Following is the full transcript of the 91 Institute event titled Plan B on Iran: A Conversation with Secretary Mike Pompeo.
Disclaimer: This transcript is based off of a recorded video conference and periodic breaks in the stream have resulted in disruptions to the audio and transcribed text.
Michael Doran:
Good morning, everybody. I'm Mike Doran. I am a Senior Fellow here at 91 and the Director of our Middle East Center. This is going to air on the 27th of September, but today I think is the 22nd if I'm not mistaken. I have with me a man who needs no introduction, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, but I'll give you a really short one if that's okay.
Michael R. Pompeo:
That sounds great.
Michael Doran:
As far as I know, you were born and raised in California.
Michael R. Pompeo:
That's true also.
Michael Doran:
You went to high school just a couple miles from my high school and I went to high school in Fullerton. You went from there to West Point, served in the military. Then you went to Harvard Law School then to Kansas. Well, do I have it wrong?
Michael R. Pompeo:
You got it right. That's exactly right.
Michael Doran:
You were elected multiple times, four times-
Michael R. Pompeo:
Four times, four for four.
Michael Doran:
... to Congress. And then you served as a Director of the CIA and as Secretary of State. Welcome.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Also, was the assistant manager at Baskin Robbins. I'll leave that out. My first leadership experience.
Michael Doran:
So, people our age remember how exciting the 41 flavors were when they first came out.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Absolutely.
Michael Doran:
That was thrilling.
Michael R. Pompeo:
There's no doubt about it.
Michael Doran:
Yeah. Well, that's exciting. That would've been a very exciting job.
Michael R. Pompeo:
It was fantastic.
Michael Doran:
But that's not what we're here to talk about. You are a man under a death threat. I'd like to get to that, but let's start with the ostensible reason why you're under a death threat and that's the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Could you just walk us through how President Trump and you made this decision? I don't know how much you want to talk about it. I happen to know from my sources, friends of mine in the CIA that you made crucial decisions early on at the CIA that laid the foundation for all of this. I don't know if you can go into any of that.
Michael R. Pompeo:
I'll let you tell what your sources said and then I'll winker, whatever.
Michael Doran:
May I tell it because it's an amazing story.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Sure.
Michael Doran:
No, it's an amazing story because it's directly related to what we're going to be talking about today. So, the gentleman that you put in place in charge of targeting Soleimani. In the CIA, they have something which I think is called a targeting brief. I forget the name of it exactly. Basically, every opponent in the United States out there has a brief on it. The gentleman that you put in place-
Michael R. Pompeo:
I can neither confirm nor deny that.
Michael Doran:
But the brief is supposed to say, "How does the guy carry his money? How does he carry his cell phone? How many girlfriends does he have? Where do they live?", and so on. So, you could target him for intel collection or for other things if you had to do other things. So, he takes one look at the targeting brief, and he says, "This is unbelievable. This is what you would write a brief to give to the president when he is going to have a meet and greet with a friendly head of state." What kind of tea does he like? What are his hobbies and things like this. He said, "I want a targeting brief."
So, then there were things I won't talk about that led to the creation of a targeting brief, but this is all of course happening under your direction. So, anyway, this is a weighty decision that you made, and can you walk us through how it was made and what pushback you had and what considerations you had?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Absolutely. So, I have to set the context for it. We came into office. The previous administration had laid down a Middle East policy that was demonstrably failing, demonstrably failing our friend and ally, Israel, demonstrably failing the Middle East, and most importantly, demonstrably failing the United States of America. They entered into this JCPOA, which was at the very least a patient pathway for nuclear weapons, not just a nuclear weapon, but a nuclear weapons program for the Iranians. They were continuing to underwrite the Palestinian authority, the terrorists there, lots of money flowing to Hamas, to Hezbollah, the Shia militia in Iraq, to the Houthis in Yemen. The Iranians were running the table. So, we were set to try and upend that, to try and get back the order and stability.
So, for America, we'd have to risk putting our young kids in that dangerous place. We could reduce the risk that we'd ever have to put our young kids in a dangerous place to go do what we had done so often in the Middle East. And so, we had multiple elements to the strategy. The first piece was to connect very closely with our Israeli partners, our Israeli friends. My first week at CIA, I traveled to meet the then director of Mossad, a fellow named Yossi Cohen, because I wanted to make sure that the relationship between the CIA and Mossad was tight. Anytime you get in these organizations, they compete, right? Who's the best? Who's the greatest? They had very complimentary skill sets. I knew that.
I had not met Director Cohen, but I wanted to go over and see him and make sure our teams were working together. I put a world class guy in charge of what became our Iran mission center. You can look his name up. The New York Times outed him. He was an undercover agent that the New York Times put his life at risk. I will never forgive the editorial team there for having done that. I don't think his family will either, but we built out a set of systems, a set of operations, a collection capability.
And then the president made the decision rightfully to withdraw from the JCPOA, which we'll talk about the current administration's efforts there, but it was important because it gave us the capacity to do the one thing that you can do to make sure that Iran has trouble building out a program for nuclear efforts and that is you denied them money. They're the world's largest state sponsor of terror. It is not close. They have a missile program that has elaborate. Their space program continues to develop, and they are underwriting soldiers in the field that are trying to kill Israelis, Arabs, and Americans all across the world. And so, that was our theory of the case and that is all background. So, we began our pressure campaign.
