National security threats

CIA chief: Iran, North Korea threaten US national security

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Saturday that US national security is threatened by Iran, which he described as “the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.”
“Today, we find it with enormous influence, influence that far outstrips where it was six or seven years ago,” Pompeo told MSNBC in an interview that aired Saturday. “Whether it’s the influence they have over the government in Baghdad, whether it’s the increasing strength of Hezbollah and Lebanon, their work alongside the Houthis in Iran, the Iraqi Shias that are fighting along now the border in Syria — certainly the Shia forces that are engaged in Syria. Iran is everywhere throughout the Middle East.”

He also said North Korea poses a “very real danger” to US national security.

“I hardly ever escape a day at the White House without the president asking me about North Korea and how it is that the United States is responding to that threat. It’s very much at the top of his mind,” Pompeo said, adding that the North Koreans are “ever-closer to having the capacity to hold America at risk with a nuclear weapon.”