Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) believes President Donald Trump must escalate the U.S. war with Iran if he wants to see a decisive end to the prolonged conflict.
As negotiations stalled last month amid renewed fighting, Trump threatened to bomb “one bridge or power plant” for every ship that Iran targets in the Strait of Hormuz. Scott said Trump should follow through on the message.
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“I think he’s going to have to,” the senator told NewsNation on Tuesday.
“Here’s a president that doesn’t like war,” he said. “None of us do. Here’s a president who doesn’t want to put troops in harm’s way. None of us do, and so he’s given diplomacy a chance. Iran has walked away from it, so … at some point, he will not have a choice but to do more to destroy their ability to produce weapons.”
Scott then answered that Trump may take military action in the next 30 days, but he noted that no one really knows the president’s timetable for ending the war. The Florida Republican added that it is unlikely that the Iranian regime will change through diplomacy.
The United States has no talks scheduled with Iran, Trump revealed on Tuesday. He claimed that the Strait of Hormuz remains “open and operating,” despite Iranian officials’ statements to the contrary. A closed strait means more pressure on global energy prices.
High domestic gasoline prices remain a concern among voters ahead of the midterm elections, a thorn in the side of congressional Republicans for the midterm elections. This sentiment was recently echoed by Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV).
“This situation in Iran is causing repercussions like you can’t imagine, and I’m a real believer that once we decided to go, we got to win,” Justice told Punchbowl News.
The senator warned of a looming energy crisis if the situation in Iran is not resolved quickly.
“Now we’re in a mess,” Justice said. “Now you’ve got a situation where it’s hard to get away. It’s hard to drive gasoline prices back down to where they ought to be. We’ve got to figure out how to solve that riddle, and then we’ve got to do more and more and more, because … in no time here, we’re going to have an energy crisis in the country like you can’t imagine.”
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Asked if his colleague’s statement about gas prices is accurate, Scott expressed confidence in Trump’s plan to weaken Tehran.
“I think we all like gas prices down, and we’d all like not to be at war, but this president’s doing what he’s supposed to do,” Scott said. “As president of the United States, he defends this country. Iran wants to destroy us with their nuclear weapons. So war is horrible, but being killed by a nuclear weapon is worse. So this president’s doing exactly what he should be doing as commander in chief of defending this country.”
