{"id":36569,"date":"2019-03-21T08:23:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T08:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36569"},"modified":"2019-03-21T08:23:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T08:23:07","slug":"netanyahu-and-pompeo-vow-to-counter-iranian-aggression-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36569","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu and Pompeo vow to counter Iranian aggression"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nJERUSALEM: Top US diplomat Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday to counter Iranian \u201caggression\u201d as the two met in Jerusalem just weeks ahead of Israel\u2019s elections.
Pompeo was on a regional tour focused largely on Iran, but the meeting and his warm words on Netanyahu\u2019s leadership will likely be seen as support from US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration amid the Israeli premier\u2019s re-election fight.
Netanyahu, facing a stiff challenge from a centrist alliance in April 9 polls whilst under threat of indictment for corruption, will next week visit Washington, where he will meet twice with Trump.
Pompeo\u2019s visit offered the right-wing premier an opportunity to burnish his security and diplomatic credentials \u2014 both key planks of his re-election campaign.
In comments after Pompeo\u2019s arrival, Netanyahu said Trump\u2019s pressure on Israel\u2019s main enemy Iran was already having an effect, referring to his withdrawal from the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and Washington\u2019s reimposition of sanctions.
\u201cWe need to increase it, we need to expand it, and together the United States and Israel are working in close coordination to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and around the world,\u201d he said.
Pompeo noted a Middle East conference in Warsaw last month that included Arab nations as well as Israel, saying the discussions involved efforts \u201cto stop Iran\u2019s regional rampage\u201d among other issues.
The US secretary of state also spoke of Iranian calls for Israel\u2019s destruction.
\u201cWith such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparallelled commitment to Israel\u2019s security and firmly support your right to defend yourself,\u201d he said.
Netanyahu reiterated his pledge to keep Iran from entrenching itself militarily in neighboring Syria, where the Islamic republic backs President Bashar Assad\u2019s regime.
Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes there against what it says are Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
\u201cThere is no limitation to our freedom of action, and we appreciate very much the fact that the United States backs up our actions as we do them,\u201d Netanyahu said.
Pompeo\u2019s stay in Jerusalem also included a four-way meeting with Netanyahu, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Wednesday night.
The discussions were to include plans to build a natural gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe.
Pompeo, who later travels to Lebanon, kicked off his regional tour in Kuwait where he met Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.
He is pushing for a greater role for the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), a US-sponsored Arab NATO-style bloc aimed at uniting Washington\u2019s Arab allies against Tehran.
Pompeo said before his arrival that his trip to Israel had nothing to do with politics, saying the \u201crelationship matters, no matter who the leaders are.\u201d
No meetings with Netanyahu\u2019s opponents are scheduled, and the secretary of state will not meet with representatives of the Palestinian Authority.
Trump\u2019s administration has taken a series of steps that the Palestinian Authority has deemed so hostile that it now refuses any contact with the US administration.
They included cutting most US aid to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
President Donald Trump\u2019s decision in December 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israeli delighted Netanyahu\u2019s government.
But it enraged Palestinians, who want to make the eastern, mainly Palestinian part of the city the capital of their future state.
Pompeo\u2019s two-day visit to Jerusalem also includes a stop at the new US embassy, which was transferred from Tel Aviv on Trump\u2019s orders last year.
A shift in semantics and policy has also marked the Trump term.
The US has ceased to refer to the Golan Heights as \u201cIsraeli-occupied\u201d and instead calls the territory seized from Syria \u201ccontrolled\u201d by Israel \u2014 a change seen by some as a prelude to US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the strategic plateau.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM: Top US diplomat Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday to counter Iranian \u201caggression\u201d as the two met in Jerusalem just weeks ahead of Israel\u2019s elections.Pompeo was on a regional tour focused largely on Iran, but the meeting and his warm words on Netanyahu\u2019s leadership will likely be seen as support…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}