Press TV - The United States is seeking to negotiate a treaty with Iran over Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its influence in the Middle East as a tool to diminish the Islamic Republic and force it to surrender to US interests, says a journalist and political analyst based in Chicago.

The administration of US President Donald Trump violated its international obligations when it withdrew from the the Iran nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Stephen Lendman said during an interview with Press TV on Friday.

“The Trump regime doesn’t want a treaty with Iran; it wants to co-opt Iran; it wants it to be subservient to its interests,” he added.

Trump re-imposed anti-Iran sanctions, lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, in August, after withdrawing the US of the agreement, also backed by the UK, Russia, Germany, Russia, and China.

Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.

Iran has repeatedly emphasized that its missile program is merely defensive and deterrent, thus non-negotiable.

America’s policy is “do what we say or else; that’s what the Trump regime’s idea of a treaty is all about,” Lendman said.

“They’re plotting regime change in the country, they’re plotting destabilization in the country, they’re may be plotting war in the country. So how on earth do you get together to have a treaty with a country that wants you destroyed,” he stated.

US special envoy for Iran Brian Hook said Wednesday that Washington sought a treaty with Iran ahead of next week's United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

"The new deal that we hope to be able to sign with Iran, and it will not be a personal agreement between two governments like the last one, we seek a treaty,” he told an audience at the Hudson Institute, an American think tank based in Washington, DC.

He also said the nuclear deal lacked support among members of the Republican-held Congress, when it was clinched under former US President Barack Obama.

“They did not have the votes in the US Senate so they found the votes in the UN Security Council," Hook said. "That is insufficient in our system of government if you want to have something enduring and sustainable.”