Debate about what lies ahead for the U.S. Agency for International Development could tie into President Donald Trump’s effort to make a new nuclear deal with Iran.
Trump has signaled he wants to avert war with Iran over its push to acquire nuclear weapons and has mounted what he has described as a “campaign of pressure” to move the Middle Eastern country to the negotiating table.
The Trump administration’s decision to ax most foreign aid, particularly USAID funding, may change the tone of negotiations after an NBC News report Wednesday noted the Iranian government is pleased about the White House's recent move to overhaul USAID.
The Iranian state media reportedly celebrated USAID cuts because they benefit opposition groups fighting against the Iranian government. The Hamshahri, an Iranian newspaper, suggested anti-government groups were disappointed by the USAID overhaul because the humanitarian funding backed “counterrevolutionaries.”
Other reports indicated that Iran was “unhappy with the suspension of the funds because Trump’s decision has disrupted ‘human rights’ networks that ultimately work in the regime’s favor.”
The Trump administration’s move to overhaul the humanitarian agency could tie into a national security memorandum the president issued Tuesday announcing the U.S. would seek a policy of “imposing maximum pressure” on Iran.
In the memorandum, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was directed to “lead a diplomatic campaign to isolate Iran throughout the world, including within international organizations,” which could include USAID.
The memorandum was issued as part of the Trump administration’s broader strategy to isolate Iran politically and economically to keep it from building a nuclear weapon, with the president saying he is running “a campaign of pressure” to negotiate a new deal. He "really wants peace," but Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, Trump said.
“If we could solve this problem without warfare ... it would be a tremendous thing,” he continued.
The president’s Tuesday memorandum followed an executive order he signed that redesignated the Houthis, a terrorist entity backed by Iran, as a foreign terrorist organization and directed USAID to end its association with the Houthis.
“Following this review, the President will direct USAID to end its relationship with entities that have made payments to the Houthis, or which have opposed international efforts to counter the Houthis while turning a blind eye towards the Houthis’ terrorism and abuses,” the Jan. 22 executive order read.
Since President John F. Kennedy created USAID through an executive order in 1961, the agency has grown to be the United States’s largest distributor of foreign aid, disbursing roughly $40 billion in fiscal 2023. Most of the agency's top recipients are in Africa and the Middle East, but the recipient of the most USAID funds in fiscal 2023 was Ukraine, which pocketed over $16 billion. As a result of the freeze, payments to Ukraine projects have been paused, and the waiver they filed for an exemption was denied, according to the Guardian.
On his first day in office, Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on most foreign assistance to achieve his "America First" agenda. In the days since, while members of the Trump administration have been harmonious in their criticism of the vast humanitarian aid bureaucracy, they have given mixed signals about the exact path of the agency’s future.
On Monday, USAID’s website went dark, and employees at its Washington office were told to stay home.
The same day, Elon Musk, who has used his role as head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to target the agency for allegedly misusing funds and being “incredibly politically partisan," said Trump agreed with him that USAID should be “shut down.”
However, over the weekend, Trump said he would make a decision about USAID after he removed “a bunch of radical lunatics” running the agency.
Rubio, now the agency’s acting head, said Monday that while USAID's leadership had been “insubordinate” and lacked accountability to the U.S., the Trump administration plan was not “about ending the programs that USAID does, per se.”
“There are things that it does that are good, and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about. It’s about the way it operates as an entity. And they’re supposed to take direction from the State Department, policy direction. They do not now,” he said, later adding, ”Their attitude is, 'We don’t have to answer to you because we are independent, we answer to no one.' Well, that’s not true, and that will no longer be the case.”
If Trump moves to abolish USAID completely through an executive order, as Musk is pushing for, it would face fierce opposition from advocates of the agency.
Congressional Democrats wrote a letter to Rubio on Sunday saying Trump had no legal authority to eliminate USAID.
“Dismantling USAID is illegal and makes us less safe. USAID was created by federal law and is funded by Congress. Donald Trump and Elon Musk can’t just wish it away with a stroke of a pen — they need to pass a law,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday afternoon.
The Trump White House has pointed to what it characterizes as wasteful spending on niche progressive items, such as spending $1.5 million on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities, as justification to overhaul USAID. It has also argued that the organization has links to terrorist groups and adversarial nations, pointing to millions of aid given to EcoHealth Alliance, which the White House says was involved in research at China's Wuhan lab, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to a nonprofit group linked to designated terrorist organizations.
“For decades, the United States Agency for International Development has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” a readout from the White House notes.
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USAID allies say the agency is a global force for good and have attacked the Trump administration for ending what they see as funding for “life-saving” services.
“To be very explicit about what is being turned off, the sort of things that are being stopped are programs that support 20 million people on life-saving HIV treatment right now,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official during the Obama and Biden administrations who is president of Refugees International, told NBC News. “That’s a huge risk to those individuals, but it’s also a risk to the health of the world more broadly.”