Interview
Michael R.
Pompeo
Secretary of State
Secretary of State
David
Citadel Hotel, Jerusalem
March 21,
2019
QUESTION: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, thank
you so much for finding the time to talk to us in this whirlwind of a tour of
yours, sir.
SECRETARY
POMPEO: It’s great
to be with you. Thank you.
QUESTION: This is an important visit to Kuwait, to
Israel, and to Lebanon. Here in Israel, however, sir, we’re in the final stages
of a very intense election race, and Netanyahu’s detractors are saying that the
Trump administration is doing all in its power – and undoubtedly, it has power
– to ensure that Netanyahu gets re-elected. How do you respond to that?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: So my trip
and, frankly, the prime minister’s visit to Washington next week, are about
really – real pressing issues, things that matter to the world. They are
time-sensitive, whether it’s the challenges that are presented by the Islamic
Republic of Iran or the issues in Syria. These are issues that can’t wait, and
they don’t work on election clocks. Our mission is to work the power of the
United States and Israel together against these common threats, and it’s why
I’m here today and I know it’s what the President and prime minister will talk
about next week as well.
QUESTION: President Trump said in Hanoi three
weeks ago that Netanyahu was a strong leader, and then you said he’ll be
accepted in Washington with all the pomp and circumstance that he – that will
happen next week. You’re here with all the images that generates. This does add
some inordinate amount of political cache for Netanyahu at a critical time
obviously here.
SECRETARY
POMPEO: Qasem
Soleimani doesn’t care about your election. Qasem Soleimani is continuing to
press the case. Hizballah’s continuing to press its case. Each and every day,
the Islamic Republic of Iran is continuing to – its efforts to wipe Israel off
the face of the planet. There’s no time like the present to make sure and
address this issue. It’s why I’m here today. It’s why I’ll be in Lebanon
tomorrow and the next day to talk about these issues that are truly of the
moment.
QUESTION: Can you ensure the Israeli public that
the warm relationship between the American leadership and the Israeli
leadership will continue even if Netanyahu loses on April 9th?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: Oh, I
fully expect that’s the case. The history of the relationship between our two
countries is deep. It is strong. It survives presidents and prime ministers. It
is truly between the two nations where its peoples have shared common value
sets, two democracies, two nations that care deeply about the well-being of
their people, and two nations that share a set of common threats as well.
QUESTION: It is obviously a common practice upon
diplomatic visits to a democratic ally to also meet leaders of the opposition.
Have you met, spoken with Benny Gantz or any other leaders of the opposition?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: I haven’t
on this trip, but Mr. Gantz has met with other American leaders. The Israeli
people will speak in a handful of days. They’ll make their decision, and
America and Israel will move forward together.
QUESTION: So let’s move from the political
quagmire in Israel to a very simple task of bringing peace to the Middle East.
And every – the architects of the deal, it’s coined “the deal of the century,”
whether if it’s Kushner or Ambassador Friedman or Greenblatt, are keeping the
cards quite close to the chest. It’s very frustrating for us journalists. But
can I ask you to divulge anything about the plan? President Trump said
famously, I’m happy if it’s one state, I’m happy if it’s two state, if the
parties themselves are happy with it. Can you tell us if the term “two-state
solution” will appear in the final plan?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: So I can’t
share much about it. We’re still working our way through it. In due course,
we’ll present the plan. The whole world will get a chance to see the vision
that we have for how we might bring peace to solve this intractable problem.
QUESTION: Due course is weeks, months? When should
we expect it?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: Well,
soon. I appreciate you asking, but soon enough, when the time is most
appropriate. Remember the mission set. We want a better life for the Palestinian
people. I know the Israeli people want that, too. We want peace between the
Palestinians and the Israelis. These are commonly held objectives. A broadly
shared vision for how to achieve it is something that we’re hoping that the
ideas that we’ll be bringing forth will achieve.
QUESTION: But is it – obviously, if you say
something like autonomy, which is what Ambassador Friedman said to The Washington
Examiner, Palestinians, for them, it’s a nonstarter. They’re not going
to be in the table, they’re not even going to be in the same universe, if
that’s what the plan is going to say.
