The end of Mike Pompeo’s reign at the State Department was just as controversial and turbulent as the rest of his 32-month term, but it’s unclear what tracks will remain after he leaves.
The last days of Pompeo were played in a snowstorm of self-congratulatory tweets, at a rate of two dozen a day, while he wanted to write his own first draft of history.
The former Kansas congressman, with clear ambitions for a 2024 presidential election, has highlighted his claims to success through frequent derogatory references to the previous government, portrayed as unhappy appeasers.
Some of the tweets were factually incorrect, and Barack Obama, for example, blamed a gun control treaty signed by Ronald Reagan.
Other claims are contradictory, just as he insists the US has restored the deterrent against Iran, along with his claim that Tehran is a bigger threat than ever before. On Tuesday, he called Iran “the new Afghanistan” and claimed – without proof – that it had become al-Qaeda’s center of operations.
Although Iran’s economy has been successfully plunged by sanctions, as Pompeo noted, the stock of less enriched uranium is now more than 12 times larger than when Pompeo assumed the post of US Secretary of State in 2018.
“If the real economic coercion of the US sanctions against Tehran increases the activities that were supposed to reverse the policy, or at least stop it, it is a matter of making an impact without delivering a favorable outcome,” said Naysan Rafati, senior analyst from Iran at the International Crisis Group.
Pompeo also claims that Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un led to a silence in nuclear warheads and long-range missile tests. But he does not mention that Kim has declared an end to the moratorium and that he will now have a significantly larger arsenal than when he met Trump.
The portrait that Pompeo painted about Trump’s America was in dramatic contrast to recent events. Two days after Congress came under unprecedented violent attack by a mob led by Trump, Pompeo blatantly tweeted: “Being the largest country on earth is not just about our incredible economy and our strong army; it’s about the values we stand out from the world. ”
He also brags to his State Department team that he “did more than anyone else to build alliances that secured American interests” before he had to cancel his swan song trip to Europe because his peers did not want to see him.
The Luxembourg foreign minister has indicated he will not be available to meet with America’s top diplomat, describing Trump’s behavior as ‘criminal’. The Belgian Foreign Minister, Sophie Wilmès, with whom Pompeo also had to meet on the trip, made clear on Twitter that her government is counting on Joe Biden to restore the unity and stability of the US.
“It is unprecedented that a US Secretary of State is unwelcome at any time, especially at the end of their term of office, in the foreign ministries of our closest allies,” said Brett Bruen, director of Global Engagement at the Obama White House. said. said. “It just shows how far he has cleared himself.”
In his prospective victory round, Pompeo, who is known to be skinny, limited his media interviews to conservative talk show hosts and did not ask any questions after his speeches.
At the headquarters of the state-funded Voice of America station (VOA), he complained to his journalists on Monday because they were insufficiently patriotic and even ‘humiliated’ America. He told them “to broadcast that it is the largest nation the world has ever known”.
When a VOA journalist, Patsy Widakuswara, tried to ask him questions at his address, he walked away and ignored her. Hours later, Widakuswara was demoted from her position covering the White House to other duties.
Michael Pack, the man installed by Trump and Pompeo at the head of the US Global Media Agency, which oversees VOA and other federally funded broadcasters, is trying to entrench his position by making the incoming government harder to oust him thanks to the agency’s statutory independence to its advantage. But it is unclear whether Pack will succeed, after alienating both Democrats and Republicans in Congress with his purge of journalistic and management personnel.
“I do not see the new government having much trouble helping him find the way out,” Bruen said.
There are other ways in which Pompeo has attempted to give a final, dramatic jolt to the steering of U.S. foreign policy, with the goal of making it difficult for the next government to change course.
Within its last ten days, Pompeo has identified Houthi forces in Yemen and Cuba as a terrorist group and a state sponsor of terrorism, respectively, although neither has any direct consequences for the US.
The designation of Houthi, which warns aid agencies that it could cause widespread deaths in Yemen through humanitarian aid troubles, was done without consulting legislators or their staff.
“You must stop lying to Congress,” one staff member told a State Department official in an information call reported by Foreign Policy, and confirmed to the Guardian by a source familiar with the conversation.
“Like so many other similar briefings we have had from this government, they are sending these poor people out to defend this ridiculous policy, and they just can not,” a senior Democratic congressman said.
While at the State Department, Pompeo devoted most of his energy to trying to nail the nuclear deal that the major world powers made with Iran in 2015, from which Trump withdrew in 2018.
This attempt has so far been a failure. In response to the waves of US sanctions, Iran has stopped complying with some of the agreed restrictions on its core activities, but has indicated that it is ready to enter into a new agreement with the new government.
The sanctions and terrorist designations are intended to incur political costs for the Biden team to return to the pre-Trump status quo, based on the assumption that it would be unpopular to see America’s opponents rewarded, but it is far from clear whether it will work.
“What he is doing is creating difficult news days for the next government, but it’s manageable,” said the senior Democratic staff member, predicting that the traps set by Pompeo could be removed without spending too much political capital. . “So much of the damage that Trump and Pompeo have done has been through executive action, so it can be reversed through executive action.”