A Feb. 14 State Department report to Congress outlines the heavy financial cost of providing continued close protection for two former Trump administration officials.
Designated sensitive but unclassified, the report seen by the Washington Examiner concerns the Diplomatic Security Service’s protection of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former State Department Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook. The report puts the approximate cost of protecting Hook at $175,000 per month and $2 million per month for Pompeo.
Threats from Iran are motivating this protection. Pompeo and Hook aren’t the only ones under threat.
Yet, as the Washington Examiner reported on Monday, the Biden administration has failed to indict Iranian officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who are suspected of orchestrating a recent and highly credible assassination plot against former national security adviser John Bolton. The Biden administration appears to be concerned that any indictments will jeopardize negotiations in Vienna toward a resumption of the JCPOA Iran nuclear accord. Media reports suggest the administration may waive some sanctions on the IRGC in order to restore the accord.
Regardless, the Feb. 14 report suggests that the threats against Pompeo and Hook are unlikely to dissipate any time soon.
On the contrary, the report indicates that protection spending is “likely to increase based upon current threat reporting and the need for additional protective measures since January 2021.” It adds that funds quietly allotted by Congress in December 2020 for Pompeo and Hook’s protection (as reported by the Washington Examiner at the time) will likely be expended by June. At this point, the report says that “[the Diplomatic Security Service] will no longer have any legal authority to provide protective services should the FBI and Intelligence Community maintain assessments that the serious and credible threat persists, unless the Department receives additional authority in the [fiscal year] 2022 appropriations act or other legislation.”
Translation: The State Department will suspend its provision of necessary security unless it receives a new funding injection. Considering the level of threat that Iran continues to present toward Hook, Pompeo, Bolton, and others, Congress should move to authorize new funding to support the continued Secret Service and Diplomatic Security Service operations. This is especially urgent in that both the Secret Service and Diplomatic Security Service face heavy protective-operational requirements outside of those affected by Iran’s threats.
For the Biden administration, however, this two-sided security-sanctions relief strategy opens up an obvious criticism. Namely, why offer massive sanctions relief to elements of a regime that are engaged in plotting acts of war against the United States?
A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz, a leading Republican critic of the administration’s Iran policy, made a similar point to the Washington Examiner. The spokesman observed that “the Biden administration wants to fund both sides of Iran’s terror war against the U.S. They are rightly spending what they need to protect American officials from Iranian terrorists and must continue doing so. However, they are also committed to pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the Iranian regime which will be used to finance exactly that terrorism. It’s incoherent, reckless, and disgraceful.”
Top line: If and when a restored JCPOA agreement is reached, and if that deal includes sanctions relief for the IRGC, expect some hard questions from Congress.
