Pompeo: Iran the ‘common villain’ in Mideast protests

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Iran is the uniting factor behind protests around the Middle East, saying demonstrators in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran itself oppose the clerical regime.

While acknowledging diverse local reasons for the unrest that has swept the Middle East as well as other regions, Pompeo points the finger at Iran, considered an arch-enemy by US President Donald Trump’s administration.

Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi resigned “because the people were demanding freedom and the security forces had killed dozens and dozens of people. That’s due in large part to Iranian influence,” Pompeo says.

“The same is true in Lebanon, the protests in Beirut,” he says at the University of Louisville.

“They want Hezbollah and Iran out of their country, out of their system as a violent and a repressive force,” he says.

He says protests inside Iran — which Amnesty International says have killed more than 200 people — show that Iranians are also “fed up.”

“They see a theocracy that is stealing money, the ayatollahs stealing tens and tens of millions of dollars,” he says.

— AFP