The world is better of without Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and his death does not mean that his countrymen have suddenly decided to back Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other hardliners, Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Friday.
"What I would like to see is every member of Congress start tweeting out #freeiran," the Texas Republican and former Navy SEAL officer told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "There isn't an honest democratic debate in Iran, because the Supreme Leader Khamenei is the single voice, and that hasn't changed, but he has become severely weakened."
In addition, Iran has had to recalculate how it is dealing with the United States and pull back on their increasing number of attacks, said Crenshaw.
"They were increasing their escalations and violence, and they were moving from nonattributable proxy attacks to attributable attacks," said Crenshaw. "That is a huge change because we had no red line...with all the information we have, it effectively re-establishes a sense of deterrence. That's extremely important going forward."
Meanwhile, there are not only two choices when it comes to military action, said Crenshaw.
"It's not a false between doing nothing and isolationism and full-scale war," he said. "That's the rhetoric that is often used, mostly by politicians and leaders in the media, and what that does is it tells the American people that there are only two choices and that any time you're involved in anything, you're at war. That's not true."
He added that Americans are "sick of" endless wars, but that does not mean the United States should retract completely because that would create even more problems.
Crenshaw said there was "exquisite intelligence" that lead to the death of Soleimani
"We can pontificate about whether they were going to attack an embassy," he said. "They already did. All right? They already did kill an American."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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