U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Sochi on Tuesday for meetings with Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov as a growing conflict between the United States and Iran threatened to boil over.
It is Pompeo’s first visit to Russia as America’s chief diplomat, and he said ahead of the trip that he would confront Putin about election interference.
‘We’ll certainly talk about that,’ he assured a CNBC interviewer. ‘I’m confident that the American people should feel good about the security of our elections in 2020.’
The State Departments said Monday that ‘attacks’ by Iranian proxies and Tehran’s ‘destabilizing’ actions in Syria would be on the agenda, as well.
The U.S. is accusing Iran of sabotaging four oil tankers anchored in the Middle East, and President Trump warned Iran on Monday that ‘it’s going to be a bad problem’ for the nation if the behavior worsens.
‘They’re not going to be happy. They are not going to be happy people,’ he said in the Oval Office.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Sochi on Tuesday for a meeting with Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov as a growing conflict between the United States and Iran threatened to boil over
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
Pompeo and Lavrov shake hands prior to their talks in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in southern Russia. Pompeo’s first trip to Russia began Tuesday. He arrived a day late after stopping Brussels for emergency talks with U.S. allies
Allegations over the oil tankers, two of which belonged to the Saudis, one the UAE, and one of which was a Norwegian vessel, further strained relations between Iran and the U.S.
The White House was said to be considering a proposal to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East on Tuesday, in case escalated tensions evolved into a military conflict with Iran.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan developed the plan at National Security Advisor John Bolton’s request, the New York Times reported.
Last week, the U.S. sent a group of nuclear-capable, aircraft carriers to the Middle East, as it claimed it had evidence of a ‘credible threat’ from Iran that required the urgent deployment.
Tehran announced days later that it would no longer abide by certain provisions of the international nuclear agreement that Donald Trump left last year but Europe and Russia remain party to, unless it gets the sanctions relief it was initially promised.
Trump’s administration responded to the threat by introducing sanctions on Iran’s medal industry.
Russia has said that U.S. sanctions on Iran are ‘illegitimate’ and in violation of a United National Security Council resolution.
Pompeo insisted Saturday in an interview with CNBC that the U.S. is right to take action to contain Iran.
‘What we’ve seen from the Iranians is increased threats, and we’ve seen this reporting. It’s real. It appears to be something that is current,’ he said. ‘So we’ve done all of our things to increase our security posture to the best of our ability.’
Pompeo said ahead of the trip that he would confront Putin about election interference. Iran was on the agenda, as well, after the U.S. accused the nation of sabotaging oil tankers
He added, ‘But we also wanted to make sure that we had deterrent forces in place, so in the event that Iran decided to come after an American interest, whether that be in Iraq or in Afghanistan or Yemen or any place in the Middle East, we were prepared to respond in an appropriate way.’
Pressure from the new dispute with Iran could derail Trump’s attempt to reset relations with Russia, now that the special counsel investigation into election meddling and alleged collusion has concluded.
He spoke to Putin by phone before Pompeo’s trip and announced plans on Monday to hold talks with the Russian leader next month at the G20.
After confirming he’d meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka at the June conference, Trump said, ‘Yes, I’ll be meeting with President Putin also.’
He said he’s sending Pompeo to meet with Putin first to make clear that ‘there has never been anybody that’s been so tough on Russia but, at the same time, we’re going to end up getting along with Russia’ because it makes sense for the nations to work with one another.
‘Nobody has sanctioned Russia like I have. Nobody has talked about the pipeline going to Germany and various other places like I have. I said it’s very unfair — having to do with the United States and NATO. There has been nobody that’s ever done — and if you really look at something big, our energy business — we’re now the biggest in the world.
He said, ‘We’re bigger than Russia. We’re bigger than Saudi Arabia. We’re bigger than anybody. That it all happened since I’ve become President because I’ve made it so that you can do that. And we’re taking in a lot of money.’
