Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

Pompeo, a Steadfast Hawk, Coaxes a Hesitant Trump on Iran

By Edward Wong and Michael Crowley

The New York Times: In the days leading up to President Trump’s decision on whether to launch a missile strike against Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commanded the stage.

After warning that Mr. Trump was prepared to use force because of Iran’s suspected role in oil tanker attacks, Mr. Pompeo flew to Florida on Monday to strategize with generals at Central Command. Back in Washington, he briefed the foreign minister of the European Union on intelligence. By Thursday, he was pressing the case in the White House Situation Room for a strike.

Mr. Pompeo was steering Mr. Trump toward one of the most consequential actions of the administration. Only at the last minute did the president reverse course and cancel the strike.

The confrontation with Iran has put a spotlight on the extent of Mr. Pompeo’s influence with Mr. Trump. In an administration that churns through cabinet members at a dizzying pace, few have survived as long as Mr. Pompeo — and none have as much stature, a feat he has achieved through an uncanny ability to read the president’s desires and translate them into policy and public messaging. He has also taken advantage of a leadership void at the Defense Department, which has gone nearly six months without a confirmed secretary.

“Trump has created a giant vacuum at the Department of Defense on the civilian side,” said Eric Edelman, a former senior Pentagon official under George W. Bush. “Nature abhors a vacuum — and so does politics.”

But as the debate over the strike showed, the uncompromisingly hawkish views Mr. Pompeo holds on Iran are starting to clash with the perspective of a president deeply skeptical of military entanglements, especially in the Middle East.

Mr. Pompeo is unlikely to publicly signal frustration with the president. Some officials say he would work through the bureaucracy to push his policy goals while on the surface sticking to the role of loyal soldier, if only because he harbors political ambitions for which Mr. Trump’s support would be invaluable. Despite Mr. Pompeo’s insistence that he has “ruled out” a Senate run next year in Kansas, many Trump administration officials expect him to enter the race.

Mr. Pompeo, 55, is as much a diplomat in cultivating Mr. Trump’s inner circle as he is abroad. On Thursday, he appeared alongside Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, at the unveiling of a report on human trafficking. And he speaks regularly with her husband and Mr. Trump’s Middle East adviser, Jared Kushner — on some days more often than with foreign officials, according to a former Trump administration official familiar with his activities.

An evangelical Christian originally from California and former Tea Party congressman supported by the Koch family, Mr. Pompeo has operated for 14 months as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man around the globe, be it in Pyongyang, Riyadh or Brussels — and this week, he will once again be at Mr. Trump’s side at the G-20 summit meeting in Japan, after a stop in India.

Less apparent is how he has recently expanded his shadow role in matters of the military and intelligence, an extension of his experiences as a young Army tank unit captain in Germany and his first administration job as C.I.A. director.

With command of the Pentagon in flux since Jim Mattis resigned in December, Mr. Pompeo has asserted his views much more forcefully in national security debates, current and former officials say.

He is also widening his network in the cabinet. Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, was Mr. Pompeo’s deputy at the agency and is keen to maintain strong relations with him, knowing that that helps keep her in Mr. Trump’s good graces, the officials say. And the incoming acting defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, was a classmate of Mr. Pompeo at West Point. His presence could help bolster Mr. Pompeo’s influence — especially in counterpoint to Mr. Pompeo’s main power rival but frequent policy ally, John R. Bolton, the aggressive national security adviser.

On Iran, Mr. Pompeo has been the public face of the administration’s hawks, and internally he has even argued for policies that generals have deemed too provocative.

“What Pompeo and Bolton have done is drive the president into a corner,” said Wendy R. Sherman, a former top State Department official who helped lead negotiations with Iran in the Obama administration. “The maximum pressure campaign through the sanctions has only strengthened the hard hard-liners in Iran, just like Pompeo and Bolton are the hard hard-liners in our country.”

Prone to bluster and flashes of anger, Mr. Pompeo regularly uses military jargon when speaking of diplomacy — “mission set,” “commander’s intent,” diplomats as “warriors.” He has even described his wife, Susan Pompeo, a frequent traveling companion, as a “force multiplier.”

But Mr. Pompeo’s military leanings and embrace of hard-line policies, especially on Iran, could lead to conflict with Mr. Trump, who insists on keeping to his campaign promise of withdrawing troops from war zones. That contradiction came to the fore on Thursday night, when Mr. Trump rejected the recommendation by Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton to strike Iran for the downing of an American drone earlier that day.

Still, Mr. Trump voices support for the “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions on Iran that Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton have pushed. On Friday, Mr. Trump said on Twitter: “Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!”

No officials could point to any new sanctions. And Mr. Trump has never addressed the common argument that the reimposition of crippling sanctions last year is what has pushed Iran to lash out. Iran had spent a year working with European nations to try to contain the damage from Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear containment deal that major world powers support.

In the Situation Room on Thursday, Mr. Pompeo argued that in addition to launching a strike, the administration should continue the sanctions campaign and let the recent cut in oil revenues sink in, according to an official familiar with the debate.

“Of all the top administration officials, I think Pompeo is the most secure and also the best at channeling Trump,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who advises Trump administration officials and advocates sanctions on Iran.

But Mr. Pompeo’s militant stand on Iran has led some prominent Trump supporters to push for his ouster because of what they see as a betrayal of Mr. Trump’s “America First” isolationism. On Thursday night, after Mr. Trump called off the strike, Douglas Macgregor, a retired army colonel, told Fox News that Mr. Trump “needs to get rid of the warmongers. He needs to throw these geniuses that want limited strikes out of the Oval Office.”  >>>