美国国务院
发言人办公室
华盛顿哥伦比亚特区（Washington, D.C.）
2020年1月13日
国务卿迈克尔·蓬佩奥（Michael R. Pompeo）与斯坦福大学学生的政策讨论：”恢复威慑：伊朗的实例“
斯坦福大学胡佛研究所（Hoover Institution at Stanford University）
帕洛阿托，加利福尼亚州（Palo Alto, California）
谢谢诸位。很高兴见到你们。今天大家都好吗？天气这么好，不会让人不高兴。我依稀记得，我在南加州长大期间每天都是如此。我还注意到——汤姆，谢谢你友好的介绍。我还注意到，对我的介绍是第70任国务卿，而特朗普总统（President Trump）是第45任总统，所我担任的职务周转率高得多。（笑声）
我希望对几位特别来宾表示感谢。我知道国务卿赖斯（Rice）也在座。汤姆，谢谢你的捧场。我以前的同事和亲密好友麦克马斯特（McMaster）将军也在场。能回到加利福尼亚会见诸位总是很令人高兴。
你们能在这个杰出的机构学习，可以说荣幸之至。你们早期的毕业生之一是美国的一名伟人，胡佛研究所就是以他的名字命名的。
他高度尊尚美国开创的所有不同凡响的辉煌业绩，值得我们对他赞佩有加。他从艾奥瓦州（Iowa）的一名孤儿成长为美国总统。他是一名优秀的采矿工程师。我本人也是工程专业毕业生。他的足迹遍及世界各地，从澳大利亚到中国，勤奋工作，事业有成。
第一次世界大战（First World War）爆发后，他发挥自己的才干参加协调工作，帮助被困在欧洲的成千上万的美国人返回美国。他在这项工作上取得的成功促使他在第一次世界大战期间和战后投身于救助欧洲摆脱饥馑的努力。他体现了我们数十年坚持的美国人道主义努力的每一个方面。
1948年74岁时，他在自己的出生地谈到美国对他这样一个贫穷的孤儿给予的恩惠。他说，“我拥有任何人都渴望的每一项荣耀。在整个地球上，除了美国，没有任何地方可以给予所有的孩子这样的生活机会。”
我自己也经常有同感。美国是一个真正特别的地方。
我不想谈近几天和几个星期采取的行动，只想谈谈我们的政府为努力保障美国的安全和保护你们每一个人所做的工作。
本月3日，我们使全世界最危险的恐怖分子之一从战场上永久消失。
你们很多人可能都知道有数百万人流离失所，叙利亚成千上万人被杀害；也门饥荒遍地，霍乱蔓延；什叶派武装团伙在黎巴嫩和伊拉克等什叶派新月地带（Shia Crescent）采取破坏民主的行动。
伊朗政权及其代理人在卡西姆·苏莱曼尼（Qasem Soleimani）直接指挥下制造了所有的种种罪孽。为此，在获悉苏莱曼尼的死讯后，数千名伊拉克人走上街头表示庆祝。还有更多的人原来毫无疑问可以加入他们的队伍，但担心会受到伊朗支持的残余歹徒对他们进行殴打、监禁和杀害。其中很多歹徒在这以前的几天曾出现在美国大使馆门前。
现在，诸位可以看到，伊朗人民正走上街头。尽管需要冒巨大的个人危险，他们的人数也同样相当可观。他们焚烧带有苏莱曼尼头像的海报和广告牌，高呼“苏莱曼尼是刽子手。”
他们知道，他们受到压迫，苏莱曼尼是主要的黑手之一。美国支持他们呼唤自由和公正，对阿亚图拉及其附庸和他们从内部摧毁伊朗伊斯兰共和国的行为发出正义的怒吼。我需要重申特朗普总统坚持的立场，伊朗不得伤害任何一名示威民众。我希望人人都这样做。我们已经呼吁我国在全世界和各地区的盟友都向他们发出同样的呼声。
卡西姆·苏莱曼尼的手上沾满了美国人的鲜血，除了奥萨马·本·拉登（Usama bin Ladin）以外，没有任何恐怖主义分子欠下的血债比他多。他杀害了我们美国600多名同胞。我还认识其中的一些年轻人。
他是最近对美国在伊拉克的驻军发动袭击的罪魁祸首，也是 去年12月27日杀害一名美国人的罪魁祸首。
