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Iran knows ‘how to drive a truck through American weakness,’ Mike Pompeo tells Arab News

Arab News — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 06:08:52 +0000

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke, in an exclusive interview with Arab News, about the sustained threat the Iranian regime poses. (AN Photo/Screenshot)

Former secretary of state says protecting US soldiers in Middle East requires strong response to Iran’s actions
Says to deny Saudis “capacity to defend themselves is just crazy” and blames Houthis for blocking aid in Yemen

RIYADH: The US administration has a responsibility to push back against efforts to undermine Saudi Arabia, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says in an exclusive interview with Arab News, adding that to deny the Saudis “the capacity to defend themselves is just crazy, and yet that appears to be the direction this administration is taking.”

He says “the Iranian leadership understands how to drive a truck through American weakness” and that deterring the regime will require “a consistent, sound message” and “a willingness to impose a cost.”

Pompeo has also voiced strong opposition to the Biden administration’s lifting of the Yemeni Houthi militia’s terrorist designation, pointing out that “no one disputes that the Houthis are terrorists and no one disputes that the Iranians are underwriting them.”

In the interview, he touched on a number of important issues including the spike in attacks on Saudi population centers and oil infrastructure, Iranian perceptions of the Biden administration’s foreign-policy moves, the Houthis’ role in exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and the Trump administration’s handling of US-Saudi relations.

“In the end, the Iranian leadership, the (Supreme Leader) Ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) and all those around him understand one thing: They understand power. And when they take action and they see weakness or they see appeasement or they have an expectation that there will be appeasement, they’re going to continue to act out,” Pompeo said.

Sounding a blunt warning, he said: “So, whether it’s the effort that you have seen from the missile strikes that (the Iranians) have undertaken, or the efforts they have taken to continue to put pressure on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to deny what we all know, their clandestine program, clandestine sites where they had WMDs that weren’t declared — those are the kind of things we will continue to see until the world, not just the United States, but the whole world, the E3 (UK, France, Germany) included, says that ‘That’s enough, we’re not going to allow this to happen anymore.’”

Pompeo was a congressman from Kansas who later served as CIA director under President Donald Trump before being nominated and confirmed as secretary of state in 2018. On his watch, the US adopted a campaign of “maximum pressure” to isolate the Iranian regime and kept open the option of a military strike to “keep Americans” safe.

Since leaving office in January, Pompeo has hit the speaking circuit and refused to rule out a potential 2024 presidential bid if his former boss, Trump, does not run. In addition to saying that he wants to help Republicans and advocate for conservatives, Pompeo has scolded the new US administration for refusing to put America first, especially in the context of the Middle East.

Pompeo told Arab News what makes him concerned is not just the “signals that the (Biden) administration sends; it’s the policy direction that they have indicated they intend to go.”

“They have made very clear that they would prefer to re-enter some kind of negotiation that’s closely tied to the 2015 JCPOA,” he said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.

The deal was reached in July 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) together with the European Union. The Trump administration withdrew the US from the JCPOA in May 2018, citing the flaws of its temporary nature, its lack of controls on Iran’s ballistic missile program and Iran’s “malign behavior” in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.

“Let’s go look at the actions. So far, the administration has de-designated a terrorist organization. No one disputes, no one disputes that the Houthis are terrorists. And no one disputes that the Iranians are underwriting them,” Pompeo said.

“This administration said: ‘We’re going to take them off the list.’ This administration worked alongside the IAEA to say ‘No, were not going to issue a report about this material that was at undeclared locations.’

“They now are going to allow money from the IMF and from the Republic of Korea to flow into Iranian coffers. These are the kinds of concessions, before there’s been any conversation about actually even entering into a negotiation. This connotes weakness and, I promise you, the Iranian leadership understands how to drive a truck through American weakness.”

Describing Saudi Arabia as “an important security partner” for the US, Pompeo said: “For an awfully long time, I think we neglected this (fact). When we get this right, we can put fewer of our young men and women, American young men and women, overseas in the Middle East facing risk, and we can support them.”

Elaborating on how this could be achieved, he said: “It always begins with a commitment, a diplomatic commitment, a commitment from the president of the United States, that says we understand that you in Saudi Arabia have the right to defend yourself when there are missiles being launched into your country. To deny them the capacity to defend themselves is just crazy, and yet that appears to be the direction this administration is taking.

