RFERL:

What is the Trump administration trying to achieve in Iran? More than two-and-a-half years after candidate Trump made Iran a centerpiece of his foreign-policy platform on the presidential campaign trail, and over a year after Iran emerged as one of his administration’s core international priorities, there is still a great deal of confusion about what, exactly, the White House is seeking to accomplish vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic.

The confusion is understandable, because so far the Administration appears to have embraced at least three separate approaches.

The first, articulated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his May 2018 speech before the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, envisions Iranian acquiescence to a range of invasive demands – from the withdrawal of its troops from Syria to permitting greater inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities and ballistic missile arsenal – as a prerequisite for diplomatic normalization between Washington and Tehran.

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