Former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland warned Thursday on Newsmax that the "perception" of U.S. weakness may wind up dragging the nation into war in the Middle East as Iran begins "flexing its muscles."
In an interview on "American Agenda," McFarland said, so far, "the attacks against Americans, our allies, Israel have all been done by Iran proxies — not coming from the Iranian territory, but coming from Yemen, coming from Gaza, coming from Lebanon, coming from Iraq, coming from Syria."
In recent days, however, she said Iran has begun attacking in northern Iraq and Pakistan.
"Iran is flexing its muscles. Why? … because the perception [of] the United States' weakness," she asserted. "Nobody's holding Iran accountable for anything. So they keep going. And the worry I have … is if we don't take out, or respond in a serious way to the people who are trying to kill our people … what's going to happen is they're going to do one after another attack until they eventually kill Americans, and then we're in a war."
McFarland said that with President Joe Biden in the White House, his reaction to policies around the world is "If Donald Trump is for it, I'm against it."
After the former president left office, we had "peace in the Middle East, the Arabs and the Israelis were at the Abraham Accords, Iran was bankrupt ... Iranians were not giving foreign aid to their terrorist proxy groups around the region," she noted.
"President Biden comes in … he then takes the Houthis, for example, he takes them off the terrorist designation, no longer terrorists," she said. "They increase aid to the Palestinians, which is right to Hamas, directly into Hamas, and then all the other things, but particularly President Biden stopped enforcing the sanctions on Iran."
"So of course you got an emboldened Iran and now that Iran is moving out in the region, what's happened is that the Biden administration isn't responding," she added. "They're either looking the other way, pretending it isn't happening, or they're doing what's called perimeter defense."
As a result, she cautioned, Iran considers the U.S. response "little pin pricks on them, and they're … going to keep escalating."
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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