Iran

The Trump administration exchanged threats with Iran, turning to a longstanding security concern and a top foreign-policy focus of President Donald Trump’s key supporters.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will outline a new strategy on Monday for constraining Iran, centered around a demand that the United States’ European allies have already rejected: that Tehran enter negotiations in a new deal that would permanently ban Iran from any substantive manufacturing of nuclear fuel and, in turn, forever cut off a pathway to building a bomb.

President Trump sent two private letters to Middle East allies in recent weeks complaining that the United States has spent too much money in the region and urging them to pick up more of the burden as part of a coalition to counter Iran’s influence, a person familiar with them said Thursday.

President Trump said on Wednesday that he expects Iran to continue to comply with the terms of the 2015 deal that limits Tehran’s nuclear program, even as the United States violates it by reimposing what he called “among the strongest sanctions that we’ve ever put on a country.”