Advanced political speed dating: Mike Pompeo was in Iraq on Wednesday, flying to Bahrain on Friday - and this Thursday, US Secretary of State Egypt visited Egypt. Pompeo is currently on an extended journey through the Arab world. He will visit eight countries at the end of the trip.

Pompeo used his stay in the Egyptian capital of Cairo to defend US President Donald Trump's Middle East policy in a speech at the American University. His announcement at the end of last year to withdraw all 2,000 soldiers from Syria soon after met with criticism both at home and abroad, and regional allies, such as the Kurds, are insecure.

Pompeo's speech was titled "A Force for the Good: The Resurgence of the United States in the Middle East." At the beginning, he announced: "I was trained in military, so I speak plain text." Indeed, Pompeo delivered a speech without a thread, full of contradictions and misrepresentations.

Pompeo is working on Obama

It was a speech that addressed the US audience and its boss Donald Trump rather than the Islamic world. In the 25-minute speech, Pompeo spent most of his time working on the historic speech of Barack Obama, a US President who also spoke to the Muslim world ten years ago at the University of Cairo.

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Barack Obama 2009 in Cairo

In essence, Pompeo threw Trump's predecessor, whose name he did not even pronounce, into abandoning US-led rulers in the Middle East. Obama's speech in 2009 and his call for a fresh start in relations with the Islamic world had been a grave mistake, the Foreign Minister said. The US would have made it small by itself. Pompeo showed that he considers the Arab Spring to be a wrong turn that has plunged Egypt and the region into chaos and paved the way for terrorists.

Obama has watched the rise of the terrorist organization "Islamic State" (IS) for so long until the jihadists were in the suburbs of Baghdad, criticized Pompeo. Under Trump, it was then within 24 months almost crush the IS. What the US Secretary of State conceals: Obama had long deterred against a military intervention against the IS. But it was he who eventually forged an international anti-IS coalition, laying the foundation for the demise of the terrorist militia.

No criticism of host Sisi

Pompeo also claimed for the US to have promoted rapprochement between Israel and the Arab Gulf States. "Who would have thought a few years ago that an Israeli prime minister would visit Muscat," the minister said, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu's Oman trip last year. What he does not mention: Even before Israeli leaders had traveled to Oman twice. Jitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in the 90's.

Incredibly, the US Secretary of State also made with regard to human rights violations in Iran. Pompeo rightly criticized the Tehran regime for killing and imprisoning thousands of people following the mass demonstrations of the 2009 Green Movement. Alone: ​​That's what his host, Egypt's head of state, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, does.

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Pompeo at his speech

His security forces killed hundreds of people in the massacre on Rabaa al-Adawija Square in Cairo in 2013. Human Rights Watch estimates that there are currently 60,000 political prisoners in Egyptian prisons. In addition, Pompeo did not speak critical words.

And finally, "If the US withdraws, it will create chaos," said Pompeo, referring to Obama's Middle East policy. Just to reaffirm, a few minutes later, that the withdrawal of US troops from Syria was a done deal. A coherent strategy looks different.

US wants to sell "last Iranian boots" from Syria

Pompeo branded Iran's "brutal regime" as the main enemy of the US and its allies in the region. "The nations in the Middle East will never enjoy security and achieve economic stability," he said, if the "mullahs in Tehran" were not stopped. His government is working on that - too, but not only with economic sanctions.

He accused Iran's Revolutionary Guards of destabilizing the Arab world, especially Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. In all these countries, the Islamic Republic is present with Shiite militias such as the Lebanese Hezbollah. Pompeo emphasized that the United States, along with its allies - the Sunni states and Israel - was working to expel "every single Iranian boot" from Syria. How he wants to do that, he left open.