New secretary of state faces many challenges

Kim Jong Un meeting just one of many issues on hectic Pompeo agenda

WASHINGTON— The Trump administration and its new secretary of state — assuming the Senate confirms Mike Pompeo in time — will face a confluence of foreign-policy decisions and potential national-security cri- ses this spring that would challenge even the most experienced diplomats.

A meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, tentatively to be held before the end of May, will bring two volatile leaders face to face with the highest stakes imaginable.

In mid-May, Trump has said he will decide whether to end U.S. participation in the Iran nuclear weapons deal, a deter- mination that could profoundly change the United States’ relationships with its closest European allies and throw down a gauntlet before Tehran.

Even before those events, Trump is due to host, beginning Monday in rapid succession, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for complicated talks on Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Depending on how those talks go, the administration is hoping to bring the Persian Gulf leaders together for a May summit in Washington to broker an end to a regional dispute among them that has hobbled U.S. policy across the Middle East.

Rex Tillerson, who was fired Tuesday as secretary of state, has been deeply involved in all of those issues, while operating with a skeleton staff that is expected to dwindle even more with his departure. On these and other challenges — including Russia — he has often been publicly at odds with Trump’s impulsive approach to foreign policy, counselling more traditional diplomacy rather than dependence on gut instinct.

Pompeo is likely to be more amenable to Trump’s way of doing business. As a firebrand congressman from Kansas and a tea party leader, he sharply opposed the Iran nuclear deal, tweeting just before his CIA nomination his determination to “roll back” the agreement. Earlier, Pompeo was a leader of the Republican House effort to hold the Obama administration responsible for the killings of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

As CIA director, Pompeo has followed Trump’s lead in declining to directly accuse Russia of interfering in the election. While Tillerson urged step-bystep caution in dealings with North Korea, Pompeo has congratulated Trump on his boldness in agreeing to meet with a leader who he last year suggested would be a good candidate for U.S.-authored regime change.