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Mike Pompeo's Iran speech reveals detailed plan that will require resolve to implement

May 22, 2018  •  USA Today

Two weeks ago, President Trump terminated America's participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal his predecessor cut with Iran's rulers. Since then the administration's critics — and more than a few of its friends — have been asking: What will replace the JCPOA? What's the plan, man?

On Monday, in his first major foreign policy speech as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo provided an answer: the imposition of "unprecedented financial pressure on the leaders of the regime," and sanctions tough enough to bring Iran's mismanaged and corrupted economy to its knees.

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Trump's art of the nuclear deals

May 16, 2018  •  The Washington Times

Donald Trump inherited two deadly serious national security crises, one in the Middle East, one in the Far East. Look closely and you'll see that these crises are inseverable.

The dynastic, neo-Stalinist who rules North Korea and the jihadist, imperialist theocrats who rule Iran have always harbored hostile intentions toward America and America's allies. Both have been illicitly developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to targets in America or anywhere on Earth.

One American president after another has attempted to mitigate their intentions and/or curb their capabilities. One American president after another has failed.

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A little pivot to Central Asia

May 2, 2018  •  The Washington Times

ASTANA, Kazakhstan | Kazakhstan is one of the 10 largest countries in the world, yet most Americans couldn't find it on a map. It spans Central Asia, home to the world's most sophisticated civilizations in the Middle Ages, yet most Americans know nothing of the region's ancient cities, scholars and poets. Today, Kazakhstan is a secular and anti-Islamist Muslim-majority nation, yet most Americans have no idea we have friends here.

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Middle East missions to accomplish

April 18, 2018  •  The Washington Times

Can we at least agree that President Trump's decision to strike three chemical weapons facilities owned and operated by Bashar Assad — vassal of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia — was consistent with American values?

The gassing of civilians by dictators is — for most of us, anyway — both morally repugnant and unambiguously criminal. Those who condone such practices, along with those who merely tut-tut about them, help normalize them.

War will always be hell but, to make war a little less hellish, civilized people establish rules and enforce them. If you're not certain that Mr. Trump did the right thing, imagine the counterfactual: That he had let this red line be transgressed with impunity once again.

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What's at stake in Syria

April 11, 2018  •  The Washington Times

Syria is a far-away land about which we know little. But we do know this: Over the past seven years, more than a half million people have been slaughtered there, with an estimated 150 murdered by chemical weapons just last weekend in a town outside Damascus.

We also know who's committing these crimes: Dictator Bashar Assad and those who have propped him up for their own purposes, Vladimir Putin, Russia's neo-czar, and Ali Khamenei, "supreme leader" for life of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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