A former top US military advisor warned Sunday that tensionswith Iran “could spin out of control” after President Donald Trump’slast-minute cancelation of air strikes on the Islamic republic.
Washington and Tehran have traded accusations since Iranshot down a US spy drone last week, prompting a plan for retaliatory strikesthat was shelved when Trump decided the resulting mass casualties would not be”proportionate.”
“My biggest concern is the president is running out ofroom, running out of options and while rhetoric goes back and forth on howclose we came to hitting Iran just the other day, that this thing could spinout of control,” former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen told ABC’s”This Week.”
“The last thing in the world we need right now is a warwith Iran.” Trump has labeled Iran a danger and in May last year pulledthe US out of an international accord on rewarding the country for allowingverification of its nuclear industry.
Trump has repeatedly sought to downplay moments of tension,repeating his reluctance to see the dispute escalate to military conflict.
He has announced new sanctions beginning Monday and US cyberforces reportedly struck Iranian military computer systems. But some of hisclosest aides, such as national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary ofState Mike Pompeo, are said to favor a far more muscular US strategy.
Mullen, who served under George W. Bush and then BarackObama from 2007 to 2011, said politicians need to use diplomacy to preventIran’s nuclear ambitions.
“That’s our system here and I think the politiciansneed to figure out a way to achieve the objective, which is Iran without anuclear weapon — and, from my perspective, without regime change, withoutgoing to war,” he said.
Trump tweeted on Friday that US forces were “cocked andloaded” to retaliate after the downing of the drone but that he calledthem back in order to avoid mass casualties.
Republican House Armed Services ranking member MacThornberry, was among a delegation of congressional leaders being briefed atthe White House as events unfolded.
“If they go back to mining tankers, shooting atAmerican aircraft, the sort of pattern of activity we’ve seen since April, thenobviously the president has a whole range of additional responses that he couldemploy,” he told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
“But he’s given himself a lot of headroom, if youwill.” But Senator Cory Booker, a Democratic presidential candidate and memberof the Foreign Relations Committee, told the show the president was”taking a belligerent course of escalation and provocation with Iran.