The United States has asked other countries to update terrorism laws to reflect the severity of attacks, but there still remains an "awful lot of work to do," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday.
"Countries have not updated terrorism laws to reflect the post-911 world," Pompeo told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "You see people not being convicted, people being released too soon."
Meanwhile, the stabbing attacks last week in the United Kingdom are an example of the same kind of risks faced all around the world. '
Pompeo Monday also defended U.S. sanctions against Iran, saying that the challenges that the country's economy faces have "nothing to do with the sanctions we put in place" but instead are the fault of Iran's leadership.
"The Iranian leadership has failed to support the people, continues to fail to support their people," he said. "It's important to note and the world should know that medical assistance, supplies are expressly permitted to go into Iran. Sanctions don't impact those items, to claim that somehow American sanctions are denying medical products for the people of Iran is foolish and to deflect catastrophe that the Ayatollah has been for the Iranian people."
The United States also has supported protesters in Iran while taking a "completely opposite" view of the "freedom-seeking, freedom-loving people of Iran" than President Barack Obama and his administration did, Pompeo said.
"This is a regime that is spoiling the very demands that the people are putting on them. The protests are a direct result of economic collapse, absence of political freedoms in a regime that sent young boys off to fight and come back dead and hasn't used the money for the betterment of the Iranian people."
Pompeo also Monday said there "nothing at all" to recent reports indicating he's dropping his job in Trump's cabinet to seek a senator's seat in Texas.
"As long as President Trump will have me as secretary of state, I will continue to support him," he said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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