Pompeo says sanctions are trying to make Iran 'behave like a normal country'

Mike Pompeo.
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Trump administration on Monday restored punitive sanctions on Iran that were previously lifted under the terms of the nuclear deal from which President Trump withdrew the United States this year. Additional sanctions will be renewed in coming months, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated they'll be around a while.

"'We're hopeful that we can find a way to move forward, but it's going to require enormous change on the part of the Iranian regime," he told reporters while en route to Southeast Asia. "They've got to behave like a normal country. That's the ask. It's pretty simple."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.