US has no plans to attack Iran: Pentagon commander

The US has no plans to attack Iran even though Washington is accelerating its sanctions campaign against Tehran, the senior US military commander in the Middle East said today.

"It is very important to note there is no military component to the maximum pressure campaign — there is none," US Central Command chief, general Frank McKenzie said. "It is strictly a diplomatic and an economic approach."

McKenzie's remarks, delivered at a virtual forum hosted by the National Council on US-Arab Relations, come at a time of a disputed power transition in Washington ahead of a major change in the US' Iran policy.

President-elect Joe Biden says he plans to lift US sanctions against Tehran and rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal, as long as Iran resumes compliance with all restrictions on its nuclear program. Sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump in 2018 have cut off more than 2mn b/d of Iranian oil exports.

But senior officials in Trump's administration, which refuses to concede defeat in the 3 November election, are keen to stack up more sanctions against Tehran to make it difficult for the Biden administration to overturn them. The incumbent administration is also encouraging Middle Eastern allies that share a hardline view on Tehran to stand firm in opposition to Biden's proposed renewed engagement, and to pursue closer military co-operation against Iran.

"The maximum pressure campaign is working, sanctions will continue, and the US will not hesitate to impose painful consequences on those who engage in sanctionable activity," secretary of state Mike Pompeo said yesterday. "Throughout the coming weeks and months, we will impose new sanctions on Iran."

Pompeo's rhetoric and his ongoing tour of the Middle East, with stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has led to concerns about a possible escalation in US-Iran tensions in the final weeks of the Trump administration.

Tehran has dismissed the outgoing administration's actions and is focused on presenting its own conditions for the anticipated US return to the nuclear deal under Biden. "Trump's policy of leaving the JCPOA and imposing maximum pressure on Iran has failed," Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said yesterday. Having selectively flouted some restrictions on its nuclear program, Tehran has built reserves of enriched uranium that are "incomparable" to what they were before Trump took office, and its nuclear research and development is "far ahead," Zarif said.

Both the Trump administration and Iran's government are trying to build up leverage before Biden takes office, former undersecretary of state Wendy Sherman said today at a forum organized by the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

"We have seen from reports that president Trump is considering taking military action, which, hopefully, his advisers and members of the Defense Department and of our armed services will continue to urge him not to do now because it could quickly turn into an a much wider war than taking out a nuclear facility," said Sherman, who was a leading US negotiator of the nuclear deal.

By Haik Gugarats