Amid chilling reports of Israel is preparing for a sudden war with Iran, former CIA Director James Woolsey told Newsmax TV the U.S. would have to act "quickly and devastatingly" on the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
"If they go to war, we have to get into it – of course on Israel's side – and I think we have to do so quickly and devastatingly," according to Woolsey on Tuesday's "Newsmax Now." "I would think that all parts of the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran we should take out.
"The Revolution Guard owns a lot of the factories and run the military facilities. The Iranian military is just the military of modest importance. It's the IRGC that matters."
Any aggression on Israel or U.S. interests on behalf of Iran and "we need to take them out," Woolsey said.
"We need to work with the Israelis and use our air power and other capabilities to essentially take out the behind the scenes power, the IRGC, that is responsible for the terrible conditions in Iran and the terrible way they have moved to try to take command of the entire Middle East," he added. "We have to stop that."
Woolsey supports regime change in Iran, and the protests in Iraq against Iran amid the U.S. sanctions campaign helps, he said.
"The only way we're likely to get rid of the Iranian regime – which are theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal imperialists, each one of those words I think is correct – the only way we're going to get rid of them is the people of Iraq and the people of Iran," Woolsey told host John Bachman. "And it's not just the people of Iraq acting on the Iranians, on some things it's the people of Iran, too."
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