If Trump’s meeting with Putin is the carrot, Pompeo planned to arrived on Tuesday with a stick, the State Department signaled on Friday.
‘The starting point we have to have when we discuss our policy toward Russia, and this is part of what diplomacy does, and the secretary’s trip, is to acknowledge frankly that Russia has taken a series of aggressive and destabilizing actions on the global stage,’ a senior official said Friday.
Pompeo v. Putin: the U.S. secretary of state meets with the Russian president in advance of a Trump summit. Donald Trump said Monday that he plans to meet Putin for talks at the G20 next month in Osaka
After confirming he’d meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka at the June conference, Trump said, ‘Yes, I’ll be meeting with President Putin also’
The senior State Department official declined to lay out U.S. expectations on a call previewing the visit by Pompeo, telling reporters, ‘I don’t want to predict any outcomes.’
Conflicts in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Ukraine and North Korea were expected to come up. So were the cases of U.S. citizens who are detained in Russia.
‘The secretary will also talk about the challenges in our bilateral relationship with Russia,’ the official said. ‘It is no secret that we have many areas of disagreement with the Russian Government, and the secretary will have a very candid conversation about concerns in our bilateral relationship.’
Those challenges include Russia’s alleged violation of arms control agreement and ‘Kremlin-backed attempts to meddle in U.S. and other foreign elections,’ the State Department said.
‘These are issues he’s raised before, and he will continue to raise. No administration has been tougher than the Trump administration in imposing costs on Russia for its malign activities,’ the official said of Pompeo’s visit.
The official said that trip is an ‘opportunity to take the conversation’ on key issues ‘to a higher level’ by meeting directly with Putin.
‘This trip is an opportunity to make those points clear to the Russian government and what are expectations are and see how to forge a path forward,’ the person said.
Trump is looking to move past the special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling and alleged collusion and spoke to Putin by phone a week ago on Friday
State announced Friday morning that Pompeo, who rushed back to the U.S. this week from Europe as hostilities with with Iran and North Korea, would travel to Moscow and Sochi, Russia, this week, leaving on Sunday.
An advisory said he would ‘meet with his team at U.S. Embassy Moscow before meeting with U.S. business leaders and U.S. exchange alumni’ on Monday, May 13.
‘Secretary Pompeo will travel to Sochi, Russia on May 14 to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin to discuss the full range of bilateral and multilateral challenges,’ the statement said.
Pompeo nixed a day in Moscow on Monday to make a stop in Brussels to meet with U.S. allies, instead. He arrived on Tuesday for his meetings with Lavrov and Putin.
Trump’s call with Putin signaled a willingness by the U.S. president to engage with Russia, despite added tension after a U.S.-backed uprising in Caracas failed to displace the country’s dictatorial leader Nicolas Maduro.
President Trump has repeatedly asserted his preference of having a good relationship with traditional foes like Russia rather than a bad one, a sentiment the State Department reiterated in advance of the trip by Pompeo.
‘We’ve been clear all along that part of our Russia policy is it is in our interest to have a better relationship with Russia. The president has been clear, the secretary has been clear on that,and so where we have concerns we’re going to raise them directly, narrow those differences, and find areas where we can cooperate to protect and advance our interests,’ the person said.
The official stressed that Pompeo would confront Putin and Lavrov with U.S. concerns, as he has in the past.
‘An improved relationship between the United States and Russia would be in our interest, but we have expectations for the Russian side,’ the person said.
Trump claims to have taken the fiercest stance against Russia of any modern president, but his refusal to address intelligence community concerns about Putin’s election interference generated new clams last week that he’s not acting tough enough.
He said last Friday that Putin ‘smiled’ as they talked about the 2016 election.
‘He actually sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that “it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse,” ‘Trump said. ‘But he knew that because he knew there was to no collusion whatsoever.’
The U.S. president admitted that he did not tell Putin not to meddle in the next election, despite a claim from Sanders earlier in the day that Trump is ‘looking at ways to actually prevent it’ unlike predecessor Barack Obama.
