WASHINGTON--U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will outline a "diplomatic road map" and call for broad support from European and other allies to apply pressure on Iran to force it back to the negotiating table, a senior U.S. official said on Friday, as Washington seeks to chart a course after it pulled out of a landmark nuclear deal.
Rebuffing appeals from France, Germany and Britain, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States 10 days ago from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers and ordered that sanctions be reimposed on Tehran.
In his first foreign policy speech on Monday, Pompeo will call for broad support to address "the totality of Iran's threats," said Brian Hook, senior U.S. policy advisor. Hook said U.S. officials hoped economic pressure from renewed sanctions would lead Iran back to the table as it did a few years ago, leading to the 2015 nuclear accord.
But it was not immediately clear whether the Europeans would support the plan as they try to salvage investment and trade ties with Tehran that followed the accord. Hook said Washington was seeking a diplomatic outcome with Iran and sanctions were part of that.
"The goal of our effort is to bring all necessary pressure to bear on Iran to change its behavior and to pursue a new framework that can resolve our concerns," Hook told reporters.
"We very much want to be, to have a kind of up-tempo diplomacy, one that's very focused and very determined to achieve our national security objectives," he said, adding: "We need a new ... framework that's going to address the totality of Iran threats."
A senior European official whose country is party to the deal said there were concerns that the Trump administration was interested in pursuing "the maximum pressure and brutal show of strength idea" instead of negotiating. "We say that there has to be a negotiating method but if they are purely in the maximum pressure and brutal show of strength idea and they believe it will work because they believe it worked with North Korea then we will have a major problem," the official said.
The threat of U.S. sanctions has already forced some European companies to pull back from Iran. German lender DZ Bank said it will suspend its financial transactions with Iran in July, while French gas and power group Engie also said it would end its contracts in Iran by November.
This week, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions against Iranian finance officials and financiers it said were linked to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
