Blinken: Iran has plotted to assassinate Pompeo, other top US officials while negotiating nuke deal

While U.S. work to deter assassination threats, American negotiators remain at the table in Vienna to work towards a deal.

 

By The Foreign Desk Staff Lisa Daftari April 28, 2022

Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated this week that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps continues to plot the assassination of both current and former top United States officials while talks regarding the Iran nuclear deal are still underway. Blinken made the comments during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony when Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz asked if it’s “true that the IRGC is actively trying to murder former senior officials of the U.S.?" Blinken responded that "there is an ongoing threat against American officials both present and past."

He reportedly said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, under the previous Trump administration, has and continues to be a target. In March, members of the IRGC were reported to be plotting the assassination of former National Security Advisor John Bolton even while American and Iranian diplomats mingled in Vienna. Secretary Blinken’s comments were first to suggest that currently U.S. officials are also being threatened..........To Read More.....

 

Pompeo Slams Biden State Department for Dissolving Crisis Response Bureau as Taliban Advanced

By Jack Crowe August 21, 2021 

During his time as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo set about building a unit within the department tasked with rapidly evacuating Americans who came into harm’s way while overseas. Intent on ensuring that there would never be a repeat of the disaster that took place at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in 2012, Pompeo and his deputies developed the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) “from scratch,” Pompeo told National Review in an interview.

“The administration of Donald Trump was serious about making sure we had all the capabilities to respond to the needs of American citizens all around the world in a timely fashion with adequate medical response and adequate ability to get them home to their families,” Pompeo said.

“We had seen the failure of the Obama administration in Benghazi and Libya in exactly this regard, and we were determined to make sure those failures were never repeated,” he continued. “We had built out a set of capabilities and institutions to deliver on that.”

But rather than building on the Trump administration’s processes, the Biden administration “chose a different path,” Pompeo said.................To Read More.........

The Democrats’ Latest Religious Test

Editorial of The New York Sun | August 26, 2020

No sooner did President Trump air at the Republican convention Secretary of State Pompeo’s endorsement video recorded in Jerusalem than the Biden camp is unleashing a new objection — that the secretary is too religious to represent all of the American people. We kid you not. This has got to be the most desperate, offensive, and unconstitutional claim against a state secretary that the Democrats have ever aired.

It comes from one of Mr. Biden’s closest consiglieres, Susan Rice. She was President Obama’s National Security Adviser and, before that, envoy at the United Nations. Vice President Biden had her on his short list for his running mate. She just gave an interview to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in which she asserted that “Mike Pompeo has been an overtly religious secretary or state, which in and of itself is problematic.”.......To Read More....

My Take - Does anyone really care what either of these blithering idiots have to say?As for Susan Rice, perhaps if she had been religious she wouldn't have been such a liar. 

Pompeo Initiates 30-Day Iran Sanctions Snapback; Says Europeans ‘Chose to Side With the Ayatollahs’

By Patrick Goodenough | August 21, 2020

As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday kick-started the process to restore almost all sanctions on Iran in one month’s time, he had blunt words for European allies who are rejecting the right of the U.S. to take the step, accusing them of choosing to “side with the ayatollahs.”

Pompeo was speaking in New York, after lodging with the U.N. a 30-day notice for U.N. sanctions against the Iranian regime, lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, to “snap back.”  The U.S. took the step after a failed attempt last week to extend the embargo on the sale of conventional arms to Iran, due to expire on October 18...........To Read More....

Pompeo Wrecks MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell for Portraying America as the Real Threat to Iranian Culture

Katie Pavlich @KatiePavlich Jan 07, 2020

During a press conference at the State Department Tuesday morning, Secretary Mike Pompeo pushed back on assertions from MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that the United States is a threat to Iranian culture.

"Every action we take will be consistent with international rule of law. The American people can be rest assured that is the case," Pompeo said.

"Let me tell you who's done damage to the Persian culture. It's not the United States of America. It's the Ayatollah. If you want to look at who has denied religious freedom, if you want to know who has denied the Persian culture's rich and steeped in history and intellect and they've denied the capacity for that culture to continue. If you go back and look at the holidays around Cyrus and Nowruz they have not permitted people to celebrate. They have not allowed people that they have killed, that Qassem Soleimani killed, they have not allowed them to go mourn their family members. The real risk to Persian culture does not come from the United States of America. There is no mistake about that."............To Read More....

Turkey Agrees to Cease-Fire

Will it stop the bloodshed and help prevent the resurgence of ISIS?

Fri Oct 18, 2019 Joseph Klein  144

President Trump’s critics have regularly blasted his style of diplomacy, in which he combines bad cop, good cop rhetoric with the use of sanctions and tariffs to exert maximum economic pressure on the party he is trying to influence. This style was on display again this past week as President Trump tried to navigate the outbreak of conflict between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds that the president’s critics blame on his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeast Syria. Before President Trump proceeded with completing the troop withdrawal, he sent a letter to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly encouraging him to make a good deal with the Kurds while threatening Turkey with economic devastation if it persists with its military operation against the Kurds.

Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed up with a visit to Ankara, where they secured an agreement to end the violence for now between Turkey and the Kurds in Syria pending the establishment of an expanded “safe zone” that Turkey has been seeking. While Turkish forces and allied Syrian insurgents halt their offensive, the Syrian Kurd forces would be expected to surrender their positions 20 miles from the Turkey-Syria border. As part of the deal, the U.S. will not put new sanctions in place and end the current sanctions if a real ceasefire endures.

Turkey is referring to the negotiated deal as a “pause,” not a full-fledged “ceasefire.” Vice President Pence used the term “pause” in his own remarks. He declared, “The Turkish side will pause Operation Peace Spring in order to allow for the withdrawal of YPG forces from the safe zone for 120 hours,” referring to the Syrian Democratic Forces' People Protection Units, a primarily Kurdish militia. “All military operations under operation peace spring will be paused, and operation peace spring will be halted entirely on completion of the withdrawal. Our administration has already been in contact with Syrian defense forces, and we have already begun to facilitate their safe withdrawal from the nearly 20-mile wide safe zone area South of the Turkish border in Syria.” ........To Read More....

Pompeo: 'Ignorant’ and ‘Disgusting' for Rep. Omar to Blame US for Venezuela's Problems

By Susan Jones | May 3, 2019

Rep. Ilhan Omar, a far-left, first-term politician from Minnesota, has once again waded into controversy by blaming the United States for the problems in Venezuela.

On Thursday night, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called her remarks "ignorant” and “disgusting."
Speaking Wednesday on PBS's "Democracy Now!," Omar said:

"A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela. And we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today. This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela, and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.".....To Read More....

My Take - Just when you begin think it's not possible for this woman to be any more stupid, she proves beyond any shadow of a doubt - it is possible.  Nikki Haley said about Venezuela and Omar's stunningly stupid comments:  “The [average] Venezuelan adult has lost 24 lbs. Babies have no medicine. Families have to walk miles in the heat to get the only meal they may have that day,” Haley tweeted at Omar. “All [because] of the corrupt Maduro regime. Your comments are so far from the truth. Cuba and Russia appreciate your support.”

 

Secretary Pompeo making friends in South America

April 12, 2019 By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Secretary Mike Pompeo has announced that he will travel to Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Colombia. His trip to South America is a step in the right direction, as Ana Quintana wrote: The four countries Pompeo will visit this week are leading international efforts against Maduro's dictatorship. The four countries Pompeo will visit this week are leading international efforts against Maduro's dictatorship. In the history of Latin America, this sort of cooperation and consensus is unprecedented.

There is symbolism attached to the trip as well. Three of the four countries — Chile, Paraguay, and Peru — have known oppression firsthand. All were formerly governed by dictatorships and are now democracies. The State Department is highlighting how their democratic transitions can serve as an example for a post-Maduro Venezuela.............

Also, these four countries have serious leadership. During the Obama years, Latin America never received the attention it deserved. The Obama administration was only interested in "Latinos" who wanted to walk into the U.S. illegally. It's nice to see that the Trump administration is supporting democracies and also standing up to Maduro.

Good move and another demonstration that Secretary Pompeo was a brilliant choice.............. Read more

My Take - One thing missing from this analysis.  These leaders are finally coming to the correct understanding that if they really want to create a stable economy that will create a stable social order, they need the United States.  The main problem in all these countries is the undying social paradigm for immense government corruption and a belief in socialism.  They really need to educate their citizens.  But so does the U.S.  The U.S. needs to start purging America's universities of their leftist insanity, or we're going to end up like Venezuela, or have a civil war.  Neither is unacceptable, but if we continue down the road we're traveling, one or both is inevitable.     

In Cairo, Pompeo Rebuts Obama’s 2009 Speech: ‘The Age of Self-Inflicted American Shame is Over’

By Patrick Goodenough | January 11, 2019

Almost a decade after President Obama delivered a widely-hailed address “to the Muslim world” in Cairo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned to the Egyptian capital Thursday to give a speech that amounted to a rebuttal of Obama’s – and a repudiation of the previous administration’s policies across the region.

Obama’s views on “violent extremism,” his engagement with the fundamentalist regime in Tehran, and his decision not to carry through with threats to punish the Assad regime for using outlawed chemical weapons all featured in Pompeo’s speech.

“Remember,” Pompeo told an audience of students, government officials and diplomats at the American University in Cairo, “it was here, here in this city, that another American stood before you.”  “He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from an ideology,” Pompeo continued. “He told you that 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East. He told you that the United States and the Muslim world needed, quote, ‘a new beginning,’ end of quote.”  “The results of these misjudgments have been dire.,” Pompeo charged. “In falsely seeing ourselves as a force for what ails the Middle East, we were timid in asserting ourselves when the times – and our partners – demanded it.”...........“The good news is this,” he continued. “The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering. Now comes the real ‘new beginning.’”............To Read More......