The decision to not to reissue the Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs) comes just over a week before the waivers are set to expire on May 2. Pompeo said the United States had “made clear our seriousness of purpose: We are going to zero” Iranian oil exports. Pompeo said that oil exports had long been Iran’s “principal source of revenue” and at one point exceeded $50 billion a year.
“How long we remain there, at zero, depends solely” on Iran’s senior leaders, he said. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Tehran of backing destabilizing activity throughout the Middle East.He reiterated multiple times, however, that Trump White House does indeed support the Iranian people. Asked what meaningful change the maximum pressure campaign had brought about to date in Iran’s behavior, Pompeo said, “We have watched Iran have diminished power as a result of our campaign.”  “Their capacity to wreak harm around the world is absolutely, clearly diminished,” he told reporters at the State Department.  His remarks followed a White House announcement on the topic.  “The Trump Administration and our allies are determined to sustain and expand the maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran to end the regime’s destabilizing activity threatening the United States, our partners and allies, and security in the Middle East,” the White House said in a statement.The move to eliminate all SRE’s follows the administration’s designation of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. That move, in another effort to clamp down on the Iranian regime, makes it illegal for any organization to provide material support to the IRGC. The Trump administration accused the group, formed by an order of Ayatollah Khomeini as a branch of Iran’s Armed Forces founded after the 1979 Iranian revolution, of not only facilitating, but perpetrating, terrorism.