In Mideast, Pompeo seeks a global coalition against Iran

WASHINGTON – 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.

Pompeo said his first stop is Saudi Arabia, followed by the United Arab Emirates. Both U.S. allies work to counter Iran’s influence in the region.

Motorbike taxi divers carry goods at the old main bazaar in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 23, 2019. The most-visible place to see the effect of the economic hardship most face comes from walking by any money-exchange shop. Depreciation and inflation makes everything more expensive, from fruits and vegetables to tires and oil all the way to the big-ticket items, like mobile phones. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

“We’ll 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’s largest state sponsor of terror,” he said about Iran.

But even as Pompeo delivered his tough talk, he echoed President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in saying the U.S. is prepared to negotiate with Iran, without preconditions, in a bid to ease tensions that have been mounting ever since Trump withdrew the U.S. from a global nuclear deal with Iran and began pressuring Tehran with economic sanctions.

“They know precisely how to find us,” Pompeo said. A fresh round of Iran sanctions is to be announced Monday, he said.

It was a week of topsy-turvy pronouncements on U.S. foreign policy toward Iran.

Trump initially said Iran had made a “very big mistake” and that it was “hard to believe” that shooting down a U.S. military drone on Thursday was not intentional.

He later said he thought it was an unintentional act carried out by a “loose and stupid” Iranian and called off retaliatory military strikes against Iran.

On Saturday, Trump reversed himself and claimed that Iran had acted “knowingly.”

But Trump also said over the weekend that he appreciated Iran’s decision to not shoot down a manned U.S. spy plane, and he opined about eventually becoming Iran’s “best friend” if Tehran ultimately agrees to abandon its drive to build nuclear weapons and he helps the country turn around its crippled economy. /gsg