United States Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said Wednesday that the economic workshop in Bahrain was a great chance "for a lot of countries to come together" and discuss how to deter Iranian aggression in the Middle East.
"The Iranian regime does not get a veto over American and Israeli national security. One of the nice things that I've seen in this role is that Iran's foreign policy has brought together Arabs and Israelis in ways we never thought were possible. So that's a gift from this regime. We are going to leverage that," Hook told i24NEWS.
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"We saw it in the Warsaw summit and we have seen it here [in Bahrain]. We are going to continue this work and we think that this sort of work – I wouldn't describe it as normalization – but it's becoming the new normal. When you talk to all of the countries in the Middle East today, what they want to talk about is Iran's aggression, their missile, and their nuclear programs. And together we are working to fight it," Hook continued.
The US Special Representative for Iran also criticized the Obama administration's "accommodation" of Iran, saying the Trump administration is taking an "entirely different approach."
"Iran has a 40-year paradigm of using state terrorism as a tool of statecraft. We have put in place such enormous pressure on Iran to change its behavior. This is the right policy at the right time," Hook said.
This article was originally published by i24NEWS.
