• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Washington’s Iran ‘wish list’ lacks support from allies

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When US secretary of state Mike Pompeo issued a dozen demands of Iran, he described the requests as “very basic requirements” that were not “unreasonable”, but many observers disagreed.

Mr Pompeo framed his requirements as the basis of a grand bargain — seeking to extract massive concessions in exchange for a binding treaty that would deliver lasting economic and diplomatic benefits to Iran.

But critics perceive something far more in the Trump administration’s insistence that Tehran give up everything from enriching uranium to its longstanding foreign policy, or else submit to crippling sanctions: a bid to oust the country’s leadership.

While Mr Pompeo stopped short of calling explicitly for a change of government, his demands were so exacting and so unlikely to be met by Tehran that many see them as proxy for the same thing.

“Ultimately what they’re apparently trying to do is incite, if not directly bring about, regime change,” said Wendy Sherman, the chief US negotiator who helped deliver the landmark 2015 nuclear deal that Donald Trump abandoned earlier this month.

Mr Trump made his promise to tear up the Iran nuclear deal a cornerstone of his election campaign. But he has since expanded his criticisms of Tehran to encompass almost every aspect of the regime, railing against its domestic security arrangements and foreign policy.

Mr Trump’s newest foreign policy recruits — Mr Pompeo and new national security adviser John Bolton — are renowned Iran hawks who have advocated regime change in Iran in the past.

Ned Price, former CIA officer who worked in the Obama administration as special adviser to the president, said the Trump administration issued its demands, which he described as patently impossible to achieve, only to “try to paint themselves with a veneer of reason and pragmatism”.

But Mike Singh, former Iran director at the National Security Council under George W Bush, said Mr Pompeo’s complaints were in line with concerns voiced by successive US governments.

He said the list made neither radical requests nor was tantamount to calling for regime change, but instead argued the main difficulty would be establishing how to achieve such goals.

“The administration is making a bet that it will be more successful countering Iran outside of the [nuclear deal] and with our full sanctions toolkit available . . . that it can do everything in one fell swoop,” he said. “But the downside is allies are simply not on board with our strategy and the distance between withdrawing from the deal and getting to a grand bargain is vast.”

When Washington rebuffed allies’ appeals for the US to stay in the 2015 nuclear deal and backed out, it lost global goodwill that might have helped it orchestrate a grand bargain. Allies are also affected by US sanctions on doing business with Iran.
“Most of us would agree that we would wish for as much if not all of what secretary Pompeo outlined, the question is how you do that,” said Ms Sherman, adding it was obvious the Trump administration lacked European buy-in and had failed to enlist support from China or Russia for the policy. “This is a wish list not a how-to.”

She said that any genuine effort to achieve all 12 things at the same time would make for a complex and very long negotiation that could last “probably decades”.

The long list of demands may also reflect bureaucratic panic rather than any implicit effort to deliver regime change. In the wake of Mr Trump’s decision to abandon the deal and reimpose swingeing sanctions two weeks ago, state department officials have raced to develop a “Plan B” they have yet to flesh out. US officials have not briefed allies on the strategy; they are due to meet European counterparts later this week.

Senior Trump administration officials have looked towards the prospect of succession given the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 78 and in ill health. “Mortality is unpredictable,” a senior US official told reporters earlier this year, saying Mr Khamenei’s death would mark “an open moment for the Iranian people”.

Trump administration officials were taken by surprise when protests against the regime erupted across the country in December and January.

Although they quickly seized on the initiative, they were careful not to endorse the demonstrations in case US support for the protesters backfired. But the administration boosted internet connectivity to overcome efforts by the regime to block popular communications.

Mr Price said the Trump administration was banking on the “misguided notion that the Iranian population is on the verge of revolution” to dislodge the ruling leadership.

Mr Pompeo hinted that popular overthrow might be the quickest way to American affections.

“At the end of the day, the Iranian people will get to make a choice about their leadership,” he said on Monday. “If they make the decision quickly, that would be wonderful. If they chose not to do so, we will stay hard at this until we achieve the outcomes that I set forward today.”