SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you, all.
Good to see you.
Everybody having a good day?
It’s hard to be unhappy when the weather is this great.
I vaguely remember from my time growing up in Southern California that every day was
like this.
I’m also mindful – Tom, thanks for the kind introduction.
I’m also mindful when I get introduced as the 70th secretary of state, that President
Trump is the 45th president, so there’s a lot more turnover in my gig.
(Laughter.)
And I want to recognize a few special people.
Secretary Rice I know is with us.
Tom, thank you for being here.
My former colleague and dear friend General McMaster is with us, too.
It’s always great to get back here and be with you in California.
You have this incredible privilege to study at this remarkable institution.
One of your early graduates was a great American for which this institution, the Hoover Institution,
was named.
He deserves our praise for revering America in all of its exceptional splendor.
He went from being an orphan in Iowa to the president of the United States.
He was a brilliant mining engineer.
I graduated as an engineer myself.
He traveled the world from Australia to China and earned a fortune through his own hard
work.
When the First World War broke out, he used his talent to coordinate the effort of tens
of thousands of Americans stranded in Europe and helped them get back to America.
His success there led him to spearhead the effort to save Europe from starvation both
during and after World War I.
He embodied everything in the American humanitarian efforts that we kept at and keep at for decades.
In 1948, at age of 74, he spoke at his birthplace on what America had given to him as a poor
orphan boy.
He said, quote, “I have had every honor to which any man could aspire.
There is no place on the whole earth except in America where all of the sons of man can
have this chance in life.”
I feel that way often myself.
America is a truly special place.
I don’t want to talk about the actions of just these past handful of days and weeks,
but the things that our administration has done to try and keep America safe and to protect
each and every one of you.
On the 3rd of this month, we took one of the world’s deadliest terrorists off the battlefield
for good.
Many of you are probably aware of the millions of displaced persons and those who have been
killed in Syria, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the starvation and cholera epidemics
in Yemen, Shiite militias destabilizing democracies in both Lebanon and Iraq along the Shia Crescent.
The Iranian regime and its proxies under the direct supervision of Qasem Soleimani have
nurtured all of that misery.
It’s why thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate when they heard Soleimani
was dead.
Many more would have undoubtedly joined them, but for the fear that the remaining Iranian-backed
thugs, many of which were at the gates of the American embassy in the days before, would
have beaten them or jailed them or killed them.
Right now – you can see it – the Iranian people are in the streets.
They are likewise there in astounding numbers in spite of enormous personal risk to themselves.
They are burning posters and billboards with Soleimani’s face on them and chanting, “Soleimani
is a murderer.”
They know he was one of the key architects of their oppression.
And the United States is with them in their calls for freedom and justice, in their justified
anger at the ayatollah and his minions and what they have destroyed inside of the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
I want to repeat President Trump’s insistence that Iran not harm a single protestor.
I hope everyone will do the same.
We’ve called on our allies across the world and the region to repeat this to them.
There is no terrorist except Usama bin Ladin who has more American blood on his hands than
did Qasem Soleimani, that killed more than 600 of our American patriots.
I knew some of these young men.
He’s the mastermind of the most recent attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, including the
mastermind of the attack that took place that killed an American on December 27th of the
year past.
He ordered the December 31st assault on the embassy, the people that work for the United
States Department of State in Baghdad.
And I can assure you that the world is safer as a result of the fact that he no longer
poses that very risk.
But I want to lay this out in context of what we’ve been trying to do.
There is a bigger strategy to this.
President Trump and those of us in his national security team are re-establishing deterrence
– real deterrence ‒ against the Islamic Republic.
In strategic terms, deterrence simply means persuading the other party that the costs
of a specific behavior exceed its benefits.
It requires credibility; indeed, it depends on it.
Your adversary must understand not only do you have the capacity to impose costs but
that you are, in fact, willing to do so.
I was a young soldier back during the Cold War.
You can have the greatest army in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you are not prepared
to use it to achieve your strategic objectives.
As one of your scholars here, Victor Davis Hanson, said, “Deterrence is hard to establish
and easy to lose.”
And let’s be honest.
For decades, U.S. administrations of both political parties never did enough against
Iran to get the deterrence that is necessary to keep us all safe.
The JCPOA itself – the nuclear deal – made things worse.
It enabled that regime to create wealth, it opened up revenue streams for the ayatollahs
to build up the Shiite militia networks, the very networks – the very networks – that
killed an American and imposed enormous risk at our – to our embassy in Baghdad.
Rather than blocking those efforts, the deal put Iran on a clear pathway to a nuclear weapon
as well, something President Trump began his remarks by saying would never happen on our
watch.
So what did we do?
We put together a campaign of diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and military deterrence.
The goal is two-fold.
First, we wanted to deprive the regime of resources, resources it needs to perpetrate
its malign activity around the world.
And second, we just want Iran to behave like a normal nation.
Just be like Norway, right?
(Laughter.)
Diplomatically, allies and partners have joined us.
They are today patrolling the Straits of Hormuz alongside of us in the Persian Gulf to stop
Iranian attacks on shipping.
Let us not forget how many ships the Iranians pulled from the straits over the past month.
Germany, France, Italy have all put travel bans on a company called Mahan Air.
It’s an Iranian airline that ferries military – Iranian military assets and weapons to
the battle zones.
Argentina and the United Kingdom have both now declared Hizballah a terrorist organization.
And you have seen finally, too, the economic pressure that we have put in place to cut
off roughly 80 percent of the Iranian oil revenues.
We are determined to get at that last 20 percent, too.
President Rouhani himself said that we have denied the Iranian regime some $200 billion
in lost foreign income and investment as a result of our activities.
This is money that would have in large measure gone to support the very activities that would
have put you and your fellow citizens at risk.
And you can see it, too.
The Iranian people are increasingly angry at their own government for stealing their
wealth and for the sake of violently spreading the regime at enormous cost to them.
On the military side, we’ve warned the Iranians repeatedly – I’ve done so personally myself
– that an attack that took American lives would not be tolerated.
And they tested us, as they had tested previous administrations as well many times before.
Past laxity had emboldened them.
But on December 27th, at Soleimani’s direction, we changed that.
On the 31st, Iranian-backed militias attacked our embassy in Baghdad and we changed that
calculus for them.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said it perhaps best.
Had we not taken that strike against Qasem Soleimani, our leadership – the recommendation
that we made to President Trump – we would have been “culpably negligent” had we
not made that recommendation, imposed a significant cost on the regime for their bad decision.
Qasem Soleimani discovered our resolve to defend American lives.
And Iran hit back, and we’re grateful that no lives were lost, and we will never downplay
the seriousness of any attack on the United States or its forces.
But judging from the type and intensity of the strike, the regime certainly must now
understand what we will do if they ever again pose risk to American lives.
If Iran escalates, we will end it on our terms.
President Trump reinforced that deterrence when he gave a set of remarks this past week.
And these days Iran is making noise about leaving the nuclear deal.
There’s a reason that the President had as his first words in those remarks to the
nation that said, quote, “As long as I am President of the United States, [we will never]
– Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”
That declaration is backed by the most effective deterrence capability in the world.
And our sanctions will continue until the regime stops its terrorist activity and commits
to never having nuclear weapons and permits a verification regime which can give the world
confidence that that will not take place.
We now enjoy a great position of strength regarding Iran.
It’s as good as it has ever been, and Iran has never been in the place that it is today.
We have re-established deterrence, but we know it’s not everlasting, that risk remains.
We are determined not to lose that deterrence.
In all cases, we have to do this.
We have to do this to defend freedom and liberty around the world.
That’s the whole point of President Trump’s work, to make our military the strongest it’s
ever been.
We saw, not just in Iran, but in other places, too, where American deterrence was weak.
We watched Russia’s 2014 occupation of the Crimea and support for aggression against
Ukraine because deterrence had been undermined.
We have resumed lethal support to the Ukrainian military.
China’s island building, too, in the South China Sea, and its brazen attempts to coerce
American allies undermined deterrence.
The Trump administration has ramped up naval exercises in the South China Sea, alongside
our allies and friends and partners throughout the region.
You saw, too, Russia ignored a treaty.
We withdrew from the INF with the unanimous support of our NATO allies because there was
only one party complying with a two-party agreement.
We think this, again, restores credibility and deterrence to protect America.
It doesn’t happen alone.
That’s why the President has insisted that NATO members do their part, share their burden.
Some $400 billion by the end of 2024 will be added to the NATO arsenal to protect freedom
around the world as a direct result of America’s efforts to encourage our partners to reinforce
what it is we are all trying to accomplish together.
For years, too, China has restricted access for American products in its markets, while
demanding access for their stuff here.
I was a small business owner.
I had a small office that was in Shanghai.
We’ve made clear that we’re going to have a fair and reciprocal trading arrangement
with China.
We’ll demand it.
I hope, here in the next handful of hours, we sign the first part of what will be a significant
agreement which will improve the lives of American citizens, raise wages for citizens
here at home, and increase the economic relationship between our two countries on a set of terms
that work for both China and for the United States.
There is a second mission, too.
China has stolen massive quantities of American innovation, innovation created at campuses
right like this one I’m standing on – everything from genetically engineered crop seeds to
self-driving car technology.
They stole it.
They didn’t have to invest or take risk.
We’re making progress to make sure that the next part of the deal will improve on
the IP protections that are in Phase One of the Chinese trade deal.
I’ll end here because I want to take as many questions from you as I can.
Look, we don’t know how the Iranian regime will react as we continue to rebuild deterrence.
If we make the right choice and return to a place where we have mutual respect between
us, it will be a good thing for the world.
We hope that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leadership shares our view, and we hope that
we can achieve that for the betterment of security here at home and for stability in
the Middle East and throughout the world.
Thank you all for having me here today.
I look forward to taking questions from you.
(Applause.)