Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with VOA Persian Director Setareh Derakhshesh Thursday afternoon to discuss the Trump administration's plans for a new security framework aimed at ending Iran's nuclear program. They also discussed recent protests in Iran, and the administration's efforts to free Americans being held by the government.
Secretary Pompeo, thank you very much for doing this interview with us.
It’s wonderful to be with you.
As secretary of state, you chose Iran as [the subject of] your first major foreign policy speech. Why Iran? Is it because of the urgency or the importance of it?
I think it’s both. It’s something that the president has viewed as a serious threat to Middle East stability and therefore to American national security and it also looks at the place that the Iranian people find themselves, and he thinks it’s a place America can help make a difference. He has long thought that the agreement that the previous administration entered into didn’t serve any of those interests – the interests of the Iranian people or Middle East stability or, frankly, for America. And so it was a priority for him and thus I wanted in the first weeks since the secretary of state to have an opportunity to lay out how President Trump thinks we can make things better in each of those three situations.
What is the ultimate goal of the proposed new security framework, and how is it different – how does it differ from the initial JCPOA?
Yeah, so very different. Different in breadth and I think different in its goal. The first agreement was very narrow. It was an effort to say that the Iranian regime was spending a ton of money on its nuclear program and it wanted to halt that – a noble objective, a good goal, a worthy one. But the threat that Iran presents is so much greater than that, right. They’re taking – they’re launching missiles into Muslim countries. They’re taking the human rights away from their people.
All of these things I think President Trump cares deeply about, and so his vision is that if we begin again to set out what we think are pretty basic ideas, right. So these 12 things that I listed are all pretty straightforward. We’re not asking a lot from the Iranian leadership, just behave like normal leaders; don’t loot your people, don’t waste your people’s money on these adventures in Syria and Yemen and in Lebanon and in Iraq, the list goes on; lead your people, build a great nation, use the resources you have for that. That’s all we’re simply looking for.
Is that going to be part of the new proposed security framework that Iran would stop or should stop meddling in other countries’ affairs?
Yeah, so we’ve asked for that. Look, we’ve asked them to stop spreading terror around the world, not to build out militias in Iraq, not to put Iranian dollars and Iranian citizens, who are losing their lives in Syria – it’s inappropriate for Middle East security and it’s bad for the country. So our aim is to set conditions where Iran will behave like a normal nation, right. And if they do that, if they – and this is not the Iranian people - this is the Iranian leaders who have taken control and done this damage. If we can create conditions where they’ll stop that, the Iranian people will have great success, and we will have Americans visiting there, and we’ll have all the great things that we do when there are friends and allies as opposed to folks who are presenting risk to our country.
I’m going to get to the human rights issue also, sir. But if I may, I want to continue on the security framework if possible. How about a requirement for Iran to let inspections in the military sites? Is that going to be part of also the framework?
So it is. With respect to the use of nuclear material in Iran, just as we have in Saudi Arabia, just as we did with the United Arab Emirates, we don’t believe it’s appropriate for Iran to have the capacity to create fissile material, to enrich uranium or have a plutonium facility. If they want a peaceful nuclear energy program, fine, but they could import that material. And other countries do it; it works for many countries around the world. And in order for us to achieve that, to get comfortable that that’s the case, there will have to be inspections. That would include inspections at military sites and research laboratories and all the places that had been participants in previous iterations of Iran’s program.
And you mentioned human rights. There are protests, anti-government protests, all around Iran. I wanted to get your take on that. What do you – how do you feel about these protests? And do you think that the United States can maybe support the protesters?