Pompeo on Flight 752: World will ‘take appropriate actions’ after investigation

WASHINGTON — The United States will await the results of an investigation into what happened to Flight 752 before taking the “appropriate actions” in response, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday as he acknowledged for the first time that the Ukraine International Airlines jet was likely downed by an Iranian missile.

“We do believe that it’s likely that that plane was brought down by an Iranian missile,” Pompeo told a news conference in Washington, saying he’d spoken earlier in the day with his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.

The U.S. will allow time for Canada to get resources on the ground in Iran and for the investigation into the crash to be completed before making any “final determinations,” Pompeo added.

“When we get the results of that investigation, I am confident that we and the world will take appropriate actions in response.”

It’s the first time a senior U.S. official has publicly acknowledged what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday: That intelligence points to a missile strike from Iran as the cause of the tragedy.

The plane crashed early Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Tehran and just hours after two military bases in Iraq where U.S. soldiers were stationed were hit by a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin were detailing the additional sanctions President Donald Trump promised earlier this week against the Iranian regime in response to the attack in Iraq, which was spurred by the U.S. decision to target Iran’s top military leader, Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Pompeo also made it clear that the U.S. acted against Soleimani to prevent what he called an “imminent attack” against U.S. facilities, including the American embassy in Baghdad.

“It was very clear: Qassem Soleimani himself was plotting a broad, large-scale attack against American interests, and those attacks were imminent … against American facilities, including American embassies, military bases and American facilities throughout the region.”

The Canadian Press