National Post (National Edition)
U.S. to take more activist role in Mideast, Pompeo says
Official blasts Obama policy, targets Iran
CAIRO • U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a new manifesto for U.S. action in the Middle East on Thursday, telling a university audience here that “the age of selfinflicted American shame is over” and that the United States would take a far more activist role in the region, despite fears that President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria marks a new phase of withdrawal.
Pompeo delivered a scathing — and personal — rejection of President Barack Obama’s approach to the Middle East, excoriating Obama for “fundamental misunderstandings” about the region that “underestimated the tenacity and viciousness of radical Islamism.”
And he described a policy of containment of Iran’s power, pressing for allies in the region to isolate the country. He vowed to “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria, but offered no plan to achieve that goal at a moment when the small U.S. force of 2,000 troops is scheduled to get out.
The seeming contradiction between Trump’s impulsive announcement that United States forces would leave Syria and Pompeo’s declaration that “when America retreats, chaos follows” confounded many in the region. They say they cannot reconcile the declaration with the president’s Dec. 19 tweet that his only reason for remaining in Syria was the defeat of the Islamic State, a job he said had been completed.
Only three months ago, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, promised that U.S. forces would not leave Syria until the Iranians were out of the country.
So far in Pompeo’s ninenation tour of the region that started Tuesday, he has had to reassure jittery nations who have interpreted the president’s instincts as the definition of retreat. Pompeo spent much of the day in Cairo trying to explain the new strategy, arguing that it does not take troops on the ground to influence events.
Pompeo picked the timing and locale of his speech for dramatic effect: It was almost exactly a decade after Obama delivered a landmark speech at another university in Cairo, offering an olive branch to Iran and urging autocrats to permit greater freedoms.
Obama later conceded that his administration had done a poor job of turning the lofty rhetoric of that speech into action on the ground. And much of his strategy was swept away in the 2011 Arab Spring, with the upheavals it brought to the region.
Pompeo offered his own reset, based on unquestioned U.S. leadership and an alliance of Arab authoritarians to counter Iran, without dwelling at all on human rights issues. The word “rights” does not appear in Pompeo’s text.
Iran immediately rejected the speech.
“Whenever/wherever U.S. interferes, chaos, repression and resentment follow,” the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, posted on Twitter hours after Pompeo spoke. “The day Iran mimics U.S. clients & @ Secpompeo’s ‘human rights models’ — be it the Shah or current butchers — to become a ‘normal’ country is the day hell freezes over.”
Pompeo’s assertion of U.S. purpose in the Middle East comes at a moment when Washington’s will to lead has been widely questioned.
The decision to withdraw from Syria has created a diplomatic tangle with Turkey and, since the resignation of Defence Secretary Jim Mattis over the Syria announcement, has led to fears among allies that Trump is not on the same page as his national security team.
While Obama spoke with the air of the professor he once was, Pompeo stressed his military background, Christian faith and fondness for plain speaking. “It is a truth that isn’t often spoken in this part of the world, but I’m a military man by training, so I’ll put it bluntly: America is a force for good in the Middle East. Period.”
Obama’s era was time of disastrous misjudgments, he said. “What did we learn from all this?” he said. “When America retreats, chaos follows. When we neglect our friends, resentment builds. When we partner with enemies, they advance.”
Former Obama officials sprang to defend their legacy.
“Listening to Secretary Pompeo’s speech is like listening to someone from a parallel universe,” said Robert Malley, Obama’s co-ordinator for the Middle East. He called the speech “a self-congratulatory, delusional depiction of the Trump administration’s Middle East policy.”
The speech met with polite applause from a selected audience at the American University in Cairo.
AMERICA IS A FORCE FOR GOOD IN THE MIDDLE EAST. PERIOD.