If the Biden administration is indeed prioritizing lower gasoline prices, one “tool” it has at its disposal is its own policies toward Iran and Venezuela. To date, the Biden administration has not meaningfully broken with Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaigns on either country. Like many other sanctions regimes, these campaigns did not achieve their stated political goals and are widely regarded as failures by experts. Trump’s strategy also provoked a strong response from the international community. The sanctions on Venezuela are opposed by many other governments in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as by opposition movements in Venezuela itself; the withdrawal from the so-called “Iran Deal” by the Trump administration in May 2018 was regarded as catastrophic by many US allies in Europe. More
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kevin Cashman.