Regarding the Oct. 9 news article “U.S. imposes sanctions on Iran, defying allies”:

The latest collateral damage of the Trump administration’s obsession with dismantling every effective accomplishment of the Barack Obama era includes the entire population — the simple folk — of Iran. For years, we had a working diplomatic solution to Iran’s expanding nuclear program: the Iran nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. If Iran has recently acted more aggressively, both militarily and in regard to developing its nuclear program, it is because our president’s fragile ego strong-armed him into pulling us out of that stability-generating agreement.

By President Trump’s playbook, the suffering of Iranian innocents caused by these sanctions apparently doesn’t matter much. But this is not surprising, as we’ve witnessed how neither did the heart-rending trauma of mothers separated from their children at our borders, the reasonable fears of every person of color when the president refused to denounce white supremacy, or the tens of thousands of U.S. lives that could have been saved by the simple gesture of the president donning a facial mask and expressing confidence in science.

Nov. 3 cannot come soon enough.

Carol DiCaprio Herrick, Charlottesville