“Second, we worked with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on a broader range of issues, weapons sales, things that would provide security for the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Pompeo rejected the common critique that the Trump administration ignored human rights in the process. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “We supported the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it began to open up inside, to allow women to be more active and to do many things which had been prohibited for an awfully long time. And real progress was made.”

He argued that the Trump administration did call out the Kingdom when mistakes occurred. And in the case of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the administration did sanction the operatives who were implicated.

At the time, the Kingdom admitted that a number of agents had exceeded their authority and ended up killing the journalist in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018. A trial followed and five Saudis were sentenced to death with another three given jail time over the killing.

Still, Pompeo reiterated that having a “deep security relationship with the Kingdom is central to American security and also to security throughout the Middle East.”

He drew a sharp contrast between Trump’s Middle East policy and that of his successor.

“We had three primary lines of effort. The first was to build a coalition against the largest state sponsor of terror in the world, the Iranian regime. And we did that,” he said.

“We built a coalition that included Arabs and Israelis. It included others too who were prepared to help us patrol the Straits of Hormuz. We built a real global coalition against Iran to deter military attack.

“Second, we put enormous economic pressure on the Iranian regime. We sanctioned them; we made sure that they couldn’t sell their crude oil around the world — all the things that would force the Iranian regime to make hard decisions about how to spend resources.

“If you want to underwrite Hezbollah, you have to have less money to feed and care for your people. If you want to support the Iraqi militias, if you want to help the Assad regime in Syria, we made them face difficult financial constraints with the hope that they would ultimately conclude that building out their nuclear program, and continuing to build their missile program, wasn’t in their country’s best interests.”

Pompeo continued: “The third thing we did is we supported the Iranian people. This is different to what the Obama administration did. We were very mindful that the Iranian people themselves want a life that is not terribly different than that people all around the world want — and that the theocrats, the kleptocrats in power in Iran today, (may) have the weapon systems but not the hearts and minds of the Iranian people.

“So, we did everything we could to support the Iranian people. Those three key pillars of our policy were the right direction. They were the thing that would create the best deterrent from Iran attacking Arab countries, provided the most assurance that the Iranian stated intent to wipe Israel off the face of the map, would not come to fruition.”

Pompeo says there is no reason to second-guess the Iranian regime’s mindset. “They’ve made it very clear they are prepared to do things all around the world, with what they see as securing their rights around the world,” he told Arab News.

“So, I talked about this when I was secretary of state a great deal, (about) their efforts to conduct assassination campaigns all across Europe.

“You’ve seen some of their actors arrested and imprisoned in Europe, after they’ve been caught. It always befuddled me to watch the E3 continue to cozy up to the Iranians and the JCPOA deal to say ‘No, this is the right direction,’ when in fact the Iranians were trying to kill people inside each of their countries.

“We certainly see that here in the United States too. We shouldn’t forget it wasn’t all that long ago that the Iranians had a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador right here, not very far from where I’m sitting here today in Washington D.C.

“They’ve a global campaign, a global espionage campaign, a global assassination effort, all in defense of a handful of senior leaders inside of Iran who are siphoning off the remaining funds available to the Iranians. We can’t continue to underwrite this.

“We can’t relieve these sanctions, until Iran releases all the American prisoners, until Iran comes to understand that it is unacceptable to engage in this kind of behavior. To reward that, to reward them with financial resources, only gives them an incentive to continue to do this and provides them with the capital to continue these programs.”

Moving on to his decision to designate the Houthis a “foreign terrorist organization,” Pompeo told Arab News: “Of course. It was a simple step that was made by the (Trump) administration. It was straightforward. It didn’t take any great heavy lifting.

“But, look, the (Biden) administration can’t deny that these are terrorists, yet (it has) now said (the Houthis) are not terrorists. I understand the concerns that the world has about the humanitarian challenges inside of Yemen. Indeed, the Trump administration spent a great deal of American taxpayers’ money — and we convinced the Saudis and the Emiratis to do the same — to make sure that ordinary people in Yemen didn’t suffer famine.

“We worked really hard on this. We made sure, the best we could, that food got into that country. But the people who were preventing global aid from reaching those who actually needed that food and that medicine were, in fact, the Houthis.”

