Feb. 4: Trump Returns to ‘Maximum Pressure’ Amid New Iranian Nuke Scare

Canada bends knee; NY AG ignores Trump EO on trans care; Elon special government employee

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The Big Story

Shortly before meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump signed what he called a “very tough” executive order reinstating his first-term “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign on Iran, designed to drive the country’s oil exports to “zero.” In a press conference, Trump said he was “unhappy” about signing the order, expressed hope that “it’s not going to have be used in any great measure at all,” and reiterated his desire for a “deal” with Tehran, but said that he had “not so much choice because we have to be strong and firm.” The president went on to emphasize his bottom line, which is that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

As it happens, on Monday, The New York Times published an article on precisely that topic. The paper reported that new intelligence has “convinced American officials that a secret team of [Iran’s] scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran’s leadership decides to race for a bomb.”

According to the Times report, which cites conversations with “current and former U.S. officials,” the new intelligence, collected during the last months of the Biden administration and relayed to Trump’s national security team, indicates that Iranian engineers and scientists are looking for a “shortcut” that would enable them to create an “older-style nuclear weapon” that could be assembled far faster than modern, miniaturized warheads designed to fit on a ballistic missile. This would allow them to turn their nuclear fuel stockpile into a workable weapon in mere months, as opposed to a year or more. The Iranians’ alleged pursuit of a quicker nuclear breakout, the Times reports, comes as the country’s military is exploring “new options to deter a U.S. or Israeli attack” following the near-destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah, the toppling of the Assad regime, and the failure of Iran’s ballistic missiles to penetrate U.S.-Israeli missile defenses.

That may well be. But as Tablet’s geopolitical analyst explained in a conversation with The Scroll, it is worth treating this story skeptically. The first point to stress is that a nuclear bomb is not a mystery of the universe but an 80-year-old technology, well within the scientific capabilities of a country like Iran. The main constraints on producing a bomb are, on the one hand, logistical—acquiring the right machine tools, chemicals, etc—and, on the other hand, strategic and political. The Iranians are aware that their government is deeply penetrated by Israeli intelligence, which has been able to (among other things) assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, infect Iranian computer systems, and kill Ismail Haniyeh in a supposed safe house in Tehran. The Iranians likely suspect that any attempt to create a usable weapon will immediately become known to the Israelis and the Americans and potentially open them up to devastating retaliation in which the Iranian regime would lose whatever nuclear capacity it possesses. But it is also a problem for them if Israel and the United States know that they definitely do not have a nuclear capability, since that removes their deterrent. Strategically, then, Iran’s best bet is to be perpetually close to nuclear weapons without ever really acquiring them—unless, of course, the United States decides to strike a deal that allows Iran to have them for free.

So this “new” assessment is in effect telling us what we already know. Tablet’s analyst was particularly skeptical of the source of the intelligence—namely, outgoing Biden officials, who just happened to feed the story to the Times one day before Trump’s meeting with Bibi. It may be a ploy to sell Trump on new negotiations with the Iranians, based on the supposed threat presented by their more-dangerous-than-ever nuclear program. Or it may simply be a form of ass-covering, as intelligence officials attempt to “correct” the assessments they produced to support the political imperatives of the Biden administration, which the new boss could interpret very differently (For instance, intelligence downplaying the Iranian nuclear threat, produced under Biden in order to cajole the Israelis into lowering tensions, could now be taken as justification for approving an Israeli strike, on the grounds that Washington need not fear significant Iranian retaliation.) Another analyst we spoke to suggested it could be a similar gambit on the part of the Iranians—to pretend to rush toward a new “weapon” in an effort to ensnare the United States in a new round of negotiations.

Trump appears to be open to those negotiations, and he said on Tuesday that he would be open to meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. But even if the Iranians get their foot in the door, they may find out what the leaders of a half-dozen other countries have found out since Jan. 20, which is that bargaining with this version of Trump is not a whole lot of fun.

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The Rest

→Canada will implement a border security enhancement plan that appoints a fentanyl czar, increases surveillance, and establishes a joint security force with the United States to better combat drug trafficking—all at the cost of $1.3 billion—seemingly bending the knee to Trump’s demands in order to avoid the full wrath of his tariffs for at least 30 more days. In a post on X, Justin Trudeau said he had a “good call” with President Trump about the concessions, his tone markedly less hostile than it was on Jan. 9, when he publicly condemned Trump’s tariff plans, as Reuters reported. That change reaffirms Trump’s position that tariffs can indeed be powerful bargaining tools.

