Rick Santorum to Newsmax: Trump Recognized Iran as 'Real Threat'

President Donald Trump's actions against Iran mark long-overdue recognition of a "real threat" to U.S. security, former Sen. Rick Santorum told Newsmax on Saturday, while praising both the United States and Israel for what he described as a strategic and destabilizing blow to the Iranian regime.

Speaking on Newsmax's "America Right Now," Santorum said he had long believed Iran, not Iraq, was the primary danger in the Middle East.

"Back when [then-President] George Bush went into Iraq, I said, 'Well, you know, we invaded the wrong country.' The country that we should have been going after at that time was Iran," Santorum said.

"And I said so then and continued to say for 20-plus years. So my congratulations to Donald Trump for recognizing the real threat to the security of our country and to the region and going after Iran," he added.

Santorum called reports that Israel may have targeted Iran's supreme leader "an incredible accomplishment," pointing to what he said was a high level of Israeli intelligence penetration inside Iran's leadership circle.

"The fact that the Israelis had that level of intelligence — even if for some reason the supreme leader survived — this has to just devastate the internal workings of the Iranian government," he said.

That "Israel had that level of understanding, had moles, and had intelligence within the inner circle of the Iranian leadership is fracturing their leadership right now," Santorum added.

He said the next step should include targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which he noted controls roughly a third of Iran's economy and protects the regime.

"They obviously have all the military resources, and they are the ones who are protecting the regime. And if there is going to be an uprising, you have to take out the capability to push back against the uprising," he said.

Santorum contrasted the current approach with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, saying the U.S. is not seeking to occupy Iran.

"In the case of Iraq, we broke it and we owned it. In this case, we're fracturing it. We're not completely destroying it," he said.

"We're fracturing it and allowing for a knitting and a healing from within, as opposed to completely taking possession of it."

He added that there may already be destabilizing forces at work within Iran's government as a result of the strikes, including possible internal opposition within the regime.

Responding to comments from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who called for a war powers resolution vote and said Trump was contradicting his pledge to avoid costly foreign wars, Santorum rejected comparisons to Iraq.

"This is not a level of engagement from the standpoint of American intervention that is even approximating anything we did in Iraq," he said. "This is very strategic."

Santorum said the U.S. military buildup in the region was aimed at preventing Iranian retaliation rather than launching a full invasion.

"I think one of the reasons you're not seeing a heavy response by the Iranians is all of that additional military might that we brought into the region was not to destroy the regime, but it was to stop the regime from attacking our ships, our bases, the Israelis, and the Arab allies," he said.

"So No. 1, you decapitate the head, you take out their ability to project power, and then you start to degrade their ability to resist a type of revolution or counterrevolution," Santorum added.

"At least initially, it looks like they're conducting it very well. But again, it's not a full-scale invasion. It's not something you would seek congressional approval for."

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