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Mike Pompeo, Wasting No Time, Meets With NATO Mike Pompeo, Wasting No Time, Warns Europe About Iran Deal
(about 13 hours later)
BRUSSELS — A day after he was sworn in as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo arrived at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday morning with some words his hosts eagerly wanted to hear as he started a four-day, four-nation trip that will include talks with top allies about Russian aggression and the Iran nuclear deal. BRUSSELS — On his first full day as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo traveled to Europe and delivered a warning that leaders here have come to dread: President Trump will soon pull out of the Iran nuclear deal unless major changes are made.
President Trump has given European leaders reasons to question his support for NATO, but in a brief welcome ceremony with Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary general, Mr. Pompeo emphasized that his presence should be taken as an endorsement. “Absent a substantial fix, absent overcoming the shortcomings, the flaws of the deal, he is unlikely to stay in that deal past this May,” Mr. Pompeo said of Mr. Trump.
“I was sworn in yesterday afternoon, I hopped straight on a plane and came straight here,” Mr. Pompeo said. “There’s good reason for that. The work that’s being done here today is invaluable and our objectives are important, and this mission means a lot to the United States of America.” Mr. Pompeo said that Mr. Trump had not made a decision on the accord, but Mr. Pompeo’s itinerary on his first overseas trip as the nation’s chief diplomat — a stop here at NATO headquarters and others in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Jordan in the next three days — suggested that he was preparing allies for a likely decision by Mr. Trump to pull out of the deal.
This week, President Emmanuel Macron of France predicted that Mr. Trump “will get rid of this deal on his own for domestic reasons.” Mr. Trump has set May 12 as his deadline to announce his choice.
Mr. Pompeo’s warning came at a news conference here during which he demonstrated the characteristics that have endeared him to Mr. Trump — he was direct, with a no-nonsense approach, and he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.
Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Pompeo’s predecessor, had approached these trips, like much of the rest of his job, with the awkward joylessness of a cowboy walking into a fancy-dress cotillion.
Mr. Pompeo said that the diplomats he spoke with were “hopeful that the State Department will get its swagger back” and that he expected to “build that esprit and to get the team on the field so that we can effectuate American diplomacy.”
Mr. Pompeo also said that he welcomed the historic meeting between President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. But he made clear that the United States would not accept Mr. Moon’s proposal for an incremental process of North Korean disarmament that is accompanied by a series of concessions from the West, a so-called step-for-step strategy that Mr. Moon has suggested could take two years to conclude.
“Our objective remains unchanged: We’re committed to permanent, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Koreans’ weapons of mass destruction programs without delay,” Mr. Pompeo said. “Until then, the global maximum pressure campaign will continue.”
Mr. Pompeo was also blunt in his call for European countries to spend more on their own defense, something Mr. Trump has urged repeatedly. When asked whether Germany was doing enough, Mr. Pompeo said simply, “No.” And he called for all countries to create plans before a leaders’ summit meeting in July to increase military spending to 2 percent of their gross domestic product, a target all NATO countries have endorsed but not all have achieved.
But he emphasized that his arrival in Brussels just hours after his own confirmation demonstrated the importance of the NATO alliance to the United States.
“This alliance has been an essential pillar of American security interests for decades,” he said. And he said that Russian aggression in Georgia, Ukraine and the Middle East only made it more so.
“In light of Russia’s unacceptable actions, NATO is more indispensable than ever,” he said and then referred to the recent poisoning in Britain of a former Russian spy. “As NATO allies agree, the use of military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia on U.K. territory was a reckless action that put the lives of innocent civilians at risk.”
“The United States has made abundantly clear that NATO should not return to business as usual with Russia until Moscow shows a clear change in its actions and complies with international law,” he said.
Mr. Trump has frequently been critical of NATO, and his expressions of support appeared to be made grudgingly: He reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which requires that it defend any NATO members that are attacked, only after having first pointedly refused to do so.Mr. Trump has frequently been critical of NATO, and his expressions of support appeared to be made grudgingly: He reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which requires that it defend any NATO members that are attacked, only after having first pointedly refused to do so.
Mr. Pompeo is now the United States’ top diplomat, but he was recently the head of the C.I.A. He was also once a tank commander in Europe dedicated to deterring Russian aggression, and his visit comes with the Russian threat looming large on the Continent. Mr. Pompeo is now the United States’ top diplomat, but he was recently the directory of the C.I.A. He was also once a tank commander in Europe dedicated to deterring Russian aggression, and his visit comes with the Russian threat looming large on the Continent.
In the past four years, Russia has annexed Crimea, intervened in Ukraine, interfered in the American presidential election in and supported the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The poisoning in Britain of a former Russian spy has been widely attributed to Moscow, galvanizing much of Europe, and Mr. Pompeo is in Brussels to support NATO’s efforts to prepare for the worse. Mr. Pompeo also met with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu of Turkey on Friday to talk through a host of issues that have caused relations between the two countries to dip to their lowest point in years. Mr. Pompeo mentioned the continued detention of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who has been in jail for about 18 months in a case that has become a cause célèbre among evangelical Christians.
Mr. Pompeo, however, will also reiterate Mr. Trump’s frequent complaints that some NATO members are not spending enough on their own defense, and the alliance will discuss its unsuccessful efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. The two countries are also at odds over a Turkish decision to purchase Russian-made antiaircraft missiles as well as American support for Kurdish forces fighting in Syria. Both sides said the meeting was cordial.
The secretary of state will fly on Saturday to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he will meet King Salman and Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. On Sunday, he will travel to Israel, where he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he will then go to Amman, Jordan, for talks with King Abdullah II. He is scheduled to return home Monday.
The trip comes two weeks before Mr. Trump’s self-imposed deadline of May 12 to decide whether to remain in the Iran nuclear agreement, which imposes curbs on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Although Mr. Trump signaled on Tuesday that he was open to a new arrangement with European allies that would preserve the accord, he has declined to publicly commit to the current agreement, which he has described as the “worst deal ever.”
“Nobody knows what I’m going to do on the 12th, although Mr. President, you have a pretty good idea,” he said in an appearance on Tuesday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, who winked at him in reply.
In the wake of the meeting with Mr. Macron, some European diplomats have grown increasingly pessimistic that Washington will remain in the accord. Their efforts have instead focused on ensuring that Iran does not back out, which officials in Tehran say is a possibility if the United States withdraws.
For European leaders, Iran’s presence in the agreement is far more important than that of the United States.
Mr. Pompeo owes his job in part to the fact that his predecessor, Rex W. Tillerson, supported the nuclear accord, which put him at odds with Mr. Trump. Mr. Pompeo spoke about the deal in derisive terms when he was a congressman from Kansas, and he once said the answer to the Iranian nuclear program was 2,000 bombing sorties.
Mr. Pompeo struck a more moderate tone during his confirmation hearings, saying he would work to preserve the accord.