他下令在12月31日攻击大使馆，攻击在巴格达（Baghdad）为美国国务院工作的人。我可以肯定地告诉各位，由于他不再能构成这种威胁，世界现在更加安全。
但是，我想以我们所一直进行的努力为背景来说明这点。这里涉及更宏观的战略。
特朗普总统和我们这些他的国家安全班子中的成员，正在重新建立对伊斯兰共和国的威慑——真正的威慑。用战略语言来说，威慑的意思就是让对方信服，它的某种行为会得不偿失。这需要有可信度；它确实要靠这点。你的对手必须懂得，你不仅有能力让它付出代价，而且你确实有这样做的意愿。
当年在冷战时期，我是个年轻军人。你可以拥有世界上最了不起的军队，但是如果你没有准备用它去实现你的战略目标，就无济于事。
正像你们这里的一位学者维克多·戴维斯·汉森（Victor Davis Hanson）所言，“威慑很难建立而很易丧失”。
让我们直言不讳。几十年来，美国两个党派的政府都从未能对伊朗采取足够行动，建立维护我们所有人安全所需要的威慑力。“联合全面行动计划”（JCPOA）本身——即核协议——使情况更糟糕。它让伊朗政权能够创造财富，给阿亚图拉打开了收入来源，发展什叶派武装力量网，就是这个网——就是这个网——杀害了一名美国人，并给我们在巴格达的大使馆带来巨大危险。核协议非但未能阻止这一切，反而还让伊朗走上明显的核武道路，特朗普总统在他的讲话一开始就说，我们当政时绝不会发生这种情况。
那么我们采取了哪些做法？我们发动了外交孤立声势，经济施压，以及军事威慑。
我们的目标是双重的。首先，我们要切断该政权的资源，那些它在全球从事恶毒活动所需要的资源。第二，我们要伊朗像正常国家那样行事。像挪威一样，是吧？（笑声）
在外交方面，盟国和伙伴加入了我们的行列。今天，他们在波斯湾（Persian Gulf）和我们一道巡逻霍尔木兹海峡（Straits of Hormuz），制止伊朗袭击航运。让我们不要忘记过去一个月里伊朗在海峡拦阻了多少船只。
德国、法国、意大利都对一家叫做马汉航空（Mahan Air）的公司实施了禁飞。这是一家向交战地区运送军事——伊朗军事资源和武器的伊朗航空公司。
阿根廷和英国现在均已将真主党（Hizballah）列为恐怖主义组织。
最后你们还看到，我们施加的经济压力切断了大约80%的伊朗石油收入。我们决心也要切断那最后的20%。
鲁哈尼（Rouhani）总统自己说，我们的做法让伊朗政权失去了2,000亿美元的外来收入和投资。而这些钱的大部分本来是会被用于支持让你们和你们的公民同胞遭受危险的活动。
你们还可以看到，伊朗人民对政府窃取他们的财富和让他们为该政权的暴力扩张付出沉重代价日益愤慨。
在军事方面，我们一再警告伊朗——我自己曾亲自这样做，给美国造成生命损失的攻击不会被容忍。
他们试探我们，就像他们以前多次试探前几届政府一样。昔日的松懈让他们更加胆大妄为。
但是，在12月27日，在苏莱曼尼的指示下，我们让这点发生改变。12月31日，伊朗支持的武装分子攻击了我们驻巴格达大使馆，而我们改变了他们的如意算盘。
参谋长联席会议主席的话也许最精辟。如果我们没有打击卡西姆·苏莱曼尼，我们的领导层——我们给特朗普总统的建议——如果我们没有提出那一建议，让该政权为其恶劣的决定付出沉重代价，那就是“过失渎职”。
卡西姆·苏莱曼尼认识了我们捍卫美国人生命的决心。
伊朗进行了反击。我们庆幸没有生命损失，我们也永远不会轻视对美国或美国军队的任何攻击的严重性。但是，从攻击的形式和程度判断，伊朗政权现在一定明白，如果他们再敢威胁美国人的生命我们将会怎样做。如果伊朗升级，我们将以我们的方式结束之。
特朗普总统在过去的一周发表一系列讲话时重申了这种威慑力。这几天伊朗一直在制造有关退出核协议的声势。总统在对全国发表讲话时首先指出：“只要我仍然任职美国总统，[我们就永远不会]——伊朗永远都不会被允许拥有核武器。”这是有其原因的。这种宣告是以全世界最有效的威慑能力作为后盾的。
