US president Donald Trump today appealed to Iran's leaders to accept his offer of "peaceful engagement" and economic cooperation by giving up its nuclear program.
"I want to make a deal with Iran," Trump said. "If I can make a deal with Iran, I'll be very happy. We're going to make your region and the world a safer place."
The White House cast Trump's speech at a US-Saudi business forum in Riyadh as "a major foreign policy address outlining an optimistic vision for the future of the Middle East".
Trump appears to be limiting his demands on Iran, calling for a halt to its nuclear program in exchange for US sanctions relief — a negotiating posture that he once disparaged.
"We want [Iran] to be a wonderful, safe, great country, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon," Trump said today. "This is an offer that will not last forever.
"If Iran's leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors, then we will have no choice but to inflict massive, maximum pressure and drive Iranian oil exports to zero like I did before," Trump said.
Trump upon returning to office has ratcheted up enforcement of oil sanctions against Iran, by also targeting independent refiners in China that for years have relied on discounted Iranian crude.
In the latest action, the US Treasury Department today announced sanctions against China-based trader Qingdao Fushen and against Hong Kong- and Singapore-based companies allegedly engaged in concealing the origin of Iranian oil sold in China.
Trump during his first term set a goal of reducing Iranian oil exports to zero. But Iran since 2019 has developed a sophisticated network of intermediaries and "shadow fleet" vessels, enabling it to continue exporting crude to buyers in China. Recent US sanctions measures have added costs along that supply chain, but China still imported close to 1.5mn b/d of Iranian crude in April. Availability of oil storage in Shandong, China, is the only factor limiting imports this month. Many buyers in China built up Iranian crude stocks earlier this year.
In a major change from his first administration, Trump has authorized diplomatic negotiations with Tehran that both countries say have made progress. Trump since returning to the White House has barred his former Iran advisers from serving in his administration. And his top negotiator with Iran, former real estate developer Steve Witkoff, appears to have discarded the previous Trump administration's approach of adding other complex issues to nuclear talks, such as Iran's missile and drone capabilities or its network of regional proxies, although secretary of state Marco Rubio has suggested that all those issues should be addressed.
A narrow focus on Tehran's nuclear program and an offer of sanctions relief is quite similar to former president Barack Obama's approach to Tehran, which resulted in a nuclear agreement that Trump once blasted as "the worst deal in history".
Whether deliberately or not, Trump's speech today stood out as the antithesis to Obama's 2009 address in Cairo, where the former US president called for a reset of relations between the US and the Middle East.
Unlike Obama, who 16 years ago called on the region to fulfil democratic aspirations as the best way to remedy economic failings, Trump in his remarks today praised the region's autocratic leaders for their economic development skills and said that the US under his leadership would be minimally involved in the region's political future.
"The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neo-cons, or liberal non-profits like those who spent trillions failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad," Trump said. "The so-called 'nation-builders' wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies they did not understand."
Iran, too, can build infrastructure projects like its Arab neighbors if it gives up "stealing people's wealth to fund terror and bloodshed abroad", Trump said.
"Yet I'm here today not merely to condemn the past chaos of Iran's leaders, but to offer them a new path and a much better path toward a far better and more hopeful future," he said.
Trump cited his short-lived campaign of bombing against Yemen's Houthis as an example of the limited US involvement in the Middle East he will try to practice as president.
"My preference will always be for peace and partnership, whenever those outcomes can be achieved," he said.
Trump on 6 May declared an end to his bombing campaign in Yemen that began on 15 March, leaving key questions unanswered, such as whether his ceasefire with the Houthis will fully reopen Red Sea waterways to international shipping.
But in Trump's words, his campaign in Yemen was a complete victory.
"We hit them hard, we got what we came for and then we got out," he said.
