President Trump dispatched Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Eastern Europe for another round of talks aimed at ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. Dan Proft played a clip of NBC’s Richard Engel pressing Kushner on why the public should have confidence in his ability to succeed given the lack of resolution in earlier negotiations he was involved in, including Gaza and Iran. Proft characterized the question as cynical, and credited Kushner with a measured response in which Kushner said he and Witkoff are representing President Trump’s approach to negotiations rather than their own, pointed to the Abraham Accords and the USMCA trade deal as examples of past success on seemingly impossible problems, and argued that difficult conflicts do not have simple solutions, but that a willingness to try, even amid criticism, is itself valuable.
For further analysis, Proft spoke with Max Meizlish, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who previously worked at the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Meizlish said Kushner’s broader point has merit given how many overlapping conflicts predate the current administration, but argued the administration has room to apply more pressure, particularly on Russia. He noted that despite the diplomatic outreach in Eastern Europe, the administration has imposed few new sanctions on Russia during this term beyond limited measures against some oil firms, leaving many potential targets untouched and enforcement comparatively weak.
The conversation turned to Iran, where Proft played remarks from Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirming that U.S. forces have struck Iranian tankers in response to Iranian attempts to target American naval vessels. Citing Wall Street Journal reporting and comments from tanker-tracking firm Tankertrackers.com, Proft noted that the U.S. naval blockade aimed at containing Iranian oil exports has proven more effective than Iran’s own efforts to counter it. Meizlish agreed the blockade has sharply limited the flow of newly extracted Iranian oil, but cautioned that an estimated 30 to 40 million barrels of Iranian oil that crossed the blockade line during a temporary lapse remain bound for China, and the U.S. is not currently moving to intercept those shipments. Instead, he said, the administration is focused on cutting off the financial channels that would let China’s purchases benefit Iran’s government, including recent measures against banking access for an Egyptian state-owned bank operating in the UAE, a Turkish financial institution, and elements of Iran’s commercial aviation sector.
Meizlish argued the administration could go further by directly sanctioning Bank of Kunlun, a Chinese-linked institution he said has repeatedly been identified by the Treasury Department as a conduit for funds moving between China and Iran and for facilitating sanctioned oil sales. He said adding the bank to the Treasury’s sanctions list, even though a prior dollar-access restriction in 2012 had little effect, would pressure the bank’s parent, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, to divest and let the institution fail, without the broader economic disruption that would come from sanctioning a systemically important Chinese bank. Proft connected the discussion to the administration’s separate trade dispute with Canada, suggesting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s insistence that no country is exempt from the economic pressure campaign against Iran should extend clearly to China as well. Meizlish agreed, noting that warning letters sent to Chinese banks in April do not appear to have stopped the flow of funds to Iran, and said the administration needs to back its warnings with concrete enforcement action.
Meizlish also addressed the role of the United Arab Emirates, describing it as an important partner for enforcing sanctions on paper but one with what he called a Dubai problem, since illicit financial flows tied to Iran sanctions evasion, Russian sanctions evasion, and narcotics trafficking tend to move through Dubai specifically, in contrast to Abu Dhabi’s more aligned political leadership. He said continued pressure on the UAE to reform Dubai’s financial sector, along with similar scrutiny of Hong Kong, would strengthen the broader sanctions effort against Iran while also serving as a demonstration of American resolve ahead of any future confrontation involving China.