Pompeo:
European response to Suleimani killing 'not helpful enough'
US
secretary of state unfavourably compares European reaction with ‘partners in
the region’
Julian
Borger in Washington
Sat 4 Jan
2020 16.36 GMTLast modified on Sat 4 Jan 2020 19.29 GMT
Mike Pompeo
has expressed disappointment with European reaction to the US killing of the
Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, suggesting the UK, France and Germany have
not been sufficiently supportive.
The US
secretary of state compared the European response unfavourably with US “partners
in the region”, a likely reference to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates, which Pompeo consulted after the Suleimani assassination.
“I spent the last day and a half, two days,
talking to partners in the region, sharing with them what we were doing, why we
were doing it, seeking their assistance,” Pompeo told Fox News. “They’ve all
been fantastic. And then talking to our partners in other places that haven’t been
quite as good.
“Frankly,
the Europeans haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be. The Brits,
the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the
Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well.
This was a good thing for the entire world, we
are urging everyone to get behind what the United States is trying to do
Mike Pompeo
“Qassem
Suleimani led and his IRGC [Revolutionary Guard] led assassination campaigns in
Europe. This was a good thing for the entire world, and we are urging everyone
in the world to get behind what the United States is trying to do to get the
Islamic Republic of Iran to simply behave like a normal nation.”
European
reaction to the drone-strike killing of Suleimani and Iraqi Shia militants
travelling with him in Baghdad has been cautious and apprehensive. While noting
Suleimani’s destructive role in the region, governments have called for
restraint.
Policy
towards Iran has been a deeply divisive issue between the US and Europe since
Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 multilateral agreement with Iran that
imposed strict limits on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
European officials have blamed Trump’s efforts to strangle Iran economically
for the rising tensions in the Persian Gulf.
There were
immediate signs that in the short term at least, the killing of Suleimani would
inhibit the broad coalition effort to wipe out Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Nato suspended its training of Iraqi security forces, currently led by Canada,
and the US-led counter-Isis mission in the region, Operation Inherent Resolve,
also cut back its activities, including the training of Iraqi counter-terrorist
units.
“Over the last few days we’ve literally
stopped the anti-Isis fight – everything stopped,” said Michael Knights, an
expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Knights
said the counter-Isis campaign had already been severely hindered over the past
year as Shia militias extended their influence. US-led forces have been stopped
from flying over a large part of Iraq and banned from communicating with Sunni
tribal forces, which had been seen as an important part of the strategy for
keeping Isis suppressed.
The
increased militia threat has also meant US special forces have had to abandon
remote positions which they had been manning with Iraqi army units, because
such small 30-strong detachments had become too vulnerable.
“You just
can’t do that because those guys could easily be overrun, killed or kidnapped
by the militias, by the Iranians,” Knights said.
“It’s been
very challenging to keep counter-Isis operations going under these conditions,
and now with the really ramped-up threat to operating locations, it’s even
harder, and if they kick us out of the country, even harder still.”
If the Iraq
parliament votes to eject the US military, other partner countries in the
coalition will leave too, he said.
“It
operates on an ‘in-with-us out-with-us’, meaning those countries that came in
with the US, will leave with the US.”
Boris
Johnson’s silence on Suleimani assassination is ‘deafening’ say critics
Politicians
attack the prime minister for not addressing the Middle East crisis from his
holiday on Mustique
Toby Helm
Political editor
Sat 4 Jan
2020 19.29 GMTLast modified on Sat 4 Jan 2020 19.51 GMT
Boris
Johnson was facing growing criticism last night for failing to cut short his
Caribbean holiday as the Middle East faced one of the gravest crises since the
Iraq war in 2003.
I have no confidence Boris Johnson will keep
us out of a quagmire in Iran
Emily
Thornberry
As global
leaders weighed in on the assassination of Iran’s top general, Qassem
Suleimani, in a US drone strike in Baghdad in the early hours of Friday,
Johnson remained silent on the island of Mustique where he is on holiday with
his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds.
Downing
Street said Johnson would be back in the UK on Sunday and that the foreign
secretary, Dominic Raab, would travel to Washington this week for talks with
the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, with the Middle East the main topic of
discussion. In a sign of irritation that the UK had not already expressed its
support for the US, Pompeo on Friday said the Europeans, including “the Brits”,
“[had]n’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be”.
Johnson is
expected to update MPs on the crisis when parliament returns after the
Christmas and New Year break on Tuesday. But as the hashtag #wheresBoris began
trending on Twitter, opposition politicians tore into Johnson, suggesting he
was too afraid of upsetting President Donald Trump, who ordered the
assassination of Suleimani, to speak out. Tory sources said his silence was
more likely to be part of a co-ordinated effort by EU leaders to say little in
order not to inflame the situation.
Shadow
foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said it was “astonishing” that Johnson had
still to make a statement on the crisis in Iran, which was “on the brink of
becoming an even more destructive and catastrophic war than Iraq or Syria”.
Writing in
the Observer, she says: “Is he afraid of angering President Trump? Or is it
simply that, as he lounges in the Caribbean sun, he simply does not care, an
exact mirror of the blase approach on Iran he took in his past role as foreign
secretary when Trump was driving the nuclear deal to destruction in 2018, and when
recklessly jeopardising the fate of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe the previous
year.”
Ed Davey,
the Liberal Democrats’ acting leader, said Johnson’s silence was “deafening”.
“The prime minister must speak out now and make clear Britain will not support
the United States in repeating the mistakes of the Iraq war,” he said.
Ian
Blackford, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, said he found Johnson’s silence
“quite extraordinary” adding: “There is a clear responsibility on him as prime
minister of the United Kingdom to speak up in what is a very, very dangerous
situation. All of us have got to call for calmness.”
Asked if he
believed Johnson might be worried about upsetting his friend Trump, Blackford
reiterated: “He is the prime minister of the United Kingdom and he should speak
without fear or favour at such a time.”
A former
Tory minister with experience of the EU and the Middle East said he believed
Johnson’s decision not to speak out was part of a deliberate strategy,
co-ordinated with other EU leaders. “We are still members of the EU [until 31
January] and I think it is right. Don’t get sucked into the mangle. Pause for
thought. That is the correct response.”
As the
Foreign Office on Saturday updated its advice to British travellers, warning
against visiting Iraq apart from essential travel to the Kurdistan region,
former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said the US was playing a risky game.
“It’s an incredibly dangerous game of chicken going on because both sides have
calculated that the other side cannot afford and doesn’t want to go to war,” he
said.
“So they
are doing increasingly extreme things, not just the assassination of Suleimani
… the bombing of the Saudi oil facility last September is another example. It
is true neither side wants to go to war but it’s also true that both sides are
compelled to react when things like this happen. That is the risk in this
situation.”
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