(Jerusalem Post) Omri Nahmias - U.S. envoy for Iran Brian Hook told the Jerusalem Post: "We have weakened the regime dramatically. We've weakened their proxies, and we have disrupted and deterred many Iranian operations. Now, President Trump has taken Soleimani off the battlefield. He was the glue that really held together Iran's proxies in the gray zone so effectively. And we think that his death is much more likely to make the region more stable." The American sanctions are "starving the regime of the revenue it needs to fund its proxies," Hook said. During the nuclear deal, "the regime was rich and so were its proxies. When the proxies have less money and the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism has less money, it means fewer attacks....We have put in place a foreign policy that is weakening the regime and its proxies, and the regime knows it." "I saw the intelligence, and the intelligence was very clear that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks against American diplomats and soldiers in the region that were large-scale, mass casualty attacks....If we had done nothing and he had killed hundreds of people, the press would be asking me, 'Why didn't we kill Soleimani when we had the chance?'"
2020-01-16 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive