The US warns of the strongest sanctions in history and makes 12 sweeping demands of Iran. In his first speech since becoming Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo unveiled America’s tough new policy on Iran. Tensions between the two countries grew noticeably when President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Iran Nuclear deal.  But Pompeo’s assertive stance goes far beyond the nuclear issue.
Let me deal with a few of the 12 points of demands: first, Iran must declare to the IAEA a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear programme and permanently verifiably to abandon such work in perpetuity.
Second, Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing including closing its heavy water reactor.
Third, Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country.
Fourth, Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and hold further launching or development of nuclear capable missile systems.
As it stands, these are basically terms of surrender. Imagine if Iran had exited the nuclear deal and then demanded that the US would leave the region and stop supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia! It’s really impossible to imagine that the US would ever agree to these.
If the administration truly believes that this is a possibility that should probably also believe in unicorns. The reality is that this was an indirect way for the Trump administration to say that it was seeking a regime change in Iran with regard to all the references that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made to the Iranian people.
And, it’s also quite ironic because these are the same people that the US will now put under tremendous economic pressure as a result of snapping back its sanctions. It will endanger their safety by disabling them from purchasing civilian airplanes and it has barred them from entering the United States. But nevertheless, the message that Secretary Pompeo was trying to put across that there would be no deal with this regime because all the changes he’s asking for are just simply impossible.

What we’ve seen from President Trump since he’s been in office is a certain approach to foreign policy that’s in some ways quite different from his predecessor. President Trump is intent on keeping his campaign promises and this was one of them.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal was Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement. Undoubtedly, that was absolutely the first issue and this is critically important because it’s really all about domestic politics and President Trump himself coming into mid-term elections in November 2018 and then his real election in 2020. So, it’s very much rooted in domestic politics and a key pillar for Trump in his domestic politics to distinguish himself from President Obama.

He very much promised to undo or pull the US out of what he viewed as a bad deal with Iran on its nuclear programme. Trump wants to differentiate himself from former President Obama. He wants to show that he is tough and he can get things done and frankly he’s also a bit heedless of the consequences. He doesn’t believe that many of the consequences that people say would ensue for example from pulling out of an agreement like this really will happen.

In the short term, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the main beneficiaries of the current situation but it’s short-sighted. The idea from the Trump’s administration is that if it puts Tehran under tremendous economic pressure given the impression in Washington that the system in Iran is quite fragile and vulnerable whether that’s a realistic assessment or not. It’s another question. But, the protests that happened in Iran earlier this year and the freefall of the currency in Tehran have given the impression in Washington that the system in Iran is vulnerable. So, they believe that if they could put Iran under economic pressure by definition. The system will have to focus on its internal dynamics and therefore it would have less to do in the region and to invest in the region. This is a misguided calculation.  If one looks at height of the sanctions regime  in 2011 and 2012,  at that time Iran was completely  isolated and seen by the international community as the inflexible party at fault. Iran was expanding   its role in the region----- that’s when it started sending troops to Syria and Iraq.

And, therefore one can come to the conclusion that Iran’s role in the region is not decided by the amount of money it has in its bank accounts. It’s a function of threat perception that it has about the regional dynamics and also opportunities it sees for expanding its influence in the region.

Now this in 2018 and 2019 without having the buy-in from US allies like Europeans or Russia and China, it’s really hard to imagine that the US would be able to restore maximum pressure on Iran in a way that it would either destabilize the system or to push it to behave in a more moderate way in the region.

Tensions in the region are rising and there’s a lot of friction between Iran and the US and the respective allies. And a single miscalculation where there’s no diplomacy can obviously result in a clash that could spiral out of control.

Md. Sharif Hasan is a commentator on international politics, and is currently working as a field researcher on behalf of the Centre for Genocide Studies (CGS), University of Dhaka. He can be reached at [email protected]