President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice blasted President Trump for claiming that the Obama administration “paid for” the ballistic missiles that Iran used in its retaliatory strike against the United States.
Iran attacked at least two U.S. air bases with more than a dozen ballistic missiles on Tuesday night, but there were no casualties. The attack came in response to the U.S. strike that resulted in the death of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
“The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration,” Trump said in the grand foyer of the White House at a press conference on Wednesday. He was referencing the Iran nuclear agreement, one of the signature foreign policy moments of the Obama administration, which sought to end Iran’s nuclear aspirations while alleviating sanctions on the country.
Rice, who predicted that the Soleimani strike would “likely” result in “wider warfare,” was on MSNBC following the conclusion of the president’s press conference.
“First of all, Andrea, as you know and as you were just discussing with your colleagues, this is another series of despicable lies by President Trump. The fact that 3 1/2 years after taking office he remains — or three years after taking office — he remains obsessed with President Obama just shows President Trump’s extreme weakness and insecurity,” Rice stated. “In the years since the signing of the deal in 2015, up until President Trump’s unilateral withdraw abandoning our allies against the advice of his advisers, there were no proxy attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. personnel in Iraq. There were no efforts by Iran to attack our drones in the Persian Gulf or attack shipping.”
She went on to call the president’s decision to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal as reckless.
