Iran is "notorious for making bad judgments and miscalculating," and the real danger for the United States is a miscalculation that will give the United States no choice but to "fully" engage, Sen. James Risch, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned Thursday.
"When these things start, they are really easy to start and not so easy to unwind as we've learned 18 years ago from Afghanistan," the Idaho Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom," while commenting on the potential U.S. response to last weekend's airstrikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. "You have to be really careful about getting into this."
However, the United States can't look the other way, said Risch, as "this was a clear act of war."
"The vehicles that were used were war vehicles, and something is going to have to be done," said Risch. "I've seen the same intelligence the president and everyone else has seen. There is no question who did this. I think that point is behind us. The question now is where do we go from here?"
President Donald Trump does not go to war, and he has made that clear, said Risch.
"I was in the room when he made the decision, the difficult decision, regarding when Iran shot down our drone," said Risch, recalling Trump's decision not to launch strikes on Iran, out of humanitarian concerns, after forces there shot down U.S. drone in June.
"He wrestles with these in a very, very serious way," said Risch. "He doesn't want to do this. But as he has pointed out, sometimes you wind up having to do stuff you don't want to do and the Iranians keep pushing in that regard."
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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