On January 30, 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley suggested that the United States government should “go after” Iranian military leaders as a retaliatory measure against drone attack allegedly carried out by an Iran-supported militia that resulted in the deaths of three American service members.
“Go after the launch sites where they’re doing it, and then go after the leadership,” she said during an interview on “CBS Mornings,” after making similar remarks on January 30.
“This is surgical,” she declared, continuing by noting that, “You take one or two of them out, and that’s what you do.”
A spokeswoman for the Haley campaign stated that the former South Carolina Governor was making a reference specifically to the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite branch of the Iranian military.
One of the CBS hosts, Tony Dokoupil, called attention to how Iranian leadership is based in Tehran. She then asked if Haley was suggesting “a strike inside Iran.”
Haley then responded by referencing the Trump administration’s assassination of the Iranian General Qassim Suleimani back in 2020: “When we assassinated Suleimani, he wasn’t in Iran. They move around.”
On top of that, she called for imposing additional sanctions on Iran. “They don’t care if you kill their proxy fighters,” she declared. “They don’t care if you destroy their missiles. What they care is if you take out their money or their leadership.”
Further, 30 service members were injured in the drone attack on a remote outpost in Jordan on January 28. The Axis of Resistance — a consortium of Iran-backed militias — asserted responsibility and Iran itself has rejected any involvement in these attacks.
Haley is the consummate neocon. She wants conflict everywhere — whether it’s China, Iran, and Russia. Haley represents the neoconservative order of yore that’s obsessed with regime change abroad, imposing sanctions on countries, and even attacking countries that don’t bow down to the US.
Her candidacy needs to be rejected if the US wants to promote peace abroad and keep the geopolitical winds tame.