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Eurasia
May 25, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
Pompeo swaggers into Iran picture with “strongest sanctions in history” warning
Will Conroy in Prague
Mike Pompeo, the new US Secretary of State who says his department needs to "get its swagger back", swaggered into the heart of the Iran nuclear deal story on May 21 vowing the US will impose the "strongest sanctions in history" on the Islamic Re- public if it doesn’t meet Washington’s demands.
Only Pompeo – who has told State Department employees that in their case "swagger is not ar- rogance... In our case, it is America's essential rightness... aggressiveness born of the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America's core principles” – once more came up against just about the whole of the rest of the world which says that when it comes to the issues surrounding the nuclear agreement the Trump administration has got it all wrong.
In a speech in Washington, America's top diplo- mat said Iran would be "battling to keep its econ- omy alive" after the heavy sanctions took effect with the US prepared to place "unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime". "Iran,” he added, “will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East".
The difficulty with Pompeo’s envisaged squeeze on Iran is that it may turn out to be entirely un- realistic. The nuclear deal – otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in late 2015 as Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement but unilaterally aban- doned on May 8 by Donald Trump – was agreed to by Iran after the US, its closest allies and many
Pompeo addresses US State Department staff.
other countries put Iran in an economic vice. The heavy sanctions to be rolled out by the US over the next three to six months, on the other hand, do not enjoy the support of the other JCPOA signato- ries – the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – who have instead set out to save the accord.
Of course, many analysts contend that the real aim of the Americans is not to bring Iran to the table
to agree a far wider-ranging nuclear deal, but to exert enough pressure to achieve regime change. But if that’s the case the US may have to persuade other countries not to keep Iran’s economy afloat in the face of the sanctions. China and India, for instance, are by far the biggest buyers of Iranian oil, at around 700,000 and 550,000 barrels per day, and they have shown no sign of being willing to turn away Iran’s oil, the exports of which are vital to its economic well-being. Moreover, in another boost to Iran’s hopes of keeping the oil flowing, on May 18 the European Commission proposed letting EU members make payments for oil directly to the Iranian central bank to bypass US sanctions.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani, a pragmatic- centrist who is under pressure from hardliners who say he should never have trusted the US enough to sign the multilateral JCPOA, issued a defiant re- sponse to Pompeo’s speech, given at the Heritage Foundation thinktank. The world today does not accept that the United States decides for the world. Countries have their independence," Rouhani said in a statement put out by Iranian media. "Who are you to decide for Iran and the world?".