It took almost two years to get it in place because we didn't withdraw from the JCPOA until I was Secretary of State, so April, May of 2018. Before we actually withdrew, President made a campaign promise to do so. My predecessor was against it. And so, they'd gotten it done. We were able to withdraw, which let us put the pressure campaign, the sanctions, and massive enforcement of those sanctions. We took Iran's foreign exchange reserves from $96 to $4 billion over the course of what was about 20 months of full implementation. We had them in a really difficult place. They of course responded. It makes perfect sense. What was their response?
Their response was artillery rockets from the Shia militia and our embassy on a near daily basis, assassination campaigns throughout the world, including in Europe, continuing to try to go around the edges and continue to spin centrifuges, continue their research, R&D for their program. They shot down two American UAVs and they fired cruise missiles directly from Iran into Abqaiq on September 14th, 2019. That's the background, but it's all important because that was the setting in which I became very concerned that we were losing our deterrence capacity with respect to Iran. It's the old Southwest airlines line. They were feeling more free to move about the cabin and we needed to get it back.
Many administrations had known General Soleimani. He had been killing Americans in Iraq for years and years and years. The number is somewhere between 400 and 600 Americans whose lives no longer are because of Qasem Soleimani. We also knew he was still this important leader. He was more than a general. He was certainly that, but he was more than a general. He had a best PR team measure. I should hire them sometime, right? He looks like the Dos Equis guy. Everybody knows him. The Iranian people love him as much as they love the Ayatollah. And for that reason, nobody wanted to touch this murderous terrible man, because they thought it would start World War III.
So, we weren't original in thinking, "Hey, eliminating him would be useful," but nobody wanted to go anywhere close to it. So, we began to lay the groundwork. You talked about a little bit of it. We began to lay the groundwork so that we could, if need be, present the president an option to reduce risk to the United States of America. And so, it was long time coming.
It wasn't a new idea, but in December of 2019, I was very worried about deterrence and opportunity met that need. We were aware that Qasem Soleimani was currently actively plotting to kill more Americans. We also knew he was traveling. He was traveling from Beirut to Damascus and then into Baghdad. We had done a bunch of work. We were ready. So, I flew to Mar-a-Lago at the end of December, along with Secretary Esper, Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Milley, the President.
Michael Doran:
You talked about classified information at Mar-a-Lago?
Michael R. Pompeo:
What's that?
Michael Doran:
You talked about classified information at Mar-a-Lago.
Michael R. Pompeo:
In a skiff. Yes, absolutely. The Mar-a-Lago skiff. Dually noted and certified. Yes, exactly. We left no documents there and the President made the right decision. And then your Department of Defense did an unbelievable job of executing a mission that no other nation in the world could. We did two things that day, and this is why it mattered. First, we eliminated terror threat, a plot, an active, ongoing executable mission set that Soleimani was traveling to Baghdad to meet with Mohandas, to talk about how and when to execute that. And second, we restored deterrence, because it was such a bold move, such an unexpected move. One that everybody said, "No, you can't touch that."
We didn't have risk at our embassy for an awfully long time. They did respond. They fired missiles into Iraq, at the US military base in Iraq. There were soldiers injured. I take full responsibility for that fact. It saddens me. We didn't have anybody killed, but there were some soldiers who had. There were sound shock waves that injured them, but we were able to contain it. We had done enough work and we were able to get the messaging right that it didn't create World War III, that you didn't have people killed. We not only restored deterrence with Iran, but importantly, Xi Jinping noticed. Chairman Kim noticed. Taliban noticed. The whole world noticed that this administration was prepared to do the things that said it would do.
Michael Doran:
All of our allies noticed.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Our friends noticed. You don't get the Abraham Accords without the strike on Soleimani. I'm convinced of it. It demonstrated that we were actually going to be active in preserving security in the region, not just pay lip servant to us and go to Vienna and sign silly documents that give them the capacity to have a nuclear weapons program. Yes, the Gulf states all noticed too.
Michael Doran:
You pretty much just answered this question, but let me put it to you anyway, directly, because it's such a part of the democratic messaging against this operation. Susan Rice, who was president of Obama's national security advisor among other things, she immediately wrote in the New York Times after the killing of Qasem Soleimani, that this was a completely counterproductive move, because it was going to lead to a cycle of violence that was only going to make the situation worse in the Middle East. So, how do you answer that?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yeah. In the moment, it's very difficult to answer because we're all conjecturing about what will happen next. Today, I can prove she was wrong. It didn't lead to the very cycle that she described. Indeed, I'm convinced and again, one can never predict. I'm convinced six months a year, another 18 months of the pressure campaign, the Iranians have to make some really hard decisions. The Iranian people would've been forced to make some incredibly difficult decisions and we didn't get the cycle of violence. We didn't get multiple states proliferating nuclear weapons. These are the things that we were able to avoid. And importantly, we should never underestimate this, and we didn't get the Chinese drop in missiles off of Taiwan.
We didn't get the Taliban overrunning Kabul. You can talk about them in isolation and verticals. We'll have another discussion about Taiwan, but these leaders watch how America behaves and they watch if America's prepared to actually do things that everybody knows have risk attached to them. When you're prepared to do that, I promise you, these leaders are real human beings, watching everything that takes place. So, when you have a president say one thing and a staff go out and correct it, as opposed to the staff going out and saying something, the next thing you know there's a hell fire missile hitting a moving vehicle at an international airport, going 60 miles an hour and missing the target by less than an inch. I promise you; the world knows it.
