Middle Euphrates River Valley, Syria 0
4 April 2019

Asked to describe the threat posed by Iran, Secretary Pompeo replied that "today there continues to be a concerted assassination effort, campaign, inside of Europe... to allow something like this to happen is just unacceptable. We are working with our partners all around Europe to make sure we all have the right information placed in the right place at the right time to reduce this risk and reduce this threat". "A second component of this is the deterrence effort, which is the undertaking that the U.S. is engaged in to reduce the capacity of the Islamic Republic of Iran to undertake this kind of activity by sanctioning them in a way that force them to have fewer resources so that they can create these risks around the world", Pompeo added. He went on to indicate that "there are European foreign fighter terrorists sitting today in Iraq and in Syria that we now have to figure out a way to make sure do not return to the jihadi battlefield. The efforts that Iran is engaged in in Syria fundamentally make that problem set more difficult, as do Iranian Shiite militias that are not under the control of the Iraqi Security Forces in Iraq". 

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