Pompeo react on the Iranian assault
The United States aims to avoid a war with Iran and the additional troops ordered to deploy in the Gulf region are for “deterrence and defense” in the United States. State Secretary Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.
Speaking to Fox News Sunday, Pompeo said he was optimistic about the U.S. President Donald Trump would take action if such dissuasion policies had failed and the Iranian management had known this well.
“Our task is to prevent conflict,” Pompeo said. “You saw what Secretary Esper announced on Friday that we are deploying additional forces in the region for the purpose of deterrence and defense,” he said.
Pompeo said that Washington was taking action to discourage Tehran, but he added that Trump would take the required intervention if Tehran tried to modify its conduct. “If this deterrence continues to fail, I am also convinced that President Trump will proceed to take the needed action,” he said.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated further following last weekend’s assault on Saudi oil installations, which originally interrupted half of the kingdom’s oil manufacturing, the world’s biggest exporter of oil, and were blamed on Tehran by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. has imposed more sanctions on Iran, penalizing the Iranian Central Bank, while the Pentagon has said that it is ordering U.S. soldiers to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s air and missile defenses after the largest ever assault on the kingdom’s oil installations.
Iran refused to participate in the assault. Yemen’s Houthi rebellion, an Iran-aligned group battling a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s civil war, asserted accountability.
Pompeo’s statement
U.S.—Secretary of State Steven Mnuchin, talking to CNN, said that the assault on Saudi oil was an assault on the world economic system. He said the U.S. wants any nation connected to the U.S. dollar scheme to comply with sanctions against Iran.
Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last year and ramped up sanctions to strangle its oil exports, a mainstay of the Iranian economy.
Source: Reuters
