Former Republican congressional candidate and political commentator Bryan Leib expressed hope that U.S. military strikes over the weekend in Iraq and Syria will help prevent a wider conflict throughout the Middle East, but he expressed doubts that the United States actually hit any significant military targets.
The U.S. strikes in Iraq and Syria, which started on Feb. 2, targeted locations of suspected Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) forces and militia groups believed to be acting at Iran’s behest. The U.S. strikes came in retaliation for a Jan. 28 explosive drone attack in Jordan, believed to have been carried out by an Iran-backed terrorist group, that killed three U.S. servicemembers and injured dozens more.
“I think all of us Americans, whether we’re on the left or the right, you know, we hope that these airstrikes are meaningful and are hitting targets that are really going to stop the spread of this terrorism and the war that’s happening in the Middle East right now,” Mr. Leib told NTD’s “Capitol Report” on Feb. 5. “But I think we also have to be candid about the situation.”
He noted that President Joe Biden’s administration had said for days before the U.S. strikes began that it had decided on a course of retaliation for the Jan. 28 drone attack.
“It took the Biden administration about five days to hit back after telegraphing what they were going to do. So, you know, we'll see if these targets are actually hard targets that are being hit right now,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem like we’ve really hit some critical targets yet. So time will tell in terms of what the targets actually look like.”
U.S. forces also carried out new rounds of strikes on Yemen over the weekend, targeting suspected locations of the Houthi terrorist group, which the U.S. government has assessed to be aligned with Iran.
Iran Condemns US Strikes
Although the U.S. government has repeatedly asserted that significant ties exist between the Iranian regime and factions around the Middle East directly attacking U.S. forces or fighting with Israel, the Iranian government has distanced itself from its alleged proxies.The Iranian Foreign Ministry cheered the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in which Hamas terrorists breached the Gaza barrier, killed 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel, and kidnapped hundreds more, but it denied any direct involvement, casting the attacks as a “spontaneous” event.
The Iranian regime has also cheered the Houthi attacks on commercial vessels but has repeatedly denied arming the Yemeni group or directing its actions.
Following the Jan. 28 drone attack that killed three U.S. servicemembers in Jordan, the Iranian regime again denied involvement.
“Iran is not involved in the resistance groups’ decisions about how to support the Palestinian people or defend themselves and the people of their countries in the face of any aggression and occupation,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said of the Jan. 28 attack.
Although the Iranian regime has denied direct ties with groups such as Hamas, the Houthis, and other Islamist factions that have targeted U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq, it did condemn the recent U.S. strikes throughout the region.
Leib Calls for Return of Trump-Era Iran Policy
Mr. Leib, who has previously expressed support for former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, called for a return of the “maximum pressure” campaign that the Trump administration took against Iran, which included pulling the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—and reimplementing sanctions against Iran.“Our former president, President Trump, really had a very successful maximum pressure, maximum sanctions campaign that truly did isolate the Islamic Republic of Iran on the world stage,” Mr. Leib said.
“My advice to the U.S. and to our allies around the world that are serious about wanting to do something to hamper the Islamic Republic of Iran is it’s time to go back to that maximum pressure, maximum sanctions campaign that truly was working,” Mr. Leib said. “It was isolating the regime.”
He said Iran has grown “exponentially stronger” in recent years and its ties with powerful international partner nations such as Russia and China are “at an all-time high.”
“So I don’t know if we could put the genie back in the bottle,” Mr. Leib said. “But if I was the president right now, I would reenact that maximum pressure, maximum sanctions campaign immediately.”
