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 Republic if it doesn’t meet Washington’s demands.

Only Pompeo—who has told State Department employees that in their case "swagger is not arrogance… 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 diplomat said Iran would be "battling to keep its economy 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 unrealistic. 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 abandoned on May 8 by Donald Trump—was agreed to by Iran after the US, its closest allies and many 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 signatories—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.

“Who are you to decide for Iran and the world?”
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 response 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?"

In another response, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that “America wants to pressure Iran to surrender and accept their illegal demands... his [Pompeo’s] remarks showed that America is surely after regime change in Iran”, while a standpoint on Pompeo’s plan issued by the UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson declared that the approach will not work. 

“The prospect of a new jumbo Iran treaty is going to be very, very difficult,” said Johnson. “I think if you try now to fold all those issues – the ballistic missiles, Iran’s misbehaviour, Iran’s disruptive activity in the region and the nuclear question – if you try to fold all those into a giant negotiation, a new jumbo Iran negotiation, a new treaty – that’s what seems to be envisaged – I don’t see that being very easy to achieve, in anything like a reasonable timetable,” Johnson told journalists in Buenos Aires.

He added. “The advantage of the JCPOA was that it had a very clear objective. It protected the world from an Iranian nuclear bomb, and in return it gave the Iranians some recognisable economic benefits. That was at the core of it." Johnson added: “The Americans have walked away from that.”

Pompeo set 12 conditions for Iran to follow in order for the US to assent to a new nuclear deal. These including the withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria and an end to Tehran’s support for rebels in Yemen.

Others are giving the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a full account of the former Iranian nuclear military programme, and giving up such development work for ever (the present nuclear deal allows some development activities to restart in 2025); stopping uranium enrichment and never pursuing plutonium reprocessing; ending the proliferation of ballistic missiles and halting further launching or development of nuclear-capable missiles; ending "threatening behaviour" towards neighbours, including "threats to destroy Israel, and the firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the UAE"; ending support for Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad; ending support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region and ceasing the harbouring of Al-Qaeda members; releasing all US citizens, and those of US partners and allies, "detained on spurious charges or missing in Iran"; and allowing nuclear monitors to have "unqualified access to all [military] sites throughout the country".

Iran denies ever having had an ambition to develop a nuclear weapon or a missile that could carry a nuclear payload and says it is not responsible for the missiles that have lately been fired into Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It has further denied harbouring members of Al-Qaeda, pointing out that Iran is actually a sworn enemy of the group.

All the other JCPOA signatories and the IAEA have said the country has fully complied with the conditions of the nuclear accord to date.

In a series of tweets, Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy programme at the Brookings Institution, said: “Pompeo has not outlined a strategy, but rather a grab bag of wishful thinking that can only be interpreted as a call for regime change in Iran... Note that no other US president has openly sought to effect regime change in Iran. This is a first.”

She added" “This is no longer about Trump fulfilling campaign promises or trying to satisfy his own ego re: a ‘bigger, better deal.’ It’s his infantile approach to foreign policy that purports to solve intractable challenges through the application of maximalist pressure.”

Throwback “to era of Bush junior”
In a further dismissal of Pompeo's statements, Rouhani described the administration of Trump as a throwback "to the era of Bush junior and a repeat of the same statements as 2003." He added:  "The era of such statements has evolved and the Iranian people have heard these statements hundreds of times, and no longer pay attention."

But Pompeo remains determined that his swagger will stand the test of time. Iran, he said, had "advanced its march across the Middle East" since the signing of the 2015 JCPOA. Under the coming sanctions, he said, Tehran will have to choose between maintaining its economy or sponsoring terrorist and insurgent groups in countries like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. "It will not have the money to do both," he said.