current protests, which were soon exploited by the U.S. and Israel to enact their desired regime change campaign.

If, Trump really cared about helping Iranians, he would end his “maximum pressure” campaign on the country, but instead, he cares about launching a regime change war at the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu.

January 12, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism