Pompeo: The Ayatollah Understands Only Strength

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others have blasted the Biden administration Thursday after the White House signaled it was ready to restart diplomacy with the Islamic Republic of Iran over a nuclear deal.

Mike Pompeo has slammed the Biden administration’s willingness to restart nuclear talks with Tehran, fearing they could lead to sanctions relief and concessions — but little substantive change in the country’s nuclear policy.

In clear comments, Mike Pompeo has defended the Trump administration’s record in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran dismissing assertions by the Biden team that the previous administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear accord has brought Tehran closer to a nuclear weapon.

“The ayatollah understands only strength. I led a response to the Iranian threat that protected the American people from its terror and supported the Jewish state of Israel,” Pompeo told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday. “Adopting the European Union model of accommodation will guarantee Iran a path to a nuclear arsenal.”

Pompeo said the Trump administration — which in 2018 withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and other nations — “refused” to “appease the Iranian theocracy,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Pompeo’s remarks came after State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday that the Biden administration would “accept an invitation from the European Union High Representative to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Tehran to discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran’s nuclear program.”

In 2018, the Trump administration pulled out of the so-called Iran Deal three years after it was brokered by the Hussein Obama administration with Britain, France, Germany Russia, China, and the EU. The accord reduced sanctions against Tehran in exchange for the country reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium needed to fuel nuclear weapons.

Since the withdrawal, Ayatollahs have admitted it’s breached the 2015 deal by using advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges in an underground plant.

Mike Pompeo credited the Trump administration’s steadfastness, saying that European nations “wanted to appease the theocrats in Iran for my entire time as secretary of state.”

“When the Iranians sense weakness, they’ll attack,” Pompeo said on “Fox News @ Night.” “What we did is that when they came after an American, we made this very clear: Whether they attacked an American through a proxy force in Iraq, whether they attacked an American through Hezbollah in Syria, wherever it was, wherever Iran was responsible, we were going to hold the Iranians accountable. That’s the kind of strength that built the deterrence model that we had with respect to Iran. I hope that this current administration won’t give up on that.”