Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday said he is confident the United States can develop a shared strategy with European leaders to deal with Iran.
A reporter at a State Department press briefing referenced Pompeo's speech on Monday about the unprecedented financial pressure that he wanted the United States to put on Iran. He then mentioned Pompeo's critics and said that they believe that the Europeans won't go along with him on the sanctions.
"What do you say to those critics? How do you get the Europeans to go along, and then others like China or Russia, who continue to abide by the agreement?" the reporter asked.
"It's really straightforward. This is a global challenge I mentioned in my remarks yesterday," Pompeo said. "This is a shared threat across the world and I am confident that we can collectively develop a diplomatic response that achieves the simple outcomes that we put forward. We wouldn't tolerate Iceland doing what the Iranians are doing. We wouldn't tolerate Chad doing what the Iranians — I could just pick a number. I'm sort of tripping through the alphabet."
Pompeo went on to say that if somebody created an equivalent of Hezbollah, the United States and European allies wouldn't sit by and let them carry on operations.
"Russia and China don't see that as a positive impact around the world either, so I'm confident that there's a set of overlapping values and interests here that will drive us to the same conclusion about the need to respond to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s threats to the world," Pompeo said.