Mike Pence chides US allies at Warsaw summit on Iran | World news | The Guardian 14/2/19 14'49

Mike Pence chides US allies at

Warsaw summit on Iran
Vice-president tells event that EU mechanism to facilitate trade
with Iran is ‘ill-advised’

Patrick Wintour
and Oliver Holmes
in Jerusalem
Thu 14 Feb 2019
12.47 GMT

Mike Pence (left) with the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Polish counterpart, Mateusz
Morawiecki, in Warsaw. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters

The US vice-president, Mike Pence, has sharply rebuked Washington’s European allies over
their efforts to shield their businesses from US sanctions on Iran, as transatlantic tensions
over US foreign policy were laid bare at a conference in Warsaw.

A scheme the EU has set up to facilitate trade with Iran was “an effort to break American
sanctions against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime”, Pence said during a conference
on the Middle East organised by the US in the Polish capital.

“It is an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the EU and create still more
distance between Europe and the United States,” he said.

The Warsaw meeting was attended by more than 60 nations, but major European powers
such as Germany and France, parties to the landmark 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, refused
to send their top diplomats over fears that the summit was designed largely to build an
alliance against Tehran.
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Mike Pence chides US allies at Warsaw summit on Iran | World news | The Guardian 14/2/19 14'49

The US, by contrast, is represented by Pence, Mike Pompeo, Washington’s top diplomat, and
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special aide on the Middle East. The Israeli
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu is also attending.

The Obama administration eased US sanctions on Iran under the terms of the nuclear deal,
but Trump reimposed them when he withdrew the US from the agreement last year.

“You can’t achieve stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran. It’s just not
possible,” Pompeo told reporters after his formal opening statement. “There are malign
influences in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq,” he said, referring to groups Iran supports.
“The three H’s: the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah, these are real threats.”

Netanyahu had earlier withdrawn a claim on his Twitter account, said to be the result of a
mistranslation, that he was in Warsaw to discuss war with Iran.

Netanyahu described the opening dinner at which he sat alongside senior officials from Arab
Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, as a historical turning point. Many Arab states do not
recognise Israel, and have not shared a diplomatic stage with the country since a Middle
East peace conference in Madrid in 1991, but they have been driven together by their
common fear of Iran.

It remains to be seen how far the new alliance can extend to a combined approach to the
Palestinian issue. It is expected Kushner will discuss his peace plan with Arab leaders in
private as well as at a public session on the sidelines of the summit.

Netanyahu has argued that the Arab world is open to normalised economic ties with Israel
that are not dependent on a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At the opening session, he sat next to Khaled Alyemany, the foreign minister of Yemen, and
the two exchanged a brief smile. Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s Middle East envoy, said on
Twitter that Alyemany offered his microphone to Netanyahu, whose own had broken.
Netanyahu then joked it signalled a “new cooperation between Israel and Yemen”,
Greenblatt said. Palestinian officials have condemned the summit.

Netanyahu, who faces elections shortly, told reporters in Warsaw: “In a room of some 60
foreign ministers representative of dozens of governments, an Israeli prime minister and the
foreign ministers of the leading Arab countries stood together and spoke with unusual force,
clarity and unity against the common threat of the Iranian regime.

“I think this marks a change and important understanding of what threatens our future,
what we need to do to secure it, and the possibility that cooperation will extend beyond
security in every realm of life.”

Officials said Netanyahu spoke around the same table as senior officials of Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, none of which have relations with Israel. The country
only has diplomatic relations with two Arab states, neighbouring Egypt and Jordan.

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Mike Pence chides US allies at Warsaw summit on Iran | World news | The Guardian 14/2/19 14'49

Pompeo’s call in his opening speech for a new era of cooperation in the Middle East will
viewed with scepticism by EU leaders, who feel they were not consulted on the US decision
to pull out of the Iran deal, or the planned withdrawal of 2,000 US troops from Syria.

The Iranian foreign minister, Javed Zarif, described the Warsaw conference as “dead on
arrival” and another attempt by the US to pursue an unfounded obsession with Iran.

A former US ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, also dismissed the event saying “conducting
a lacklustre and rambling conference on the Middle East shows that it is amateur hour at the
White House and is ultimately another blow to US prestige and leadership”.

The Warsaw conference came as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, increasingly seen as
a key player in the Middle East, hosted his Iranian and Turkish counterparts to discuss a
final settlement in the Syrian civil war, including the presence of a large number of Islamist
fighters in Idlib province.

The three countries, particularly Turkey and Iran, do not agree on the final settlement in
Syria, but have been uneasily cooperating to find a solution that does not betray their
interests.

Iran wants Turkey to agree that Syrian forces should be deployed along the border with
Turkey, but there has also been a separate US discussion of an international force to assuage
Kurdish fears of Turkish invasion once US forces depart.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Wednesday that the leaders would also
discuss forming a special committee tasked with drawing up a new postwar constitution for
Syria. The composition of the committee, including the role of civil society has been in
dispute for more than a year.

The previous UN special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, admitted on his retirement in December
he had not overcome mainly Syrian government objections to his vision for the committee’s
membership.

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Topics
Iran
Israel
Middle East and North Africa
US foreign policy
Poland
Europe
news

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