Michael Doran:
We also did it with a drone. What I mean to say is basically by moving our little finger. I think we sometimes forget how powerful we can be.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yeah, no other country can pull this off. We watched the military try and invade Ukraine along four axis and fail. There's nobody that could have done what our soldiers and sailors did that night. We had good partners and friends on the operation as well and our intelligence committee did really good work in the run up to this. My team did a very nice job in the aftermath. You'll remember there was one other event in that cycle, which was that the Iranians shut down a commercial airline. They fired a missile and killed a couple hundred people on a commercial aircraft as well. So, there were really three events that night.
Michael Doran:
So, you earned the undying hatred of President Raisi among others. He this January said, "If Trump and Pompeo are not tried in a fair court for criminal act of assassinating General Soleimani, Muslims will take our martyr's revenge. The aggressor, murderer, and main culprit must be tried and judged under Islamic law of retribution and God's ruling must be carried out against him. It's against Trump, but also against you. President Raisi is in New York or was in New York yesterday. I don't know if he's still there.
Michael R. Pompeo:
I was in the city too at the same time that he was.
Michael Doran:
Both of you being-
Michael R. Pompeo:
At a passport, he was here in a way he should not have been. He shouldn't have had a visa.
Michael Doran:
He shouldn't have had a visa. There's also a law passed in 2014 that sponsors of terrorism and making terroristic threats is engaging in terrorism by law. Forget about the politics because by law. So, was there any discussion with you about this? You're both being guarded by the secret service.
Michael R. Pompeo:
The head of state was being guarded by the secret service. My security detail is from the state department. Amazing men and women who protect me every day.
Michael Doran:
It must feel a little bit odd though, to be in the same city with this guy who's threatened you, who's here illegally.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yes.
Michael Doran:
Certainly, it's bad political judgment anyway, but to be in the same city, to see that-
Michael R. Pompeo:
I think you could be a diplomat. You used the word odd. There was more emotion than that.
Michael Doran:
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about your emotions, Secretary Pompeo. Tell me. What's your support network?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yeah, exactly. Therapy for years. The truth is that the strike that we took was lawful. That's important to someone who served as a soldier and who cares deeply about the rule of law and the law of warfare. He was a general, actively engaged in a plot to kill Americans. So, this was a layoff.
Michael Doran:
And who has killed many Americans.
Michael R. Pompeo:
And who has killed many Americans. So, there are times that it's complicated. There are times that you need a bunch of lawyers to look at it and they come to split. This was not that. This was a layup from that.
Michael Doran:
For the record, I never think there's a time when you need a bunch of lawyers, but good. That's a whole another question.
Michael R. Pompeo:
You know what? I stand correct. You are correct about that. We need one lawyer who understands mission, but this wasn't that. It's a legal matter. This wasn't controversial. We had other times where there were long discussions. This was an easy American legal basis and an easy basis under international law as well. So, when you hear others use language like Raisi did, this was just not true. But second, as a practical matter, it was important for American security.
So, for those two reasons, it's not particularly emotional for me in the sense of I am confident that we did the right thing both as a matter of law and as a matter of my responsibility as a constitutional officer. It was simply my recommendation. In the end, the president is the commander in chief and I think he made the right decision that day as well.
Michael Doran:
Let me talk about my emotions then, since you don't want to talk about yours. I can't find the words for my emotions because it's more than outrage, because I find it absurd that so often in the world today, there are things that are happening, and you can't believe that the government is doing what it's doing. I mean, this Iran policy is one of them. This is a zombie policy. It's dead. It's been proven wrong. They're mouthing the same... I had a discussion with the senior Middle Eastern figure recently.
And I said, "When you talk to the senior American officials and tell them about all the money that the JCPOA is going to give to them, what do they say to you about and you explain how that's going to increase the capacity for terrorism? What do they say to you?" They say exactly what they were saying back in 2015. We think that they're going to use it on butter, not guns. That's already been disproven. I'll get back to it later, but anyway, the policy is dead. They're threatening you personally.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Importantly, not just me, other officials as well. There was an indictment that was unsealed where they'd come after Ambassador Bolton, former national security advisor. There are other officials as well that some of the threats have been public. There are others that are less so. Theyre not all just former government officials. They tried to kill a civilian in Brooklyn. There were people on the ground. This has been widely reported. They are notorious. Everybody knows the Cafe Milano story when they tried to whack an ambassador, the Saudi ambassador at the Cafe Milano. So, it is not historic for the Iranians to conduct assassination campaigns, not only here in the United States, but across Europe.
And so, to allow the butcher of Teran, this guy Raisi, who's responsible for the death of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 of his own people and who is driving an Islamic regime today that is actively engaged in threatening places where there are Americans every day. You have Houthis missiles today flying into Saudi Arabia where there are American contractors working. So, we can focus on me or other, but this is a global campaign putting Americans at risk. We tell Raisi, "Knock yourself out. We'll provide you security. Come on down, come to New York. Stand on that global stage as a terrorist and tell the world, you're the one trying to create peace." You used the word absurd. It is nutty.
Michael Doran:
So nutty, I realize it's a personal issue. So, it's funny to talk about, but when you were an assistant manager at Baskin-Robbins, if I had come into you and after I tasted the Rocky Road, if I said to you that there's a foreign government out there that has open plots to kill former American officials and our current president is negotiating with it to give it hundreds of billions of dollars, you'd say, "No, that would never happen in the United States of America. That would never happen." I'm not saying this because I'm a Republican and they're Democrats. I can't believe they're doing it, I can't believe they're doing it.