我们的制裁措施将会继续，直到该政权停止其恐怖主义活动，并承诺永不拥有核武器，而且允许有一个能让全世界确信那绝不会发生的核查制度。
我们现在在伊朗问题上享有一种极大的实力优势。这是有史以来最有利的，而且伊朗从未处于像今天这样的境地。
我们重新确立了威慑力，但我们知道它不会是永恒的，而且风险依然存在。我们决心不失去这种威慑力。在所有情况下，我们都必须这么做。
我们必须这么做，来捍卫全世界的自由与自由权。这正是特朗普总统的努力的全部意义所在，让我们的军队前所未有的强大。
我们不仅在伊朗，而且在其他地方，看到美国的威慑力曾是薄弱的。我们目睹了俄罗斯于2014年占领克里米亚（Crimea），并支持针对乌克兰的进犯，因为威慑力遭到了损害。我们已恢复对乌克兰军队提供杀伤敌人的支持。
还有中国在南中国海建岛的活动，及其公然试图胁迫美国的盟友的行为，也损害了威慑力。特朗普政府同我们在整个地区的盟国、友邦及合作伙伴一道加强了在南中国海的海军演习。
你们也看到，俄罗斯无视一项协议。我们在我们的北约（NATO）盟友的一致支持下退出了《中导条约》（INF），因为当时只有一方执行了这项双方的条约。我们认为，这又一次恢复了信誉和威慑力，以保卫美国。
这是无法独自做到的。因此，总统坚持要求北约成员国尽自己的力量，分担责任。到2024年年底，将增加大约4,000亿美元用于北约的武器装备，以保卫世界各地的自由。这是美国为鼓励我们的合作伙伴增进我们所有人都在力争共同取得的成果而努力的直接结果。
多年来，中国一直在限制美国产品进入他们的市场，同时要求他们的产品进入到这里来。我曾是一名小企业所有者。我曾在上海有一间小办公室。我们已阐明要同中国达成一种公平、对等的贸易安排。我们将坚决要求这一点。我希望，在这里在未来可以计数的小时内，我们会签订将成为一项重大协议的第一部分，将改善美国公民的生活，提高这里国内公民的工资，并基于对中国和美国都可行的一系列条款增进我们两国间的经济关系。
而且还有第二项使命。中国盗取了数量巨大的美国创新，在像我现在所在的这座校园一样的高校推出的创新——从基因改造的作物种子到自驾车技术无所不有。他们予以盗取。他们不必进行投资或承担风险。
我们正在取得进展，确保协议的下一个部分将改善与中国的第一阶段贸易协议中所包含的知识产权保护。
我就讲到这里，因为我想尽量多地回答你们的提问。请注意，我们不知道伊朗政权会在我们继续重新确立威慑力的过程中做出何种反应。如果我们做出正确的选择并重新回到我们之间存在相互尊重的状况，那将是对世界有益的事情。
我们希望伊朗伊斯兰共和国的领导人和我们拥有相同的看法，我们希望我们能为增强在国内的安全以及中东（Middle East）和整个世界的稳定而实现这个目标。
感谢你们大家今天邀请我来到这里。我期待着接受你们的提问。
（掌声）

Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State
The Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Palo Alto, California
MR GILLIGAN:  This is all pretty elaborate, isn’t it?  (Laughter.)  Well, good morning.  My name is Tom Gilligan.  I am the director of the Hoover Institution.  I want to – it’s my great pleasure to welcome you all to listen to a message from our chief diplomat from the United States.
