Channel 1 Los Angeles
Washington, D.C. 1/5/2020
It’s what we’ve done over these past weeks and days. It’s what we’ve done over our entire three years with our Middle East strategy. The activity that you’re seeing today is fully consistent with that, and the American people should know we will continue. The President tweeted it again last night. We will take the actions necessary to keep Americans safe.
As for the activity today with respect to Iraq, we’ve been in their country, we’ve been supporting Iraqi sovereignty, we’ve been continuing to take down the terrorist threat against the Iraqi people. The prime minister is the resigned prime minister; he’s the acting prime minister. He’s under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that it is that we are pushing back against. We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign, and we’ll continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe.
QUESTION: But if Iraq – it is a sovereign country – if they demand that we leave, one, will we leave? And if we do, won’t that dramatically hurt the fight against ISIS and stability in the region?
SECRETARY POMPEO: So we’ll have to take a look at what we do when the Iraqi leadership and government makes a decision, but the American people should know we’ll make the right decision, and we will take actions that, frankly, the previous administration refused to take to do just that.
QUESTION: President Trump says that General Soleimani was planning a, quote, “imminent” attack against Americans. You have said it was a, quote, “big action” that could potentially kill hundreds of American diplomats and soldiers. What was the plan, who were the targets, and how soon?
SECRETARY POMPEO: Yes, President Trump was right in what he said. So was I. We’ll share all the intelligence that we can. I was the CIA director for a little while, Chris. There’s things we simply cannot make public about what it is we knew at the time, and what, in fact, we know today about the continuing activity. I think General Milley got it right when he said we would have been culpably negligent had we not gone after Soleimani when we had the opportunity. He was actively engaged in plotting against American interests. We need look no further than what he had personally done over the days before that, when an American was killed on December 27th. There’s no surprise. There’s plenty of public evidence about the bad behavior of Qasem Soleimani. He was a designated terrorist, and we did the right thing.
QUESTION: I just want to press to this degree: The – he had been targeting Americans and other people around the region for decades, and the blood of 600 Americans was on his hands for – during the Iraq War. The question is that there are some intelligence agents who are talking to media outlets who are saying, yes, he was doing bad things but it was another day in the Middle East, and some congressional leaders who have been briefed now say that the intelligence was not of an imminent attack that was bigger, more worrisome. Don’t the American people have the right to some understanding of what it was, why it was so urgent to take out Soleimani now?
SECRETARY POMPEO: I haven’t heard any of the congressional leaders who have seen the full set of intelligence make the comments that you just described. I think any reasonable person who saw the intelligence that the senior American leaders had in their possession would have come to the same conclusion that President Trump and our leadership team did about the fact that there would have been more risk to America – more risk through inaction than there was through the action we took. I think it – I think it’s very clear. I think it’s very plain. We’ll do everything we can to share this information with the American people, but I think the American people understand, too, there’s certain things you just can’t – you can’t put out in public. You’ve got to protect Americans who are out collecting the intelligence – the intelligence we will need in the days and weeks ahead to continue to defend and protect them.