Pompeo visits CENTCOM amid mixed messaging from US on Iran

Al-Monitor:

Pompeo, speaking in Tampa today shortly before Shanahan’s nomination was pulled, gave no indication he was auditioning for the Pentagon chief job. But it was unusual for a secretary of state to visit a US military command without a Defense Department civilian counterpart.

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The Trump administration’s episodic messaging, one day emphasizing the Iranian threat, the next projecting desire to de-escalate tensions, is not perfect, one senior US administration official, speaking not for attribution, acknowledged to Al-Monitor.

More broadly, Trump does not seem to know what a serious negotiation strategy with Iran would entail, or how to get to one, said Dalia Dassa Kaye, the director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the Rand Corporation.

“There is a disconnect between [US Iran] policy on the ground, and the episodic messaging that Trump wants to talk,” Kaye told Al-Monitor. “There seems to be a lot of confusion about how you get from Point A to Point B.”

“They don’t know either,” said former State Department Iran negotiator Richard Nephew of the administration’s signalling regarding its intentions on Iran. “They have five different policies per four principals.”