The US State Department said it is paying more than $2 million a month to provide round-the-clock protection to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his former top aide, who face “serious and credible” threats from Iran.
The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million.
On Saturday, the Associated Press obtained the report, dated February 14, and marked “sensitive but not confidential.”
Pompeo and Hook led the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign once morest Iran. The report believes that US intelligence assessments indicate that threats once morest them still exist despite their departure from the government and may intensify.
The threats continued despite the Biden administration’s participation in indirect negotiations with Iran regarding the return of the United States to the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement.
As a former secretary of state, Pompeo automatically received 180 days of protection from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security following leaving office. But Secretary of State Anthony Blinken repeatedly extended that protection in 60-day increments due to a “serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties former Secretary Pompeo performed while at the Department,” according to the report.
Hook, who and he and Pompeo were the main drivers of the Trump administration’s imposition of crippling sanctions on Iran, received special protection from Blinken for the same reason Pompeo, immediately following he left government service. The decision was also repeatedly renewed in 60-day increments.
The latest 60-day extension will soon expire, and the State Department, in conjunction with the Director of National Intelligence, must determine by March 16 whether the protections should be extended once more, according to the report.
The report was prepared because the special protection budget will expire in June and will require an infusion of new money if the threats are deemed serious.
Current US officials say the threats were discussed during the nuclear talks in Vienna, where Iran requires the lifting of all Trump-era sanctions. Those sanctions include designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a “foreign terrorist organization,” which Pompeo and Hook were instrumental in approving.
The Vienna talks were expected to produce an agreement soon to save the nuclear deal that President Donald Trump announced the United States withdrew from in 2018.
But US officials said the talks have been called into question due to new demands made by Russia and some outstanding issues between the United States and Iran, including the designation of terrorism.
And on Wednesday, a report submitted by US intelligence agencies to Congress revealed that Iran “seriously and credibly threatened” the safety of a number of prominent American officials, led by Pompeo and Hook, according to the network.CBS“American.
The network stated that the US State Department delivered two threat assessments to Congress, which were not publicly disclosed, last January, in order to obtain approval to fund round-the-clock security protection for former officials from US tax funds, following receiving threats in 2021, which were also repeated in 2022. .
The network reviewed the two assessments signed by the US Deputy Secretary of State for the Department of Administration and Resources, Brian McConne, in which he stated that Pompeo faced a threat “from a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power” on July 16, 2021.
Two current and three former US administration officials confirmed to CBS that Iran is what is meant by the term “foreign power” in the official report submitted to Congress, which did not reveal details regarding the nature of those threats.
Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018, imposed sanctions on Iran, and in July 2019, Iran’s nuclear-related activities began to exceed the limits of that agreement.
