Mike Pompeo: Iran is weaker than at any point since 1979 and the West must not waste the moment
The former U.S. secretary of state argues sustained economic pressure could empower Iranians to reshape the region.
Mike Pompeo
(Streame)
Mike Pompeo, the former U.S. secretary of state and ex-CIA director, believes the Iranian regime stands at its most vulnerable juncture in more than four decades. The combination of Israeli military blows to Hezbollah and Hamas, internal unrest, and sustained economic collapse has, in his view, created a rare strategic opening, one that the United States and its allies must exploit through relentless pressure rather than diplomatic hesitation.
“Iran’s never going to be back to where it was before October 7th,” Pompeo said in an interview at the Calcalist and Profit Financial Group conference. “Things have fundamentally changed. The Ayatollah will not have as much power ever again as he had before that.”
Pompeo, a leading advocate of the 2020 U.S. strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, remains unapologetically hawkish. Yet he frames the current moment less as a call for immediate military action than as a test of Western resolve. Whether or not Washington and Jerusalem ultimately choose to strike Iran directly, he argues, the decisive tool must be sustained economic and political pressure aimed at empowering ordinary Iranians.
“This is an inflection point,” he said. “If the West is prepared to continue to put economic pressure on Iran, whether there’s a military strike or not, the Iranian people have a shot at flipping the script and getting a life that is much better for their children and grandchildren.”
Pompeo rejects the notion that Tehran is on the verge of collapse. The regime still commands ballistic missiles, security services capable of killing “tens of thousands of their own citizens,” and tight control over state institutions. But the economic picture, he said, is “a calamity,” and the protests that have periodically shaken Iranian cities are driven above all by material desperation.
That domestic fragility, combined with Israel’s recent intelligence and military successes, has altered the regional balance. Pompeo praised Israel’s operations against Iranian proxies, including the widely reported sabotage of Hezbollah communications devices, as evidence of an intelligence apparatus that has “kept American lives safe” and continues to penetrate deep inside hostile territory.
“It would not surprise me at all if there were Israeli intelligence officers working inside of Iran,” he said, adding that such covert activity has long been essential to the defense of Western civilization.
For Pompeo, the struggle with Iran is inseparable from the broader architecture of Middle Eastern normalization that he helped craft. The Abraham Accords, he argued, rest on a simple principle: every nation in the region must recognize the right of the others to exist. That logic, he believes, is stronger today than before the current wars.
“Taking down the regime in Iran, if the Iranian people are successful at that, will further give the possibility for people in this place to live under an idea that the Abraham Accords very much embodied,” he said. Rather than undermining the accords, a weakened Tehran could encourage additional Arab states to formalize ties with Israel, drawn by its “thriving economy, incredible innovation, and a security apparatus they’re all going to want to be partners with.”
Despite his optimism about Iran’s trajectory, Pompeo painted a bleak picture of the wider world. Asked whether 2026 might bring calm, he replied bluntly: “No, I think ’26 is going to be an incredibly difficult year. Evil continues to roam the earth.”
He cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party as parallel threats that demand coordinated Western strength. Peace, he suggested, will come not from concessions but from deterrence rooted in technological and industrial superiority.
Israel, in his telling, is central to that effort. Its battlefield-tested defense technologies, from air defense to lasers and cyber tools, are already reshaping how the United States and Europe think about the next generation of warfare. “We need the West to join together and build an industrial base that is high-tech, capable of fighting the next generation of wars,” he said. “Israel will be an important part of that for all of us.”
Pompeo dismissed campaigns to isolate Israel economically as loud but marginal. The boycott movement, he noted, predates the current conflict and is unlikely to derail a country that remains deeply embedded in global innovation and capital markets.
“The only thing that can actually stop that is internal,” he warned, urging Israeli leaders to keep the economy open to entrepreneurs and foreign investment. “When those things take place, the Israeli people will crush it as they so often do.”
For Pompeo, the strategic equation ultimately returns to Iran. The regime is battered but not broken; the region is unstable but not predetermined. Whether this moment becomes a turning point, he suggested, depends less on any single strike than on the patience of the West, and on the courage of Iranians themselves.
“I hope we don’t lose this moment,” he said. “I hope we’re serious and determined and continue to apply pressure and don’t back off.”
You can watch the full interview in the video above.