Alluding to President Joe Biden’s decision to drop the militia’s “terrorist” label, he said: “The Houthis have now demonstrated that if you continue to block routes of transit, if you continue to threaten ports, if you continue to take real estate, as they’re trying to do in Marib today, if they continue down that path, they’ll be rewarded with sanctions relief. That’s the wrong direction. They understand power. We’ve now demonstrated that we’re prepared to give them something when, in fact, they gave up nothing.”

Last week, Brent crude futures jumped above $70 for the first time in more than a year after Saudi oil facilities were targeted by missiles and drones. A petroleum tank farm at one of the world’s largest oil shipping ports was attacked by a drone while a ballistic missile targeted Saudi Aramco facilities, according to state news agency SPA. Shrapnel from the intercepted missile fell near residential areas in the city of Dhahran.

“You’ll recall that when the Saudi Aramco facility was targeted during our administration, I made (it) very clear where those missiles came from. They didn’t come from Yemen. These were Iranian missiles launched by the Iranians,” Pompeo told Arab News.

“This continued effort to undermine the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and to threaten people, whether they’re in Dhahran — where there are many, many Americans — or they’re in Riyadh, is something that poses a real threat to stability throughout the Middle East.

“Our administration here in America, administrations all throughout Europe, have a responsibility to push back against this and impose real cost on the Iranians for this kind of misbehavior. It’s quite something that, somehow, missile launches of Iranian missiles have now become, (for) this administration at least, something that isn’t viewed as requiring a direct response.

“There are few places in the world where this would be permitted to happen without a serious response from the Western world, and that would include a serious response, at least rhetorically, from the United Nations. I hope that that takes place.”

Pompeo said while it is “hard to know day-to-day” whether the risk today is higher than what it was a week or two weeks ago, we know this: Deterring the Iranian regime requires a consistent, sound message and a willingness to impose costs on the Iranian leadership.”

So, what does Pompeo make of the US military strikes in Syria last month on a site used by two Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups, ostensibly in response to rocket attacks on American forces in Iraq? President Biden later described the strike as a message to Iran: “You can’t act with impunity, be careful.”

Pompeo said that “if the response to Iranian aggression is to throw some missiles into the desert, or hit a supply building in Syria, which imposes almost no cost on the Iranian regime itself, if those are the responses, then there is little “likelihood of being able to establish deterrents to protect and defend our soldiers who are stationed all across the Middle East, not just in Saudi Arabia, but throughout all the Middle East.

In his view, “we have an obligation to get that right and it’s going to take a strong American response to deter them.”

Encouraged perhaps by the successful campaign to get Biden to end the Trump-era Houthi “terrorist” designation, some religious, political and humanitarian leaders have recently signed a letter calling on the US president to lift economic sanctions on Syria. But Pompeo considers the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act “really important.”

“The great news was it was a bipartisan effort, this wasn’t just the Trump administration,” he told Arab News. “It empowered me as then-secretary of state to take real actions and respond under the authority of the Caesar Act. It was very effective. It put pressure on Syrian businessmen who had deep connections to Iran. It put pressure on Hezbollah and businesspeople who were underwriting Hezbollah.

“It was incredibly effective. I hope the Caesar Act and the enforcement of that by the administration will continue.”

Note: several short videos of Mike Pompeo interview by Arab News

Source: https://www.arabnews.com/node/1823276/middle-east

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Biden ends US support for Saudi-led offensive against Iran-backed terror group in Yemen

World Israel News and AP — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:06:09 +0000

A speed boat strapped with explosives near Saudi Royal Navy vessels in the Red Sea. (Saudi Interior Ministry via AP)

The Saudis have used the offensive to confront a terror proxy backed by Iran, which is attempting to develop nuclear bomb-grade uranium.

President Joe Biden announced Thursday the United States was ending support for a five-year Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen to confront the Iran-backed Houthi Islamic extremist group.

President Donald Trump’s administration designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.

Biden said the was move part of restoring a U.S. emphasis on diplomacy.

“This war has to end,” Biden told diplomats in his first visit to the State Department as president, saying the conflict had created a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.”

The Yemen reversal is one of a series of steps Biden laid out Thursday that he said would mark a major change in direction for U.S. foreign policy. That’s after Republican and Democratic administrations sided with the Saudis.

The Biden administration also says it will help Saudi Arabia boost its defenses against outside attacks, as part of maintaining key security, counterterrorism and military ties with Saudi Arabia, a strategic partner, and global oil giant.

Saudi state media focused on that part of Biden’s announcements Thursday.

