Brian Hook: The new American strategy has weakened the Iranian regime and its relays in the region
The new American strategy towards Iran has weakened the Iranian regime and its relays in the region, U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, said Tuesday in Rabat. “The US foreign policy has enabled us to dissuade Iran from continuing its aggressions in the region and providing support to Hezbollah and other relays,” Hook pointed out in an interview with the Moroccan news agency MAP.
“We have put in place a new strategy to counter the Iranian aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere, a strategy that has had many negative consequences for Iranian relays in the region, including Hezbollah,” he said. “In March, the leader of Hezbollah called for the first time for donations because Iran does not have the means it had before to support Hezbollah as a result of US sanctions that affect Iran’s revenues”, the US official said.
After recalling that the Iranian military spending reached record levels when the agreement was in force, Hook noted that the Iranians have decreased their military budget by 28%, including for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We are making Iran’s violent foreign policy prohibitively expensive,” he said, urging other countries to do the same.
“We will continue and intensify this economic pressure on the Iranian regime until it changes its behavior,” Hook said. “The Iranian regime must choose between two options, namely, behaving like a normal nation or seeing its economy collapse”, he added.
Iran, which behaves like “an outlawed and rebel regime, is paying the price as its GDP is set to contract 6% this year it will get worse in the future,” he said. Furthermore, he said, Washington has “strengthened its military presence in the region to deter possible Iranian attacks against US interests in the region,” adding that “the US president has recently said in Japan that he would like to open negotiations with Iran to reach a stronger new agreement that will replace the old agreement, signed at the expense of stability in the Middle East.”
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