Pompeo seeks a global coalition against Iran

Announcement follows series of mixed messages

USA

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said 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 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.

“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.

Pompeo then echoed President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence in saying the US is prepared to negotiate with Iran, without pre-conditions, 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. A fresh round of Iran sanctions is to be announced today in a bid to force the Iranian leadership into talks.

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.

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. On Sunday, 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 US spy plane, and he opined about eventually becoming Iran’s “best friend” if Tehran ultimately agrees to abandon its drive to build nuclear weapons.

Then Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, stepped in with a blunt warning from Jerusalem. Bolton said Iran should not “mistake prudence and discretion for weakness” after Trump called off the military strike. Trump said he backed away from the strikes after learning 150 people would be killed, but he said the military option remained.

A longtime Iran hawk, Bolton emphasised that the US reserved the right to attack at a later point.

On Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed the United States’ “interventionist military presence” for fanning the flames. Shortly after, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked an airport in southern Saudi Arabia, killing one person and wounding seven others, according to the Saudi military.