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Pompeo's Cairo speech panned as ‘tone-deaf,’ ‘hyper-partisan,’ ‘offensive’

Former diplomats and regional experts say Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Cairo address fell short on substance and policy vision, while inappropriately taking domestic partisan arguments to foreign soil.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to students at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, January 10, 2019. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS - RC1AF87FE9C0

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s stridently partisan speech in Cairo today chiding the former Barack Obama administration for its Iran nuclear diplomacy and attempts to engage the people of the Middle East received a withering response from former US diplomats and regional experts, who called it unstatesmanlike and tone-deaf.

“In falsely seeing ourselves as a force for what ails the Middle East, we were timid in asserting ourselves when the times — and our partners — demanded it,” Pompeo said in the speech, titled "A Force for Good: America Reinvigorated in the Middle East," at the American University in Cairo.

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