Michael R. Pompeo:
It's odd and you could go through the list of the perversity. At the same time, they are the lead negotiator that we're working with is Russian on the Iran deal. We sit with Ulyanov and that's the guy, while the Russians are out killing Ukrainians and we're providing tons of money to help the Ukrainians make sure that that happens less. The Iranians are now sending conventional weapon systems, something that we stopped.
I'm convinced we had snap back in place. This is a little bit in the weeds as a legal matter. But the conventional weapons ban on Iranian arm sales was expiring. So, we executed a legal right where the United States had a unilateral authority to stop that from happening and went to the UN and did snap back, end of quote. Now, they are sending relatively sophisticated drones to Ukraine to help the Russian army fight them and our answer to that is provide them more money.
Michael Doran:
Right. Iranians are in Europe, targeting American weapon systems, and we're going to give them more money to do more of that.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Not only that, Mike, one thing I think's worth everybody's notice because we talk about the JCPOA a lot. I think that's zombie talk in some ways. I've been trying to push back against the JCPOA literally since I was a young backbench Congressman in 2014 and 2015 when Tom Cotton and I found the secret side deals. I mean, this is like seven years of my life. But the truth is they're giving the Iranians money today, even with the sanctions in place, because as anyone who's lived in this world knows, sanctions without enforcement are just a bad joke. They're just a piece of paper. I've seen different numbers, but suffice it to say, we had the Iranians down to less than half a million barrels a day of crude oil, almost none of those being exchanged for cash.
Today, that number is at least double, maybe triple that. Almost all of which the Iranians are receiving cash. So, without any lifting of sanctions, without any congressional approval, without anybody lifting any document or signing any, they have already eviscerated the very sanctions regime that the vast majority, this isn't political, the vast majority of members of Congress support full-throatedly, Democrat and Republican alike.
Michael Doran:
That leads me to a point. It's not a theory, but it's very hard to know what's going on in the negotiations. You would believe that they died right now, but it's very clear if you look at the administration, what they're doing. For example, what you just mentioned, not enforcing sanctions on China. So, China's buying a ton of oil.
Supposedly, we're negotiating with Iran, but we're handing them concessions of many tens, if not more, billions of dollars while the negotiation is going on. So, they're either the worst negotiators in the world, which I don't believe, they're intelligent people, or there's a different conception at work.
The conception is they believe in engagement with Iran. It's back to the targeting brief, which is a meet and greet with Qasem Soleimani. By the way, the same guy who told me about the targeting brief also told me that there were letters sent to Qasem Soleimani. So, there was a desire, not letters of warning, letters of, "Gosh, I'd really like to get together with you." So that is the mentality. They hide it. They know the American public isn't going to accept it. So, here's my fear, a theory, a fear. They're going to ram this down our throats after the November election. They're going to wait until the November election, because they know it's politically toxic at home.
There's going to be the election and then they're going to ram it down our throats. By a NARA, the Nuclear Review Act, they have to give Congress 30 days to review it. It will sit there, and Congress won't vote on it. Why do I think this? Cause Nancy Pelosi was asked yesterday about this precisely. She was asked, "Are you going to allow a vote on the Iran deal?" She said, "We have so much that we're doing before that. I support the president. I support the nuclear agreement with Iran." Now, maybe the Iranians won't allow us to hug and kiss them. There's always that possibility, but there is this other possibility that they really want the deal so badly and they'll do it during the lame duck, and it will just expire.
Michael R. Pompeo:
I don't know. Mike, in some ways, I stare at the deal and the effective benefits that the Iranians get from the deal they are largely getting today. If you ask why they haven't accepted our concession so far, which have been staggering and enormous and confounding, and in spite of what senior leaders in the White House and state department have said, there is nothing longer, there is nothing stronger, there is nothing better about this revised version of the deal as I understand it. The minister has made no claim that they're frankly doing what they promised they would do. Remember Secretary Kerry said originally, no enrichment. I mean, this is how far the world has moved multiple times, no enrichment, no enrichment.
Now the question is, "Do you let them enrich enough for 6 bombs or 50 bombs?" I think the Iranians are getting most of what they need. They're in no hurry. The administration may need this so they can check the box and claim they've vindicated President Obama's signature second term initiative. The deal itself has become an article of faith for the administration because it's the same cast of characters. It's Wendy Sherman, it's Malley, it's Sullivan. It's the same people who did this the first time feel like our withdrawal from that was I won't use a word my mother wouldn't be proud of. ... improper.
And so, they are trying to vindicate that. So, there's some of that because in effect, they've given the Iranians vast majority of what it is they need. By 2026 or 2027, even if signed, the vast majority of the restrictions will be off, and the Iranians will be able to spend centrifuges. Anybody who doesn't think that there will be another three or four Arab countries that begin to spin their own centrifuges, I think, fundamentally misunderstands risk analysis in the Middle East.
Michael Doran:
It's really remarkable. One of the things that is remarkable about it, so you're saying basically the Iranians get the best of both worlds this way.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Today, they have that.
