Rep. Ro Khanna said Tuesday that he disagreed with the idea that the Obama administration could have done more to curb Iranian aggression in the Middle East.
“Because this was not just Barack Obama,” the California Democrat said on Fox News. “The reporting I’ve seen said President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney also passed on the chance to take out Soleimani. And the reason they all passed is they did not want to escalate a war with Iran.”
President Trump had last week ordered the killing of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani based on what he said was intelligence that the general was plotting to kill Americans in the region. The Bush administration deemed the military unit Soleimani commanded a terrorist organization.
The Obama administration reached a nuclear deal with the country, which Trump has called “disastrous.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier Tuesday that the U.S. government would continue to stand up to threats from Iran and would “never” let the country obtain a nuclear weapon.
“As we came into office, Iran was on a pathway that had been provided by the nuclear deal, which clearly gave them the opportunity to have those nuclear weapons,” Pompeo said. “We won’t let that happen.”
“I believe that President Obama had a strategy of the JCPOA that would prevent Iran from becoming nuclear,” Khanna said. “And there weren’t these incidents during the Obama administration. We didn’t have protests against our embassies. We didn’t have the killing of American contractors. So, Americans were safe at that time.”
On Sept. 11, 2012, a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