I especially want to thank the students for being here, our future policy makers, for taking time to join us in this important dialogue.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Hoover Institution, we’re a research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity and national security and democratic governance.  Throughout our nearly 100-year history, our work has directly led to policies that produce greater freedom, democracy, and opportunity in the United States and around the world.
The Hoover Institution and Stanford University have long served as conveners of policy discussions promoting a platform for civil discourse, and I am pleased that so many of you took the time today to be here to engage in thoughtful conversation on some of our country’s most pressing foreign policy issues.
I’ve always known I work at a very special place because where else could you say that we have a secretary of states club?  Our 60th and 66th secretaries of state, George Shultz and Condoleezza Rice, are Hoover fellows, and Condi is going to moderate our Q&A session today.  Thank you, Condi, for doing that.  And our guest today, of course, may soon join our club.  He’s a southern California native, so stay tuned, we’ll see how that goes.  (Laughter.)
Our guest today graduated first in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served as a cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  He also served with a second squadron, 7th Cavalry in the United States Air – excuse me, United States Army’s 4th Infantry Division.  After leaving active duty, he graduated from the Harvard Law School having been an editor on the Harvard Law Review.  He founded Thayer Aerospace, where he served as the CEO for more than a decade and later became president of Century International.
Prior to joining the administration, he was serving in his fourth term as a congressman from Kansas’s 4th Congressional District.  From January of 2017 to April of 2018, he served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  On April 26th of 2018, he was sworn in as our nation’s 70th secretary of state.  Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  (Applause.)
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, – 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.)
SECRETARY RICE:  Well, thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, number 70.  Thank you very much.  Welcome to Stanford.  Welcome to the Hoover Institution.  I want the really important and difficult questions to come from the students, but I’m going to take the moment just to ask you one, which is that many of these students are students of international politics, and they have studied precepts developed by a person who is actually a faculty member here, a man named Alexander George.  It was called “coercive diplomacy.”  And the idea was that you do set deterrence, and you set the terms of what’s not acceptable, but then you open pathways for diplomacy.  So can you talk a little bit as the chief diplomat about how you think now about trying to open pathways for diplomacy now that we’ve set the table in the way that we have?
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah.  So I could certainly talk about that, but it didn’t begin with these last few days, this effort at diplomacy, and it’s not even just with Iran.  I could speak about that in the challenges that we have in Venezuela today, the challenges that we confront in other parts of the world.  In every case, we have endeavored to make this first a diplomatic outcome.  It is always best to resolve these things through a set of conversations where people express the reality.
One of the risks – and you would know this – one of the risks is that you go have a meeting and you just sit and lie to each other.  Right?  You say nice things.  You have a conversation that’s polite and you go back and you bang heads again.  We’ve tried to just be candid.  We’ve said, “Hey look, the deals that we had with China for an awful long time, it’s on us.  We allowed this to take place.  No more.  Here’s how we’re going to think about our commercial relationship between our two countries.”  We think that’s helped get us to a better place.
With Iran, too.  Everyone – there’s lots of talk that says, “Well, there’s no communication.”  That’s not true.  I think the Iranians clearly understood in – long before these past few weeks, how we’re thinking about the strategic relationship and Iran’s place in the Middle East.  We want them to be safe and secure.  We want a prosperous Iranian people.  But there’s certain things you simply cannot do, including develop their nuclear weapons systems.
In each place, it’s the case that we have first delivered American expectations about how we think they can fit into what works for the United States of America, and we’ve done that through diplomacy.
And then to your point, when that fails, when you – when they move past a boundary that you’ve set, it requires you to respond to that in a way that convinces them that you actually meant what you said.
SECRETARY RICE:  Thank you.  All right, over to the students here.  I see right here in the middle, in blue shirt, and they will get a microphone to you.  And if you can identify yourself and what you’re studying.
QUESTION:  Hi, I’m Bryce Tuttle.  I’m a political science major.  Sorry.  So you started your remarks talking about supporting the protesters who are fighting for hopefully democracy in Iran.  What is your administration doing to fight for the people who are also fighting for democracy in Hong Kong?
SECERTARY POMPEO:  Yeah.  So you needn’t look no further than the President’s remarks at the United Nations, the remarks that I’ve made repeatedly and other senior American officials as well.  There’s a much longer conversation to be had about China, but with respect to Hong Kong in particular, our policy has been simply this:  The Chinese Government made a commitment to Hong Kong.  That commitment still exists.  It sits at the UN as well, so it’s a commitment they made not to the United States or, frankly, even just to the people of Hong Kong.  It’s a commitment that they made to the people of the world to honor this central understanding that there would be increased autonomy for the people of Hong Kong, and we have done our best to draw a set of boundaries for what we think would be acceptable.
I think the President talked about this at some length when the protests first broke out and there were hints of violence at the front end of those protests.  I think we’ve been unequivocal about our support that says the Chinese Government made a commitment that there would be higher level of autonomy there, and it’s our expectation the Chinese Communist Party will live up to that.
SECRETARY RICE:  Yes, right here in front, and again, identify yourself and what you study.
QUESTION:  Hi, thank you for coming here.  It’s such a privilege to hear you speak.  I’m Gabby Conforti (ph).  I’m a junior studying political science.  Last week, I was reading an article on the death of Soleimani which stated in death he may have achieved what he never could have in life, which is forcing the Americans out of Iraq.  Can you please comment on the future plans for American soldiers and contractors stationed in Iraq?  Thank you.
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah.  Thanks.  Yes, I’ve seen that mantra repeated.  I’ve also seen the mantra repeated that says that the strike that we took would unite the Iranian people around the flagpole.  I will let history reflect whether that turns out to ultimately be true.  I think the Iranian people’s hearts beat for freedom.  And I’m not naive.  The Basij and the Iranian thugs will do everything they can to beat these protests back.  We saw tear gas; there were reports of violence even past that yesterday.  I understand the challenge that is presented both to the Iranians and to the Iraqis, who are looking for a sovereign, independent nation.
And so our view is this:  We want to work with all of the various sectarian interests in Iraq.  We – we’ve been doing this before.  We will continue to do this.  How, ultimately, our force posture will be resolved inside of Iraq, we will work along the duly elected leaders in Iraq to get to the right place, but I’ve probably had 50 phone calls with various Iraqis over just these past 10 days – Sunni leaders, Kurdish leaders, Shia leaders from a broad spectrum of the Shia community as well.  They won’t all say so publicly, but privately, they all welcome the fact that America is still there executing its counterterror campaign, making sure that Daesh, ISIS doesn’t reemerge in the theater, and providing an opportunity for the Iraqis to gain the sovereignty and independence that most Iraqis want.
We hope that there will be a day when they can move past the sectarian strife that has plagued them since you were the secretary of state and even before that.  It is not an easy solution, but we’re committed to seeing that through, caveated by this:  I have been fully supportive of President Trump’s effort to reduce the American footprint throughout the region.  There’s enormous risk to American lives.  As we sit here today, within the last 48 hours, there were strikes at Balad Air Force Base by the Shia militias formerly under the control of Qasem Soleimani.  That risk is not behind us.
And so to the extent we can use less American treasure and put fewer American lives at risk, we ought to do that.  We ought to make sure we understand precisely what America’s interests are, and we should preserve those.  And I think we can achieve both of these goals – reduce our footprint, reduce our risk, while still achieving the American objectives in the region, including in Iraq.
SECRETARY RICE:  Yes, right here, and then you’ll be next, and then I’m going to look to this side, so put your hands up if you’ve got a question.
QUESTION:  Hi, thank you so much for coming.  My name’s John; I’m a senior studying economics.  One – huge fan as well, but one thing I wanted to sort of ask about was back in April of 2019, there were plans to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.  Back in 2015, you sponsored the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.
SECRETARY POMPEO:  I vividly remember this.  Yes, I’m reminded about that.
QUESTION:  And so one thing I was just curious about is we – there was a big media flare-up over that back in April, but then we kind of never heard the follow-up on that, so I was just wondering, to the extent you can, if you could comment on where the status of that is currently and if there’s an ongoing effort.
