Pompeo in Saudi Arabia to ‘Build Out a Global Coalition’ Against Iran
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Mike Pompeo is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia this week to “build out a global coalition…prepared to push back against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” following the downing of a $160 million unmanned U.S. drone by Iran on June 20.
The tour of U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states by the U.S. Secretary of State will begin in Jeddah and end in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before Pompeo heads to India, South Korea, and Japan, as the U.S. and its Middle East Sunni allies circle the wagons against Shi’ite Iran’s aggression.
In a press conference Sunday ahead of his trip, Pompeo warned of a “significant set of new sanctions” against Iran to be announced this week designed to curb the Islamic Republic’s ability “to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapons system, [and] to build out their missile program,” the U.S. has blamed Iran for a series of attacks on international vessels in the region’s oil transport waterways over the last month.
Simultaneous to Pompeo’s meetings with Gulf Arab leaders, John Bolton, Meir Ben-Shabbat, and Nikolai Patrushev, representing the security concerns of the U.S., Israel, and Russia respectively in the evolving Iran crisis, met in Jerusalem Monday to begin a two-day summit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “a very important summit for ensuring stability in the Middle East during turbulent times.”
Despite continually holding out the olive branch to Iran contingent upon the abandonment of its nuclear weapons program, Trump said in an NBC interview aired Sunday that conflict with Iran would mean “obliteration like you’ve never seen before” for the Islamic Republic.