“We welcome President Biden’s stated commitment to work with friends and allies to resolve conflicts, and deal with attacks from Iran and its proxies in the region,” Saudi Prince Khalid bin Salman, a son of King Salman and the kingdom’s deputy defense minister, tweeted.

In addition to its attempts to develop a nuclear bomb, Iran funds, trains, and fights alongside a group of terror proxies that menace the Middle East, including the Houthis in Yemen.

Iran’s other terror proxies include Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Recent reports also revealed Iran’s role in assisting the Al-Qaeda, the terror group that perpetrated the 9/11 terror attacks on America in 2001.

According to former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iran is the jihadist network’s “new home.”

Yemen, the biblical kingdom of Sheba, has one of the world’s oldest constantly occupied cities — the more than 2,000-year-old Sanaa — along with mud-brick skyscrapers and hauntingly beautiful landscapes of steep, arid mountains.

But decades of Yemeni misgovernment have worsened factional divisions and halted development, and years of conflict have now drawn in increasing intervention by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran.

The Obama administration in 2015 gave its approval to Saudi Arabia leading a cross-border air campaign targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who were seizing ever more territory, including Sanaa. The Houthis have launched multiple drone and missile strikes deep into Saudi Arabia.

U.S. targeting assistance to Saudi Arabia’s command-and-control was supposed to minimize civilian casualties in the Saudi-led airstrikes. But bombing since then has killed numerous Yemeni civilians, including schoolboys on a bus and fishermen in their boats. Survivors have displayed fragments showing the bombs to be American-made.

The stalled war has failed to dislodge the Houthis and is helping deepen hunger and poverty. International rights experts say both the Gulf countries and Houthis have committed severe rights abuses.

Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Yemen’s unsuccessful Arab Spring popular uprising, urged Biden to stay involved in Yemen peace efforts.

“Deeper U.S. engagement — and a refusal to side with dictators who have chosen bloodshed over democratic change — is vital so that the Yemeni people can return to the project of democracy” that warring parties inside and outside of Yemen interrupted, Karman said in a statement.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the U.S. action will give more space and more hope “not only to the talks but, more importantly, more hope to the people of Yemen.”

Biden called Thursday for a cease-fire, an opening of humanitarian channels to allow more delivery of aid and a return to long-stalled peace talks.

Biden also announced an end to “relevant” U.S. arms sales but gave no immediate details on what that would mean. The administration already has said it was pausing some of the billions of dollars in arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s main partner in its Yemeni offensive.

The ending of U.S. support for the offensive will not affect any U.S. operations against the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, group, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

In what was seen as the latest in several Saudi gestures toward Biden, the State Department said Thursday the kingdom had conditionally released two dual Saudi-U.S. citizens detained in a crackdown on civil society there, and reduced a sentence for a third, Dr. Walid Fitaihi, convicted of “disobedience” to the government.

The weeks-old Biden administration has made clear that shifting its stance toward the Yemen war, and toward Saudi Arabia over the Yemen offensive and other rights abuses, was a priority. Other measures have included a review of the Trump administration’s categorization of the Houthis as a terror group. Critics say the designation hinders delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemenis.

Biden also announced the choice of Timothy Lenderking as special envoy to Yemen.

Lenderking has been a deputy assistant secretary of state in the department’s Middle East section. A career foreign service member, he has served in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Source: https://worldisraelnews.com/biden-ending-us-support-for-saudi-led-offensive-in-yemen

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Trump says he’s ending the US role in Middle East wars. He’s sending 1,800 troops to Saudi Arabia

Alex Ward — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 21:56:07 +0000

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with senior military leaders at the White House on October 7, 2019, in Washington, DC. Jabin Botsford/Washington Post via Getty Images

The Trump administration will send nearly 2,000 troops and advanced military equipment to Saudi Arabia to deter threats from Iran — a move that will increase America’s presence in the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump falsely boasts about ending wars in the region.

The announcement, made by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley on Friday, continues the administration’s campaign both to increase pressure on Tehran and deepen ties with Riyadh. The US has sent an additional 14,000 military members to the Middle East since May, which the 1,800 authorized Friday will add to.

That makes sense, as May was when the US and Iran became locked in a standoff that’s seen the US aggressively increase its stance in the region and consider striking Iran only to call it off at the last minute. It’s also seen Iran bomb oil tankers in strategic waterways and oil fields in Saudi Arabia, which Esper specifically cited as a reason for the increase.

