Donald Trump used his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to once again boast about the outcomes of pressuring Iran during his first time but stopped short of talking about his current plans for dealing with Tehran's rulers.
"Iran was broke. They had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah. They had no money to give. Everybody knows that...They were not giving money around," the US president said in his Saturday speech outside Washington DC.
He had previously made similar remarks about how his “maximum pressure” policy against the Islamic Republic helped reduce the country's oil sales and strip it of enough funds to sponsor its armed allies in the Middle East.
Trump has long argued that the deadly attack launched by Tehran-backed Hamas militants against Israel on October 7, 2023, would have never happened if he were in office.
"And when I got out, they took all the sanctions off, Biden, and Iran became rich very quickly. With oil, you can become rich very, very quickly. And the rest is history. What a horrible thing," Trump told the CPAC, criticizing his predecessor Joe Biden for what Republicans call a lax enforcement of US sanctions on Iran.
Data from oil tanker tracking firms reveal that during Joe Biden's presidency, Iran exported approximately 2 billion barrels of oil—a significant increase compared to the volumes recorded between 2019 and 2021.
Details from Kpler, a commodity intelligence company, reveal that Iran, whose daily oil exports had fallen below 400,000 barrels in January 2021, at the start of the Biden Administration, exported 1.6 million barrels daily last year.
Trump this month reinstated the maximum pressure campaign on Iran with the stated aim of driving its oil sales to zero, warning of "catastrophic" consequences if Tehran does not make a deal with the US on its nuclear program.
After restoring the sanctions policy, he said he would prefer a deal with Tehran to an Israeli attack on their nuclear sites.
Trump, however, refrained from addressing the issue in his speech at the CPAC.
The meeting was scheduled to host prominent exiled Iranian opposition figure Prince Reza Pahlavi but he cancelled his speech citing family commitments.
