Intel Chair Turner on Iran threat: Americans in the area remain in danger

House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) on Sunday said Americans in the Middle East remain in danger amid escalating tensions following Israel’s alleged airstrike on an Iranian embassy last week.

Fears over Iran targeting U.S. interests in the region were renewed last week after an airstrike on the Iranian consulate building next to Tehran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria killed two senior members and five officers, per Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge in a speech last week, prompting Israel and the U.S. to be on high alert for retaliatory attacks.

Asked on CNN’s “State of The Union” about the nature of the threat from Iran and if Americans are in danger, Turner said, “Well, I think Americans in the area remain in danger.”

“Remember, Iranian proxies have continued to attack U.S. troops in the area, again, with the Biden administration being slow to respond and ultimately responding to those attacks,” he continued.

Attacks by Tehran-backed proxies against American troops and bases in Iraq and Syria spiked after the state of the Israel-Hamas war but died down in early February when the U.S. launched a retaliatory assault against the militia groups.

In that instance, Washington ordered the strikes after an attack by Iranian aligned militants killed three U.S. service members at a base in Jordan in January.

Turner pointed to the U.S.’s movement of additional assets in the Middle East in recent months to prevent Iran from escalating the Israel-Hamas war into a wider, regional conflict.

“And, of course, the United States has moved additional capabilities and assets in the area to deter Iran from entering into this conflict directly with Israel, although their proxy is Hamas, which the conflict is directly with,” he said.

“And Hezbollah continues to be a threat to Israel in Lebanon. But I think what we’re seeing here is, certainly, the consulate in Syria was a legitimate target from — for Israel because Iran certainly is the source of which all this is coming,” he continued.

Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday reiterated the Israeli’s military claim that the strike was “not a diplomatic mission of any sort of kind.”

She said Israeli intelligence found the building was a “military base in disguise.”

 “Iran has a record of attacking embassies. Let me remind the viewers here — if it’s the U.S. embassy in Tehran taking Americans hostage, if it’s the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires killing many, many people, you’re the big state of the United States, we’re the small state in Israel.”

Turner called the strike against the embassy in Syria “very unwise” as the U.S. was working to keep Iran out of a wider conflict.

“As we were trying to put pressure on Iran to keep them out of this conflict, both with U.S. presence and with our response to the attacks on our own troops, this certainly does escalate the issue throughout the entire region,” he said.