Trump's Secretary of State pick Mike Pompeo faces hearing amid Syria crisis, other threats

President Donald Trump has agreed to delay withdrawing troops from Syria after clashing with Pompeo and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Elizabeth Keatinge (@elizkeatinge) has more. Buzz60

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s choice to lead the State Department, faces senators at his confirmation hearing Thursday with dangerous crises looming with Russia, China, and Iran.

Pompeo, a former Republican Congressman from Kansas with a reputation for a hawkish approach to American security, has been a lightning rod for criticism from rights advocates and some Democrats who worry he'll lead the president into war.

In excerpts of prepared remarks provided by the The White House on Wednesday, Pompeo said he plans on working closely with the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. I'll do my best to pick up your calls on the first ring, and I'll be a regular visitor to the Capitol," Pompeo said in the statement.

He also pledges to strengthen diversity in the State Department workforce.

"I'll work to achieve that diversity, just as I have successfully done at the CIA," he said.

Human Rights Watch wrote that Pompeo's support for detaining terror suspects for interrogations abroad and aggressive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, are cause for concern. His nomination "sends a dangerous message to US allies and adversaries alike that respect for the rule of law is no longer a leadership requirement," the group's leadership wrote the committee in March.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats, said on Twitter that Pompeo "is absolutely the wrong choice for secretary of State."

Pompeo's "hawkish views on Iran and North Korea could very well lead us into another disastrous war," Sanders said. "I will vote no on his nomination."

Pompeo gained Trump’s trust while advising the president toward a number of confrontations that will be decided in the coming days and months:

Syria

President Trump is in the process of deciding how to respond to an alleged chemical attack in Syria that has been blamed on forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who Russia has pledged to protect. Trump taunted Russia Wednesday, saying on Twitter that missiles “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’”

The chemical attack happened after Trump told a crowd in Ohio March 29 that he’d like to withdraw troops from Syria “very soon.” Pompeo joined other members of the president’s national security staff to warn that doing so would be a mistake, CNN reported.

In an interview with CBS News March 11, Pompeo described Trump's approach to earlier allegations of chemical attacks on rebel-held neighborhoods in the East Goutha neighborhood of the Syrian capital.

“We have a higher standard to make sure we understand precisely what took place, precisely who did it so that our response can meet the threat,” Pompeo said.

North Korea

Trump is preparing for a proposed summit in May with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss the North’s nuclear weapons program, which Kim has said is aimed at deterring a U.S. threat. Pompeo said at the Aspen Institute last July that the administration’s priority is to separate Kim from the nuclear weapons he controls.

“It’s one thing for him to have one missile capable of landing in Denver, Colo., and it’s another thing for him to have an entire arsenal, and there are things we can do to keep that capability out of his hands,” Pompeo said.

He added that there’s room for diplomacy: “We need China to help us to convince Kim it’s not in his interest to go down that path.”

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping rocked international stock markets in the past few weeks with tit-for-tat threats to impose tariffs on each other’s countries that would affect hundreds of billions of dollars in trade.

Iran Deal

Trump is also poised to decide in May on whether to kill or stick with the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

Pompeo opposed the agreement, which limited Iran's nuclear activities for a time, while lifting international sanctions. A year after it was signed, he wrote that while the deal prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons for a few years, provisions in the deal that allow Iran to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial-scale in the future means that eventually it will be able to develop nuclear weapons.

“Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime,” Pompeo wrote in an op-ed for Fox News in July 2016.

More recently, Pompeo told CBS News that while Obama didn’t want to upset Iran during the nuclear negotiations, the situation now is different.

“This administration has taken a much stronger approach, a much more aggressive posture with respect to countering Iran,” Pompeo said.

Russia

Pompeo has historically had some choice words for Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies said sought to sway the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor and continues to meddle in U.S. politics even now.

“I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that, but I'm confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election [and] that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won't be great,” Pompeo told the BBC in January.

State Department staffing

Senators are also likely to ask Pomeo about how he will improve morale at the State Department, where many of the department’s most experienced diplomats departed in the past year, while many ambassadorships remain unfilled around the world.

Trump’s first secretary of State, former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s efforts to reorganize and streamline the department wound up hollowing out its top ranks, said Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, a professional organization and labor union.

“With all the threats facing our country, this is not the time to pull the foreign service team from the field and risk forfeiting the game to our adversaries,” Stephenson told USA TODAY.

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