(NewsInsights.org) – A drone strike by Iranian-backed proxies in Jordan killed three service members and injured more than 40 others on January 28. In response, the White House and the National Security Council (NSC) threatened retaliation against Iran and its operatives. On February 2, US and UK allied forces launched coordinated strikes on more than 100 Iran-backed targets in Syria and Iraq. Allied forces followed with another barrage of more than 36 strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen the following day. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream to criticize the way the US undertook the retaliation.
Graham pointed out that the administration telegraphed the impending strikes more than a week prior, giving Iran and its proxies plenty of time to change the location of or harden their operation centers. As a result, he said the strikes only killed operatives who didn’t “know to get out of the way.”
Graham added that the volume of attacks certainly didn’t take out high-value targets. He contrasted former President Donald Trump’s strike on Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, former head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), saying carrying out targeted, surgical strikes on high-value targets to really hurt Iran would make more sense. He suggested going after the country’s oil infrastructure, mentioning that Iran had only four refineries. The senator emphasized that the administration was “failing miserably” at deterring Iran or other adversarial powers.
Moreover, Graham assessed, “Our national security is in freefall.” He backed up the statement with examples, including the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Russia’s aggression into Ukraine in 2022 and 2023, and the Hamas attack on Israel in October. “People are not afraid of us,” he said.
Responding on February 4 to criticism from Graham and other GOP leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, NSC advisor and spokesman Jake Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, “there will always be armchair quarterbacks” but that the administration was confident in the actions it had taken against Iran.
Copyright 2024, NewsInsights.org
