Pompeo Lands in Saudi for Talks Focused on Iran

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh Wednesday for talks with Saudi leaders focused on countering Tehran, his first visit since a top Iranian general's killing sent regional tensions soaring.

The top US diplomat, whose visit follows his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, will hold talks with King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, State Department officials said.

"We'll spend a lot of time talking about the security issues with the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular," Pompeo told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa before heading to Riyadh.

Pompeo said the United States was "prepared to talk anytime" to Iran but emphasised that the Iranian regime has "got to fundamentally change their behaviour".

"The pressure campaign continues. It's not just an economic pressure campaign, its diplomatic pressures, isolation through diplomacy as well," he said.

US President Donald Trump, who is closely allied with Saudi Arabia, in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear accord with Iran and imposed sweeping sanctions aimed at reducing Tehran's regional clout.

Pompeo's three-day visit to close ally Saudi Arabia comes in the wake of a US-ordered drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran's most powerful general, as he visited Baghdad on January 3

Regional tensions rose following the killing and Iran responded with missile strikes on US forces in Iraq.

US officials blamed Iran for a September attack on Saudi oil installations, although Riyadh has since appeared keen to engage in cautious diplomacy to ease friction.

Pompeo faces a tough balancing act in Saudi Arabia as he said he would also discuss "human rights" during his visit.

The 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which sparked global condemnation of the crown prince, has tested relations between the two allies.

After Riyadh, Pompeo will fly to Oman to meet the new sultan, Haitham bin Tariq, on Friday.

Pompeo will offer condolences over the death of his predecessor Qaboos, who was the Arab world's longest-serving leader and served as a go-between for Iran and the United States.

Photo: State Department

Pompeo Talks Maritime Security, Iran With Saudi Crown Prince

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed maritime security, Iran and Yemen with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a phone call on Wednesday.

"The secretary discussed heightened tensions in the region and the need for stronger maritime security in order to promote freedom of navigation," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

Iran has seized three tanker ships in strategic Gulf waters in a month, and the United States has accused it of carrying out multiple attacks on ships in the region.

The U.S. has been struggling to piece together an international coalition to protect cargo ships travelling through the Gulf, with allies concerned about being dragged into conflict with Iran.

Ortagus also said that the top U.S. diplomat and the crown prince "discussed other bilateral and regional developments, including countering the Iranian regime's destabilizing activities."

Tensions between Washington and Tehran -- Saudi Arabia's arch foe -- have soared since U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal with Iran last year and imposed punishing sanctions.

Twelve months on from the U.S. withdrawal, Iran responded by suspending some of its commitments under the nuclear deal.

Iran meanwhile shot down an American drone in June, with Trump saying he called off retaliatory air strikes at the last minute, and the United States says it has since downed one and possibly two of Tehran's unmanned aircraft, which the Islamic republic has denied.

On Yemen, "the secretary and the crown prince reaffirmed their strong support for UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths' efforts to advance the political process," Ortagus said.

Saudi Arabia is locked in a bloody war in the country against the Iran-backed Huthis, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, relief agencies say.

Trump vetoed congressional resolutions last month that would have blocked arms sales to the kingdom that critics fear would aggravate the devastating Yemen war, which the UN said has triggered the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Photo: Wikicommons

Netanyahu: Israel Would Hit Iran to Ensure its Own Survival

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel would be prepared to attack inside Iran if the Jewish state's survival was at stake.

 "Our red line is our survival," Netanyahu said at a meeting with foreign media where he was asked what his "red line" was for attacking Iranian territory, rather than its proxies in Syria and Lebanon.

"We do what is necessary to protect the state of Israel against the Iranian regime that openly calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state."

"I'm not ruling out doing anything that we need to do to defend ourselves," added Netanyahu, who sees Iran as the most dangerous threat to Israel.

He said that Israel is the only country whose military is "directly engaging Iranian forces" with air strikes in neighboring Syria, where Iran supports the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

Netanyahu said Wednesday that Iran's aggressive regional behavior, in contrast to Israel's fight against radical Islamic militants and its advanced technology, had brought once-hostile Arab states closer to the Jewish state.

"The Arab countries understand exactly that Israel is not their enemy, but their indispensable partner" against extremists, he said, speaking of "new relationship between Israel and the Arab world".

Israel has diplomatic relations with only two Arab countries—Egypt and Jordan—but has recently been pushing to broaden regional ties.

A rapprochement with Saudi Arabia in particular, a regional heavyweight and rival of Iran, would be a considerable breakthrough for Israel.

Netanyahu said that a balanced diplomatic response was needed to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country's consulate in Istanbul on October 2, which sparked a global outcry.

While he described the crime as "horrific, nothing short of that," he said that every country, especially those with formal relations with Saudi Arabia, must decide how to react.

"It's balanced by the importance of Saudi Arabia and the role it plays in the Middle East, because if Saudi Arabia were to be destabilized the world would be destabilized... and I think that has to be taken into account, there's a balance," he said.

Photo Credit: Wikicommons

Iran Stays Quiet on Khashoggi Case

Iran has been playing it cool as it watches the furore over the disappearance of writer Jamal Khashoggi create a crisis for its regional rival Saudi Arabia.

As of Wednesday, the government had yet to make any official comment on the alleged murder of Khashoggi who vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Barraged by questions at his weekly press conference on Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said only that Iran was monitoring events.

The Iranian press has been reprinting the gruesome claims from Turkish and other international sources that Khashoggi was tortured and dismembered inside the consulate, and on Wednesday alleged a cover-up by Riyadh and Washington.

"US, Turkey and Saudi colluding to close the murder case of Jamal Khashoggi," read the headline on Wednesday's Jomhuri Eslami, a conservative paper, as it reported on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to Riyadh and Ankara.

"Pompeo's mission in travelling to Riyadh and then Turkey is to cover up Saudi brutality and scandal by making up stories, and this very project is an excuse to keep milking the Saudis (for weapons' contracts)," added the Javan newspaper, considered close to the Revolutionary Guards.

Reza Ghabishavi, in the reformist Arman newspaper, acknowledged the silence from Iran's leaders over the case.

"The whole world... has reacted, but after two weeks, Iran has made no remarks," he wrote.

"Of course, it's obvious the whole thing is in the interests of Iran because on the one hand it has caused serious differences between America and Saudi Arabia, and on the other hand, the young prince's reforms in Saudi Arabia have been destroyed in the public opinion of the world," he added.

'Terrorist Wahhabis'

Ghabishavi also pointed out that Khashoggi was no friend of Iran, having strongly criticised the country's foreign interventions in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

The case comes just a few weeks before full US sanctions are reimposed on Iran following Washington's decision to scrap the 2015 nuclear deal.

Although the sanctions have contributed to a sharp economic downturn in Iran, its leaders have relished a rare opportunity to hold the moral high ground on the international scene, as much of the world criticizes the aggression of US moves against Iran.

"Everyone knows that America has lost legally and politically by giving up on its international obligations and that we have achieved victory," said President Hassan Rouhani in a speech on Sunday.

The Tehran Times emphasised that Khashoggi's alleged assassination was the inevitable result of the West's long-running support for Saudi monarchs.

"This is your own doing," wrote editor-in-chief Mohammad Ghaderi, addressing Western governments.

"You pick puppets to rule over (their) lands... and back terrorist Wahhabis," he said, referring to the fundamentalist Saudi interpretation of Islam.

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