BRUSSELS: The Trump administration is urging Europe to impose tough new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program.
The call comes as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to meet European officials in Brussels this week and after the US and others condemned an Iranian missile launch over the weekend.
Iran is expected to be a major topic of conversation when Pompeo meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Brussels on Monday night. Pompeo also plans to talk about Iran when he meets his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany on Tuesday while he is in Belgium for a meeting of NATO counterparts.
US special envoy for Iran Brian Hook rejected Iran’s insistence that its missile program is defensive.
He told reporters traveling with Pompeo that Iran’s continued missile development and testing is a threat to the region and beyond and in defiance of UN Security Council demands.
Hook said US discussions with the Europeans about missile sanctions are gaining traction. Those talks center on slapping penalties on companies and people involved in Iran’s program.
“It is a grave and escalating threat, and nations around the world, not just Europe, need to do everything they can to be targeting Iran’s missile program,” Hook said.
Hook’s comments on Monday were the latest salvo in an escalating US campaign against Iran since President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal in May.
“Iran is on the wrong track, and our campaign of maximum economic pressure is designed to starve the regime of revenue it needs,” he said.
On Thursday, Hook accused Iran of violating a UN ban on Iranian arms exports by sending weapons to its proxies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
On Saturday, Pompeo denounced Iran for test-firing a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple warheads that could reach parts of Europe.
“We are accumulating risk of escalation in the region if we fail to restore deterrence,” Pompeo said.
US urges Europe to impose sanctions on Iran over missiles
US urges Europe to impose sanctions on Iran over missiles
- Pompeo is urging Europe to impose tough new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities
- The US and several European countries condemned an Iranian missile launch over the weekend
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
