The former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday that President Donald Trump is “running out of options” with Iran’s increasingly aggressive behavior.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week," Admiral Mike Mullen said war, however, should be a last resort.
"My biggest concern is the president is running out of room, running out of options, and while the rhetoric goes back and forth on how close we came to hitting Iran just the other day, that this thing could spin out of control,” he said. “The last thing in the world we need right now is a war with Iran."
But Mullen said Iran must never be able to have nuclear weapons.
"I think the politicians need to figure out a way to achieve the objective, which is Iran without a nuclear weapon, without — from my perspective — without regime change, without going to war,” he said.
“Iran with a nuclear weapon would start to proliferate nuclear weapons in the Middle East, which is incredibly dangerous,” Mullen said. “Other countries would then probably generate that kind of capability. And the Middle East has got a lot of problems and we don't need more nukes."
Of Trump’s last-minute cancellation of a strike on Iran, Mullen conceded the consideration was normal, but the timing a little bit too close.
“You're very concerned that it would happen so near to execution,” he said. “Obviously the process that actually routinely assesses and looks at collateral damage specifically or how many people could possibly be killed is fairly normal.”
“It's very, very unusual, not unprecedented that a strike would be called off so closely to its execution,” he said.
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