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From the January 5, 2020, edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday
CHRIS WALLACE (HOST): Joining us now here in Washington, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, welcome back to Fox News Sunday, sir.
MIKE POMPEO (SECRETARY OF STATE): Chris, it's great to be with you, thanks for having me on this morning.
WALLACE: You know that the Iraqi Parliament is holding an emergency session today to discuss the question as to whether U.S. troops, the 5,000 troops we have there should remain in the country. It has just come across the wire that the Iraqi prime minister says it is in the interest of both Iraq and the U.S. to end foreign troop presence in Iraq and he also says that the killing of Gen. Soleimani and also a top militia leader who was backed by Iran, al-Muhandis, were political assassinations. Your reaction, sir?
POMPEO: Chris, the American people should know that President Trump will never shy away from protecting and defending America. It’s what we’ve done over these past weeks and days. It’s what we’ve done over our our entire three years with our Middle East strategy. The activity that you are seeing today is fully consistent with that. The American people should know we will continue — the president tweeted it again last night, we will take the actions necessary to keep Americans safe. As for the activity today with respect to Iraq, we've been in their country, we've been supporting Iraqi sovereignty, we've been continuing to take down the terrorist threat against the Iraqi people. The prime minister is the resigned prime minister, he is the acting prime minister. He is under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that it is that we are pushing back against. We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counter-terror campaign ,and we will continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe.
WALLACE: But if Iraq — it is a sovereign country. If they demand that we leave, one, will we leave, and if we do, won’t automatically hurt the fight against ISIS and stability in the region?
POMPEO: So we'll have to take a look at what we do when the Iraqi leadership and government makes its decision, but the American people should know we will make the right decision. We will take actions that frankly the previous administration refused to take to do just that.
WALLACE: President Trump says that Gen. Soleimani was planning a quote “imminent attack” against Americans. You have said that it was a quote “big action” that could potentially kill hundreds of American diplomats and soldiers. What was the plan? Who were the targets and how soon?
POMPEO: President Trump was right in what he said, so was I. We will share all the intelligence that we can. I was the CIA director for a little while, Chris. There’s things we simply cannot make public about what it is we knew at that time and what in fact we know today about the continuing activity. I think Gen. Milley got it right when he said we were culpably negligent had we not gone after Soleimani only had the opportunity. He was actively engaged in plotting against American interests. We need look no further than what he had personally done over the days before that when an American was killed on December 27. There’s no surprise, there’s plenty of public evidence about the bad behavior of Qassem Soleimani. He was a designated terrorist, and we did the right thing.
WALLACE: I just want to press to this degree, he had been targeting Americans and other people around the region for decades, the blood of 600 Americans was on his hands during the Iraq war. The question is that there are some intelligence agents who are talking to media outlets who are saying yes, he was doing bad things, but it was another day in the Middle East and some congressional leaders who have been briefed now say that the intelligence was not of an imminent attack that was bigger, more worrisome. Don’t the American people have the right to some understanding of what it was, why it was so urgent to take out Soleimani now?
POMPEO: It's interesting, I haven’t heard any of the congressional leaders who have seen the full set of intelligence make the comments that you just described. I think any reasonable person who saw the intelligence that the senior American leaders had in their possession would have come the same conclusion that President Trump and our leadership team did about the fact that there would have been more risk to America, more risk through inaction than there was through the action we took. I think it’s very clear, I think it’s very plain. We will do everything we can to share this information with the American people but I think the American people understand too there are certain things you just can’t put out in public. You got to protect Americans who are out collecting intelligence. The intelligence we will need in the days and weeks ahead to continue to defend and protect them.
WALLACE: Iran’s leaders are vowing a crushing response using words like a hard revenge. What do we do if they strike back, if they retaliate? Is there a plan? And is there, because of the fact that we went after Soleimani, has there been a change in U.S. response of we're no longer going to go after the enemy in the field, we are now going to go after Iran’s command and control?
