The Free Press
Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo returned from a trip to his Virginia home around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday night. About 20 minutes later, a State Department official showed up at the door to tell him that his State Department security detail had been terminated. Effective immediately.
Suffice it to say, Pompeo is no longer at his home. That’s not because the thugs who have been trying to murder him have stood down. It’s because the president of the United States has.
Pompeo is one of the most senior members of a group of American officials who need security because the Iranian regime wants to kill them, likely as revenge for the elimination of Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike by the United States in 2020.
Iran has also targeted Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, and former special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook. Trump has yanked their security details, too.
Never mind that the threat to these public servants is very real. In 2022, the Justice Department charged an Iranian national and member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a murder-for-hire plot to kill Bolton. There is nothing to suggest that the threat has subsided. This is how Tehran does business. The regime targeted our friend, the Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad, at her home in New York. She has lived in safe houses ever since.
Let’s spell that out one more time: Former Trump officials have required 24/7 protection because one of America’s sworn enemies is trying to murder them as retaliation for one of the biggest foreign policy wins of the first Trump term. Now, presumably because those officials haven’t been as obsequious as Trump would have liked in recent years, the president has said: You’re on your own.
Hanging these men out to dry is a petty, small-minded decision. But it isn't just that. It also does real harm to American interests. A country that sees its adversaries plotting violence against top officials and effectively says, “Go right ahead,” is a country encouraging more violence on our own soil.
The decision also disincentivizes good people from public service. The U.S. government offers talented people working on national security a simple guarantee. The hours will be long; the pay won’t be great. But in exchange for your hard work to keep Americans safe, we will make sure you are, too. Now Trump has reneged on that deal.
National security officials in the new administration will surely have noticed this news and must be asking themselves: If they won’t even protect a former secretary of state, what will happen to me?
The upshot is that questions of personal safety may now be weighing on national security decisions. In other words, the move gives effect to Iran’s assassin’s veto over American foreign policy. That is an intolerable state of affairs.
This is not the first time the protection of former officials targeted by Iran has been held back. Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser at the time of the strike on Soleimani, was informed by the Secret Service in June 2023 that his security detail would not be renewed.
“Biden’s team was neglectful. What Trump has done is vindictive,” a former senior U.S. official who is on Iran’s assassination list told The Free Press. “Iranians will interpret this to mean it is open season on former officials inside of our borders.”
As the official explained, “In these high-stakes national security jobs, the last people you want are ones who are going to put their personal safety ahead of the people they are sworn to protect.”
When Trump was asked about the decision Thursday he said: “When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life.”
“There’s risks to everything,” he added.
You might think the attempts on Trump’s life last summer, as well as the unsuccessful Iranian plot to murder him on the campaign trail, would give him an appreciation of the danger. Apparently not. Now, unless Trump reverses his decision, Pompeo and others will be forced to pay millions to protect themselves and their families.
Last year, Trump promised he would blow Iran “to smithereens” if it ever harmed an American presidential candidate. But pulling security away from Americans who need it, in a move seemingly motivated by personal animosity, he leaves America weaker and Tehran emboldened.
The president calls his whole agenda, “America First.” This move is just the opposite.
Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball to the Beltway elites. And while this populist moment feels unprecedented, Eli Lake, host of our new show Breaking History, says it’s not—the rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA. Listen to the first episode below or wherever you get your podcasts.