Pompeo slams Obama policies

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has delivered a scathing rebuke of the Obama Administration’s Mideast policies, accusing the former President of “misguided” thinking that diminished the United States’ role in the region while harming its longtime friends and emboldening Iran. In a speech to the American University in Cairo, Pompeo unloaded on President Donald Trump’s predecessor, saying he was naive and timid when confronted with challenges posed by the revolts that convulsed the Middle East, including Egypt, beginning in 2011. Pompeo denounced the vision outlined by President Barack Obama in a speech he gave in Cairo in 2009 in which he spoke of “a new beginning” for US relations with countries in the Arab and Muslim world.Pompeo did not mention Obama by name but the remarks still struck listeners in the US as unusually partisan. “It’s a speech shocking for its use of domestic politics, for kind of attacking a prior president in an international setting and for going to a long-time ally and questioning some of the foundations of the relationship with the ally,” said Heather Hurlburt, an analyst with the New America, a nonpartisan thinktank. “Those are all things that secretaries of state don’t normally do but seem to be becoming standard practice with Pompeo.”