Washington urged European leaders Monday to enact sanctions on Iran after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tehran tested a medium range ballistic missile Saturday, VOA news reports.
“We would like to see the European Union move sanctions that target Iran’s missile program,” Washington’s Iran special envoy Brian Hook told reporters traveling with Pompeo to the NATO meeting in Brussels Monday.
Hook said said the test violated U.N. Council Resolution 2231. Iran responded by saying its tests were for defensive purposes.
“How exactly is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism entitled to a claim of defense? In fact, Iran’s security concerns are entirely self-generated. Was a plot to bomb Paris defensive? Was the assassination attempt in Denmark defensive? Is smuggling missiles to the Houthis in Yemen to attack Saudi Arabia and the Emirates defensive,” the U.S. special representative for Iran said.
Pompeo arrived in Brussels late Monday, where he is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss “regional developments,” according to Netanyahu’s office.
At the semi-annual meeting of NATO ministers, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert says Pompeo will renew the U.S. call that allies “shoulder a fair share of the burden of responsibility to protect against common threats.”
“This means living up to the pledge that all allies made in 2014 and reaffirmed at the 2018 Brussels Summit to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense by 2024 and to invest 20 percent of that in major equipment,” Nauert said in a statement Monday.