David Maddox
The Independent / January 9, 2025
Trump’s former secretary of state and foreign policy chief told an Iranian pro-democracy conference in Paris that the change of administration in Washington will mark an end to the current regime in Tehran.
The “rotten to the core” Khamenei regime is a “paper tiger” whose time is up, Mike Pompeo has told Iranians campaigning for democracy.
Mr Pompeo, a former secretary of state under president-elect Donald Trump, made the comments while addressing a conference held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Paris just ahead of his former boss being inaugurated as US president on 20 January.
It comes as Trump has already outlined a bellicose new foreign policy with a warning to Tehran’s Hamas allies that the US will take severe action against Gaza if hostages are not released by the time he re-enters the White House.
In his speech, he claimed that President Trump will be “bringing back the maximum pressure campaign” and it will be “the beginning of the end” for the despotic and evil regime.
He promised that “the regime’s end is in reach” as it continues to suffer from “dysfunction of the highest order”. He condemned the nature of the regime, explaining how “the ayatollah’s cronies care more about fomenting war against their enemies and their radical theology than they do about basic sustenance for their own people.”
Pointing to the utter failure Iran’s proxy forces during 2024, he claimed that “all the regime’s bluster about the extent of its power and influence has been revealed for what you all knew it was, a grand lie… The Ayatollah, the Wizard in Iran, has now been revealed for what he truly is, a corrupt character who only rules by fear and terror.”
Pompeo said that he believes that “human decency will triumph” over the Iranian regime who have “committed such atrocities and such horrors” against the Iranian people and the wider world.
He said that US support for efforts to topple the “fragile” regime was just around the corner and told the NCRI to keep fighting, praising their efforts as the actions of “freedom fighters of the highest order”.
Trump’s former secretary of state called on the incoming administration to adopt a new policy that includes “recognition of the National Council of Resistance of Iran as the single best alternative to the clerics that are ruling Iran”.
He went on to commend the NCRI’s 10-point plan for a post-mullah Iran, claiming that it “deserves every nation’s support”.
Pompeo continued by saying that Mrs Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the NCRI, “heads a democratic alternative that has demonstrated its capability over now four decades against the Mullah’s dictatorship”.
That alternative is the “one path to the regime’s end, and that is being achieved by the Iranian people and the organized resistance inside of Iran.”
David Maddox – political editor
_____________
UK should back tough Trump sanctions on Iran, report says
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian / January 12, 2025
Former top UK official believes intensifying economic pressure on Tehran would erode internal support for regime.
The UK should back Donald Trump’s expected maximum economic sanctions against Iran as part of an effort to encourage nationals to end their support for the current regime in Tehran, Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary, argues in a report published on Monday.
He writes: “It is not for the west, let alone the UK, to determine who rules Iran. That is for the Iranian people. But we can make clear that the right choice will bring benefits just as the wrong one will bring more of the same.”
He suggests in a foreword to a Policy Exchange pamphlet that the UK should show leadership against Iran by backing what he regards as Trump’s likely policy of a return to maximum economic sanctions against the regime.
“While aligning with Trump II’s maximum pressure against this regime, the UK should also insist that a successor, willing to liberalise at home and behave responsibly abroad, can earn a respectable place in the international community,” suggests Lord Sedwill, who is also a former UK national security adviser. “From crisis emerges opportunity. It is an opportunity for the UK to lead.”
His remarks are likely to anger Tehran as it prepares to stage a second round of exploratory talks starting on Monday with the UK, France and Germany on a possible successor framework to contain Iran’s nuclear programme.
Sedwill’s stance is likely to disappoint reformists inside the Iranian government who want to persuade the west that they are not seeking confrontation and genuinely want to reopen direct negotiations with Europe and the US. Their hope is that sanctions could be lifted in return for commitments not to threaten the west.
Trump pulled out of the previous nuclear deal in 2018 but the UK, along with France and Germany, are staging exploratory talks on Iran’s willingness to scale back its nuclear enrichment.
If the talks lead to an impasse, the three European powers are planning a step-by-step move that will would lead to full UN sanctions reimposed on Iran in October on the basis that Tehran, in breach of the nuclear agreement reached in 2015, is continuing to increase its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Sedwill claims: “The regime is wounded but remains dangerous. It terrorises our regional partners, destabilises global energy and shipping routes, plans assassinations on British soil and is complicit in Russia’s sacking of both Ukraine and 75 years of European peace.
“We know that, whenever given even the barest of choices, the Iranian people choose the most progressive (or least regressive) candidate available. Their tolerance of the regime’s excesses is wearing thin.”
He suggests Iran may be ripe for change, pointing to inflation running at 80% and the disembowelling of Iran’s network of armed proxies.
The Policy Exchange pamphlet, written in part by Sir John Jenkins, the former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, argues: “It should be made clear that the UK would endorse attacks on the Iranian nuclear programme should evidence arise that Iran is attempting a nuclear ‘breakout’ irrespective of the extent of UK participation in such operations.”
Patrick Wintour is diplomatic editor for The Guardian
