Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s plan to corral the Iranian regime is drawing skepticism from the administration’s closest European ally.
“I think the idea of a jumbo Iran treaty [is] very difficult,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Monday while traveling in Argentina for a diplomatic summit.
Pompeo outlined a plan to use “the strongest sanctions in history” to force Iran to agree to a “fundamental strategic shift.” That plan will be implemented with or without the support of European allies, he emphasized, noting that the United States will sanction anyone who tries to invest in sanctioned industries.
But Johnson — a leader of the Brexit movement and, in theory, a natural partner for the Trump administration in diplomatic standoffs with the European Union — thinks it won’t work.
“If you try now to fold all those issues — ballistic missiles, Iran’s behavior, Iran’s disruptive activity in the region, nuclear activity — if you try to pull all of those into a giant negotiation, a new jumbo Iran negotiation, a new treaty … that seems to be what they envisage, and I don’t see that being very easy to achieve in anything like a reasonable timescale,” he said.
Pompeo thinks an aggressive sanctions package could cripple the Iranian regime. “After our sanctions come in force, it will be battling to keep its economy alive,” he said. “Iran will be forced to make a choice: either fight to keep its economy off life support at home or keep squandering precious wealth on fights abroad. It will not have the resources to do both.”
And then, by his logic, it’s only a matter of time before the regime folds — either voluntarily or upon the death of current leaders or through domestic unrest.
“I can’t put a timeline on it,” he said. “But at the end of the day, the Iranian people will decide the timeline. At the end of the day, the Iranian people will get to make a choice about their leadership. If they make the decision quickly, that would be wonderful. If they choose not to do so, we will stay hard at this until we achieve the outcomes that I set forward today.”
Johnson rejects the premise of Pompeo’s strategy, which is predicated on the idea that the 2015 nuclear deal enabled Iran to “run roughshod” over neighboring countries by financing the regime’s military and proxy forces.
“The advantage of the [nuclear deal] was it had a very clear objective, it protected the world from the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb and in exchange gave the Iranians some recognizable economic benefits,” Johnson said. “That was at the core of it. The Americans have walked away from that, I imagine we will be discussing, not in the formal session, certainly be discussing with friends and colleagues around this meeting today how to take it forward.”
