“We are experiencing tough times, we have to face the challenges courageously and strongly… we need powerful diplomatic efforts in the Middle East to control Iran’s destabilizing actions in Syria, Yemen and the region”. This was a part of new US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech to his staff, who amount to more than 70,000.

 

The US has a huge capability to weaken and possibly eliminate any regime it opposes, without shooting a single bullet, Pompeo said. Which almost happened to the Iranian regime when Washington imposed further sanctions in 2006 after a Security Council resolution in response to the regime’s insistence on pursuing its nuclear project.

 

Sanctions included banning the export of many goods, including refined oil products to Iran, preventing banking transactions, suspending financial transactions between Iran and most of the world’s banks, and pursued international oil companies to prevent them from production in Iran. Washington prohibited insurance for the Iranian oil tankers and built an electronic wall that blocked all dealings including registering websites and internet services. Without dollars, information, banks and insurance the Iranian regime was stuck; it could not trade, import nor fulfill the needs of its people.

 

The events required complicated diplomatic work, political patience, and well-informed intelligence agencies to make sure that the decisions were being implemented; this is what Washington succeeded in during this period. Due to these immense pressures, the Iranian regime resorted to communicate in private with, after three years of Obama’s administration asking to negotiate.

 

These communications coincided with the Green Revolution in Tehran, which strongly impacted the regime. Then a long set of talks started between the two sides. Iran then had to be more submissive after the revolution in Syria, its strategic ally in the region. In exchange for Iran to suspend its nuclear project for military purposes, the US administration agreed along with its European allies to make a secret deal to lift economic sanctions on Iran while refraining from toppling the Syrian regime. The Iranians, who are skilled in bargaining, had realized that President Obama is ready to give them more in return for the agreement. Thus they took double what they wished for, including large amounts of financial payments which suspended all the hostile campaigns against them and overlooked their military expansion in the region.