Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Friday on CNN’s “Newsnight” that the Biden administration should not have said it would not target Iran in recent military strikes in response to attacks on U.S. military bases in the Middle East. .
“Based on our reporting, these attacks appear to have essentially targeted supply lines used by Iranian-backed militias,” anchor Abby Phillip said. In your opinion, are we going to send a strong enough message to Iran to stop this?”
Clapper said, “I doubt that. If we take the approach of just punishing Lebanese militias, whether it be Abiy, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc., then we need to have more attacks of this kind, and that’s the ultimate goal here.” needs to further strengthen its militia infrastructure if it is to change the attitudes and behavior of the Iranians who are using these proxies to direct attacks.”
He added: “We have stated that we will not attack Iran. If the Iranians are wondering what we will do there, in some ways they would like us to leave, but if we do attack… If we’re going to limit it to just militias, we need to be prepared for long distances and long struggles to destroy enough infrastructure to get them to change their behavior. So we understand the approach. What we’re trying to thread the needle here is change behavior, not provoke a broader war. That’s difficult.”
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