By John Gizzi
December 18, 2022
Sounding very much like a presidential candidate in 2024, Mike Pompeo told a wildly cheering crowd of Iranian exiles Saturday that “freedom is on the march” in their country and “the future lies with the protestors” who have taken to the streets of Tehran for three months to demand an end to the theocratic dictatorship.
“Revolution is in the making!” the former secretary of state declared, adding that after three months of marching and withstanding an assault from Iranian security forces, the protestors “are organized and powerful. We aren’t seeing any disarray here.”
Noting that the movement in the streets is “led by women and spear-headed by youth,” Pompeo deadpanned, “it’s making old people like me [he’s 58] feel bad!”
The former secretary of state and CIA director was the headliner at a Washington DC meeting of the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC.org), an all-volunteer coalition of Iranian exiles throughout the U.S.
Pompeo was greeted with a hero’s welcome. Many Iranian exiles recalled how, in his words, “I’ve been on the right side of this issue for over a decade,” when Pompeo was a freshman U.S. Representative from Kansas and spoke of the Iranian people and their quest for freedom.”
He spoke proudly of the work of the Trump Administration in which he served and its hard-line support for an “info warfare” against the Tehran regime and “20 months of sanctions that had begun to bleed the regime dry.”
“In ’09, we had a chance to support the Iranian people and President Obama walked away from it,” Pompeo said, referring to the US refusal to condemn with marchers protesting clearly-manipulated defeat of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Rather than condemn the 44th president, however, Pompeo simply noted that Obama “recently appeared to recognize [his mistake].”
Joining Pompeo at the event were Gary Locke, who served as President Obama’s ambassador to China and secretary of commerce, retired Gen. Jack Keane (U.S. Army), and former Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., who served as President Trump’s ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom.