‘We didn’t discuss that,’ he told a reporter who asked about the next election twice.
At the White House later, DailyMail.com asked Sanders to explain why Trump declined to tell his Russian counterpart to not interfere in the next election.
‘The president’s made clear to everybody: every person that’s not an American person has no business in our election. We’ve said it a lot, and we’re actually doing things to prevent everybody from meddling in our election. Something the other administration failed to do,’ she claimed.
Sanders said, ‘Let’s not forget that any interference in any election didn’t take place under this president, it took place under President Obama. We’re actually taking steps to stop it and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.’
Pressed to say why he did not tell Putin that during the call, she replied, before walking away, ‘The president’s been clear that no one needs to meddle in our election. He doesn’t need to do that every two seconds.’
Sanders told press earlier in the day that Trump and Putin discussed the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference ‘very briefly’ in an early morning call she told reporters about as she walked back from a TV hit on the White House lawn.
She would not say who initiated the contact that came amid the uprising in Venezuela but confirmed that the two leaders spoke for ‘a little over an hour’ on Friday and the special counsel investigation was among the topics.
‘Very, very, briefly it was discussed, essentially in the context of its over, and there was no collusion, which I’m pretty sure both leaders were well aware of long before this call,’ she told White House press who happened to be present.
President Trump described it as a ‘long and very good conversation’ in a tweet later in the day.
‘As I have always said, long before the Witch Hunt started, getting along with Russia, China, and everyone is a good thing, not a bad thing,’ he announced.
He said they discussed the ‘“Russian Hoax” ‘ during the call, using a nickname he gave the probe over allegations he participated in election interference.
It was the rival presidents’ first conversation since the conclusion of the special counsel investigation. Robert Mueller’s report found that no one in the Trump campaign was involved in the Kremlin’s plot to disrupt the American presidential election in 2016.
Trump and Putin held their first meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. They could meet at the G20 summit again next month
President Trump described it as a ‘long and very good conversation’ in a tweet later
Mueller did not arrive a verdict on whether Trump obstructed justice in 10 instances outlined in the report. A meeting he had with Russian officials at the White House the day after he fired James Comey as FBI director was described in one of them.
‘The day after firing Comey, the president told Russian officials that he had “Faced great pressure because of Russia,” which had been “taken off” by Comey’s firing,’ the report says.
Sanders told reporters waiting for her after a television hit on the White House drive that Trump and Putin had a ‘very good discussion’ in a Friday morning call about nuclear agreements, trade and conflicts in North Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela.
She said it was ‘overall a very positive conversation’ that ran a gamut of topics.
Trump’s top spokeswoman revealed that the leaders discussed extending an existing nuclear agreement and the possibility of a new nuclear deal that includes China.
She said the call was mainly about Venezuela, and the ‘focus was on helping the people and the importance of making sure they get food and medical supplies’ during a standoff between opposition party activists and Nicolas Maduro’s government.
Sarah Sanders told reporters waiting for her after a television hit on the White House drive that Trump and Putin had a ‘very good discussion’ in a call last Friday morning
But the Mueller probe also came up during the call, she admitted, providing little additional detail on the nature of the discussion.
The White House spokeswoman insisted to press that the Trump administration is taking aggressive steps to prevent future election meddling by Russia.
‘This administration, unlike the previous one, takes election meddling seriously,’ she charged, ‘and we’re going to do everything that we can to prevent that from happening.’
She said Trump is ‘looking at ways to actually prevent it from taking place, instead of what they did in 2016, just letting it happen, knowing about it and doing nothing, and then trying to blame it on the incoming administration.’
She had no future summit to preview between Trump and Putin, after the U.S. president cancelled the last one abruptly.
‘I’m not aware of any plan upcoming for the two presidents,’ she said.
Trump confirmed on Monday that he would meet the leader, however.