CIA Director Mike Pompeo promised to push back against Iran "everyplace" he can, accusing Tehran of supporting the Syrian President Bashar Assad and supplying Yemen with missiles. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi called Pompeo's statement an example of interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
Commenting on the aggravation of Iranian-US relations, a senior research fellow of the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Sazhin, recalled that US President Donald Trump has long been actively opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. The expert listed the shortcomings that Trump found in the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan - a political agreement on the nuclear program of Iran reached between Iran and the Group 5+1:
"First - international inspectors' inability to monitor absolutely all objects, including military ones, required by the inspectors for verification if necessary.
Second - the lack of guarantee in the document that Iran will never be able to acquire nuclear weapons.
Third - the JCPOA is too limited in duration - 10 years for some provisions and 15 years for others. According to Trump, it should be unlimited.
Fourth - an absence of a prohibition on the Islamic Republic's developing of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Trump proposes to eliminate these shortcomings and make changes to the document."
Vladimir Sazhin stressed that China and Russia oppose any changes in the text of the document and support the continuation of its operation, as indicated not only in the document itself, but also in the UN Security Council resolution, which legally and internationally confirmed the legal force and effects of this document.
A senior researcher of the Arab and Islamic Studies Center at the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Boris Dolgov, believes that the US goal is to weaken or destabilize the situation in Iran, since neither the US nor Israel is satisfied with Tehran's system of power. "Improving the relations between Iran and Israel would immediately solve a lot of problems in the region and in global politics. But Israeli colleagues say that as long as an Ayatollah remains in power in Iran, there can be no improvement. That is why we see these US accusations against Iran. Moreover, it's not just the accusations regaring a nuclear deal, it's accusations of supporting terrorism - Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization in the US. If we recall the recent protests in Iran, then Donald Trump announced his support to protesters on the very first day, saying that the US will stand by these protesting forces at the right time. The United States tried to raise the issue of protest demonstrations at the UN. This is similar to what was happening in Libya: supporting the protesters, raising the issue at the UN, taking the decision necessary to the United States, closing the possibility of military support. But Iran is not Libya, of course."