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah.  I appreciate the question.  I always – full disclosure – I was one of I think eight members of Congress who sponsored legislation asking the previous administration to designate the Muslim Brotherhood broadly as a terrorist organization.  The administration’s still looking at this, trying to evaluate, trying to make sure that we get it right.  It is – it’s perhaps a bit more nuanced than I appreciated as a member of Congress from Kansas.
SECRETARY RICE:  It’s always more nuanced when you’re Secretary of State.  (Laughter.)
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah, it’s – it’s – that is a very – I’m mindful – all my old friends always throw bombs, and I welcome that but remind them it’s a complicated world.
So we’re still trying to figure out how to get that right.  There are undoubtedly elements of the Muslim Brotherhood that are properly designated as terrorists.  We just want to make sure that we get it right, that we calibrate this appropriately, that we make sure that we’ve got the legal foundation for this.  This is something that Secretary Rice would know.  We talk about these designations and it seems as if it’s just a decision that we made.  In fact, the work that’s done to make sure that there is a legal basis for this, that there’s a statutory legal basis for this, the work to make sure that we got the dataset right before we designate an individual or a group as a terrorist organization is deep and robust and important.  We got to get it right, and we’re working our way through this process as well.  I don’t know how that will ultimately be resolved, but I do know there is real risk from the Muslim Brotherhood in many nations throughout the Middle East and we ought to do our part, I hope alongside our European friends as well.
SECRETARY RICE:  Yes.
QUESTION:  Hi, my name’s Nathaniel.  I’m a senior studying international relations and getting my master’s in communications.  I was just wondering, given the cold war that’s happening right now in the Middle East between Saudi and Iran, like, how – between Sunni and Shia as well – how does the U.S. and the administration view their policy towards Iran as playing into that cold war?  And how do we plan to undermine Chinese economic interests in countries that do have Shia majorities and are ruled by Shia groups at the same time?
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Well, I wouldn’t describe it as a cold war.  Missiles landed at an Aramco facility taking 5 percent of the world’s oil supply off the market like that, I’d – does not seem very cold.  Certainly to the people who were working at that facility, it didn’t.  So I think we are – Iran is engaged in a kinetic war against its Middle East co-inhabitants that is real and serious, and it’s part of the problem set that we’ve been confronting since we came in.  We took a very different approach than the previous administration.  It’s not political.  We just had a very different judgment about the risks and how to resolve those risks in America’s favor in the Middle East than the previous administration.  Of all the things we did, it’s probably the biggest, sharpest change we made in policy that you can see playing out on the ground.
As for Chinese influence in the Middle East, they want to have political influence there.  We brook no ill towards them if they’re trying to have economic engagement.  We want the Chinese economy to be successful.  But I’ve been pretty clear about the risks that come when there’s not a straight-up transparent deal with the Chinese.  And I think you see countries in Southeast Asia, countries in Africa today recognizing that some of the transactions that took place have proven to be debt traps and have put these countries in the political thrall of the Chinese Communist Party, something that they didn’t anticipate, they don’t want, and now they are coming to the United States to help figure out a path back.
And we’re – so we’re mindful as they do these things, kinds of things in the Middle East, a different dynamic, these are wealthy nations as opposed to some of these other countries that needed Chinese money.  We try to make sure that they’re aware of those risks.  They are sovereign nations that get to make their own choices.  We simply tell them how America will respond if they act in a way that we believe is inconsistent with the things that matter most to us.
Does that answer your question, at least in part?
SECRETARY RICE:  Yeah.  The black t-shirt back here.
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah, right here.
SECRETARY RICE:  She’s right next to you.  Yes.  She’s right next to you, the black and white t-shirt, yeah.  There we go.
QUESTION:  Hi.  My name is Anat Peled.  I’m a senior studying history —
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Good morning.
QUESTION:  — and I served in Israeli intelligence.  So I’m struck by the —
SECRETARY POMPEO:  I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk to you.  I got to figure this out.  (Laughter.)
