The US has trade sanctions on Iran too, and Iran is on the tariff list. I don't think that's it. Some transparency would be helpful.
I'm not claiming his administration's logic is 100% sound, only that there is an explanation that doesn't assume the rather farfetched theory that Trump is an agent for Russia.
I'm not particularly well-versed in this area, but searching for the topic on Google easily found this information on sites such as Wikipedia, WSJ, Newsweek, and whitehouse.gov.