It was "un-American" for former Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama-era Middle East adviser Robert Malley to have arranged multiple meetings with Iran's foreign minister while President Donald Trump was in office, but what's going on with the Biden administration's plans to engage with Iran is even worse, ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday.
"We know that those meetings took place," Pompeo told Fox News' "America Reports." "We know some of what was discussed. The truth of the matter is that's not right, it's un-American to undermine the duly-elected president of the United States and the secretary of state and the team that is trying to execute American policy."
But still, President Joe Biden's push to reenter the Iran nuclear deal is even worse, said Pompeo.
"They will try to go back into this deal that created a straightaway path for the Iranians to have a program on the territory," said Pompeo. "They tried this before, 'If we just give the Iranians enough money, enough policy cash and get this right and bribe them, they will be peaceful.' We saw that did not happen and we saw the attacks and the terror that continued, and we seldom continue to work on a nuclear program that led to a localization and bad outcomes for our friends and allies in the Middle East."
Pompeo also accused the Biden administration of bragging about the return.
"Sounds like we are back to the same idea that you can fundamentally appease tyrants, dictators, theocrats who really mean harm to America," said Pompeo. "The truth is, and what we could demonstrate clearly during the term for administration, is what they understood was power, they understood deterrence."
He added that Iran believes the Biden administration wants a deal badly enough that "we will appease them and give them the money that they want and they will go back to the old tricks that we have seen for so long."
Meanwhile, the former secretary also commented on Tuesday's congressional hearing on security procedures and decisions that took place before and during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
"The idea that information was not pushed to the right place and that there were communication gaps, if that's what happened, is really disappointing," Pompeo said. "Many terrorist plots were taken down by a really good network over the last two decades. I hope that we don't find that there was a U.S. domestic intelligence failure."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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