Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday announced the creation of special new State Department team that will be responsible for drafting and coordinating the Trump administration’s Iran strategy.
The goal the “Iran Action Group,” Mr. Pompeo said, will be to sharpen and strengthen the administration’s current “maximum pressure” strategy toward Tehran by bolstering U.S. alliances with others frustrated by Iranian meddling in various nations across the Middle East.
The development comes as the White House is reimposing economic sanctions against Iran in accordance with President Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, under which the former Obama administration had eased sanctions in exchange for limits to Tehran’s nuclear activities.
The Trump administration argues the deal was a failure because it ignored Iranian ballistic missile activities that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions, and because it did nothing to halt Tehran’s backing of proxy militias in various Middle Eastern nations, including Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.
“The Iranian people and the world are demanding that Iran finally act like a normal nation,” Mr. Pompeo told reporters at the State Department, adding that the new action group will be “a true multinational undertaking” designed to ramp up coordination with U.S. allies against Iran.
The group will be headed by Brian Hook, who has led the department’s policy planning directorate since February. His new title will be “Special Representative to Iran” and he’ll lead a core staff of department officials, backed by a rotating roster of diplomats and regional experts.
Appeared alongside Mr. Pompeo on Thursday, Mr. Hook said he’s already discussed the new group’s policy objectives with representatives from Germany, France and the United Kingdom, during a recent meeting in London.
President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal in May drew scorn from those European allies who’d also signed onto the accord during the Obama years. Administration critics, and some European leaders, have argued the U.S. withdrawal from the deal effectively eliminated the best chance Washington and its allies had to peacefully track Iran’s alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Mr. Hook said Thursday that the Trump administration remains open to negotiating a new nuclear deal that could again ease sanctions on Iran — but only if Tehran end its destabilizing actions in other nations. “The Iran deal as we inherited it … did not address the broad range of Iranian threats,” he said. “Now that we are out of the deal, we have a lot more diplomatic freedom to pursue the entire range of Iran’s threats.”
Mr. Trump suggested last month he may be open to bilateral talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with no preconditions. But the offer was quickly rebuffed by Mr. Rouhani and Iran’s hard-liners, who responded with a show of military force in the Persian Gulf Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which oil is exported to the world by several Middle Eastern nations.
Tehran sent dozens of small boats into the strait in an attempt prove its ability to choke the waterway off should the Trump administration follow through on threats to impose an embargo on Iranian oil this fall. “Mr Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail,” Mr. Rouhani said at the time. “This would only lead to regret.”
“America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace,” he added, according to Tehran’s state-controlled IRNA news agency. “War with Iran is the mother of all wars.”
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.