FLASHBACK: Trump Warned of Obama Playing the “Iran Card” to Get Re-Elected in 2012
Shane Trejo
|
President Donald Trump is talking tough on Iran right now, with a military strike reportedly on the table, but prior to his election, he warned against his predecessor going to war with Iran to boost his re-election chances.
Trump speculated in a series of Tweets that Obama would “play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected” and that the former president would “someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.”
While Trump’s predictions never quite came to fruition, he now finds himself in a similar situation as the one he described. Trump has a hotly-contested election coming up next year, and is on the precipice of a war with Iran.
Trump administration officials are admitting that bombing Iran is now a real possibility after they were attributed by U.S. intelligence as the culprit of oil tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman last week.
“We don’t take it lightly,” Trump said last week on “Fox and Friends” about Iran. “They are a nation of terror and they’ve changed a lot since I’ve been president, I can tell you. They were unstoppable and now they are in deep, deep trouble.”
“The United States is considering a full range of options. We have briefed the President a couple of times, we’ll continue to keep him updated. We are confident that we can take a set of actions that can restore deterrence which is our mission set,” Pompeo said this weekend on “Face the Nation.”
While the Trump administration gets more hawkish toward Iran, top Trump allies in Congress – Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) – are warning the President not to get bogged down in another forever war.
“One of the things I like about President Trump is that he said the Iraq War was a mistake. I think an Iran war would be even a bigger mistake than the Iraq War. We lost over 4,000 soldiers over there. I don’t think we need to get involved in another war.” Paul said on Fox News.
“Now if a ship is shooting at you, you can return fire. You can defend yourselves. But to go and retaliate and say, ‘oh we’re going to blow up one of their naval ships or we’re going to drop a bomb on Tehran,’ … No, those are completely wrong-headed and unconstitutional ideas.” Paul added.
Japanese and Norwegian vessels were attacked. If these nations aren’t calling for war, neither should the U.S. We can’t afford another #ForeverWar.
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) June 16, 2019
“‘America First’ means protecting our border from the ‘Gulf Cartel’ before avenging foreign vessels in the Gulf of Oman,” Gaetz said in a follow-up tweet.
Trump would be wise to take his own advice, and avoid another costly military intervention in Iran that could possibly be an even bigger disaster than what happened in Iraq.
Share: