Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News’ The Story that Iran’s economy has been “mostly ruined by the ayatollah and his henchmen,” arguing that sustained pressure has exposed just how fragile the regime’s finances are. Pompeo credited America’s economic measures for driving Tehran into its current crisis and warned that the clerical regime bears the lion’s share of the blame for its people’s suffering.
The numbers back up the blunt assessment: recent IMF-related reporting shows Iran facing a sharp nominal GDP decline and runaway inflation, with the rial collapsing and real incomes plummeting for ordinary Iranians. Those international economic reports make clear that Iran is not a victim of circumstance so much as a country crushed by a mix of chronic mismanagement and tightened international isolation.
Anger on the streets has turned into broad unrest as citizens protest price spikes, shortages, and corruption at the highest levels, forcing Tehran to shuffle senior officials in a bid to calm outrage. Journalists and global outlets are now documenting mass demonstrations and a government scrambling to respond as the economy bleeds.
Those domestic failures did not happen in a vacuum — U.S. sanctions and a deliberate policy to choke Iran’s oil revenues have applied extraordinary pressure designed to deprive the regime of the resources for its malign regional behavior. Washington has explicitly aimed to squeeze Iran’s export and financial lifelines, and even skeptics must admit those measures have had impact; when bad actors behave badly, consequences should follow.
This is a moment for clear-eyed policy, not hand-wringing. Conservatives should celebrate the success of putting real pressure on a rogue theocracy that exports terror and repression, while insisting Washington keep its foot on the gas until meaningful change — not cosmetic reshuffles — takes root in Tehran.
The moral test is simple: stand with the Iranian people who long for basic economic security and freedom, and deny the clerical regime the means to fund its regional aggression. American foreign policy must remain firm, principled, and unafraid to use every peaceful tool at our disposal to compel better behavior from a government that has earned neither sympathy nor legitimacy.
