Mike Pompeo’s long, strange tour through the Mideast

CNN — What a long, strange trip it has been. “So we spent time talking about human rights issues, the Khashoggi case in particular.” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Saudi Crown Price Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Monday. In addition to reassuring US allies over Syria, Pompeo made clear at The American University in Cairo in an address optimistically entitled “A Force for Good: America Reinvigorated in the Middle East,” that the US has two main priorities in the region: finishing the job of defeating ISIS, and stepping up the effort to contain what Washington sees as Iran’s growing influence in the region. In 2016 Pompeo, then a congressman, wrote on Fox News’ website: “Congress must act to change Iranian behavior, and, ultimately, the Iranian regime.” Bolton, also an Iran regime change advocate, wrote an editorial in The New York Times entitled “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran.” The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that after pro-Iranian militias fired mortar shells on the diplomatic compound in Baghdad last September, and a similar incident several days later close to the US consulate in Basra, Bolton asked the Pentagon to provide options for a military strike on Iran. That went contrary to Bolton’s determination that US troops in Syria should remain “as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders.” The president clearly didn’t buy that.