Follow us on social

1280px-secretary_pompeo_delivers_keynote_remarks_at_united_against_nuclear_iran’s_2019_iran_summit_48793609858

America’s Maximum Recklessness Policy Against Iran

Trump administration claims of support for the Iranian people are disingenuous and do not mitigate the effects of their “maximum pressure” campaign.

Analysis | Middle East

In a major speech on Iran on December 19, in reaction to the protests sweeping the country, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proclaimed support for the protestors and announced new sanctions against Iranian officials and their family members. He also designated Iran a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), a status reserved for the worst violators of religious freedom in the world. All of these measures were cloaked, as usual, in the language of support for the Iranian people against despotic theocracy.

Pompeo’s claims of being on the side of the Iranian people are disingenuous. Targeting officials involved in the brutal crackdown on the protests may be morally satisfying. Yet it alone does nothing to mitigate the disastrous effects of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign, such as hampering Iranians’ access to medicines and healthcare. These effects are amply documented in the latest report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

As to the designation of Iran under the IRFA, this has far more to do with Pompeo’s courting of Christian evangelical voters than with a real concern about religious liberty. It’s not a coincidence that to boost his case he singled out the alleged persecution of a Protestant pastor. However, Iranian Christianity is not defined by such incidents, as the experience of traditional Armenian and Assyrian communities in the country demonstrates. If any group does have legitimate grounds to protest widespread discrimination, it is Bahais—yet Pompeo did not even mention them. In any case, Iran’s record on religious freedoms is far better than that of some close allies of the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, where no form of worship other than Wahhabi Islam is tolerated.

Rather than concern for the Iranian people, Pompeo’s speech reflects a barely disguised drive for regime change in Iran. Intentionally or not, the speech followed a memo by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a hawkish Washington-based think-tank, that advocated for the “coercive democratization” of Iran. One of the pillars of this strategy, drawing on Ronald Reagan’s policies vis-à-vis the now-defunct Soviet Union (the way the FDD chooses to interpret them), is the de-legitimization of the regime through denunciation of its human rights record.

Yet this strategy is fundamentally misguided. Whatever the successes of Reagan’s Soviet policies, three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall Russia is not a liberal democracy, but an aggressive revisionist power that many accuse of meddling in U.S. elections. Former Soviet satellites, such as Hungary and Poland, are backsliding toward authoritarian nationalism. And the ghosts of xenophobic populism haunt many other “liberated” eastern European nations. So, even in coercive democratizers’ own terms, the success of Eastern Europe is very qualified at best.

That is not to say that creating external conditions conducive to setting a country on a more liberal trajectory is, in itself, an absurd proposition. But for it to work in the Iranian context, internal agents of democratization need to be empowered—urban, educated, largely secular middle classes and their political representatives in reformist and centrist camps. Yet Trump’s maximum pressure campaign achieves the exact opposite of this. It weakens the moderates, by impoverishing them through sanctions and forcibly disconnecting them from the world through travel bans and denial of access to education and technologies. It undermines their political representatives, such as President Hassan Rouhani, by validating Iranian hardliners’ narrative about America’s implacable hostility toward Iran. Gravest of all, the Trump administration’s policies put in direct danger any activist or dissident who genuinely seeks positive change in Iran, by enabling the Iranian security apparatus to frame them as foreign agents.

Weakening the moderates is not an unfortunate byproduct of a regime change policy. It stands at its very center, as the existence of political moderates still holds out a prospect of a peaceful, evolutionary path of reform in the Islamic Republic. Hence, the Trump administration deliberately intends to radicalize the Iranian protests, as U.S. special envoy on Iran Brian Hook has openly admitted. Unlike the “Green” civil liberties movement in 2009, the protests in 2019 are driven not by the middle classes, but young, impoverished, unemployed, and often under-educated men from the lower strata of the society. Statements by American officials, like Pompeo and Hook, seek to maximize the violent, destructive potential of the protests.

But if the Trump administration succeeds in provoking chaos and the collapse of Iranian state institutions, the beneficiaries are going to be the best-organized, best networked, most ruthless, and best armed factions. These are not pro-Western secular liberals, but men from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), mosque networks, Ansar-e Hezbollah and Basiji paramilitary organizations—i.e., the very people coercive democratizers seek to overthrow. Violent chaos in Iran will easily spread to other countries in the region, as the IRGC has demonstrated a capacity to strike at the interests of the U.S. and its allies, either directly or through proxies.

So the strategy of coerced democratization either belies a monumental hubris in believing that the United States is capable of socially engineering fundamental change in Middle Eastern countries—especially with the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan in the background—or is just a cynical ploy to cover-up the Trump administration’s true geopolitical goal: the removal, through Syria-like chaos, of an actor that challenges the U.S.-led regional order pivoting around Israel and Saudi Arabia. Whatever the real motivations, this is a maximally reckless strategy that, far from bringing democracy and human rights to Iran, will only further inflame the conflicts in the region.

This article reflects the personal views of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the S&D Group and the European Parliament.


Mike Pompeo at the 2019 United Against Nuclear Iran conference (credit: U.S. State Department)
Analysis | Middle East
US Navy Arctic
Top photo credit: Cmdr. Raymond Miller, commanding officer of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), looks out from the bridge wing as the ship operates with Royal Norwegian replenishment oiler HNoMS Maud (A-530) off the northern coast of Norway in the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle, Aug. 27, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Cesar Licona)

The rising US-NATO-Russia security dilemma in the Arctic

North America

An ongoing Great Power tit-for-tat in which U.S./NATO and Russian warships and planes approach each other’s territories in the Arctic, suggests a sense of growing instability in the region.

This uptick in military activities risks the development of a security dilemma: one state or group of states increasing their security presence or capabilities creates insecurity in other states, prompting them to respond similarly.

keep readingShow less
Trump Vance Rubio
Top image credit: President Donald Trump meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance before a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

The roots of Trump's wars on terror trace back to 9/11

Global Crises

The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an "invasion" at the border.

keep readingShow less
President Trump with reporters
Top photo credit: President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Sunday, September 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

Is Israel forcing Trump to be the capitulator in chief?

Middle East

President Donald Trump told reporters outside a Washington restaurant Tuesday evening that he is deeply displeased with Israel’s bombardment of Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf that, at Washington’s request, has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012.

“I am not thrilled about it. I am not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump said, denying that Israel had given him advance notice. “I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect of it,” he continued. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy with the way that went down.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.