Eli Lake, Columnist

Pompeo Raises the Price for Iran to Rejoin International Community

The new secretary of state’s first major speech outlines the opposite of Obama’s policy.

May 21, 2018 at 6:52 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Wherever Kerry zigged, Pompeo zagged. — Wherever Kerry zigged, Pompeo zagged.
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images

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If you ever wanted to know what the opposite of Barack Obama's Iran strategy would look like, I recommend Mike Pompeo's speech Monday at the Heritage Foundation.

In his first major address as secretary of state, Pompeo outlined a new strategy that overturns three key assumptions that underpinned the Iran policy of Obama and his top diplomat, John Kerry. These are: that America can live with Iranian regional aggression in exchange for temporary limits on its nuclear program; that the 2015 nuclear bargain expressed the will of the international community; and that Iran's current elected leadership can moderate the country over time.