Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday he wants to build a global coalition against Iran during urgent consultations in the Middle East, following a week of crisis that saw the United States pull back from the brink of a military strike on Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pompeo spoke as he left Washington for Saudi Arabia, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Sunni Arab allies that are alarmed by Shiite Iran\u2019s increasing assertiveness and are working to its influence in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His stops in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi were hastily arranged late last week as additions to a trip to India from where he will join President Donald Trump in Japan and South Korea. But they were not announced until immediately before his departure in a sign of fast-moving and unpredictable developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be talking with them about how to make sure that we are all strategically aligned, and how we can build out a global coalition, a coalition not only throughout the Gulf states, but in Asia and in Europe, that understands this challenge as it is prepared to push back against the world\u2019s largest state sponsor of terror,\u201d Pompeo said about Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even as Pompeo delivered his tough talk, he echoed President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in saying the US is prepared to negotiate with Iran, without preconditions, in a bid to ease tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those tensions have been mounting since Trump last year withdrew the US from a global nuclear deal with Iran and began pressuring Tehran with economic sanctions. A fresh round of Iran sanctions is to be announced Monday in a bid to force the Iranian leadership into talks. \u201cThey know precisely how to find us,\u201d Pompeo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a week of topsy-turvy pronouncements on US policy toward Iran that careened between the bellicose, the conciliatory and back again after Iran shot down an American military drone and boasted it would not bow to Washington\u2019s pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump initially said Iran had made a \u201cvery big mistake\u201d and that it was \u201chard to believe\u201d that shooting down the drone on Thursday was not intentional. He later said he thought it was an unintentional act carried out by a \u201cloose and stupid\u201d Iranian and called off retaliatory military strikes against Iran. On Saturday, Trump reversed himself and claimed that Iran had acted \u201cknowingly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Trump also said over the weekend that he appreciated Iran\u2019s decision to not shoot down a manned U.S. spy plane, and he opined about eventually becoming Iran\u2019s \u201cbest friend\u201d if Tehran ultimately agrees to abandon its drive to build nuclear weapons and he helps the country turn around its crippled economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then Trump\u2019s national security adviser, John Bolton, stepped in Sunday with a blunt warning from Jerusalem, where he was traveling. Bolton said Iran should not \u201cmistake US prudence and discretion for weakness\u201d after Trump called off the military strike. Trump said he backed away from the planned strikes after learning that about 150 people would be killed, but he said the military option remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A longtime Iran hawk, Bolton emphasized that the U.S. reserved the right to attack at a later point.\u201dNo one has granted them a hunting license in the Middle East. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed the United States\u2019 \u201cinterventionist military presence\u201d for fanning the flames. He was quoted by the official IRNA news agency. Shortly thereafter, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen launched an attack against an airport in southern Saudi Arabia, killing one person and wounding seven others, according to the Saudi military. Such attacks have been cited by Saudi and US officials as examples of Iran\u2019s \u201cmalign behavior\u201d in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pompeo, who addressed reporters from the tarmac before he boarded his airplane in Washington, declared the goal of his talks with the Saudi kingdom and the UAE is to deny Iran \u201cthe resources to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapon system, to build out their missile program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are going to deny them the resources they need to do that, thereby keep American interests and American people safe all around the world,\u201d said Pompeo, who was due to arrive in the region after one person was killed and seven others were wounded in an attack by Iranian-allied Yemeni rebels on an airport in Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening, the Saudi military said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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