Mike Pompeo talks about his latest book and the dangers posed by antisemitism, Iran and China to Israel and the West. Pompeo will be signing his book in a special event with the Israel Heritage Foundation on Tuesday
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells Israel National News that the controversy that has erupted this week stemming from a passage in his new book about Nikki Haley plotting to be named Trump’s vice president while she was serving as the administration’s UN ambassador reveals a great deal about the way Washington D.C. functions.
“The fact that it became a story of the day tells you a lot about Washington D.C.,” Pompeo says. “The story I was telling was about teams and how you build them and about commitment and duty. My critique there was simply an observation that Ambassador Haley wasn’t being part of the team, she was behaving in a way that was inconsistent with executing America’s mission, President Trump’s mission, my mission, our team’s mission. I have no time for people that are about themselves and not about the mission.”
Pompeo also criticized Haley for leaving the administration after barely two years, when they still had a lot of work to do, with many foreign policy challenges left to deal with.
“Folks who didn’t stay the course weren’t prepared to fight through all the noise. We were all being critiqued heavily for working for a president who was willing to break glass. I was looking for people who were in for the mission set and not in it for taking care of themselves.”
Pompeo disagrees with the notion that some Trump officials left the administration because the president was seen as challenging to work for.
“Every good leader I’ve ever worked for has had their own characteristics, their own leadership style, their own behavior. The task of those of us who work inside of organizations is to deliver. That means to understand the leader, make sure you’re delivering information to her or to him in a way they can handle it, they can process it, they can make good decisions. And when given good guidance, execute the heck out of it.”
In terms of the relationship between the United States and Israel, he comments that the American people know that Israel is “our great partner in the Middle East.” He checks off reasons such as Israel’s democracy, it’s markets, it’s technology and it’s freedoms.
He adds that “it is a great security partner in every dimension.”
“This relationship matters to the American people. It’s the right thing morally, and I’m incredibly proud of all of the accomplishments we had, not just the decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But my statement as secretary of state that not every settlement is unlawful, the recognition of the Golan Heights as the property of the people of Israel, this is a nation that’s been there for 3,000 years. It is the rightful Jewish homeland. And the Trump administration and our team recognized that and delivered that.”
He recalls his final visit to Israel as Secretary of State, when he visited Judea and Samaria.
“At that point, I was still hoping we would have four more years. It was absolutely a statement about Judea and Samaria. It was absolutely a statement about the fact that Israel is not an occupying nation or an apartheid country. We wanted to make clear that at least myself and Ambassador Friedman understood the nature of Israel and we wanted to do everything we could to make sure the Israeli people understood we were fully supportive of them.”
On the subject of the new Israeli right-wing government, he notes that he had a fantastic working relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu during the Trump administration era.
“Most importantly, it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about Prime Minister Netanyahu. Although, the people who were in those roles at the time made an awful lot of difference in executing the Abraham Accords.”
He said that the important point is that the Trump White House and the Netanyahu government deepened the relationship between the two countries on intelligence, security and on a diplomatic basis.
Regarding the Biden administration, Pompeo hopes that the White House will not sign a bad deal with Iran and will stand with Israel. But he remains worried that the White House is still consumed with the idea of getting a deal done.
“It’s certainly the case that when President Biden came into office, he returned to President Obama’s policies. They are still screwing around, thinking about putting a consulate in Palestine, and I write about that in my book. You can’t give an inch on these things that matter the most. That’s why you have to be unbridled in your commitment. And once you make that commitment you have to honor that.”
“I hope this administration has now seen that the Iranian regime can’t be worked with. I hope this administration can now see that the people of Iran deserve better and are demanding it. But I’m afraid that if the Iranians showed up today and said ‘We’ll take the last offer.’ This administration might just take it still. They are deeply wedded to that crazy ridiculous nuclear deal.”
In his new book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, he talks about why the deal was bad for the United States and Israel. “And frankly for the Gulf states and the entire region,” he said.
Pompeo also sets the record straight that the Abraham Accords did not come about as a result of shelving the Judea and Samaria annexation issue.
“The Abraham Accords came about as a result of a deep recognition that while we wanted to make life better for everyone in the world, that would include those living in Judea and Samaria, when you’re led by a terrorist like [Mahmoud Abbas], there’s no deal to be had. He has no interest in negotiating. And we knew that.”
