So the piece here links to a speech by Mike Pompeo, the new Secretary of State, in which he specifies the complaints that the US has with the nuclear deal that President Obama made with Iran and several other countries. In light of the extreme corruption of the Trump Administration, it's pretty laughable to read about the administration complaining of Iranian corruption.
The complaints about the deal are that it has sunset provisions far in the future, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a deceptive presentation where he failed to acknowledge that all of the problems he identified were from before the deal with Obama was made, the inspection regime is somewhat short of absolute perfection, a sum of money that properly belonged to Iran was returned to it and Iran is now engaged in a (cue the dramatic music) "march across the Middle East."
Absolutely none of this constitutes a good reason to cancel the deal. All of it is either outside the deal or can be made better only by working within the existing framework.
The sanctions policy that Pompeo proposes is all stick, no carrot. It depends on getting Russia, China and Europe to agree that the current deal is fatally flawed and that the current deal has to be thrown out and replaced. President Trump has pursued a blundering and incoherent foreign policy that can't convince anybody of anything. See especially his failure to convince anyone that his opening up a new embassy in Jerusalem was a "step towards peace."
Here's an amusing sentence from Pompeo's list of demands: "Iran will never again have carte blanche to dominate the Middle East." Erm, uh, okay. This brings to mind all of the "warnings" that Saddam Hussein was another Hitler who would send has panzer divisions storming across Saudi Arabia if he wasn't stopped right away.
Yeah, essentially, Pompeo's proposals sound like Iran should give up all foreign involvement and just pull everything back. As a wag said in the Maddow piece: “I’m still a bit surprised Pompeo didn’t demand that Iran agree to open a Trump-branded golf course in Teheran (sic) and pay for the wall with Mexico.”
Update: Further arguments as to how ridiculous Pompeo's arguments are.
The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar