- Secretary looks to boost alliance against Iran in Saudi stop
- U.S. seeking more funding to reconstruct Iraq post-IS
Tillerson Calls on Europe to Back Iran Sanctions
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on European governments to join a U.S.-led sanctions regime against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, saying that countries doing business with the Islamic Republic’s force do so at their own risk.
The Revolutionary Guards “foment instability in the region and create destruction in the region,” Tillerson told reporters in Riyadh on Sunday after talks with King Salman of Saudi Arabia and other top officials. European countries and companies that do business with the IRGC “really do so at great risk,” he said.
Tillerson is in Saudi Arabia looking to counter Iranian influence in the region, including by bolstering an alliance between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In the same vein, he is trying to make sure that the void left after U.S.-backed forces ousted Islamic State fighters in in Iraq is filled by U.S. allies, not adversaries such as Iran.
He called on Iranian-backed militias to lay down their weapons and leave.
“Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIS is coming to a close, those militias need to go home,” Tillerson said. “Any foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control.”
The secretary spoke a week after President Donald Trump announced a new Iran strategy, refusing to certify a 2015 landmark nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers. While he stopped short of repudiating the pact, he asked Congress to change it to to ensure it counters Iranian political influence in the Middle East and announced more sanctions on the IRGC.