Trump has repeatedly threatened retaliatory strikes and further crushing sanctions if Iran refuses to stop its attacks, though he hopes to sign a deal with the Islamic Republic’s leaders to further constrain its missile program, nuclear ambitions, and support for terrorists.

In the meantime, the Pentagon hopes that sending more fighter jets and air-defense systems to the region will keep Iran at bay.

“We thought it was important to send forces to deter and defend and to send a message to the Iranians: Do not strike another sovereign state. Do not threaten American interests and American forces, or we will respond,” Esper told reporters on Friday. “Do not mistake or restraint for weakness.”

Trump isn’t ending wars in the Middle East

It’s worth being clear about something: Trump is only augmenting America’s presence in the Middle East.

On Wednesday morning, Trump ripped America’s involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts over the past two decades.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE…..

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

….IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY! We went to war under a false & now disproven premise, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. There were NONE! Now we are slowly & carefully bringing our great soldiers & military home. Our focus is on the BIG PICTURE! THE USA IS GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!

Trump is right to note that the US has lost thousands of Americans and spent trillions of dollars fighting these conflicts (though not quite as many trillions as Trump suggests) — not to mention the suffering endured by citizens of these war-torn nations.

But Trump is saying these things to justify his decision on Sunday to move American troops in Syria — a decision that’s drawn bipartisan pushback. It’d be one thing if he were bringing all 1,000 US troops in the country home, but he’s not. Instead, he’s moving just 50 US service members out of northern Syria to get out of the way of a just-started Turkish invasion.

That’s not all. A late September report from US Air Forces Central Command showed that the US launched the most airstrikes in Afghanistan over a single month in roughly a decade. American troops have ramped up airstrikes in Libya targeting ISIS fighters there. And the US continues its shadow war in Somalia to fend off terrorist groups there.

To be fair, there are legitimate reasons to send more troops to Saudi Arabia: The move could help defend the US ally, could make Iran think twice before attacking Saudi Arabia again, and allows the US to respond to a crisis if necessary. But making this decision does nothing to end America’s presence in the Middle East — no matter what Trump says.

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Vows ‘All-Out War’ if U.S. or Saudis Strike

Richard Pérez-Peña and Edward Wong — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 00:05:24 +0000

CreditCreditAbedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via Shutterstock

A military strike against Iran by the United States or Saudi Arabia would result in “an all-out war,” the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said on Thursday, repeating his government’s denial of responsibility for an attack last week that damaged Saudi oil facilities and hampered the global flow of oil.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are supported by Iran in their fight against a Saudi-led coalition, claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, but top American officials blamed Iran, and some within the Trump administration are advocating military retaliation.

The administration is still weighing how to react, but President Trump has appeared reluctant to order military action. Asked on Thursday about Mr. Zarif’s comments, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Mr. Trump wanted to find a peaceful path forward.

“We’d like a peaceful resolution, indeed,” he told reporters traveling with him in the United Arab Emirates before flying back to Washington after a two-day emergency trip. “We’re still striving to build out a coalition. I was here in an act of diplomacy while the foreign minister of Iran is threatening all-out war to fight to the last American.”

Mr. Pompeo said the United States, which withdrew last year from a nuclear agreement with Iran, planned to impose more sanctions, as Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday. “We have set about a course of action to deny Iran the capacity and the wealth to prevent them from conducting their terror campaigns,” Mr. Pompeo said. “And you can see from the events of last week there’s more work to do.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Pompeo accused Iran of committing an “act of war” with the aerial attacks. Saudi officials also displayed debris from drones and missiles that they said had been used in the attack, citing it as evidence of Iranian complicity while stopping short of directly blaming Tehran.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Mr. Zarif said, “This is agitation for war because it’s based on lies; it’s based on deception.” He did not specify what statements about the attacks had been untrue.

“I’m making a very serious statement that we don’t want war; we don’t want to engage in a military confrontation,” he added. “But we won’t blink to defend our territory.”

As for the Houthis, Mr. Zarif said: “I cannot have any confidence that they did it, because we just had their statement. I know that we didn’t do it.”

Analysts for the United Nations and Western governments have said that Iran supplies weapons to the Houthis, including sophisticated missiles and drones that have expanded the rebels’ offensive capabilities. But Mr. Pompeo said on Wednesday that intelligence gathered by the United States over the years did not show that Iran had supplied the Houthis with the kinds of weapons used in the Sept. 14 attack, which meant, he said, that the Houthis’ claim of responsibility was a misdirection effort.