SECRETARY
POMPEO: Well, I’m
hopeful. I’ve seen the plan. I have a pretty good understanding of its details,
although there are a handful still to be worked out. I’m very hopeful that all
nations – the Israelis, the Palestinian people, the Arab states, European
countries, people from all around the world – will stare at this plan and say
this has got merit, this has legs, this is a reason that we can begin to build
and move forward. I expect that that will be the case.
We hope that
when we present it, everyone will take this seriously, they’ll give it good
thought. There may be things they don’t like, there may be things they love
about the ideas that we put forth, but they’ll use it as a platform that we can
build on to achieve what, frankly, administrations before us have tried to help
achieve but have been unsuccessful.
QUESTION: But again, is this going to be in that
vision of the historic U.S. policy of two states, or it’s going to be something
completely different?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: We’ll just
have to wait and see.
QUESTION: (Laughter.) You’re good at building the
tension on this, sir. Is it true that the United States had to wait until after
the election to publish it, to not – to foil Netanyahu’s situation here?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: No, look,
we’ve been waiting for the right time until we had the plan fully developed,
that we’d had input from lots of different people with lots of different
thoughts about how to achieve the right outcome. So it’s taken some time for us
to get ready, and when the moment is right we’ll share that vision.
QUESTION: You mentioned the Iranian threat, and
obviously it’s been – Israel has hailed the President Trump’s decision to
basically withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran. What is the endgame,
sir? Is the endgame to put pressure on Iran and to get a better deal? Or would
the endgame, in your opinion, be regime change or anything of that sort?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: So the way
we think about this is in a broader context, right. The objective is stability in
the Middle East and peace and less violence in the Middle East and fewer times
where there are crises here in the Middle East. That’s the objective.
Today, the
primary mover for malign influence in the Middle East is the Islamic Republic
of Iran, whether that’s the assassination campaign in Europe, the funding of
the Houthis, the money that goes to Hamas and Hizballah, the support for the
PMCs in Iraq, the malfeasance in Syria. The list of Iranian aggression and
threats to the world is long. What we’re asking Iran to do is simply stop those
things, to behave like a normal nation, like we ask every other country to
behave. If they do those things, we’ll all move forward together.
As for the
JCPOA, look, it was a disastrous deal. It guaranteed that Iran would have a
path to a nuclear weapon. It was unacceptable. It was unacceptable for America,
it was unacceptable for Israel, in our judgment an unacceptable risk to the
world. So we withdrew from that. Today, we’re engaged in a pressure campaign to
convince the Iranian regime to stay away from the nuclear weapons program, to
stay away from developing that nuclear capability, and to engage in the world
in a way that normal nations do.
QUESTION: By the way, you were CIA director. Do
you see any sort of work by Iranians to relentlessly break into Israeli
officials’ phones? Do you know of any of that kind of attempt?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: So I don’t
want to talk about specifics, but suffice it to say we’ve made clear that the
Iranian efforts – their cyber campaigns, their efforts to break into technology
all across the world – are real. They are sophisticated and require attention
from the best counter-cyber teams in the world, among those the United States
and Israel.
QUESTION: Are you planning on changing or saying
that the U.S. will recognize Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights?
SECRETARY
POMPEO: Yeah, I
don’t have anything to add for you today.
QUESTION: Sir, my final question, if that’s okay.
You jokingly said that the President might one day end your job with a tweet.
You’re very close to the President. I wonder if what we’re seeing is sort of
the era of diplomacy on Twitter or decision making on Twitter or governance on
Twitter, actually.
SECRETARY
POMPEO: No, I was
just talking about something that cabinet officials say all the time. They
serve at the pleasure of the President. At any moment the President decides
that he doesn’t want us to do that anymore, we will graciously move on with our
lives. We serve at his pleasure. That was my point that I said in a kidding
fashion.
No, I don’t
think we’re seeing diplomacy by Twitter. It still requires thoughtfulness, it
requires resources, it requires capability and determination. But the ability
to communicate, the ability to rapidly spread messages around the world through
social media, including Twitter, is absolutely important. It allows leaders
around the world to share their views instantaneously with millions of people,
something that was more difficult before. And that’s our real power; it’s
another element to the capacity to shape the world.
QUESTION: Yeah, and obviously there’s the
importance of personal conversation. Secretary Mike Pompeo, again, thank you so
much for talking with us.
SECRETARY
POMPEO: Thank you
very much.
QUESTION: Thank you.
