House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) outlined several things that he wants to see President Joe Biden do with respect to Iran after Iranian-backed terrorists killed three U.S. soldiers during an attack last weekend.
Johnson made the remarks during a Sunday interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker when asked about remarks that Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan made earlier in the show.
“I do take issue with a little bit of what Jake Sullivan just said,” he said. “We need to make absolutely clear to Iran that nothing is off the table. You know, we maintain peace through strength. That was the Reagan Doctrine. That’s what President Trump continued. And that’s what we have to do right now. We should not be appeasing Iran. That’s what the Biden administration has been doing for the last three years. We are projecting weakness on the world stage. And frankly, Kristen, that is why our adversaries are acting so provocatively.”
Johnson said that the Biden administration should be “turning up the heat on Iran” through a variety of measures.
“We need to act to decimate the Iran Central Bank, the assets that they’ve held there,” he said. “We need to lean on international banks to seize the assets of Iranian proxies. We need to put big time pressure, maximum pressure, on their oil exports. There’s a lot that we could do to Iran to send a message instead of this appeasement strategy. It’s just simply not working.”
When asked if additional strikes should be on the table, Johnson said that they “should not be off the table.”
“In the Trump administration we used a drone and three missiles to take out Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad,” he said. “That sent a strong message. And it quelled all of the activity there. What we’re doing right now, we’re using potentially hundreds of munitions to strike close to 100 targets so far. But we’re not going right to the heart of the matter. I think that’s a real problem.”
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