Former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen Michael Flynn (Ret.) said the Iran deal is “carte blanche to become the hegemonic…dominant country in the Middle East for three decades of bad behavior” in an interview broadcast on Monday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.
“We just gave Iran essentially carte blanche to become the hegemonic, you know, dominant country in the Middle East for three decades of bad behavior. So, they’ve lied to us at just about every turn. And I get that you’ve got to talk to your enemies sometimes, but I don’t think this deal is a good deal, and we just incentivized bad behavior” he declared.
Flynn also criticized the Obama administration’s counterterrorism strategy, saying “I think right now we have almost solely focused on Iraq as the only place where these guys are operating. And I’ll just throw out a couple of other countries. I mean, they’re operating in Egypt, they’re operating in Libya. Libya’s a failed state. We just saw the attack in Tunisia. We know that they’re threatening in places like Algeria. We know that Al Qaeda in the Maghreb operates in Mali, all the way down to Boko Haram in Nigeria…so, I just think that our strategy right now to deal with this is just so narrow.”
He added, “what I see, is that we are not moving these people to be any more peaceful by just the sheer words that we’re using. So, I think that going in and conducting some handshakes and making some big speeches, you know, those are nice, but they’re not going to change the ideology of those that we are facing. There has to be a transformation in the Islamic religion.”
Flynn also dismissed President Obama’s rhetoric on the relation of radical Islam to terror, stating, “I’ve been at war with Islam, or a component of Islam for the last decade in my military career. So, I mean, we weren’t — you know, we were fighting radical Islamists. That’s what we were fighting.”
Flynn further criticized US intelligence operations, arguing “I know that our military is not able to capture anybody. We’re not capturing people anymore, to interrogate them, not that I’m aware of. If we’re doing that, I’m not aware of it, and I would tell you that it’s irresponsible for us to not be able to capture somebody.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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