ATLANTIC COUNCIL (WASHINGTON, D.C.) -- Mahmood Monshipouri, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of International Relations at San Francisco State University. He is also a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote this opinion piece with Manochehr Dorraj, Ph.D., professor of international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at Texas Christian University.
“Perhaps the most glaring flaw in [U.S. Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo’s speech was that the conditions he laid out failed to add up to a clear strategy,” they write. “His maximalist demands were divorced from reality and revealed ignorance about the political dynamics that govern post-revolutionary regimes such as those in Iran or Cuba in a post-colonial era. The demands also betrayed a profound lack of appreciation for Iranian nationalism. What Pompeo was asking for was complete capitulation and political submission that only conquering armies can demand of countries defeated in war.”