Al-Monitor | Laura Rozen: The Donald Trump administration will not renew sanctions waivers next month for eight countries to continue imports of Iranian oil, it announced today, in a move key American allies interpreted as an effort to get Iran to quit the 2015 nuclear deal that the United States withdrew from last year.

�The goal remains simple: to deprive the regime of the funds it has used to destabilize the Middle East,� Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told journalists at the State Department today.

But top European allies see the latest step in the Trump administration�s maximum pressure campaign as an increasingly undisguised effort to push Iran to default on the nuclear deal � and thus to expand the so far narrow coalition the Trump administration has mustered to isolate it, comprising mostly just the United States, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Israel.

�I think the [US administration�s] goal is to have a worldwide coalition against Iran, and to do that, they push Iran to default� on the nuclear deal, said a European diplomat speaking not for attribution. �Until now it is failing, totally.�

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