On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) stated that “Iran is allowing these attacks” on U.S. soldiers “to happen with no consequences to themselves. And as long as that continues, the attacks will continue and our servicemembers will be at risk.”
Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “[W]hat is an appropriate, proportionate response to an attack that does kill three servicemembers and injure 40 more?”
Smith responded, “I think you have to go more directly after the source, which is more directly after Iran. … There are a variety of different targets that would impact Iran, not all of them are in Iran. But I think you’ve got to put that on the table, because the calculus right now is just not in our favor. Iran is allowing these attacks to happen with no consequences to themselves. And as long as that continues, the attacks will continue and our servicemembers will be at risk. And that can’t be tolerated. You’ve got to change Iran’s calculus and have them bear some of the cost of what they are doing.”
Later, Smith added that the Biden administration’s deterrence hasn’t worked, but saying that “presupposes that there was something the president could have done that automatically would have worked. And that, I don’t think, is the case. Look, we don’t want to launch a wider war within the Middle East. We don’t want Hezbollah to launch all of their rockets on Israel. We don’t want Iran to full-scale attack, in Iraq, our forces. So, you’re always striking that balance between deterrence and escalation.”
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