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. Recommended US demands exacting terms for new Iran nuclear treaty 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.