Secretary of State Mike Pompeo presented a sweeping list of U.S. demands to Tehran on Monday and warned Iran’s leaders that their country will face “the strongest sanctions in history” if they continue engaging in malign behavior.
“This sting of sanctions will be painful if the regime does not change its course from the unacceptable and unproductive path it has chosen,” Pompeo said in his first major foreign policy address at the Heritage Foundation. “These will indeed end up being the strongest sanctions in history when we are complete.”
Speaking in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran, Pompeo called on global allies to join U.S. efforts to rein in Tehran—which he said has been emboldened by an influx of sanctions relief from the 2015 deal.
He said the U.S. will apply “unprecedented financial pressure,” forcing Iran to choose between financing adventurism abroad or fighting “to keep its economy off life support at home.” The administration will also “track down Iranian operatives and their Hezbollah proxies operating around the world” and “crush them.” And he said the U.S. would continue advocating for the Iranian people, who he said are subjected to a regime that wastes its wealth abroad and jails protesters.
If Tehran makes “major changes,” Pompeo said the U.S. is open to restarting sanctions relief, diplomatic relations, and more. “These are 12 very basic requirements,” he said. “The length of the list is simply the scope of the malign behavior of Iran. We didn’t create the list. They did.”
Among the demands laid out by Pompeo on Monday: Iran must declare the past military dimensions of its nuclear program and permanently abandon that work, end uranium enrichment, provide inspectors with full access to all sites, abandon its ballistic missile development, end support to groups across the Middle East like Hezbollah and Hamas, and stop harboring senior al-Qaeda leaders, among other conditions.
“Relief from our efforts will come only when we see tangible, demonstrated, and sustained shifts in Tehran’s policies,” he said. “We’re not asking anything other than that Iranian behavior be consistent with global norms.”
Pompeo said that any new Iran agreement must ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon, but stressed also that a new agreement must address the full range of Iran’s “malign behavior.”
“The JCPOA has not ended Iran’s nuclear ambitions, nor did it deter its quest for a regional hegemony,” he said, using an abbreviation for the 2015 deal. Pompeo said the administration would seek a treaty ratified by Congress.
Impending U.S. sanctions, reimposed after the 2015 deal, have escalated tension between the U.S. and Europe. Pompeo warned on Monday that those who violate U.S. sanctions will be held accountable.
“We understand that our reimposition of sanctions and the coming pressure campaign on the Iranian regime will pose financial and economic difficulties for a number of our friends,” he said. “But, you know, we will hold those doing prohibited business in Iran to account.”
The U.K., France, and Germany have said they want to keep the 2015 deal, which means maintaining Iran’s economic benefits. But a number of European firms, spooked by the impending U.S. sanctions, have already said that they will be leaving Iran. French energy giant Total said Wednesday that, without a waiver, it would be unable to continue with a gas project there.
In an effort to maintain investment in Tehran, the European Commision on Friday announced a range of proposed measures, including a blocking statue, which would prohibit European firms from “complying with the extraterritorial effects of U.S. sanctions.” A day earlier, French president Emmanuel Macron said his country is not looking to “start a strategic trade war against the U.S. about Iran.”
“The French president is not the CEO of Total,” Macron said, according to Reuters. “International companies with interests in many countries make their own choices according to their own interests. They should continue to have this freedom.”
