Pompeo’s interview came late Saturday night aboard the U.S. Air Force jet transporting him and the U.S. delegation after he met with the president of the Republic of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, whom he visited here after earlier in the day attending the opening of intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha, Qatar. As the jet touched down in Doha late Friday night the previous evening, the deal being rolled out this week between Bahrain and Israel to normalize relations was announced. Previously, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel announced they were normalizing relations. On Tuesday at the White House, representatives of both Bahrain and UAE are meeting with Trump in addition to Israeli officials including Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
“It’s a great question. They are all connected,” Pompeo told Breitbart News when asked to connect the dots between the Afghan peace talks and these other peace deals being rolled out now. “The president laid down a strategy for how to secure America from instability and threats from the Middle East.”
Pompeo, who is at the White House with Trump and other American officials as part of the historic meetings for the peace deals on Tuesday, said that Trump’s Middle East policy strategy vision began by treating Iran as the main threat in the region.
“It began by recognizing the primary operator for instability, the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said. “That central decision has begun to drive all of the elements of our foreign policy in the Middle East. Reduce our footprint in Afghanistan, get our young men and women home. Reduce our footprints in Iraq and Syria, be strong in terms of sanctions and place pressure on the regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and then lay out a strategy for Middle East peace which had multiple pieces right?”
Several of the steps that laid the groundwork for these major steps toward Middle East peace, Pompeo told Breitbart News, include recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and several other steps taken in Israel. That, he said, has lit a path forward for Arab countries in the region for a vision for peace.
“Some of this is reality: Recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, acknowledge that the Golan Heights indeed is Israeli territory. We’ve also made clear that the settlements in the West Bank were necessarily unlawful,” Pompeo said. “All of those things come together to place the conditions where frankly countries in the Middle East can see a path forward for how you can take down risk and grow their economies. We think about these deals between Bahrain and the Emirates as security arrangements. That’s true, but the benefits to the economies of those three countries of opening up trade will be enormous.”…
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