WASHINGTON: The head of the CIA on Sunday denied his agency had any role infomenting the recent anti-government protests in Iran but predicted theviolent unrest “is not behind us.”
Mike Pompeo, named a year ago by President Donald Trump to head theintelligence agency, told Fox News Sunday that economic conditions in Iran”are not good.”
“That’s what caused the people to take to the streets,” he said. He blamedwhat he called Tehran’s “backward-looking” regime for turning a deaf ear tothe voices of the people.
Asked about a claim by Iran’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Javad Montazeri,that a CIA official had coordinated with Israel and Saudi Arabia — Iran’sregional rivals — to work with exiled Iranian groups to stir dissent inIran, Pompeo replied simply: “It’s false.”
“This was the Iranian people — started by them, created by them, continuedby them, demanding a better set of living conditions and a break from thetheocratic regime.”Looming deadlines
Trump has repeatedly tweeted his support for Iranian protesters whilecastigating the Tehran regime, seizing on the recent unrest to again slamthe multiparty nuclear deal with Iran as deeply flawed.
Trump faces deadlines around mid-month on whether to renew temporarywaivers or restore US sanctions on Iran. In October, Trump refused tocertify that Iran was respecting its commitments under the 2015 nuclearaccord, but did not reimpose sanctions or abandon the deal itself.
The administration has not revealed its intentions, but the Iran unrest isseen as a possible pretext for blowing up the nuclear accord.
The US Congress has been working on legislation aimed at tightening termsof the agreement in ways that might satisfy Trump’s demands, and Pompeoexpressed careful optimism that it might succeed.
“They could do something,” he said. “They could take some of the weaknessesfrom the agreement… extend deadlines (and) snap back sanctions into placewhere they could really happen.”
But Bob Corker, head of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said lastweek that while talks on Iran were continuing with the White House and itsEuropean partners, no new bill was imminent.
Any agreement, Corker said, would take several more weeks to work out.