Pompeo touts Iran policy in Gulf ahead of Biden presidency

Although Pompeo has not taken questions from U.S.-based reporters traveling with him over the past 10 days, he sat down with the Saudi-owned broadcaster

Says a lot about Pompeo/Trump that he won't take questions from US-based reporters but will from Saudi, i.e. state-controlled media.

What are Pompeo/Trump trying to keep hidden this time that they don't want US reporters to know about.

Why is the US still so heavily involved in MENA that it continues its sales of military equipment and backs (fronts?) proxy wars as part of its international relations.

Until the US becomes less dependent on burning so much oil and gas, expect it to be beholden to oil states like Saudi Arabia.

Iran, with a military budget that's a rounding error in the arms procurement contracts with America of the regimes that Pompeo visited on his Middle East trip, is a threat to them, and the US presence in the region.

Not because of its (NNPT and now TPNW compliant) nuclear program, or its missiles.

No, its a danger to the antidemocratic regimes and the dominance of the Imperium because it shows the people of the region they could have a democratically elected government that answers to them.

Putting the American Flag on one’s face mask is a particularly dickish move. It makes on think Fat Mike is compensating for something.

Pompeo setting himself up to run in 2024. Out of work come January

WH not out of politics, the guy is getting started. All of them are actually.

Brilliant strategy by Trump in the Middle East. Marginalize Iran and the PLO, sign peace deals with the Sunni, put the US embassy in the true capital of Israel. No new wars, pulling US troops out, killing terrorists. What more could you want?

Trump accomplished nothing with Iran in 4 years except giving Iranian hardliners more credibility in Iran.

Trump was recently talked back from moving ahead with a military strike on Iran’s main nuclear site by advisors who included Pompeo, according to a New York Times report

It's well know that a strike on their nuclear facilities will do nothing as they are underground. It's surprising that Trump still doesn't know this. At least people around him are stopping him from making really dumb decisions.

Actually, the real barrier to an American bombing of Iran's nuclear program is the IAEA inspectors. Thanks to America's insistence that there is a nuclear weapons program in these facilities (an insistence that makes Trump's insistence that he won the election look credible by comparison) choosing just one facility to bomb runs a high risk of killing an inspector, highlighting the reality that the American insistence is delusional, while not killing one makes it seem very credible that the inspectors are also American agents. Choosing more than one target only exacerbates the problem by bringing the odds of killing an inspector, if they were independent, so high that not killing one effectively proves a collaboration between the inspectors and the US.

And the kicker is that any American effort to show the independence of these inspectors will only highlights the astounding difference between their reports and the stance of the IAEA board that the US insistence is reasonable.