In Mideast, Pompeo seeks a global coalition against Iran

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday 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 alarmed by Shiite Iran's increasing assertiveness and are working to decrease its influence in the region. His stops in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi were hastily arranged late last week as additions to a trip to India from where he will join President Donald Trump in Japan and South Korea. But they were not announced until immediately before his departure in a sign of fast-moving and unpredictable developments.

"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.

But even as Pompeo delivered his tough talk, he echoed President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in saying the U.S. is prepared to negotiate with Iran, without preconditions, in a bid to ease tensions. Those tensions have been mounting since Trump last year withdrew the U.S. 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.

"They know precisely how to find us," Pompeo said.

Members of the ANSWER Coalition hold an anti-war with Iran rally Sunday outside of the White House in Washington.Andrew Harnik ~ Associated Press

It was a week of topsy-turvy pronouncements on U.S. policy toward Iran that careened between the bellicose, the conciliatory and back again after Iran shot down an American military drone and boasted it would not bow to Washington's pressure.

Trump initially said Iran had made a "very big mistake" and it was "hard to believe" shooting down the drone Thursday 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 Saturday, Trump reversed himself and claimed Iran had acted "knowingly."

But Trump also said over the weekend he appreciated Iran's decision to not shoot down a manned U.S. spy plane, and he opined about eventually becoming Iran's "best friend" if Tehran ultimately agrees to abandon its drive to build nuclear weapons and he helps the country turn around its crippled economy.

Then, Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, stepped in Sunday with a blunt warning from Jerusalem, where he was traveling. Bolton said Iran should not "mistake U.S. prudence and discretion for weakness" after Trump called off the military strike. Trump said he backed away from the planned strikes after learning that about 150 people would be killed, but he said the military option remained.

A longtime Iran hawk, Bolton emphasized the U.S. reserved the right to attack at a later point.

"No one has granted them a hunting license in the Middle East. As President Trump said on Friday, our military is rebuilt, new and ready to go," Bolton said during an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, himself a longtime and outspoken Iran critic.

On Sunday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed the United States' "interventionist military presence" for fanning the flames. He was quoted by the official IRNA news agency. Shortly thereafter, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen launched an attack against an airport in southern Saudi Arabia, killing one person and wounding seven others, according to the Saudi military. Such attacks have been cited by Saudi and U.S. officials as examples of Iran's "malign behavior" in the Middle East.

Pompeo, who addressed reporters from the tarmac before he boarded his airplane in Washington, declared the goal of his talks with the Saudi kingdom and the UAE is to deny Iran "the resources to foment terror, to build out their nuclear weapon system, to build out their missile program."

"We are going to deny them the resources they need to do that, thereby keep American interests and American people safe all around the world," said Pompeo.

The downing of the unmanned aircraft marked a new high in the rising tensions between the United States and Iran. The Trump administration has vowed to combine a "maximum pressure" campaign of economic sanctions with a buildup of American forces in the region, following the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

U.S. military cyber forces on Thursday launched a strike against Iranian military computer systems, according to U.S. officials. The cyberattacks disabled Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers, the officials said.

Throughout the recent crisis, Trump has wavered between bellicose language and actions toward Iran and a more accommodating tone, including a plea for negotiations. Iran has said it is not interested in a dialogue with Trump. His administration is aiming to cripple Iran's economy and force policy changes by re-imposing sanctions, including on Iranian oil exports.

Associated Press writers Aron Heller in Jerusalem, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Matthew Lee in Bahrain contributed to this report.

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