Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that the threat of an attack on U.S. soil is greater now than at any time since 9/11 while taking to task President Obama for his past insistence that terrorists are on the run.

The Wyoming Republican, speaking at an event sponsored by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, cited last month’s terrorist attack in Paris and last week’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, as examples of the growing reach of ISIS.

“I think the threat level today is greater than it was after 9/11,” Cheney told the sold-out audience. “I think you’ve got not only the proliferation of Islamic radicalism and extremists, they are now launching attacks into Europe, attacks into the United States.”

“Anybody who sits around now and thinks, ‘Gee, we’re safe behind our oceans, and we can turn our back and let somebody else worry about that’ — forget that,” said Cheney. “Just ask the folks in San Bernardino if we’re immune from those kinds of attacks.”

His 45-minute discussion with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt focused primarily on foreign policy, terrorism and the military, topics he covers in his recently released book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Strong America.

A former congressman who served four Republican presidents, Cheney, 74, spent eight years as President George W. Bush’s second in command. The job offer came as something of a surprise, he said, given that he was heading Bush’s vice presidential selection committee.

“I turned the job down when it was first offered,” Cheney said. “I didn’t want to become vice president. I was happy in private life. The president finally convinced me I was the right guy to do what he wanted to have done.”

His latest book, published by Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster’s conservative non-fiction imprint, was written with his daughter Liz Cheney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs under Bush.

“For us to somehow think we’re safer than we were at the time of 9/11, I think the world’s a more dangerous place,” said Cheney. “I think our adversaries are deadlier. I think they’ve spread pretty dramatically from a geographical standpoint. I think ISIS is a whole new ball game — tougher, meaner, more vicious, than we had in al Qaeda.”

He said he sees the Paris and San Bernardino attacks as just the beginning, while those who see them as a “one-off event” are “just wrong.”

“And then Barack Obama, I don’t think understands, or pretends not to understand,” Cheney said. “I’ve spent hours trying to figure out what makes him tick, but it’s as though he has a different world view that’s different than what most of us hold, and when facts are brought to show that he’s wrong, he just ignores those facts and stays right on his set of beliefs.”

Cheney, known as a foreign-policy hawk, said the next president will need to repair the damage done by the Obama administration to the military and U.S. relations with its traditional Middle Eastern allies.

“Last time I was out there visiting, I made the point that this is a historic relationship between the United States and our friends in the region — the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Emirates — and that it’s temporary, there will be a new administration,” Cheney said. “And their response to me was, ‘Yes, Dick, but he [Obama] is going to be in there for two more years.’ They were very concerned at that point.”

“They’ll be relieved that Obama is no longer the president,” Cheney added. “They would expect to see a fairly quick change in policy.”

Those allies will be watching to see if the next administration acts to rebuild the military, he said.

“One of the things they count on is the state of the U.S. military. And the U.S. military has been badly damaged, weakened by this administration,” Cheney said.

Cheney has steered clear of weighing in on the 2016 presidential race, although he did appear to rebuke Donald Trump in a Monday radio interview with Hewitt. Trump called Monday for barring Muslims from entering the country until leaders can “figure out what is going on” in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting.

“Well, I think this whole notion that somehow we need to say ‘no more Muslims’ and just ban a whole religion goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom’s been a very important part of our, our history,” Cheney said during the radio show.

He said top foreign policy priorities after the November 2016 election should be to tear up the nuclear agreement with Iran and topple the caliphate established by ISIS.

“It’s not just a piece of real estate. It has great meaning from a religions standpoint to Muslims all over the world,” said Cheney. “The problem right now is we have now it has also become a safe harbor, a sanctuary from which they launch attacks against us, i.e., San Bernardino this week, Paris a couple of weeks ago. I think it’s very important that that caliphate be eliminated. I think it’s got to be your objective in that part of the world.”

He called the Iranian nuclear deal a “travesty,” predicting it will result in more terrorism as Iran siphons previously tied-up funds to its partners in Hamas and Hezbollah. The agreement could also touch off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, he said.

“Others, friends of ours, the Saudis, the Emirates, Egyptians and so forth, who have not developed nuclear weapons, they’ve always relied on the support of the United States, and nobody at that point except the Israelis had one in the region,” Cheney said. “When the Iranians become armed with nuclear weapons, everyone else is going to try to find some way to acquire their own capability.”

Obama has argued that the agreement will prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon by requiring reductions to its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions, while foes have countered that Iran has a long history of cheating on such agreements.

In the past, Cheney said, the United States and Israel acted to shut down efforts by Middle East nations to acquire nuclear weapons, but “this time around, Obama didn’t do that.”

“In fact, he bribed them to come back to the table, gave them everything they could conceivably ask for, and said that force wasn’t an option,” Cheney said. “I think it’s a terrible mistake and it will do damage 10, 15, 20 years down the road.”

As vice president, Cheney also served as Senate president. His marble bust was unveiled and placed Thursday in the U.S. Capitol.

Asked if the Senate had always been so “dysfunctional,” Cheney joked, “Do you mean, was it that way before they put my bust up there?”

He described newly chosen House Speaker Paul Ryan as a “great friend” and “very good man,” adding, “I think he’ll work well with [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell. Now what we need is a president to go along with that, and that’s why this election’s so important.”

Speaking as a former veep, he said the most important quality in a vice president is the ability to take over the top job, not political considerations such as whether the selection will help win swing states.

“That’s the thing that’s got to be foremost in your mind, and there have been times in the past when presidents have picked vice presidents and that hasn’t been a factor, and I think it’s a mistake,” Cheney said. “And it’s happened in both parties.”

Before Cheney took the stage, the Centennial Institute marked Pearl Harbor Day by honoring 93-year-old Donald Stratton, a veteran who survived the 1941 attack.

— valrichardson17@gmail.com