The normalization deals also came about because they realized that the idea that held for 40 years, where Israel and the United States had believed they couldn’t achieve peace between Israel and the region without solving the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, was not true today.
“We went to test the theory. And we began to convince the Israeli leadership, Gulf Arab state leadership, that having as your primary foreign policy objective the decimation of the nation of Israel doesn’t make any sense in 2019. And so stop it. In the end, we convinced them that this was right.”
He explains that they stressed to the Gulf states that the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria will have to find leadership that believes in peace. “We’re not going to wait on [Abbas] to create prosperity and peace in the region.”
Touching on the new Israeli government, he explains that he hopes the government will prove to be a stable coalition for the Israeli people allowing Netanyahu the ability to do what is needed.
“We know the threat from Iran has not gone away. We know that there are rockets in Lebanon focused on Israel. We know that Hamas in the Gaza Strip presents enormous risk. I hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu will have the stability to lead his country towards continued prosperity and security. I’m convinced that he will.”
Pompeo believes that the classified documents found in Biden’s garage are problematic, and that goes for all American officials at any level.
“Classified documents should be kept in classified spaces, end of story. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn’t matter if you’re a young private or sergeant in the Army or the Marines, or the secretary of state of the United States. Keep classified information where it should be and if you don’t, you should be held accountable for that,” he says. “We should enforce this fairly, not politically. You shouldn’t get off the hook because you’re a senior American leader. There’s a reason this information is classified. If it shouldn’t be classified, declassify it. But if it’s classified, get it back to where it goes.”
In his new book, he writes about the challenge the administration faced when dealing with China and North Korea.
“They’re not separate challenges. The Chinese Communist Party has enormous influence and control over North Korea,” he explains. “When I talk about my meetings with Chairman Kim in Pyongyang, it was very clear to me that he didn’t have a lot of freedom to separate from Xi Jinping… their river crossings all go into China. Their food supply depends on China. They are truly a vassal state of the Chinese Communist Party. Getting the nuclear weapons out of their hands is a tough throw. But we made real progress. We didn’t get all the way. I hope this administration can finish the job.”
In terms of China, Pompeo stresses that the Chinese Communist Party represents the biggest threat to the Western world of any threat today.
“That is true for the American people, that is true for people throughout Asia, and it is certainly true for the people of Israel as well. They have deep intentions of being a hegemonic power. We’re all very deeply connected to them but make no mistake about it, Xi Jinping wants the world to live in a place that is fundamentally different than the democracies that the people of Israel and the United States live in today.”
In his book, he expands upon how the world should respond to the threat posed by China.
But when asked what is a worse danger, he notes that for Israel, unlike with China, Iran is a present day danger.
“For Israel, Iran is certainly the pressing threat of the moment,” he says. “But no one should ever underestimate that the near term and medium term threat from the Chinese Communist Party is real. You need only ask the people of Sri Lanka, people throughout Africa, Southeast Asian countries where the Chinese Communist Party has denied them the ability to operate in their own international waterways. The Chinese Communist Party is working to infiltrate everywhere. And that includes inside of Israel as well. We should have no high end Chinese technology inside of our countries. That includes Huawei and ZTE and all of the others. We need Western technology to propel Western economies. I pray that Israel and every democracy will get that right.”
Commenting on the American Jewish community dealing with a dangerous increase of antisemitism, even in heavily Jewish areas of New York, Pompeo agrees that the situation is “very scary.”
Noting that it’s also going on in Europe and other places in the world, he remarks: “Never give an inch. This is one of the point I make most clearly. Antisemitism is the classic place where you just can’t give an inch. There’s no, well, that’s just a little bit antisemitic, it’s a little bit anti-Zionist. Those are dangerous things, they are closely related, and we all have a responsibility to speak about this with the morality and decency that reflects a central understanding of religious freedom and religious faith. Antisemitism anywhere by anyone, in the United States or elsewhere, is simply unacceptable.”
Pompeo is still weighing whether he will launch a presidential campaign for 2024.
“America needs strong leadership. It’s going to take a president that has eight years to execute on his or her vision. I’m confident that the American people will get that right. As for whether it will be Susan [Pompeo’s wife] and me that head to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to campaign in the fall, stand by. We’re praying.”
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