POMPEO: Chris, the American people know there is a strategy, it’s a strategy that has been several years in the making now that we’ve been working on. It’s been a diplomatic strategy, it's been an economic strategy. You are now seeing elements of the military strategy and with respect to targets, President Trump talked about 52 targets last night. That’s not new in the following sense. We’ve made clear to the theocrats and kleptocrats that are running Iran today, running it into the ground against the will of their own people. We made clear to them that we would not respond just against these proxy forces that they run in Yemen and in Syria and in Iraq and in Lebanon. We made clear that this cost would be brought home to them, to the leadership regime in Iran and that we would raise costs. We wouldn’t just attack their asymmetric efforts, we would respond in a way that impose costs on the decision-makers who are putting American lives at risk.
WALLACE: So you’re saying to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, you’re saying to President Rouhani, you’re saying to leaders of the revolutionary guard, don’t think that you are off-limits?
POMPEO: What I’m saying is exactly what President Trump has said. We will take responses that are appropriate and commensurate with actions that threaten American lives, That’s what we’ve done so far Chris, there’s no reason the American people or the Iranian regime should ever expect we will do anything different.
WALLACE: You talk about the strategy. The president has been pushing what he calls the maximum pressure strategy since he took office. He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May of 2018, he imposed tough economic sanctions and this summer he suggested that the strategy was working. Take a look.
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WALLACE: But in 2019 alone, Iran hit six ships, shot down a U.S. drone, launched an attack against Saudi oil facilities, a damaging attack and for all the talk of isolating Iran, they just conducted joint exercises with China and Russia. So the question is, has the president’s maximum pressure strategy made Iran less aggressive or more?
POMPEO: Panicked aggression on the part of the Iranian leadership because they know that the Iranian people are demanding enormous change. And they know that the Iranian people are supported by America in that demand for change. We build out a huge coalition, Chris. Gulf states, Israel, countries all across the world who are joining us. They are joining us not only in the efforts in the straits of Hormuz, but in the air defense efforts. All across the region, the maligned actor of Iran has been identified. Remember where we came in Chris. In 2015, the Obama-Biden administration essentially handed power to the Iranian leadership and acted as a quasi-ally of theirs. But underwriting them, underwriting the very militias that killed Americans. Those resources, the money that they had to build out those forces throughout the Shia crescent was provided to them by the nuclear deal. We allowed Europeans to go do business there, we provided a $150 billion, pallets of cash, all of these things of the very challenge that the Trump administration has had to correct. The strategy is working, we are going to stay the course, and we will protect and defend the American people at every step, Chris.
WALLACE: Just so you know, I will be asking Sen. Van Hollen about that in the next segment. President Trump also says that he is keeping his campaign promise to pull U.S. troops out of the Middle East. Here’s what he had to say in October.
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WALLACE: But just this week, the U.S. deployed 100 Marines to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, plus 750 to the region and now another 3,500. If the president pulling us out of endless wars in the Middle East or with his action this week, did he take a big step back in?
POMPEO: Endless wars are the direct result of weakness, and President Trump will never let that happen. We are going to get it right, we’re going to get the force posture right, we are going to get our facilities as hardened as we can possibly get them to defend against what Iran may potentially do. But make no mistake, America’s mission is to have our footprint in the Middle East reduced while still keeping America safe -- safe from rogue regimes like the Islamic republic of Iran and from terrorist activity broadly throughout the region.
WALLACE: So is it fair to say that while the big strategy is to pull the U.S. out of endless wars, at least in the short term there could be more of a commitment?
POMPEO: The Obama administration created an enormous risk to the American people in Iran. This administration is working to reduce that risk.
WALLACE: Finally, some analysts suggest that the impeachment of President Trump has emboldened enemies like Iran and North Korea to think that they can confront him. Do you think that, as misguided as it may be, that some of our enemies think that this president is more vulnerable because of the impeachment effort?
POMPEO: You should ask Mr. Soleimani.
WALLACE: I understand that, but he was going ahead before you killed him and the question is do you think that impeachment is emboldening our enemies?
POMPEO: I don’t. I think that our adversaries understand the President Trump and our administration will do the right thing to protect the American people every place that we find risk.
WALLACE: Secretary Pompeo, thank you.