Michael Doran:
They also have us on our knees begging them, which in the Middle East, people are so sensitive to the power dynamics. Every politician is really who goes to who's office, who's requesting, who's giving. So, they have Rob Malley sitting in Vienna and the Iranians refused to meet with him and yet he still goes. They use this in the Middle East and say, "Look at the Americans." We debate ourselves in this way. It's shocking to me.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Isn't it remarkable too? So, they've done this. The Iranians refused to meet with O'Malley at the same time Arab leaders are refusing to talk to the United States as well. So, the theory is, well, you have to pick side, they picked a side, but it turns out nobody likes what they're doing. Weakness is of hoard and the Middle East never respected. I think what they can all see is that we have become a much less relevant participant. You could argue, there are those, even in my party who argue, that's a good thing. I would tell you for American national security, it's deeply dangerous to walk away from this place that we have been dragged into time and time again and the malign actor there is pretty clear. People say, "Well, the country X is bad country. Y is bad."
We suffered when the murder of Khashoggi took place. How can you still have a relationship, a partnership with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia? I always ask this question. When it all goes to hell, who's going to be firing at your guys and who's going to be firing at their guys? I can assure you that there is one nation in the Middle East that will be firing at our guys and a whole bunch that'll be firing at their guys. This is how Kansas think about the world.
You've got a property line where your farm is and that's the barbed wire fence. This is not that complicated. And it turns out this administration has now got everybody thinking, "I wonder if I want to be America's partner." If I want to hedge my bets in material ways by sucking up to the Chinese or the Russians or somebody else, because America refuses to do the basic blocking and tackling.
Michael Doran:
The Chinese are going to move in. They're already moving into that space. They're selling ballistic missiles, drones, co-producing them. The UAE was allowing the Chinese to build a military facility there.
Michael R. Pompeo:
The Emirates have reestablished a diplomatic relationship with the Iranians.
Michael Doran:
And the Kuwaitis.
Michael R. Pompeo:
And the Kuwaitis. This is rational hedging behavior.
Michael Doran:
Yeah. It's totally rational. Well, I have other questions here for you, but I think we probably also have people in the audience who want to... Let me just ask you one more. John Walters, our leader here at the 91, he told me that he'd like to see me doing more things on the JCPOA. And I said, "The problem is it just feels like Groundhog Day. We had these arguments. We won them." Actually, I wanted to emphasize before you said a very important point. That maximum pressure was only in place for about 20 months, because they argue that maximum pressure didn't work. It was in 20 months, and they were fighting against it the whole time. Rob Malley was in New York meeting Zarif who would actually meet with him right back then. That was when you were in power, right?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Secretary Kerry was meeting with the Iranian foreign minister during our time in office as well. This is an important point. It is my belief that what he was telling Zarif is just wait and it turns out he was right. It's the only thing I'm aware of the secretary got right. Secretary got right. He told them just wait. And when you wait, you will get relief. They have received the relief. In spite of the fact that the JCPOA is still not back in effect, they've received the vast majority of the relief.
Michael Doran:
So, this will be my last question before we go to the audience here. Now, I've lost it again. Where did he go? Yes. Last March, General Steven Townsend, who led US-Africa command until August, was asked on the record in Congress, "Would sanctions relief to the Iranians lead to greater terrorism on the part of Iran?" God bless the general. He said, "Resources gained from sanctions relief would increase Iran's illicit shipment of advanced weapons to terror groups operating in Africa and the nearest region." So, I mean, isn't that just obvious?
Michael R. Pompeo:
It is. It's a long-held view. His predecessor General McKenzie, I don't know that he publicly said it, but he would likely have lived the same thing. These soldiers or military is living that, right? They are living. We still have a presence in Syria where the Iranians are active. We have significant presence along the Persian Gulf and Al Udeid and Bahrain where the fifth fleet is headquarters. They are living the risk and they can see the material impact of constraining the Iranian forces. By the way, when we don't reestablish deterrents, they can see. It's their guys, their gals that are at risk. So, it doesn't surprise me that General Townsend said that he both thought it and wanted to put it out on the record.
Michael Doran:
I'm glad he did because one of the talking points of the administration, whenever they're asked by the press, isn't this going to make terrorism worse? They say everything gets worse if Iran has a nuclear bomb, but that's actually not true.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Actually. Fundamentally, it's actually the inverse of that and concedes the core point as well, right? It concedes the core point. No, it is a certainty that Iran will have the capability of building a nuclear weapons program if we reenter that agreement. Last thing to say, because this is important, they say, "Well, we're going to go back and do the second piece of this when it's over. We're going to do this nuclear piece and then we'll confront the terror problem." If you think you have no leverage today, you're completely done. Once sanctions are lifted, then it's hopelessly logic.
Michael Doran:
It's your point about deterrents. If you deter them on the terrorism and other conventional activities that they're taking place, that will deter them on nuclear advancement. If you don't deter them on either, then you're not going to be deterred.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Don't forget, we have great friends and partners helping us on both of these problem sets. I traveled to meet the Director of Mossad for a reason. There is lots of work that has been done. It is not impossible to do. We did it pretty damn consistently for four years and you can continue to chip away and make it much less likely that the next guy decides I think I want to grow up and be an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Michael Doran:
One more question before we go to the audience here. Well, I don't get to spend that much time with this because we're talking about deterrence here. Let me just take you off Iran for a second to Russia because we just had a nuclear threat from Vladimir Putin. And if you were advising the president and that's a pretty chilling threat, how would you advise responding against that?
