Referring to the UN arms embargo on Iran expiring in October 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that “Iran will have the ability to build up their conventional weapon systems in ways that would make it even more possible for them to conduct terror around the world and to coerce and extort nations around the world, giving them even more space to continue to execute on a plan to ultimately increase the risk that they have a nuclear weapon someday”. Discussing the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, Pompeo assessed that Iran’s “capacity… has been reduced. The Iranian regime is having to make difficult choices and the people of Iran are suffering because of those choices. They may have more limited resources, but they still have plenty of money to do what they need to do to take care of the Iranian people and yet they choose to take those precious resources and either give them to the ayatollah, for his own private benefit or to the benefit of other Iranian elites, or they choose to squander that on campaigns in Syria, or campaigns in Iraq”. “I hope the Iranian people will convince their leadership to make choices that are in the Iranian people's best interests”, he added.