Pompeo's Iran Pomposity

Worried about a war with Iran?  Don't worry, boys and girls, Mike Pompeo, our new Secretary of State, has a plan to deal with Iran in a peaceful manner. Really.

Pompeo has offered to resume trade with Iran and to restore full U.S. diplomatic relations with that country, provided the Iranians agree to a list of no fewer than twelve demands, copied verbatim here from the al-Arabiya news site (always credit your sources, boys and girls).  They are as follows:

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1) Iran must declare to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a full account of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity.

 2) Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing. This includes closing its heavy water reactor.

 3) Iran must also provide the IAEA with unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country. 4) Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems.

 5) Iran must release all U.S. citizens, as well as citizens of our partners and allies, each of them detained on spurious charges. 

 6) Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

 7) Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias. 

 8) Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen. 

 9) Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria. 

 10) Iran must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior al-Qaeda leaders. 

11) Iran must end the IRG Qods Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners around the world.

12) Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of whom are U.S. allies. This includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to international shipping and destructive cyberattacks.

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Needless to say, many of these conditions would cause the Iranians to surrender elements of a foreign policy agenda that the mullahs leading the Islamic Republic consider vital to Iran's own national security, and although the demands mirror some of the suggestions made by the Europeans, the list is too long and too demanding to make Iran comply with anything.  Twelve demands?  As the French would say, even God Almighty has only ten.

If none or less than all of these demands are met, Pompeo says, the U.S. will impose the toughest sanctions on Iran possible along with sanctions against any foreign company that does business in Iran.  This would theoretically penalize any Americans who do business with a European company that has Iranian operations (i.e., a lot of us) and damage already strained relations with European countries.  Pompeo says he's doing this to help the Iranian people, already fed up with their own government, to rise up against it, but the appearance of American pressure on Iranian society may actually lead many Iranians to show solidarity with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the elected government that serves him.  Our allies might see this as more right-wing American bullying; the fact that Pompeo made is comments on Iran at an appearance at the right-wing Heritage Foundation research group speaks volumes by itself.   

If Pompeo can pull off this strategy without a shot fired against Iran or without harm to the global economy, then I'll be the first person to admit he's a genius.  However, I seem to recall that, in 1914, Austria, after seeing its heir to its imperial throne assassinated in Austrian-ruled Sarajevo by a Serb, made a list of ten demands against Serbia in order to preserve the peace between the two countries.  Serbia agreed to all but two of them, and Austria then declared war.  A week later all of Europe was mobilizing and World War I was underway.   

We Americans, to be sure, have a peculiar hangup with Iran that other countries don't.  Gee, you'd think our diplomats there had been taken hostage for fourteen months or something . . .  :-O