Michael R. Pompeo:
So, it's a difficult question. It's a difficult question because I don't know that a public response from this administration is going to mount to a hill of bean. We talk about language. What should one say when the most important thing we all have to consider is what will one do and what has demonstrably one shown that they are prepared to do? And so, I think if the administration came out and said, "We're going to do X and Y and Z," query whether it would be credible or not.
And so, you have to be very careful about what you say publicly if it's not going to be viewed credible, because you can in fact make it worse. So, I suspect if I was sitting there today, given the first 18, 19, 20 months of this administration and I were making a recommendation to this president, I think I would recommend that my response to them be private, incredible, and give them half a dozen things that we intend to do and then actually move pieces around the world, do the things they say.
We're actually working on this, show them the memo, show them the order, not words but actual deeds that demonstrate that this is an unacceptable activity and that the cost will be high and that we have friends and partners that are prepared to engage in that alongside of us. But I think I would suggest given where we are today, that that conversation ought to be much more direct, much more supported by action and likely not done in the public sphere. There are three thoughts given. You asked me if I was advising him today, this president today.
Michael Doran:
Let's talk more action.
Michael R. Pompeo:
That's what I would recommend. And this president would probably tell me, "No, I'm not going to do that."
Michael Doran:
So, who has a question? Walter Russell Mead.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yes, sir. Good to see you. I saw you laughing when he said one more question for the third time.
Michael Doran:
Well, exactly. Yeah.
Walter Russell Mead:
I've spent enough time with Mike Doran over the years to know how the show works. So, I remember that Senator Cotton warned the Iranians that any JCPOA would have no impact beyond the Obama administration if Republicans took power. Given that we may see Republican control of Congress after November, given that the 2024 election looks like the way it does, what do you think are the options that would exist to in a sense render void in reality a JCPOA, even if it's signed by the president in Vienna? How much value should the Iranians attach to that signature?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Walter, two different questions. I'll answer the second one. They should attach 16, 17 months worth of value to it, but that'll be significant because Katy, bar the door, these things are hard to get back in place. You described us having the sanctions in place for just 20 months out of our 48. This is not instantaneous. You don't get from where we were when we came into office to where we were 26, 27 months into office. It just takes time. The machine takes time. You have to do the work to be prepared to pull ships. You have to actually enforce sanctions as a physical action. There are just tons of work that goes into no BS enforcement.
And I also was reminded, and we haven't talked about this, doing this in the face of enormous European opposition who want to blow through these sanctions and threaten to try and go around swift for my entire time and they never did, not a dollar did they get around swift. Everybody said they could. Everybody said, "American sanctions alone won't work." You should ask the central bankers in Iran if the American sanctions were effective by the time we left office. So, they'll have a short time period, but it will be significant and there will be a lag effect for whoever, if it's a Republican who's elected and they moved down a path that looked like what we were doing.
It will take them some time to get that back in place and it's probably also harder the second time to do because we got a lot of cooperation because we're just brutal because we were very clear about our expectations. That's hard to do the second time, because every country, including the Middle Eastern countries, are going to say, "Here we go again, cycle seven." So, it does become harder. Your first question was what could be done? What would be the immediate aftermath if we take control of Congress? There's not a ton that Congress can do, assuming you don't get 61 Republican centers that can actually put something on the president's desk and put political pressure on, but you should never forget, and the Iranian should never forget.
There are ten or fifteen Democrat senators who they wouldn't use the language that I used today, but would view the risk of re-entering this deal much like I evaluate that risk as well. So, the Iranians should not underestimate that if we end up with 51 Republicans and a Senate majority leader who can control the docket and a speaker of the house in the House of Representatives, that there could well be legislation that gets to the president's desk that puts them in the very same place that's causing them not to re-enter the JCPOA for the election to make a politically difficult decision. So, I'm hopeful that we will go get to test that theory.
Anyway, does that answer your question at least in part? It's hard for the legislature for this foreign policy and these sanctions are executive branch driven under our constitution. So, it is difficult, but there are certainly things that can be done to force the president to do more. Just as with President Obama, remember President Obama goes out and claims I put the toughest sanctions ever on Iran, which was actually true at the time. We surpassed that, but this was getting in front of the parade after it was already headed down the street. He opposed them. He fought them. Once he saw that he didn't have the votes and it was coming to him, he flipped and said, "I signed them and did this great thing." You could do that to President Biden in his last two years. I guess I shouldn't say that, and what I hope will be his last two years.
Michael Doran:
Chris, and then Tod Lindberg.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Chris, how are you, sir?
Chris DeMuth:
The Trump administration was four years of historic progress in the Middle East, and it looks as if the current four years are going to be years of historic deterioration. I'm wondering whether if a new administration took office in January of 2025, that was inclined to continue what the Trump administration had done, but so much history had been written. Things had changed. You've discussed how much things will deteriorate.
I imagine this is a time when our resources in Europe, in Eastern Europe, in the Pacific are strained. The budget situation is deteriorated terribly. We could be in a recession. I don't think we just simply say, "Well, we're going to go back to the Abraham Accords and we're going to put pressure on Iran." It's going to require a lot of imagination and something new and different. I'm just trying to imagine after the four years that we're in right now, what would it take to restore some sensible policies in the Middle East?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yeah. Now, Chris, you make a really good point. I know you've written about this too. This budget issue is very real, where we will sit in terms of capital investment and we're having a huge recruiting problem. So, we have a workforce issue and a capital investment issue taking place in our national security environment today. So, I agree. Whoever's sitting in the oval office in January 25 will face a fundamentally different landscape than we did in January of 2017. I can see that. It means you have to be a little more creative and build. I think the theory of the case remains right.
