Iraq War veteran Ron DeSantis is glad the Ayatollahs in Iran are facing justice, even as he acknowledges that what comes next in the conflict with the U.S. is an open question
“Having seen it firsthand, that regime … would kill as many Americans as they could. I mean, that’s just the reality of who we’re dealing with here,” the Governor said during a news conference in Yulee.
DeSantis said when he was in Iraq as a Judge Advocate General in 2007 and 2008, Iran was behind attacks on American forces and assets.
“The U.S. was incurring a lot of casualties at the time. And at the time I was over there, 90% of those were because of the Iranians. They were funding and orchestrating the Shia militia groups, Islamist groups,” DeSantis recounted.
DeSantis acknowledged that “tactical questions” are open, but defended the targeted assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as one of many ayatollahs “dropping like flies” since the offensive began.
“He deserved to face justice,” DeSantis said, adding that Iran was responsible for a lot of attacks on American forces going back to a targeted killing of Marines in Beirut during President Ronald Reagan’s first term.
DeSantis painted the Iranian government as “a fanatical, apocalyptic, militant Islamist regime” with a unique capacity for self-destruction compared to other historic American adversaries such as the Soviet Union.
“They want the imposition of Sharia law worldwide, and they want the destruction of infidels, people that reject Sharia law. And so when you fuse that with the potential for nuclear weapons, it creates a different dynamic,” he said.
But while DeSantis wants a change in the country, he stopped short of advocating an effort like the Iraq War, in which he participated.
“A lot of that is going to be outside of what America can do. My hope would be that the population is freed from the grip of the Islamist regime, and that they have a regime that really is taking advantage of the culture,” he said, adding that it was “rich and advanced” before the revolution of 1979 emboldened the theocracy.
“What’s happened in Iran since 1979, it’s been destitution. The regime makes money, they fund terrorism, they fund (The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), they fund all these other things. But the average person doesn’t have a lot of opportunity,” DeSantis continued.
“I do think that culturally, they could be a very successful country. They’ve got a lot of resources. They’ve got a lot of history. I think they’d have very strong education very quickly if they were liberated from the yoke of the Islamist tyranny.”
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