Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday he’s “convinced” the Iranian people will force their government to abandon its provocative behavior in the face of tough U.S. sanctions, he told reporters Tuesday.
“I’m convinced that the people of Iran, when they can see a path forward which will lead their country to stop behaving in this way, will choose that path,” Pompeo said at the State Department.
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Pompeo, who outlined a plan to impose “unprecedented” sanctions on the Iran in order to force a “fundamental strategic shift” by Iranian leaders, argued that he’s not making any unreasonable requests of the regime.
“There aren’t a special set of rules that we set forward yesterday for Iran,” he said. “We simply asked them to behave the way normal, non-belligerent nations behave.”
To comply with the list of U.S. demands, which range across 12 areas, Iranian leaders would have to abandon central goals of the revolution that brought them to power — “its threats to destroy Israel,” for instance, and a ballistic missile program that the regime came to regard as an existential priority in response to the Iran-Iraq War.
But Pompeo indicated the U.S. has no choice but to force Iran to make these tough decisions.
“Should we allow them to be terrorists?” Pompeo said in response to dubious questions from reporters. “Is that one we should compromise on?”
Pompeo’s strategy relies on success in bringing crippling economic pressure on the regime.
“The Iranian people get to choose,” he said. “The Iranian people get to choose for themselves the kind of leadership they want, the kind of government they want.”