→Quote of the Day, Part I:

Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval, and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t.

That’s President Trump affirming the official “special government” employment status and official purview of Elon Musk in an Oval Office meeting, according to a transcript provided by CNN. This makes Musk not a volunteer, but a full-time government employee. According to a Justice Department summary, a special government employee is anyone who works or is expected to work for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period. Musk won’t be paid, according to a White House official privy to the matter, but he has a top-secret security clearance and an office on the White House campus. Though Musk has immense power and a broad mandate to carry out his initiative the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), one can’t help but detect a whiff of Trump reminding his new special government employee exactly who the boss is.

→Quote of the Day, Part II:

The Gaza thing has not worked. It has never worked.

That was Trump during a Tuesday press conference, once again expressing his interest in resettling Gazans in neighboring Arab countries. “I don’t know how they would want to stay [in Gaza],” the president said. “It’s a pure demolition site.”

→New York Attorney General Letitia James, proving that she will be “resisting” Donald Trump even after her lawsuit against the Trump Organization failed to halt his political ascendancy, told her state’s hospitals in a letter Monday that they would be violating state law if they comply with Trump’s executive order halting “gender-affirming care” for minors, the Associated Press reports. Issued last week, Trump’s executive order threatened to withhold funding from hospitals that provide puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and other gender-affirming care to children. In response, major New York City hospital NYU Langone canceled appointments for some children, according to two families who spoke with The New York Times. The families said that many of them believed New York would be insulated from the ramifications of Trump’s order, but the federal government has immense leverage over hospitals; the Times found that NYU Langone received $815 million from the National Institutes of Health in one year. New York was one of the easiest states for children to receive puberty blockers; many hospitals not only have practices dedicated to gender-affirming care but also advertise them on various websites.

It’s important to note that Trump’s executive order isn’t particularly reactionary but places our gender-affirming care practices in line with those of our allies; the United Kingdom, for example, banned puberty blockers for children under 18 last year. Nevertheless, on Monday night, hundreds of people gathered in a park near NYU Langone’s before marching toward the hospital’s entrance to protest the cancellations. The rally was headed by speakers organized by local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and included a rogues’ gallery of New York’s left-wing political figures, including City Council member Tiffany Cában and actress and former candidate for governor Cynthia Nixon, whose son received transgender care from NYU Langone.

→El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has offered the United States the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system to his country, which would accept convicted criminals into its vast prison system for a fee that would be substantial to El Salvador but minuscule to the United States. Curiously, Bukele offered his prisons to not just illegal migrant criminals, but also U.S. citizens. Under existing law, American citizens cannot be deported. The announcement comes on the heels of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s departure from El Salvador earlier today after he struck a deal for Bukele to accept deportees of any nationality. After meeting with Bukele at his lakeside country house in San Salvador for several hours Monday, Rubio said the agreement marks the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement in the world. Bukele made global headlines in 2022 when he declared a state of emergency after his country’s gangs went on a killing rampage, and suspended rights—such as access to lawyers—allowing the government to swiftly arrest 83,000 criminals with no due process. Currently, the State Department describes El Salvador’s prisons as “harsh and dangerous.”

→President Trump is planning an executive order that aims to eventually shut down the Education Department and, in the short term, dismantle it from within, according to three people privy to its contents who spoke anonymously to The Washington Post. The order acknowledges that only Congress can shut down the department, and instead directs the agency to diminish itself. Twenty people from Musk’s DOGE are working inside the Education Department to cut spending and staff. The DOGE probe is seen as a preview of a more dramatic effort on behalf of the Trump administration to make good on Trump’s campaign promise to shut down the department.

→Overriding California’s state water policies, Trump ordered the release of water from two reservoirs in California’s Central Valley, resulting in 2.2 billion gallons being discharged into a dry lake bed. The action has sparked some controversy, as experts argue the discharge does not aid Southern California’s water needs or help with firefighting. California Sen. Adam Schiff called the move “dangerous, stupid, ridiculous and wasteful,” but then again, Schiff had no problem with $32 million being wasted on the Robert Mueller probe into Russiagate, which he actively encouraged and still insists came up with evidence that Trump is a Russian asset.

Trump has claimed that California withholding water supplies made it more difficult to fight the wildfires, according to CBS.

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