Pompeo to visit Israel to discuss countering measures against Iran
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked about the reasons for his incumbent visit to Israel in a time of global crisis, said, that he wanted to meet with the newly elected government and “talk to them about a range of important issues, not only issues that relate to the US-Israel relationship, but issues that we work on together: countering the Islamic Republic of Iran, including our work to extend the arms embargo”, Pompeo said in an interview with Kan News reported on the US State Department website.
Pompeo added that he felt that he wanted to be at the front end of the new government’s formation to express “the importance that the US places on our continued relationship with Israel”.
Discussing Syria he said that both countries “made clear to the Iranian regime that they need to get out of Syria.” He added, “we’ve made that clear to the Assad regime as well”.
“We hope the Iranian regime will make the wise decision to move out of Syria, to cease their terror campaign there that’s caused six million people to leave, tens of thousands of lives lost,” he said. “We hope the Iranian regime will make a different choice and that they’ll depart Syria, and the sooner, the better.”
He says that the Iranian population is fed up with the waste of resources Theran is investing in the Syria conflict, especially at COVID-19 outbreak times.
Discussing the word that the US has been doing in the region, Pompeo said that he thinks it has been effective at denying Iran the resources to “inflict terror across the world”.
Pompeo also said he auspicates a change of leadership in Tehran. “We hope now that they’ll make a choice of leadership that changes the fundamental behavior of the Iranian regime,” he said.
“Look, this is a nation that is the most anti-Semitic nation in the world. They have threatened to take Israel off the map. They also are the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. We are confident that that is not what the Iranian people want. We hope that regime will change its behaviour in a way that’s consistent with what the demands of the Iranian people have consistently been,” Pompeo concluded.