I think, as you stare at the tool set to accomplish the twin missions of pushing back against Iranian malfeasance and their nuclear program, I think the central theme line of deny them resources is critical. So, I think you continue that mission, but your point is very well taken. I've spoken about this a lot. We have a gap in the Navy that is real and serious while we're trying to go build out a capability in a place that is an awful along the ways away in the Pacific. January 25 may not be quite the low point, but you be able to see it from there. And the next president will be able to see that gap and Xi Jinping ping can see that gap importantly as well. So, I agree, there will be increased creativity. It's hard to know the trajectory.
I guess we're now 30 months from that, something like that, just a little less than 30 months from that. We know the trajectory. We don't know the slope and the rate of decay. What I would also hope is that some of our friends that partners would see the American rate of decay and do something that is I will concede a historic. They will begin to try and lead us back in the right path. I've watched what Japan is doing, good on them. I hope the Australians and the South Koreans will begin to push us, instead of us as a historic matter pushing them. So, that the rate of decay over the next 30 months is lower. So, the next president who comes in has a foothold to begin to build out both the work that needs to be done in Southwest Asia as well in the Middle East.
Michael Doran:
Can you give it to Todd there? Yeah.
Tod Lindberg:
Thanks, Mike. I loved your last question, and it sometimes takes you a while to get to your best question, but it was excellent question. Thank you. I thought the answer was quite interesting too. I reflected back on some things you said here previously, which is about the role of warning in diplomacy. You've said that on more than one occasion when you were secretary, you issued rather sharp warnings to foreign governments about the possible consequences for their actions. I know obviously there's a lot of that that is beyond the realm of discussion in public, but I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that in general.
And of course, Mike's question was what would you say to this administration? He previously described this administration as one that was projecting an aura of weakness and that therefore a public statement might not be quite as appropriate. Another administration might actually not project an aura of weakness under circumstances, such as these. And therefore, I assume your counsel might be different. So, I would just ask you if you'd be willing to explore those history and the hypotheticals a little bit.
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yeah. So, it's hard to answer in the simple deterrence theory. So, that comes back to game theory. I was an operations research engineering guy. So, you can just go back to simple game theory. The more players there are, the more complicated it gets. And the less clarity there is around the rules, the less certainty has about outcomes. The rules have two components to them. How are the rules drafted? Second is anybody going to enforce them? So, there are three pieces to this.
As one thought about and we contemplated this many times, so what should we say? What should I say? What should the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman Joint Chief of Staff say to our friends and allies? How ought we to phrase it, what format out we to present, and what are the things we're prepared to do to demonstrate that now we're actually going to go deliver against either a promise we are making or a threat that we were putting before them. And so, there were things we didn't get right to. No one should leave here and think we got it right all the time. That is fundamentally untrue, but boy, we were pretty thoughtful about how we did this. I think it accrued cumulatively to our benefit. So, it's not even just in the instance.
It is the cumulative set of commitments that one makes and what percentage of them you actually live up to, because nobody gets to all of them, but we made fewer promises and lived up to a greater percentage of them. I think over time, our friends and adversaries came to see that. Oh, they may not do exactly what it is we wanted, but boy, if they tell us they're going to do it, they are likely to be able to not only effort to live up to it, but actually execute against it. Because those are two different pieces of it as well. Your second question was coming back to this challenge that Putin presents today, where he is talking about using nuclear weapons. I think it's important, it gets thrown around a little bit lazily in the media.
So, the nuclear weapons that he'll use aren't the ICBMs that Ronald Reagan went to Reykjavk to deal with. This is a different kettle of fish. It presents a different problem. So, when folks say, "Well, we respond in kind with nuclear weapons," this is public information. American strategic response is not to respond in kind. We reserve the right to do so. But if it's an artillery piece, the fire's a tactical nuclear weapon. There are many tools that one can take out their capacity to deliver a tactical nuclear weapon that don't involve countering with a nuclear weapon ones itself. And then there are many other tools that one can use. Many of which I can't speak about that, but we have many other options for how one to respond.
So, this is to your question. These are the things that we should be putting in place that if you're trying to deliver deterrence against Vladimir Putin's assertion that he is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons. There are many physical manifestations of a credible deterrent response that you could provide and show to Vladimir Putin and military leadership around him that says that this will end badly. Those are the important things. Happy to bluster at the UN, sign me up. But in the end, nobody gives a damn. Certainly, Vladimir Putin doesn't care.
What he cares about is oh, my goodness, they actually did X or Y or Z or better still X and Y and Z.
Those are the kinds of things one can do to begin to your point to message and communicate both with our Ukrainian friends, our European friends and partners, expectations for what it is that they're going to need to do in the event of and how it is that the United States will respond. Last thing to say here, you can kill all of this capacity to communicate and deter with process. If the answer to a Russian tactical nuclear weapon is that you call a meeting of the national security council, the deputies gathered is dead.
I love deputies. They're important. They do amazing work in preparation and planning. This is all incredibly valuable. You need to have done that work. You need to have built your understanding based on all the work that everyone does at every level, at DOD, at state, at the NSC, at DHA, all the places that have a touchpoint on this. But in the moment, when you hear somebody says, yes, the assistant deputies are gathering at the White House for an NSC meeting, here's what Vladimir Putin knows. Yeah, it's fascinating, great meeting. Hope they publish the notes. In the moment it is for execution and there's only one person that gives the execution order.
