Pompeo is slated to tell his audience that former President Barack Obama — although he may not name the former president — misled the people of the Middle East about the true source of terrorism, including what contributed to the rise of the Islamic State, according to the people briefed. | Sergio LimaAFP/Getty Images
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is heading out on what may prove his toughest trip yet, a weeklong swing through the Middle East in which he will give a major speech about America’s role in the region and privately reassure Arab allies that the U.S. remains committed to them.
In his speech, to be given in Cairo, Pompeo plans to repudiate the Middle East vision of former President Barack Obama, who famously delivered an address to the broader Muslim world while in Egypt in 2009. Pompeo will slam Obama’s engagement with Iran, sources told POLITICO, while asserting that President Donald Trump has the region’s best interests at heart.
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But as Pompeo prepares to take off Tuesday, a question looms larger by the minute: Can foreign leaders believe he speaks for an unpredictable president?
After all, Trump has spent the last several days contradicting him and other top advisers about his administration’s plans in the Middle East.
On Monday, the State Department sought to reassure on that front.
“As Secretary Pompeo has made clear on numerous occasions, of course he speaks on behalf of President Trump,” said Robert Palladino, a department spokesman. “They talk often and the secretary is in lockstep with the president on the foreign policy priorities of the administration.”
The confusion centers largely on when the U.S. will withdraw from Syria. Trump in December said it was imminent, but he and his advisers have spent weeks walking that back.
Over the weekend, while in Israel, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, indicated that the U.S. wouldn’t withdraw troops from Syria until after the Islamic State terrorist group was eradicated and Iran had also pulled out its forces — a timetable that could be indefinite.
But on Monday, Trump insisted that the troops would leave at “a proper pace” and insisted that this was “no different from my original statements,” suggesting he once again is eyeing a quick pullout.
Last week, Trump also declared that Iran “can do what they want” in Syria — an astonishing stab at the heart of what Pompeo, Bolton and other aides have been publicly saying for months: that the United States won’t leave Syria until all of Iran’s forces do.
The gyrations in the various policy statements are so extreme that critics of the administration say Pompeo can’t claim with confidence to truly speak for the president.
“One day he is saying we are in Syria for the long term to fight Iran. The next day Trump says we’re leaving in 30 days and Iran can do whatever it wants in Syria. It’s impossible to be effective in this environment,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official now with the Center for a New American Security.
At least one analyst said Pompeo should consider scrapping his Cairo speech, whose date hasn’t been released yet.
“If the administration cannot put forward a future-focused, coherent and presidentially endorsed strategy for U.S. engagement in the region, is now the best time for a big speech?” asked Dana Stroul, a former Democratic Senate staffer now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Supporters of the secretary, however, say that if there is anyone who can properly channel Trump while calming jittery allies, it’s Pompeo.
The former Kansas congressman and CIA chief is one of the president’s closest advisers, and — at least in public — he has often managed to interpret Trump’s statements in a way that is safely ambiguous, even when he says the president is being clear.
“Pompeo is one of the few Cabinet members who is able to channel Trump’s wishes effectively,” said Mark Dubowitz, an Iran analyst who leads the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “They have a very strong relationship. He doesn’t get ahead of Trump on issues.”
In an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax in early January, for instance, Pompeo declared that U.S. troops were leaving Syria, but that the U.S. would keep up the fight against Islamic State terrorists while also maintaining the pressure on the Iranian government.
“We’ll do all of those things,” he insisted. “We’ll continue to achieve those outcomes. We will simply do it at a time when the American forces have departed Syria.”
“I can’t give you a timeline,” Pompeo added, referring to the planned withdrawal.
Still, even for the secretary of state, the coming week in the Middle East could prove a daunting challenge on the messaging front, both privately and publicly.
He is stopping in Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. A visit to Iraq is also possible, as is a stop in Israel. The trip is supposed to run through Jan. 15.
In each country, there will be specific, often dicey issues to tackle. The two stops likely to draw the most attention, however, will be his speech in Cairo and his discussions with the Saudis.
Two people outside the administration who have been briefed on the speech, while noting that Pompeo could still change what he says up until the last minute, said the drafts so far had a distinctly anti-Obama flavor.
Original drafts of the speech were heavily focused on trashing elements of Obama’s 2009 speech, in which the former president sought a “new beginning” with Muslim-majority countries amid the fallout of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Pompeo is slated to tell his audience that Obama — although he may not name the former president — misled the people of the Middle East about the true source of terrorism, including what contributed to the rise of the Islamic State, according to the people briefed.
Pompeo will insist that Iran, a country Obama tried to engage, is the real terrorist culprit. The speech’s drafts also have Pompeo suggesting that Iran could learn from the Saudis about human rights and the rule of law, two people briefed said.
Such assertions, should Pompeo ultimately make them, are sure to get pushback, not only from aides to Obama but also from experts on the region.
For one thing, the main terrorist groups in the region, such as Al-Qaeda and its offshoots, as well as the Islamic State, are dominated by Sunni Muslim extremists. Iran is a majority-Shiite Muslim country that has fought against some of the same militants.
And Saudi Arabia is widely considered one of the most repressive countries in the world, especially for women. By several measures, Iranians are freer than Saudis.
Pompeo is also due to applaud Saudi Arabia for bringing to justice the killers of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, two people briefed said.
That would be an odd note to strike, given widespread questions about the Saudi justice system and lingering anger that the country’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is widely suspected of orchestrating the Oct. 2 murder, has been spared any punishment.
A senior State Department official told reporters just last week that the Saudis had not done enough to hold Khashoggi’s killers responsible.
During that briefing with reporters, State Department officials noticeably said little about the Cairo speech. When pressed, one official merely said, “The secretary is going to speak about America as a force for good in the region.”
Pompeo will bring up the Khashoggi case while meeting with officials in Saudi Arabia, the officials said. He’s also planning to talk to the Saudis about ways to support peace talks in Yemen, where U.S.-backed Saudi forces are fighting Houthi rebels supported by Iran.
In describing the overall trip, one senior State Department official said Pompeo would focus on two themes: First, that the “United States is not leaving the Middle East,” despite what the official claimed were “false narratives surrounding the Syria decision.” And second, that “the Iranian regime is the dangerous actor in the region.”
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