Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued on Monday that a Trump presidency would have prevented Hamas’ and Iran’s attacks on Israel and that a second Trump administration would be more likely to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Pompeo, largely echoing rhetoric from former President Donald Trump, argued that Hamas and Iran would not have attacked Israel had Trump still been president, and would be deterred from future aggression if Trump is reelected.

“We had a model that worked,” Pompeo, who has been rumored to be under consideration for a senior administration role should Trump win in November, said at the inaugural MEAD Summit in Washington, D.C. “The Iranians would no more have done what they continue to do today, to hold American hostages and kill Americans in Gaza. They would no more have supported the nonsense of these knucklehead terrorists called Hamas. When we were united with Israel and had great partners throughout the entire Gulf region, they took us seriously, and so there’s no reason to expect they wouldn’t do so again.”

Pompeo argued, in a conversation with moderator Barak Ravid of Axios, that Trump would be more likely than Vice President Kamala Harris to allow Israel to attack Iran, if needed, and slow down Tehran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

“If you were going to probability weigh the outcomes given Vice President Harris as commander-in-chief or President Trump as commander-in-chief, and you were the Ayatollah, which would you think would give you the better chance to get closer to finishing the program that you’ve been designing?” Pompeo said.

He also said there’s still a chance to deter Iran from progressing toward a nuclear weapon, or from using that weapon if it obtains one, through consistent pressure to change the Iranian leadership’s calculus. 

He warned that military action against Iran’s nuclear program is a “deep, very complex problem,” making it especially important to work to influence Iranian leaders’ thinking.

Pompeo lambasted the Biden administration’s push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas because it involves peace with Hamas and because, he said, it centers Gaza, rather than Tehran, in the regional calculus.

“The answer is to focus on winning. Winning looks like making sure that Israel is able to find a solution towards security,” Pompeo said, adding that close ties with Gulf states are critical to the postwar situation in Gaza and the regional fight against Iran.

Pompeo predicted that Israel will continue to have a military presence in Gaza for at least the near future until there is a “sufficient” and “adequate” security situation on the ground. He suggested a model along the lines of the West Bank, including Israeli troops and intelligence officers as well as Palestinian security forces.

The former secretary of state dismissed those in the Republican Party pushing for decreased U.S. aid to allies — in some cases including Israel — which he said could complicate negotiations for the next memorandum of understanding with Israel under the next administration.

“They are the minority voices inside of our party, and I am convinced that the same support for the region and for Israel that we exhibited for four years will continue no matter who President Trump picks to bring around him,” Pompeo said. “I think that will be pretty consistent with where we were.”

Pompeo also acknowledged that the U.S. may have fallen short in the Middle East under the Trump administration in not responding more forcefully to the Iranian ballistic missile attack on oil processing facilities at Abqaiq Saudi Arabia in 2019. 

He also said that the status quo in Gaza that was maintained under the Trump administration ultimately proved untenable — though he suggested that was not the fault of the Trump administration.

“I would concede that there was a model that had been collectively concluded that said, ‘we can count on this situation maintaining its place, and allowing some of this [Qatari] money to flow will make life better.’ We had people from Gaza traveling into Israel… travel to work every day,” Pompeo said. “We thought if we made life better for the Gazan people, that we would reduce the risk of [an attack on Israel] happening. It turned out that after we left, that was no longer true.”