WASHINGTON — Senior Donald Trump administration officials said today they hope that renewed US economic sanctions on Iran that go into effect Tuesday will fuel Iranian protests and ultimately pressure the Iranian regime to take up Trump on his offer for talks for a broader deal.
“If Iran were really serious they’d come to the table,” Trump national security adviser John Bolton told Fox News today. “We’ll find out whether they are or not.”
“They could take up the president’s offer to negotiate with them, to give up their ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs fully and really verifiably,” Bolton said.
US officials from the White House, the State Department and the Treasury Department, speaking not for attribution on a press call today, said they believed that recent protests seen in Iran and the recent sharp drop in the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, show the Iranian people are frustrated with the Iranian government’s decisions about how to manage the economy. In particular, US officials said they support Iranian protesters calling on the Iranian regime to stop spending Iranian money and resources on supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Shiite militias and proxy groups that the United States says are destabilizing the region.
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