I'm happy to gather the senior leaders and everybody look at each other eye one more time and make sure that they've got it right. I'm not suggesting chaos and rudeness, but when you begin to attach process to your response in the moment, you've lost it.
Michael Doran:
Peter Rough. Peter, I think you're going to give us the last question. It should be a two-parter because you should ask also about the protest going on in Iran today.
Michael R. Pompeo:
That's as good as it gets.
Peter Rough:
This has been great. This reminds me of my favorite sports talk show from years ago, Mike and Mike in the Mornings. It's not yet noon.
Michael R. Pompeo:
You got to tell me which one of those Mikes you think I am.
Peter Rough:
Well, I guess I will ask about the protests then maybe you could comment on those, but I also wanted as part of my two-parter maybe ask a broader question. Some of our friends in the foreign policy world are increasingly pitching the idea that the US should focus on defending the beaches of Taiwan and that's essentially it. I think as Governor Palin put it years ago about the Middle East, let Allah sort it out. In Europe, there's plenty of wealthy democracies that should be able to check Russia as the thinking. You obviously stand for a muscular engaged America, at least that's the tenor of your remarks. I think that's in part what 91 stands for. So, maybe could you offer your views on this, your take on that?
Michael R. Pompeo:
Yeah. I'll take that one first and I'll go to the protest. We can finish up there. I mean, let, dig in the reverse. Let me do the protest first because the other one's a broader question about America's place in the world. And so, perhaps that's a better place to close. The protests are great. Whatever the protest occurred in our watch, we tried to support them, provide them things that we could provide them, assistance, help, certainly our prayers and moral support as well in addition to anything else we could do on the ground. There are protests in Iran all the time. The internal Iranian security forces, I think, have this all-in hand. I am very confident that orders given, I guess he's still in New York, from New York City will make clear.
Don't give him an inch and they're not likely to give them an inch. They'll let them protest a little bit, but they'll do what they did to that young lady. They'll kill whoever they need to kill in order to retain their capacity and their power. They'll come a day when that statement's wrong and we don't know when that day. Just as I always recall, I left Germany as a young lieutenant patrolling the East German border in October of '89 and a couple weeks, the fence line I was patrolling for three years was gone. No one knew the day, but it happened. It was inevitable because of the work that so many before me had done and it is inevitable that someday the Iranian people will get back the government that they deserve.
What's happening there is tragic. It's another example of why it's just nutty to be sitting at the table with these folks. It's not the human rights is the end all. We don't. We make decisions for America, but to think for a moment that this regime is going to deliver on any of the promises they make doesn't reflect the history of these very leaders, these same people. As the transition has made and Ayatollah passes and a new Ayatollah is selected, you can bet that it won't get any better for the Iranian people. I couldn't tell you who it's going to be. There's lots of intelligence predictions. By the way, Ayatollah's death was predicted 47 times when I was the director. So, just call me skeptical, but someday we all go. The good Lord takes us all.
And when that day comes, I think it's unlikely to change in any material way, the Iranian outlook. I hope that the Iranian people get that moment and get that space and maybe they can break it free. But if they have more money, if the regime has more money, that's another reason the JCPOA is a bad idea. If the regime has more money, that's less likely to happen. You were talking about Taiwan and Taiwan's defense. So, I have made clear, I didn't do this when I was a secretary. I've done this as a civilian. I think we should recognize Taiwanese sovereignty. It's an independent nation. I joke that I traveled there. I'm actually traveling there again next week. I'm banned from going to China. So, it must not be.
My passport's going to clear customs, counting on it. We should acknowledge that. I think that's important. I couldn't tell you what the administration's policy is on Taiwan today. I don't mean that lightly. I think that's dangerous. So, our ambiguity today is ambiguous, because they just can't get a clear message. Even the president yesterday from the UN, I couldn't tell you. He did make clear statements that we would defend Taiwan. Good on him. I hope his team is on board with that and I hope more importantly that they actually have the planning in place to execute it. Not so that we can do it and do it effectively, but because to the extent we've demonstrably done that, then it's less likely to happen.
And so, in the end, this is about getting your friends and partners prepared to deliver deterrence message that is truly credible. I don't think we have that. I think these next three to five years is really risky and it is enormously important for any American who thinks, "Why do I care about Taiwan?" Just pull your phone out of your pocket and grab a semiconductor that was almost certainly manufactured in some material respects in that place. When you get in your car, when you open your refrigerator, when you drive your motorcycle, when you run your tractor on a Kansas farm, you are almost certainly going to be using a semiconductor that comes from Taiwan. Xi Jinping knows this, too.
If you think the economy is struggling today, shut down TSMC for about a week and we will all be struggling to figure out how to turn the lights on across the world. This matters. We have to get this right. Our partners and friends in the region have to get this right. The administration needs to make unambiguous to Xi Jinping that an attack and I use that term broadly. This doesn't just mean planes and ships. An attack on the sovereignty of Taiwan will be met with a response that will have a greater cost to the Chinese people than it will to the American people. That in the end is the calculus for Xi Jinping and it is his perception of that risk that will drive success. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks for your time today.
Michael Doran:
Thanks very much. Really appreciate it.