Pompeo's Cairo speech panned as ‘tone-deaf,’ ‘hyper-partisan,’ ‘offensive’
Former diplomats and regional experts say Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Cairo address fell short on substance and policy vision, while inappropriately taking domestic partisan arguments to foreign soil.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s stridently partisan speech in Cairo today chiding the former Barack Obama administration for its Iran nuclear diplomacy and attempts to engage the people of the Middle East received a withering response from former US diplomats and regional experts, who called it unstatesmanlike and tone-deaf.
“In falsely seeing ourselves as a force for what ails the Middle East, we were timid in asserting ourselves when the times — and our partners — demanded it,” Pompeo said in the speech, titled "A Force for Good: America Reinvigorated in the Middle East," at the American University in Cairo.
“Our desire for peace at any cost led us to strike a deal with Iran, our common enemy,” Pompeo said in another swipe at the Obama administration. “The good news is this: The age of self-inflicted American shame is over, and so are the policies that produced so much needless suffering.”
Current and former diplomats were, in a word, not impressed.
