Iran's leaders should think "very carefully" before taking any more actions against Americans in the Middle East or anywhere else, Sen. Tom Cotton said Monday.
"(President) Donald Trump showed just last week what happens," the Arkansas Republican told Fox News' Martha MacCallum. "He would order the killing of your terror mastermind."
Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed at the Baghdad International Airport, had arrived from Lebanon where he had been visiting with Hezbollah, his "terrorist proxy there," and while on his way out of the airport, the car in which he was riding was hit by the airstrike ordered by Trump.
"He was killed not with an Uber driver, but the head of Hezbollah in Iraq as well," said Cotton. "They were plotting to kill more Americans throughout the Middle East."
Cotton added that Trump, "nor I, nor any other Americans" want to start another war in the Middle East, but at the same time, "we aren't going to let Iran wage a proxy war against us without fighting back."
He added that Trump "put it well" last week when he said he acted against Soleimani to stop a war, not start a new one.
For a month, Iran has been escalating its aggression against the United States and its partners, Cotton said, including bombing ships in the Persian Gulf, tagging unmanned aircraft, and increasing the pace and scale of attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.
"The president made it clear from the very beginning that if Iran killed an American, they would take the consequences and that's exactly what happened last week when he ordered the death of Qassem Soleimani," said Cotton. "Let us remember who he was as well, the mastermind of terror in Iran for decades. He has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands. So we didn't just get vengence and justice for all those Americans who died at his hands and their families, but also made America safer in the future as well."
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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