US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently told an audience at the Heritage Foundation think tank that Iran would face “unprecedented” sanctions unless the Regime agreed to certain US demands. This wasn’t just a simple announcement about increased sanctions, but rather a eulogy to the appeasement policy that the US has adopted towards Iran for nearly 40 years.
New US sanctions on Iran and a withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal were key promises from Trump on the campaign trail and they were a long time coming. But there is something different about these sanctions; they are not merely meant as a punishment or to pressure the Iranian Regime. Instead, they seem designed to crush the economy and bolster the Iranian people’s call for regime change.
That’s why the US and its Gulf allies are working together to target Iran and those who continue to financially support the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, including America’s European allies. This will help shorten the timeframe for regime change, but also help end Iran’s military expansionism, which is a danger to all in the Middle East.
Makram Rabah, a history professor who specialises in politics, wrote: “The real menace was never the Iranian nuclear program, which was far from completion, but rather the expansionist sectarian policy, which Sunni extremist factions used as a pretext to recruit and ultimately carry out terrorist attacks.”
Of course, the US will consider a new deal with Iran, but they want a lot more from this one. Pompeo advocated a series of things that the US would require from Iran, including moving its proxy forces out of Syria and ending its support for terrorist groups, but first of all the US wants Iran to admit that it is the cause of much sectarian violence in the region.
This is hardly likely to get a response from the Regime. They don’t care that they’ve caused chaos in the Middle East – that was their intention from the start. And they won’t change their behaviour – they’ve had 40 years to do that. Makram Rabah wrote: “To expect [the Regime] to reform is similar to expecting molasses from the back end of a mongoose, neither realistic but above all unsavoury.”
The only thing left is regime change by the people of Iran
