Kaveh Kazemi / Contributor/Getty Images
The Trump administration’s strategy for dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran has been notably assertive since Day One.
Generally speaking, this is the right approach, even though it has been largely avoided by previous presidents. By the time the Trump administration took office, decades of damage had been done by Western leaders who were all too keen to cut a deal with the ayatollahs for the sake of short-term, short-sighted gains, or in the misplaced hope of encouraging the regime’s moderation. The US took another clear step on Monday when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined new measures that will be put into action immediately.
The impulse toward permissive negotiations with the Iranian regime always came with a high cost. Apart from giving away leverage and normalizing Tehran’s behavior — as by providing it with large-scale sanctions relief while allowing it to continue its malign conduct — our dealings with the mullahs have tended to alienate the Iranian people, who are overwhelmingly opposed to the theocratic system under which they have been suffering for nearly 40 years. But the present US administration has not been taken in by the regime’s efforts to downplay this opposition or this suffering. References to both featured prominently in Pompeo’s speech, as well as in various earlier statements by the president.
#IHaveADream 4 #FreeIran2018
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