It’s all over for the U.S. in the Middle East, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said Sunday, cautioning the time has come for Washington to admit defeat against the might of the Islamic Republic.
Boasting that submission is better for America than “unfounded and foolish bragging” to the contrary, he spoke after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined how the U.S. policy of isolation against Iran was working in a speech at the Ron Pearson Center in Iowa.
“We’ve also fundamentally changed the way America treats the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said Friday, adding the Obama-negotiated JCPOA 2015 nuclear deal gave Iran more money through sanction waivers while presenting risk to the United States and others in West Asia.
Pompeo said the Iranian government only responds to strength, not to appeasement, which is why isolation works and Pompeo has previously affirmed he has no intention of slipping back to the soft reproaches of the Obama administration.
“So we flipped what the previous administration was doing. We ditched the deal and implemented a brand new Iran policy,” he said.
President Donald Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from the agreement in May 2018, fulfilling one of his 2016 campaign promises.
“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should never, ever have been made. It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will,” he said when announcing his final decision to withdraw.
In response to Pompeo’s claims, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reports Shamkhani wrote on his Twitter account that it “is for over 40 years that you have taken all your powers for defeating Iran but you are still defeated.”
Admitting failure against Iran is better than unfounded and foolish bragging, he added, although Shamkhani offered absolutely no evidence to support his thesis that the U.S. is in inevitable geopolitical decline in the Middle East or anywhere else, for that matter.