Mike Pompeo has threatened Iran with the “strongest sanctions in history” if it does not comply with a list of a dozen US demands.
In a speech that attempted to lay out the Trump administration’s strategy on Iran after quitting the nuclear deal it agreed with other major powers in 2015, the secretary of state warned that the US would not just reimpose all the sanctions that were in place before the deal, but also pile additional punitive measures.
“The Iranian regime should know this is just the beginning,” Pompeo said.
The speech did not explicitly advocate regime change, but in remarks immediately afterwards Pompeo suggested that it would be up to the Iranian people to end the US pressure campaign by changing their own government.
“I can’t put a timeline on it, but at the end of the day, the Iranian people will decide the timeline,” Pompeo said at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington. “The Iranian people will get to make a choice about their leadership. If they make the decision quickly that will be wonderful. If they choose not to do so, we will stay hard at this until we achieve the outcomes that I set forth.”
Among the 12 conditions laid down by Pompeo were: demand Iran to give a full account of its alleged past work on nuclear weapons development; stop all uranium enrichment; halt launches of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles; end its support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad; withdraw all forces under Iranian command from Syria; and end support for Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Pompeo said the Trump administration would not separate negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme from other issues like regional conflicts and missile development.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
