Just weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a renewed “pressure campaign” targeting Iran’s energy sector, America’s top diplomat said Sunday the Trump administration is willing to talk with Iran “with no preconditions” — but he added that debilitating sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy will remain in effect.

The U.S. is “prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions; we’re ready to sit down” with Iran’s leaders, Pompeo said at a press conference. He warned, however, that “the American effort to fundamentally reverse the malign activity of this Islamic Republic, this revolutionary force, is going to continue.”

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The dramatic development comes amid rapidly escalating tensions between Iran and the United States. President Trump fired a social media broadside at the Iranian regime in May, vowing that war between Washington and Tehran would result in “the official end of Iran” before warning, “[n]ever threaten the United States again!”

Also in May, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued an extraordinary public rebuke of President Hasan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, slamming their implementation of the country’s 2015 international nuclear accord and suggesting the rising influence of hardliners in the regime. . . .

Iran’s economy is on the brink thanks largely to the Trump administration’s sanctions, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The country is in a deep recession, with inflation at roughly 40 percent, the organization said, marking the highest such level since 1980.

The Trump administration last summer restored major sanctions against Iran in the areas of automobiles, gold and other key metals. The sanctions had been suspended under former President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, pummelling the value of currency there and threatening to further unravel the Islamic country’s already-struggling economy.

Officials say newly declassified intelligence, shared exclusively with Fox News, shows Iran-backed militias across the Middle East are strapped for cash; State Department correspondent Rich Edson reports.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear deal in May 2018, saying its enforcement and monitoring mechanisms were too lenient and calling for Iran to return to the negotiating table. Even more severe U.S. sanctions against Iran’s banking and energy sectors, including restrictions on Iran’s oil industry, went into effect later, cutting off a crucial source of hard currency. . . .

Pompeo’s Iran-related diplomacy has already taken him to Iraq, Britain, Belgium and Russia since early May. Pompeo also met German Chancellor Angela Merkel . . .