U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday that there cannot be Middle East peace without combating Iran.
“You can’t achieve stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran,” Pompeo said to reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the summit in Warsaw regarding the volatile region. “It’s just not possible.”
“There are malign influences in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq,” continued Pompeo. “The three H’s: the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. These are real threats. There are others as well.”
“But you can’t get peace in the Middle East without pushing back against Iran,” he added.
Netanyahu, speaking with Pompeo, labeled the summit a “historical turning point.”
“An Israeli prime minister and the foreign ministers of leading Arab countries stood together and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against the common threat of the Iranian regime,” he said.
“This marks a change and an important understanding in what threatens our future, and what we have to do to secure it and the possibilities of cooperation that extend beyond security to every realm of life for the peoples of the Middle East,” added the prime minister.
Along with addressing the Iranian threat, issues that were addressed at the summit, called “The Ministerial Conference to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East,” included, but were not limited to, solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ending the crisis in Yemen.
