Pompeo urges Middle East unity against ‘common challenge’

US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo is using the Middle East leg of his first trip abroad as America’s top diplomat to call for international action to punish Iran for its missile programs.

Mr Pompeo arrived in Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday after a stop in Saudi Arabia.

Both countries are fierce rivals of Iran, and have welcomed the Trump administration’s hard line toward the Tehran government.

“Iran destabilises this entire region,” Mr Pompeo said before he flew to Tel Aviv.

Ahead of their meeting, Mr Netanyahu called the US Secretary of State a “true friend” of Israel and said their talks would focus on Iran’s “growing aggression” in the region and the international nuclear deal with Iran.

President Donald Trump is set to decide by May 12 whether to remain in the deal.

Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat and has been an outspoken critic of the 2015 nuclear deal.

In Saudi Arabia, Mr Pompeo urged the Saudis and their neighbours to resolve a festering dispute with Qatar that US officials say Iran is exploiting to boost its influence in the region, including in Yemen and Syria.

Mr Pompeo met Saudi King Salman, whose country, along with Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, is embroiled in a row with Qatar that has hobbled Gulf Arab unity and frustrated the US as it seeks to blunt growing Iranian assertiveness.

“I think they would all agree that it’s in everyone’s best interests that the Gulf states all figure out how to be together,” Mr Pompeo told reporters.

“We’ve got a common challenge in Iran, I think they all recognise that. We’re hopeful that they will in their own way figure out their dispute between them.”

Meanwhile, a British-Iranian university professor is being held on security charges, jus- tice officials in Tehran have confirmed. Abbas Edalat, a computer scientist and mathematician at Imperial College London, was reportedly arrested earlier this month by the Revolutionary Guard, which has detained~ several dual-nationals in recent years.

Mr Edalat had actively campaigned against Western military action targeting Iran.