Exclusive Mike Pompeo: Israeli strikes on Iran made the world ‘a heck of a lot safer'

Al Arabiya

14 hours ago

Former US Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has strongly defended Israel's military campaign on Iran, calling it a strategic necessity that has made the world 'a heck of a lot safer.'
In an exclusive interview on Al Arabiya English's GNT, presented by Tom Burges Watson, Pompeo said the Israeli strikes have significantly diminished Iran's capacity to threaten regional security.
'The air defense systems in Iran are virtually useless,' he said. 'Now the Israelis are undertaking an effort to push back the great threat to the region, which was a nuclear-armed Iran… That makes the world a heck of a lot safer in my judgment.'
Israel has said it targeted Iran's nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders at the start of what it warned would be a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.
Pompeo, who served under President Donald Trump, said he believed Israel had 'no choice' but to act preemptively, adding that his instinct tells him this is not a one-off operation.
'My instincts tell me the Israelis will continue this campaign until they have materially set back the capacity of Iran… to create a deterrence model that prevents Iran from ever thinking they can head back down that path again.'
'It was go time'
Addressing recent diplomatic efforts reportedly underway in Oman, Pompeo dismissed the notion that the talks were meaningful.
'My sense is that the talks weren't very advanced… They were trying to drag this up. They were playing for time, hoping they got someone like President Biden back in office.'
He said Israel likely assessed that diplomacy had run its course and that 'it was go time.'
Defending Trump's Iran policy
Pompeo stood firmly behind the Trump administration's 2018 decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, calling it 'absolutely the right decision.'
'I only wish President Biden had kept the pressure campaign on Iran and they hadn't had billions of dollars to conduct the terror in the region… including one of the greatest massacres of modern times on October 7th of 2023,' Pompeo said.
He also urged the UK and other European powers to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran, calling it a chance to 'gain leverage on the Iranian regime.'
Is escalation inevitable?
Despite the scale of Israel's strikes, Pompeo downplayed the risk of regional war.
'I think we have regional conflict, right? The Iranians have been fighting in Iraq, in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Syria, in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank against decent people all across the world for decades,' he said. 'And so…the Iranian's are the ones that bring a regional conflict.'
While warning of possible cyber or terror attacks, he concluded that Iran's ability to escalate was limited.
'If they come after Americans, that will be the end… If they escalate drastically, the whole world will see that they are, in fact, the bad actor that we've known them to be for the past decades.'