US President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders on Tuesday to reimpose “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran and to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the UN aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA.
In an apparent indication of the changes in his foreign policy outlook from his first term, during which he was advised by Iran hawks like John Bolton and Brian Hook, Trump said he was “torn” on signing the order against Iran.
Signing the orders before meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump said the actions were “very tough on Iran,”.
“Hopefully we are not going to have to use it very much, I’m unhappy to do it,” he added.
Trump’s second executive order once again withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council, the Geneva-based rights organization that has been accused of having an anti-Israel bias.
The council’s agenda item 7 makes a review of the “human rights violations and implications of the Israeli occupation of Palestine” a standing feature of every council session. Israel is the only country in the world subject to such an agenda item.
The order also withdraws the United States from UNESCO and from UNRWA.
Washington has had a complicated relationship with UNESCO since the latter admitted the Palestinian Authority as a member in 2011, widely seen as a precursor to full Palestinian membership of the UN.
US law bars government funds from being given to any multilateral organization that admits the authority as a member, and Trump withdrew from UNESCO entirely in 2019 during his first term.
The Biden administration rejoined in 2023, using a loophole to fund a portion of US dues and arrears to the cultural organization.
UNESCO has further been accused of anti-Israel bias over a 2016 resolution about the terminology surrounding the Temple Mount and the Western Wall Plaza, which it referred to as “al-Aqsa Mosque/al-Haram al-Sharif” and “al-Buraq Plaza ‘Western Wall Plaza,’” respectively.
The UNRWA order extends a ban on US funding that Congress imposed in March after Israel alleged that some 30 employees of the aid organization participated directly in the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel and that nearly 1,500 of its 13,000 staff in Gaza are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Trump said on Tuesday that he hopes that the order can spur reform throughout the UN system. “I’ve always felt that the U.N. has tremendous potential,” he said. “But it’s not being well run, to be honest.
“They gotta get their act together,” he added.
