Mike Pompeo Criticizes Biden’s Approach to Iran as Weak

Mike Pompeo, secretary of state and CIA director in the Trump administration, said Thursday that President Joe Biden’s soft stance with Iran has come back to “haunt” the U.S.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Pompeo criticized the Biden administration for waiting until Wednesday to return Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen to the list of global terrorist organizations after they fired rockets and drones at U.S. military and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

The Houthis were put on the list late in the Trump administration, but Biden took them off the list early in his administration, saying it would be easier to bring humanitarian aid into Yemen. Pompeo said that claim is a “fraud.”

“Every single terrorist, that designation statute has exemptions for humanitarian assistance,” he said.

Pompeo, who considered running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Biden’s failed policies with Iran led to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, as well as the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists in southern Israel.

He told the Daily Mail there is a “very serious risk” when you “try not to look directly into the eyes of evil and acknowledge that it exists and then confront it.”

The Houthis began attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea in November in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since then, they have launched dozens of attacks on commercial tankers passing through the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, and on U.S. military vessels.

On Thursday, the U.S. military said it launched strikes targeting two Houthi anti-ship missiles that were being prepared to fire into the Red Sea and deemed “an imminent threat” to shipping and U.S. Navy vessels in the region. The U.S. military conducted similar strikes Wednesday.

Pompeo told the Daily Mail he will be speaking Saturday at the Steamboat Institute’s Foreign Policy Summit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He said he will cover the top foreign policy challenges facing the Biden administration and how they can be solved.

“This is all fixable,” he said. “We simply have to muster the temerity as Americans to do that, and I’m convinced we will.”