(U.S. State Department) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed Stanford University's Hoover Institute on Monday. "On the 3rd of this month, we took one of the world's deadliest terrorists off the battlefield for good....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." "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....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." "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." "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 for the sake of violently spreading the regime at enormous cost to them." "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."
2020-01-14 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive