WASHINGTON (AP) – Mike Pompeo is not fading away in silence. In his last days as Secretary of State, he is issuing orders that have caused international consternation and tweeting a storm in his official and personal accounts to consolidate his legacy as the main promoter of President Donald’s “America First” doctrine. Trump.
With a potential look at a 2024 presidency, Pompeo has doubled his support for Trump, even when other cabinet members have resigned or gone out of sight after the Capitol violence. As the House debated Trump’s role in fomenting the riot, Pompeo sent a tweet promoting Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Last week, Pompeo held controversial controversies that are likely to be overturned by his successor, intensified criticism of what he believes is unfair news coverage and complained about the alleged censorship of conservatives on social media.
And as a sign of his post-Trump ambitions, he urged followers of his official State Department Twitter account to start following his personal account.
While it is not uncommon for members of the outgoing Council of Ministers to publish their achievements, Pompeo has taken a step further by overthrowing his predecessors in the national security community, some of whom will play a prominent role in the president-elect’s administration. Joe Biden.
“Remember this ‘Middle Eastern expert?’ He said it couldn’t happen. We did, ”Pompeo said in a scrupulous tweet with a video clip of John Kerry, who said Arab countries would not recognize Israel without a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Kerry, a former secretary of state, will serve as the climate envoy to the Biden administration.
Pompey, who is already the most political of the last secretaries of state, has criticized even the mildest criticisms and accused his critics of being wrong, unintelligent or incompetent. He has ignored the advice of his own advisers advancing on pet projects, some of which seem designed to complicate Biden’s presidency.
Since last Saturday, he has:
—It lifted long-standing restrictions on US contacts with Taiwan, a measure whose main outcome is to anger China.
—Houthi of Yemen has declared a rebellion as a terrorist organization, a move that the United Nations and aid agencies say could worsen what is already a humanitarian catastrophe.
—Re designates Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” an action that will prevent or at least delay any attempt by Biden to improve ties with Havana.
He accused Iran of deep and long-standing ties to al-Qaeda, a statement that many in the intelligence community find overwhelmed given a story of animosity between the two.
The actions are in line with a harsh “America First” policy that he has long been keen to defend.
It has attacked China, Iran, various UN organizations, multilateral institutions such as the International Criminal Court, and bilateral treaties such as arms control agreements with Russia, two of which the Trump administration has withdrawn during the his time as top American diplomat.
In Iran, Pompeo has been particularly harsh, re-imposing all the sanctions that had been eased by the Obama administration after the 2015 nuclear deal and adding more sanctions. He also defended the assassination of a first Iranian general in Iraq early last year and has been at the forefront of an effort to encourage Sunni Arab states to unite against predominantly Shiite Iran.
“The foreign policy stain is constantly looking for a moderate within the Iranian regime to ‘normalize relations,'” Pompeo said this week. “The reality is that you are more likely to find a unicorn.”
Pompeo has made a sport out of the destruction of China, Cuba and international organizations, as well as Obama administration officials who, he said, were naively irremediable in negotiating with them.
“As the main contributor to the United Nations, I have put American taxpayers and American interests first,” Pompeo tweeted Monday. He was accompanied by a photo of former President Barack Obama, Kerry, Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, and Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power. Along with Kerry, Rice and Power have also been appointed to prominent positions in the Biden administration.
Still, despite all efforts to celebrate the Trump administration’s foreign policy, Pompeo and the State Department have played a minimal role in some of the most important areas, with the White House taking over. This was most notable in what Trump supporters see as one of his major achievements, improving Israel’s ties with its Arab neighbors.
Led by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the administration relentlessly pushed for the Israeli-Arab peace effort, culminating in agreements to normalize relations between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Pompey and the State Department were largely absent from this diplomacy, with the exception of Israeli Ambassador David Friedman, who depends primarily on the White House.
Pompeo’s State Department was effectively excluded from Kushner’s “vision” of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the secretary of state was not present for the implementation of the economic part of the plan in Bahrain in 2019. Pompeo and other cabinet members were present at the presentation of the political piece of the proposal last January, but their role in creating the plan, which was immediately rejected by the Palestinians, is murky.
On Thursday, Pompeo praised Trump’s March 2019 decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which he captured from Syria in 1967. He tweeted a video about him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the residence from Netanyahu to Jerusalem that night with the text, “I will never forget this moment.” Still, he and his delegation had been out of bounds at the time of the Golan Heights decision, which Trump took after consulting with Kushner just minutes before Pompeo met with Netanyahu.
Similarly, the State Department backtracked on Kushner’s negotiations to get Morocco to normalize ties with Israel, which meant American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the former Spanish territory of the Sahara. Western.
Pompey overturned a U.S. legal opinion decades ago on the legality of Jewish settlements on Palestinian-claimed land. On his last visit to Israel in November, Pompey became the first secretary of state to visit a settlement and on Thursday proudly promoted a West Bank wine bearing his name.
“L’Chaim’s wine at Pompey!” Pompey said on Twitter.