Pompeo slams Iran, pushes Gulf state unity in Saudi Arabia visit


New Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled this weekend to Saudi Arabia, where he held a joint press conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.
"Gulf unity is necessary, and we need to achieve it," he said, pushing Riyadh to end its conflict with neighboring Qatar. "We are hopeful that they will, in their own way, figure out how to remove the dispute between them," Pompeo told the press.
He also took aim at Saudi rival Iran. Tehran "destabilizes this entire region," Pompeo argued. "It supports proxy militias and terrorist groups. It is an arms dealer to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. It supports the murderous Assad regime [in Syria] as well." Pompeo is a strident critic of the Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump has said he may exit.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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