On April 13, former U.S. secretaries of state Michael Pompeo and John Kerry joined the Dartmouth Political Union for a debate and open forum Q&A on contemporary geopolitics at the Hanover Inn. Pompeo served in the first Trump administration, and Kerry during the second Obama administration.
The event was part of DPU’s debate series, “Critical Discourse in the Age of Disagreement” The event was moderated by DPU ambassador James Kapadia ’29.
Approximately 300 people attended the event, according to DPU president Roger Friedlander ’27. Kapadia asked Pompeo and Kerry questions about Trump’s military objectives in Iran and how they see America’s relationship with Ukraine and Israel, among other topics.
Pompeo critiqued past presidents’ — including Trump in his first term — failures to face the “problem” of Iran “head-on,” which he said has “made the problem that we suffer today even greater.”
The ongoing Iran war aims to create “a safe region for Israel and our Gulf-area allies … through the Strait of Hormuz” and ensure that Iran does not have the resources to “reconstitute their missile program, their chemical program, their cyber program and their nuclear program,” Pompeo said.
Kerry disagreed with Pompeo’s assessment of Trump’s objectives, but said he believes that it is “well near time that we take care of [the Iran] problem.”
“The primary progenitor of terror in the world for a long time has been the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Kerry said. “There are no modernists in that leadership; there are just degrees of radicalism.”
On nuclear disarmament, Kerry defended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, as a plan that shut down Iran’s “four potential pathways to a nuclear weapon” by “building up the strongest regime as possible” to “hold Iran accountable.”
Kerry was one of the most visible Americans in negotiations for the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015.
The Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 under Pompeo because it “failed to protect America’s national security interests,” he wrote in a May 8, 2018 White House fact sheet.
“JCPOA rested upon a model that suggested that the Iranians would actually comply with something they signed up for,” Pompeo said at the DPU event. “The Iran that I have known … never once lived up to any of the commitments that they made.”
Attendee Kiara Freidberg ’26 said she noticed, however, that the two secretaries gave “similar” answers in other areas, such as military spending and the national deficit.
Pompeo praised Kerry for his “amazing” advocacy for Ukraine after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Kerry “was arguing vigorously inside [the Obama] administration to provide defensive weapons systems to Ukraine,” Pompeo said. “You were personally engaged in a way that was really important, and you should be lauded for that.”
In response to a question posed by an audience member on the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Kerry said that Israel is “our ally” and “our friend.”
Pompeo agreed that Israel is an “important partner” for the U.S.
“There are many reasons for them to be our ally,” Pompeo said. “We should put America first, but Israel is an important partner and the homeland of the Jewish people. We ought to make sure that that relationship stays strong in the way that Secretary Kerry spoke to you about.”
Friedlander wrote in a statement to The Dartmouth that Pompeo and Kerry were invited to speak at the event for their “commitment to civil and productive disagreement, personal friendship and illustrious respective careers across nearly all aspects of American government.”
Anika Mukker ’26 said she was “surprised” at the amount of agreement the secretaries had on “so many different topics.”
“That level of agreement was something that really surprised me coming out of it,” she said.