“The intelligence community has high confidence that these were not weapons that would have been in the possession of the Houthis,” he said.

CreditAmr Nabil/Associated Press

American and Saudi officials have said that the strikes came from the north or northwest — in the direction of Iran or Iraq — and not from Yemen, which is to the south, though they have not provided clear evidence for that claim. Mr. Pompeo and the Iraqi government have said the strikes did not originate in Iraq, which has Shiite militias with ties to Iran.

On Wednesday, Mr. Pompeo met the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He flew to Abu Dhabi on Thursday to meet with the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.

The Emirates is a close partner of Saudi Arabia’s, and the two nations have been leading a coalition in the war against the Houthis in Yemen, though the Emirates has been withdrawing most of its forces from that campaign in recent months. The yearslong war has resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the United States has tried to force Mr. Trump to end American military and arms support for the coalition.

Before departing Abu Dhabi, Mr. Pompeo said that as a result of his meetings in the two Gulf nations, “I think I’ll be able to give the president some important information about how it is we should think about proceeding.”

“I think it’s abundantly clear and there’s an enormous consensus in the region that we know precisely who conducted these attacks,” he added. “It was Iran. I didn’t hear anybody in the region who doubted that for a single moment.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Pompeo and the Saudi prince remained at a working dinner in Jeddah until 11:30 p.m. The State Department said the two “discussed the need for the international community to come together to counter the continued threat of the Iranian regime and agreed that the Iranian regime must be held accountable for its continued aggressive, reckless and threatening behavior.”

Mr. Pompeo told reporters he expected the United States and Saudi Arabia to bring up the Iranian aggression at the United Nations next week when foreign leaders will gather for the annual General Assembly.

Before the attack, top Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani, were expected to attend the conclave. There had been speculation about whether Mr. Trump would meet with Mr. Rouhani to discuss the continuing tensions among the United States, Iran, the Gulf nations and Europe, which have been punctuated by violence this past summer — including attacks on international oil tankers for which American officials blamed Iran and the downing of an American drone by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, part of the Iranian military.

A senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday that Iran had sought visas for 124 people to assist its delegation to the United Nations conference and that the State Department had denied around 40 for people with connections to the Revolutionary Guards, which the administration designated as a terrorist organization in April.

American and Saudi officials will probably find it hard to persuade other nations to take strong action on Iran, whose economy is suffering under severe sanctions imposed by Mr. Trump. Other governments say that Mr. Trump set off the current conflict by withdrawing the United States from a 2015 agreement to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and by reimposing sanctions.

The Trump administration took its harshest actions involving sanctions in May when it ended exceptions it had granted eight governments to buy Iranian oil. That meant China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey — the five governments that used the exceptions — had to comply with oil sanctions. Though China still imports some oil from Iran, the end of the exceptions led to a sharp drop in revenue for Iran.

Iran responded by breaching limits on its nuclear program set by the 2015 agreement, even though American intelligence officials and foreign officials had said Tehran was adhering to the terms of the agreement. Analysts say the violence of the summer in the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, along with the Sept. 14 attack in Saudi Arabia, were also direct results of the American actions.

“Iran is fighting back, and now we have a major threat to global oil markets, not to mention Iran’s walk back from nuclear commitments,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, an Iran expert at the RAND Corporation, a research group based in the United States. “It’s at times like these when the United States needs allies, but Trump’s policies have left us with few good options.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/world/middleeast/iran-us-saudi-arabia-attack.html

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Nikki Haley: Mohammed bin Salman ‘has to lose’ his ‘thuggish nature’

Tom Rogan — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 04:01:24 +0000

In a gaggle with a small group of journalists on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told me that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been “careless at times” and “has to lose the thuggish nature in which he has been acting.”

Haley’s robust comments go further than other Trump administration officials, most notably President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. But perhaps recognizing that the young prince will likely still be around if she pursues higher office in the future, Haley was also calibrated in her assessment.

When I asked her for her view of the prince, she noted, “That’s an interesting question,” and paused for a few seconds before answering. But then Haley cut to the crux of the issue most in the news at present, the crown prince’s culpability in the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “First and foremost,” Haley said “[the crown prince] owes us some accountability for what happened to Khashoggi. Without question.”

