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Top State Department Official: We Want Iran to Behave Like a Normal State
(Jerusalem Post) Yonah Jeremy Bob - The Trump administration is not seeking regime change, but rather to maintain its "maximum pressure campaign to get Iran back to the table" for a "better deal than the JCPOA," Acting Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Nathan Sales told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Sales said that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's 12 principles remained the standard and that an improved deal would be a major change, not merely cosmetic. He agreed that Iran's ballistic missile testing and aggressive behavior in the region would need to be part of such a deal. Sales said that "U.S. Iran policy is the president's Iran policy. The president has been very clear that it is the worst state sponsor of terrorism...and imposed historically severe sanctions on Iran....We want them to behave like a normal state which doesn't use terror as a basic tool of statecraft." For example, Sales slammed Iran for continuing to host al-Qaeda operatives on its soil and permitting it to move funds around the region.