Rep. Michael Waltz Thursday applauded President Donald Trump's actions so far where Iran is concerned, but warned that more force will be needed to get the Iranian regime to back down.
"The Iranians through the militias in Iraq thought they could hit us and hit our bases without much of a response," the Florida Republican, a combat-decorated Green Beret, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"The president responded strongly. That's what the Iranian regime respects."
However, Iran will continue to push the Trump administration to back down, as others have, but the United States needs to hold Iran "directly accountable" for its actions, said Waltz.
Whether it's through cyberattacks, sanctions, or "even more direct means," Iran won't back down unless tough action is taken, he added.
"It's like a bully and until it's faced with force, it'll continue to do this," Waltz said.
The United States' maximum pressure campaign is working, Waltz added, and the Iranian regime wants to create a crisis that will divert its own population away from the fact that its economy is crumbling.
"It wants to get the international community and folks here in Washington, the Democrats especially, to buy into this narrative that this is all President Trump's fault," said Waltz. "At the end of the day, this is Iran doing what it always does, which is stoking crisis across the Middle East through its proxies."
The only way to stop that is to meet the regime "with force," said Waltz.
Waltz, however, said he does not think the attacks earlier this week on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad compare to the 2012 Benghazi attacks in Libya, other than that they were both on embassies, but he does see parallel the current incident and the 1979 attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.
"We were feckless back then and we didn't meet it with strength," said Waltz. "We met it with strength this time and Iran has backed down and the proxies have backed down. What they are going to try to do is work through the Iraqi Parliament to get us removed from Iraq. That's their ultimate goal. At the end of the day, they want to dominate the region."
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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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