Pompeo push for global coalition

US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo says 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 spoke on Sunday as he left Washington for Saudi Arabia, followed by the United Arab Emirates – Sunni Arab allies that are alarmed by Shiite Iran’s increasing assertiveness and are working to its influence in the region. 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.

“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,” Pompeo said about Iran.

But even as Pompeo delivered his tough talk, he echoed Mr Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in saying the US is prepared to negotiate with Iran, without preconditions, in a bid to ease tensions. 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.

It was a week of topsy-turvy pronouncements on US policy towards 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’s pressure.

WE’LL BE TALKING WITH THEM ABOUT HOW TO MAKE SURE THAT WE ARE ALL STRATEGICALLY ALIGNED SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO

Trump initially said Iran had made a “very big mistake” and that it was “hard to believe” that shooting down the drone 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.

Pompeo, who addressed reporters from the tarmac before he boarded his aeroplane in Washington, declared the goal of his talks with the Saudi kingdom and the UAE was to deny Iran “the resources to foment terror, build out their nuclear weapon system (and) their missile program”.