After pulling the U.S. out of Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear appeasement deal in June, on Monday President Donald Trump followed through on the second half of his promise to raise maximum pressure by reimposing international sanctions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, “The United States will reimpose sanctions that were lifted as part of the nuclear deal on Iran’s energy, shipbuilding, shipping, and banking sectors.” He added, “These sanctions hit at the core areas of Iran’s economy. They’re necessary to spur changes we seek on the part of the regime. In order to maximize the effect of the president’s pressure campaign, we have worked closely with other countries to cut off Iranian oil exports as much as possible.”

While some conservatives have complained that the sanctions don’t go far enough, pointing to the fact that eight nations were granted a waiver from the sanctions to continue purchasing oil and gas from Iran, others argue that this gives the U.S. greater room to make the argument that the sanctions are targeted at the regime in Tehran and not the Iranian people. The Wall Street Journal notes, “Even with the waivers, the expectation of sanctions has already taken 1.1 million barrels of Iranian oil a day off the market. That’s a lot of lost income for the Iranian economy. Note, too, that the Administration didn’t spare the European Union from the oil sanctions following its refusal to cooperate with helping the U.S. renegotiate Barack Obama’s flawed nuclear deal with Tehran.”

On the other hand, The Washington Free Beacon reports, “Iran is being given a pass from the administration to continue nuclear projects at the Arak, Bushehr, and Fordow facilities, all contested sites that have been at the center of Tehran’s secretive nuclear enrichment work in the past.” Evidently the Trump administration values economic pressure over tightening other restrictions at this time. We’ll see if that pans out.

While this latest action may not be perfect, it goes a long way in correcting the course on Iran. Obama helped make this mess and Trump is left working to clean it up, and thus far it’s a good start. Europe’s leaders are likely to continue squawking their opposition, but in the long run, their financial ties to the U.S. will motivate them to get in line and follow along. Remember the ultimate goal here is to see the end of the current Iranian regime’s threat.

Footnote: The Democrats’ favorite anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, was in Iran over the weekend, where he declared, “America has never been a democracy and has always leaned towards the wealthy and powerful class.” He then led a crowd of law students in chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” Perhaps he’d prefer to stay out of our country, then.