Pompeo: Soleimani's killing part of new US strategy

(Patria) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that Qasem Soleimani was killed as part of a broader strategy to deter threats posed by US enemies, which also applies to China and Russia, thus downplaying claims that the top Iranian general was killed because he was planning attacks on targets in the US.

Pompeo delivered a speech at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in which he did not explicitly mention the attacks that Soleimani allegedly planned.

In a speech titled "Restoring Deterrence: The Iranian Example," Pompeo focused on what he said was the administration's strategy to establish a "real policy of deterrence" toward Iran after previous Republican and Democratic policies that encouraged Iran's "malign activities."

Democrats and Republicans criticized the administration for justifying self-defense based on undisclosed intelligence about the threat. President Donald Trump said that among the potential targets of those attacks were four US embassies.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he had not seen any intelligence indicating possible attacks on embassies.

Trump on Monday again fanned the flames by saying it "really doesn't matter" whether Soleimani posed a threat.

Pompeo said that behind the killing of Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, Iran's elite spy force, lies a "broader strategy."

"President Trump and we on his national security team are re-establishing a policy of deterrence - real deterrence - of Iran," he said.

"The adversary must understand not only that you are capable of imposing a cost, but that you actually have the will to do so," Pompeo said, adding that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which Trump withdrew in 2018, only encouraged Tehran.

"America now has a great advantage over Iran, greater than we have ever had," he said, recalling the damage that US sanctions, which Trump reimposed after withdrawing from the deal, have done to the Iranian economy.

"The importance of deterrence is not limited to Iran," Pompeo stressed. "In every case, we must deter enemies to defend freedom. That is the whole point of Trump's effort to make our military stronger than it has ever been," he said.

As examples of the US administration's deterrence strategy, he cited military aid to Ukraine to fight Russia-backed separatists, Trump's withdrawal from arms control agreements with Moscow, testing of new US intermediate-range missiles, increased US naval exercises in the South China Sea, and Trump's imposition of tariffs on Chinese imports.

"We are giving deterrence new credibility," Pompeo said.