Rep. Michael Waltz said Tuesday he's outraged by reports that former Obama officials are working behind the scenes with Iran and urging them not to allow tensions to escalate despite the actions being taken by the Trump administration.
"It's essentially working directly with a foreign hostile power to undermine a U.S. negotiating position," the Florida Republican told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
Waltz added that President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been clear that they are open to talks with Iran, but they want a better deal than the nuclear deal brought under President Barack Obama.
"The means to drive the Iranians back to the table is economic and diplomatic isolation," said Waltz, but providing a "back door" to that is "absolutely unacceptable."
Last week, The Daily Beast reported that when the White House sent an aircraft carrier and warplanes to the Persian Gulf, a small group of unnamed former Obama administration officials reached out to Iranian government contacts, including Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, to warn them to not take Trump's bait.
Waltz, though, said sanctions on Iran are working, so now Iran has lashed out by attacking U.S. interests in the region.
"That's the lesson they learned from Beirut in the 1980s," he said. "They killed 200 Marines; we withdrew. They kill over 500 Americans during the Iraq war, we respond very weakly by attacking their proxies, not Iran."
In the current case, there was "credible intelligence" that Iran was about to try the same thing, and to Trump's credit, "he responds with force and Iran has backed down, so the response was absolutely credible," said Waltz.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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