Pompeo’s Upside-Down Worldview

No one can honestly look at the Trump administration's Iran policy and conclude that it has "worked" in any sense except to harm ordinary Iranians, stoke conflict, and destroy Iran's economy.

Pompeo unwittingly admitted today that the worsening crisis with Iran is the result of administration policy:

The last thing I’ll say is there is this theme that some suggest that the President’s strategy that we allowed isn’t working. I would argue just the converse of that. I would argue that what you are seeing here is a direct result of us reversing the enormous failure of the JCPOA [bold mine-DL].

In Pompeo’s upside-down world, the JCPOA was an “enormous failure” when it was actually the most successful nonproliferation agreement on record. They have reversed this so-called “failure” by reneging on the deal and waging economic war on the Iranian people, and the Trump administration has been actively working to destroy a major diplomatic success for the U.S. and its allies. There was little or no chance of a regional war before the administration violated the agreement, and now just such a war is dangerously close to happening. The Trump administration took a region that was already unstable and made it significantly more so, they took an agreement that was working very well and have done everything they can to wreck it, and they have exposed the U.S. and the region to the potential horrors of a major war that had become less likely. This is a catastrophic failure by any rational, sane standard, but for someone like Pompeo it is proof that the policy “works.”

No one can honestly look at the Trump administration’s Iran policy and conclude that it has “worked” in any sense except to harm ordinary Iranians, stoke conflict, and destroy Iran’s economy. The thing to remember is that this is what Iran hawks want, and that is why they take pride in a purely destructive and cruel policy that prevents sick people from obtaining life-saving medicine and increases the chances of a war that would be ruinous for everyone involved. Trump’s Iran policy is a total failure if one assumes that it was supposed to lead to improvements in regional security and advance U.S. interests, but its supporters are interested only in wreaking havoc and inflicting pain.