Pompeo claims Biden administration has ‘accelerated the rate of decay’ in US deterrence 

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that President Biden has “accelerated the rate of decay” of U.S. deterrence.

“President Biden has allowed such [an] accelerated rate of decay of our deterrence that we had built up in the four years that President Trump and I were serving, has really done the American people a disservice, and it is dangerous.” Pompeo said Tuesday in an interview on Fox News.

“It’s dangerous not only for the Israelis, and for folks in the Middle East, but it’s dangerous for folks here in the United States of America as well,” Pompeo continued. “A wide-open southern border, and a North Korean leader, a Chinese leader, a Russian leader who don’t think that the United States will stand up and defend its most sacred values, is a place that is a very dangerous country here at home as well.”

A senior Hamas official was reportedly killed in a strike Tuesday in Lebanon’s capital city, putting Israel on high alert should the conflict in the region widen.

According to local news channels, Israel carried out a bombing that killed Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chief of the political bureau for the Palestinian militant group in Beirut. The Hamas official is the highest-ranked member killed in the ongoing war between Israel and the group in Gaza.

There’s also the question of how the Israeli bombing in an area where Iran-backed Hezbollah is strong could affect current fighting along the Lebanese-Israeli border. 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had promised retaliation in the past for all forms of Israeli targeting of allied militant leaders in his country, The Associated Press reported, but Nasrallah has seemed reluctant thus far to escalate the fighting.