Last month, the Trump administration said it expected all countries that buy oil from Iran, which has some of the world’s largest oil reserves, to wind down their purchases to zero by November 4 or face U.S. sanctions. Other trade with Iran is also being targeted. The administration has said it will not provide exemptions to the sanctions, even for U.S. allies in Europe who trade with Iran—a move that will almost certainly hurt Iran’s economy. Iran has said it will remain a party to the accord as long as the other signatories provide Tehran with the investments that were promised in exchange for signing the agreement. The EU has enacted legislation that would target European companies that comply with U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran. But for European companies, with their global supply chains and international workforces, access to the U.S. financial system (which would be cut off in the event of U.S. sanctions), as well as access to the U.S. consumer market, are far more important than any deal with Iran. Indeed, while the EU and its member states say they will continue to abide by the deal, they have few realistic options left to keep the agreement going.

In a speech in May, Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, listed 12 conditions that he said Iran would have to meet if it wanted diplomatic and commercial relationships with the U.S. Among them: an end to its ballistic-missile program, and to its support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and its malfeasance in Iran and Syria. Barbara Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told me at the time that the list was a nonstarter. “He’s not asking the leopard to change its spots,” she said of Pompeo. “He’s asking it to become a lamb.”

Iranians expected the nuclear deal to yield a shot in the arm to their economy, which has been crippled by years of international sanctions. But those expected benefits have been slow to materialize—because, Iran’s critics say, the Islamic Republic is spending its money on military adventurism in Syria, Yemen, and other places in the region—leading to protests against both Iran’s elected leaders as well as the Shia clerics who hold near-absolute power.

The Trump administration says it supports the Iranian people against their rulers, but at the same time Iran is among the countries on a list of nations whose citizens are forbidden from traveling to the U.S. under most circumstances. Pompeo, speaking Sunday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in Simi Valley, California, said Iran’s regime “resembles the mafia more than a government,” adding that the “goal of our efforts is to one day see Iranians in Iran enjoying the same quality of life that Iranians in America enjoy.”

In Tehran Monday, Bahram Qasemi, the Iranian foreign-ministry spokesman, said Pompeo’s remarks indicate America’s “frustration,” adding that Pompeo’s speech was “hypocritical and absurd.” “Pompeo’s words constituted very clear evidence showing the U.S. efforts to meddle in Iran’s internal affairs,” he said. That’s perhaps what many of Iran’s own neighbors would say about its actions within their borders.