QUESTION:  So you spoke about an imminent threat that was thwarted, but I’m struck by the fact that Americans have little faith in the intelligence agencies, especially since the Iraq war.  Why should the American people trust the intelligence about an imminent threat, especially in light of the President’s own distrust for the agencies?
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah.  So I’ll just give you my personal analysis on that.  It’s – it is certainly that, having had the privilege to serve as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency for a year and a half – the first year and a half of this administration, I watched these professionals do their level best to get it right every day.  That’s not the – the Intelligence Community makes mistakes all the time, right?  Happens.
But the depth and breadth, the intellect, the capacity and reach of America’s intelligence capability is enormous.  They do their level best to present this accurately.  We do our best, indeed, to translate their products into a situation where we can talk about this publicly.  That is often difficult because we have to preserve the capacity and the resources that were put in place.  We can’t risk them to share something with the American people.  We have to protect them and preserve them because we’ve still got folks in harm’s way even as we sit here today.
But I can say to the American people you should have enormous confidence in the Intelligence Community that their efforts are genuine, they are real, they are authentic, they are trying to provide good datasets to – now I’m on the other side as the policy advisor for the President receiving this intelligence, informing our decision making.  There was enormous work done over the last 12 months to put us in a place where the President had every opportunity to make a good decision when the risk was high.  My judgment is the President made the right call.  It’s what I recommended to him.  There was, in fact, a set of imminent attacks that were being plotted by Qasem Soleimani.  It was unmistakable.  I mean, you heard the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say that if we hadn’t done this, we would have been negligent.  It’s not a political act.  This is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley.
The Intelligence Community said the same thing.  It was their view that the risks were real and growing, and that the actions that we took that day reduced that risk.  It never eliminates it, but it reduced that risk.  And I hope the American people can see our intelligence professionals for what they truly are.  I know that I certainly do.
SECRETARY RICE:  One final question right here.  Yes.
QUESTION:  Thank you so much.  Jenny Tangeman (ph).  I’m a second-year MBA student.  I would just love to hear more – what’s being done on the diplomatic front so that we are able to reduce our military presence in the Middle East in the future?
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Yeah.  So there’s – where to begin – lots of work.  I spoke, I think, with nearly all of my Middle East ambassadors on Saturday morning.  I spoke with Ambassador Abizaid, Saudi Arabia, I spoke with my – Ambassador Richardson in Lebanon, spoke to Ambassador Satterfield in Turkey, I spoke with our ambassador in Bahrain.  I – we are working diligently to build out a set of understandings that take down risk.  You will continue to see our efforts that relate to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  That hasn’t drawn much attention lately.  We – still working very diligently on it.  Mr. Kushner’s leading the effort.  We’re at the State Department enormously supportive of that, to try and take this historic challenge, right.  There’s been conflict in the Middle East – how many of you are ancient Middle Eastern scholars in the room?  This is – there’s nothing new about this.  But we’re trying to create the conditions – and we’ve had some success.  I’ll give you examples.
Back in May of last year, we held an event in Warsaw, the first time that you had Gulf states, Arabs sitting with the Israelis all identifying the identical risk to the region.  It was historic.  We’ve watched these countries work together in ways that they have not done before.  There’s still conflict.  The Qataris and the Saudis and the Emiratis have their challenges, their disagreements.  But our diplomacy is aimed to try and create a set of conditions – as the President says, always in the first instance of protecting the people in this room, protecting America, but also understanding that if we get this right, we can reduce the total effort that America needs to put in this, and that means bringing in countries from all across the world to be part of this collective effort.  I think we’ve made progress.  There’s – awful lot more to do.
SECRETARY RICE:  Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for joining us here at Stanford at the Hoover Institution.  I want you to know that we know how difficult these jobs are, and whether one agrees or disagrees with outcomes from time to time, I know that you do it in a great spirit of patriotism and love for our country, and so thank you for that.  And thank you to the students who all showed up early and had their coffee and donuts so that they could participate.  So thanks for being here.
SECRETARY POMPEO:  Thank you all very much for being with me this morning.  (Applause.)