According to a recent media report, the the US government has again extended protection to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top Iran aide due to persistent threats against them by the Iranian mullahs, despite the fact that President Joe Biden and his administration are continuing appeasing Ali Khamenei, Ebrahim Raisi and other murderous mullahs in Iran.
On January 10, 2023, in an exclusive interview in reply to my question – “In Iran anti-regime protest is continuing for many weeks now. In your opinion, can these protests succeed in ousting mullahs from power?”, Ambassador John Bolton said, “Yes, I think they can succeed. I think the government in Tehran is weaker. Now, that an any point, since it took power in the 1979 Revolution, I think we all should realize that there have been widespread economic protest in Iran for four five, six years now, and which were bloodily repressed by the government of ever run in 2019. But the protesters continued because the economy is so mismanaged country with all that oil wealth, still finds the people alienated throughout {inaudible} and have these latest protest against the dress codes of hijab and headscarf and things like that, have brought 50 percent of the population into a direct attack, on the rule of the mullahs, and It’s not just about dress requirements, it’s a challenge to the ideological legitimacy of the Ayatollahs.
“So, when you add that on top of the economic discontent, I think it’s very serious. The problem for the opposition in Iran today is that the government through revolutionary guards, the regular army as well, holds a monopoly on force and they going Back to 2019 as I say back to 2009, when people protest fraudulent, re-election of Mahmood Ahmadinejad, government has not been reluctant to use force against its own people. One key difference here though, is that the generals at top of the regular military and the top the Revolutionary guard are hearing from their mothers and sisters and wives and daughters that they side with the people out in the Streets. And I think that’s the kind of thing that can have a real impact. We won’t see it from the outside, but it can cause fractures within the top leadership in Tehran and that’s what could bring the government down”.
The Associated Press reported that the State Department notified Congress during first week of January 2023 of the extension saying that the threats to Pompeo and Brian Hook remained “serious and credible”. Hook served as the Trump administration’s special envoy for Iran.
Along with Pompeo, Hook was the public face of the US “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran following President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. Iran has also threatened revenge against former US officials for the US assassination of Iran Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.
Another former official with government protection is John Bolton, UN ambassador during President George Bush and National Security Advisor during Trump. The Justice Department revealed in August that an operative of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tried to hire a hitman in the US to kill Bolton. DoJ said Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, 45, had attempted to pay “individuals in the United States” US$300,000 to carry out the killing, “likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (IRGC-QF) commander Qasem Soleimani”.
Bolton told an Iranian media that he was not surprised as the indictment was unsealed because he was kept informed “in general terms until late in 2021 when it was determined I would again get secret service protection”. But he criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough to stop the Iranian threat against former US officials.
The notifications, obtained by The Associated Press, were signed by Acting Deputy Secretary of State John Bass.
“I hereby determine that the specific threat with respect to former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo persists”, Bass wrote. He used identical language to refer to the threat against Hook.
The AP reported in March 2022 that the State Department was paying more than US$2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to Pompeo and Hook. The latest determinations did not give a dollar amount for the protection.
Even as the Biden administration has made those determinations and spent money for Pompeo and Hook’s protection, it has continued to press ahead with indirect talks with Iran aimed at salvaging the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from in 2018.
Those talks have been stalled for many months now and the administration has been saying since October that its focus has shifted from the negotiations to the protest movement in Iran.
In the meantime, Iran has launched a major crackdown on antigovernment protests sparked by the death of a woman in custody who was accused of violating a law requiring women to wear headscarves in public.
The State Department did not specifically mentioned Iran as the source of the threats, but Iranian officials have long singled our Pompeo, Hook and Bolton for leading the Trump administration’s policy against Iran, including designating the Revolutionary Guard Corps a “foreign terrorist organization”, subjecting it to tough economic sanctions and orchestrating the Soleimani assassination.
On the third anniversary of the Soleimani killing last week, Iranian officials renewed their threats to take revenge. Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi in a speech on Tuesday addressed the US saying, “We have not forgotten martyr Soleimani’s blood and will never forget. They [Americans] should know that revenge for Soleimani is certain and his killers…will not have any peaceful sleep”.