Haley suggested that how the prince addresses the aftermath of Khashoggi’s murder will be “a defining moment” for his leadership. But Haley also noted that Crown Prince Mohammed has “a lot of good ideas,” and “wants to change with the times.” While Haley’s stance on Saudi Arabia is thus somewhat harsher than other officials and certainly implies that Haley believes Crown Prince Mohammed was involved in Khashoggi’s killing, it sits on the same baseline of President Trump’s realism.

Considering American interests, I believe this is the right approach.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/nikki-haley-mohammed-bin-salman-has-to-lose-his-thuggish-nature

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Saudi Arabia is in big trouble

Burhanettin Duran — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 21:31:28 +0000

For more than one week, the House of Saud has been under fire for its ties to the United States and its crackdown on dissidents. First, U.S. President Donald Trump shared details of his most recent conversation with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to a group of his supporters in Mississippi, where Trump told him that he could not survive for more than two weeks without Washington’s support. The U.S. president’s remarks were crude enough to hurt the Saudi monarch’s pride. At the same time, the situation was grave enough to take stock of U.S.-Saudi relations, which had been steadily improving since World War II. Again, Trump’s statement was remarkable enough that Riyadh had to think long and hard about its joint plans with the Trump administration in the Middle East.

It would seem that the Saudis won’t just spend money to pay for forming alliances with the U.S. next to the infamous orb in Riyadh and trying to form an anti-Iran bloc in the region. The decision by regional powers to have an asymmetrical relationship with the United States often results in fragility and a violation of their national interests. The security services that countries with no autonomy purchase with cash tends to be a nuisance and, if necessary, a threat against their employer.

Trump’s crude words must not be viewed independently of his address to the United Nations, where he warned the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members not to raise oil prices. After all, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s largest oil producers. In other words, the Trump administration doesn’t want the Saudis to raise oil prices in order to pay the United States.

In response to Trump’s statement, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave an interview to Bloomberg, where he attempted to defend his country’s pride. The crown prince told reporters that Riyadh had already paid for the weapons that it purchased from the United States. He added that Saudi Arabia had been around since 1744 – three decades earlier than the United States. To be clear, those words weren’t intended as a criticism of Donald Trump. Riyadh works very hard to irreversibly align its policies with Washington’s priorities. For this purpose, the Saudis have ended up adopting the Israeli position on Palestine and Jerusalem. Having taken huge risks to make concessions that amounted to a break with traditional Saudi foreign policy, the House of Saud appears to think that it has no choice but to embrace Trump. Hence the crown prince’s efforts to downplay the U.S. president’s remarks: A friend, he argues, can say good or bad things.

Another incident that captured the world’s attention was the disappearance of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Last week, he entered the Saudi Consulate to obtain official papers necessary to get married in Turkey, and never came back. Turkish police are concerned that Khashoggi was murdered, dismembered and carried out of the Saudi mission in multiple bags.

Riyadh has a long history of abductions and enforced disappearances when it comes to dissidents. The 1979 disappearance of Nassir al-Sa’id in Beirut, the 2003 abduction of Prince Sultan bin Turki in Geneva immediately come to mind. So does the suspicious disappearance of Saud bin Saif al Nasr. Again, the detention and forced resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri wasn’t too long ago.

The Khashoggi scandal could deal a serious blow to Turkey-Saudi relations. If the authorities are right about what happened, it will be difficult for Riyadh to explain why it decided to kill a dissident at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. At this point, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that he is “very sorry” and pledged to “closely monitor” the investigation. Going forward, Turkish and Saudi officials need to work together to shed light on this incident.

Moreover, we must point out that this affair amounts to a scandal with serious international repercussions for the Saudis. Having spent millions of dollars over several weeks to portray himself as a “reformist” in Washington, the Saudi crown prince now faces fierce criticism there. There is talk about the U.S. Congress moving to “punish” Saudi Arabia – which could derail ongoing efforts to create the Middle East Strategic Alliance that is intended to bring together Egypt, Jordan and the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Riyadh must understand the limits and dangers of collaborating with Donald Trump. It has no choice but to engage Turkey on the basis of cooperation.

Greed must be brought under control. Covert operations only serve to ruin friendships.

Source: https://www.dailysabah.com/columns/duran-burhanettin/2018/10/11/saudi-arabia-is-in-big-trouble

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Saudi Arabia is in big trouble