TEHRAN – Not long after laying waste a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany), the Trump administration just threatened Iran with military action if it goes beyond the nuclear limits of the deal.

The United States’ top diplomat Mike Pompeo on Saturday warned Iran not to, as he claimed, “pursue nuclear weapons,” saying it would face the “wrath of the entire world” if it did so.

Pompeo then went on to express hope that it would never be necessary “for the United States to take military action” against the country.

In an interview with political columnist Hugh Hewitt conducted on Friday and broadcast the following day on MSNBC, Pompeo said that whatever the fate of the international nuclear deal with Iran, it would not be in Tehran’s interest to seek nuclear arms.

“I hope they understand that if they begin to ramp up their nuclear program, the wrath of the entire world will fall upon them,” he said.

Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was walking away from the nuclear agreement. Trump also said he would reinstate U.S. nuclear sanctions on Iran and impose "the highest level" of economic bans on the Islamic Republic.

Under the JCPOA, the official name for the nuclear agreement, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions.

Since the U.S. president pulled Washington out of the historic nuclear deal, Iran has tried through diplomatic talks with the European Union to ensure that without the U.S., Iran gets enough economic benefits from the JCPOA to persuade it to stay in the deal. 

Pompeo’s threats come a few months after he said in April as the CIA director that “Iran wasn't racing to a weapon before the [nuclear] deal. There is no indication that I'm aware of that if the deal no longer existed that they would immediately turn to racing to create a nuclear weapon today.”

Shortly after Pompeo’s confession, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the statement showed the United States’ moral bankruptcy.

“U.S. moral bankruptcy on full display in CIA chief's admission of U.S. policy: in the past Iran was sanctioned over false claims that it sought nuclear weapons. Now, sanctions must be reimposed because we seek no nukes?” Zarif tweeted back in April.

SP/