• National

    Trump Team Doing All It Can to Foment Unrest

    US President Donald Trump administration has launched an offensive of speeches and online communications meant to foment unrest and help pressure Iran to end its nuclear program, US officials familiar with the matter said.

    More than half a dozen current and former officials said the campaign, supported by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the neocon national security adviser John Bolton, is meant to work in concert with Trump’s push to economically throttle Iran by reimposing tough sanctions. The drive has intensified since Trump withdrew on May 8 from a 2015 seven-nation deal on Iran’s nuclear program, Reuters reported.

    The current and former officials said the campaign paints Iranian leaders in a harsh light, at times using information that is exaggerated or contradicts other official pronouncements, including comments by previous administrations.

    The White House declined comment on the campaign. The state department also declined to comment on the campaign specifically, including on Pompeo’s role.

    A senior Iranian official dismissed the campaign, saying the United States had sought in vain to undermine the government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

    “Their efforts will fail again,” the official said.

      More Critical Posts

    A review of the state department’s Farsi-language Twitter account and its ShareAmerica website–which describes itself as a platform to spark debate on democracy and other issues–shows a number of posts critical of Tehran over the last month. Iran is the subject of four of the top five items on the website’s “Countering Violent Extremism” section. They include headlines such as “This Iranian airline helps spread violence and terror.”

    In social media posts and speeches, Pompeo himself also appeals directly to Iranians, the Iranian diaspora and a global audience.

    On June 21, Pompeo tweeted out graphics headlined, “Protests in Iran are growing,” “Iranian people deserve respect for their human rights,” and “Iran’s revolutionary guard gets rich while Iranian families struggle.” The tweets were translated into Farsi and posted on the ShareAmerica website.

    “Let me be clear, we are not seeking regime change. We are seeking changes in the Iranian government’s behavior,” a state department official said in response to questions from Reuters.

    “We know we are driving Iran to make some hard choices. Either they can change their ways or find it increasingly difficult to engage in their malign activities,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And we believe we are offering a very positive vision for what we could achieve and what the Iranian people could have.”

      Aggressive Campaign

    Some of the information the administration has disseminated is incomplete or distorted, the current and former officials said.

    In a May 21 speech in Washington, Pompeo said Iranian leaders refused to spend on their people funds freed by the nuclear weapons deal, using it instead for proxy wars and corruption.

    By contrast, in March testimony before a US Senate committee, the US Defense Intelligence Agency director, Robert Ashley, said social and economic expenditures remained Tehran’s near-term priority despite some spending on security forces.

    Pompeo also accused “Iran-sponsored Shia militia groups and terrorists” of infiltrating Iraqi security forces and jeopardizing Iraq’s sovereignty throughout the period of the nuclear agreement.

    This is while the militias fought the self-styled Islamic State and were instrumental in containing the terrorist group’s lightning takeover of large swathes of Iraq in 2014 following the country’s army collapse. They then aided the US-backed offensives that liberated IS-held territory and some units are being incorporated into Iraqi security forces.

    The state department official acknowledged that the militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, are by law part of Iraq’s security forces and played a role in countering Islamic State in 2014.

    “We understand, however, that some of the undisciplined PMF are especially close to Iran, responsive to Iran’s directives, and have a history of criminal activity and terrorism,” the official said. “Those groups are as problematic for the Iraqi state as they are for us.”