Tuesday in an interview with Huntsville, AL radio’s WVNN, Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) gave President Donald Trump some credit for not following through with an attack on Iran following the nation’s alleged disruptions of shipping channels in the Persian Gulf and the downing of a U.S. unmanned drone in international airspace.
Jones pointed to reports of a U.S. cyber attack on Iran as a “strong signal” as an acceptable substitute for a missile attack and urged that any future response from the Trump-led U.S. government be “proportional.”
“Well, I think we’ve had a response,” Jones said on “The Jeff Poor Show.” “There was some cyber attacks that the president authorized the other day in response to that. I think that’s a pretty strong signal of the force that we have in ways other than firing missiles. You know, look, this is a very tense situation over there. Clearly, sanctions that have been imposed are working. Iran is feeling the heat. But we’ve got to be very, very careful with all of this because we don’t want American lives or any lives put in jeopardy. And we have got to make sure that whatever response that we have it is a proportional response. And that was why I was glad the president backed down.”
“Now, I will tell you this – it really troubled me that this came to a 10-minute no-go situation,” he continued. “That’s just not how I understand the military to operate. They should have briefed the president early on: ‘Here is our plan. Here is the proposal. These are the number of casualties that are likely to be incurred.’ And so, this last-minute thing is pretty perplexing to everybody up here that has been involved in these situations in the past.
“But the fact that he pulled back, I think, is a good thing,” Jones added. “One of the issues that we have got here now is whether or not, what we don’t see is this to be escalated on a stair-step kind of basis – Iran gets a little bit worse, we start stepping up our efforts. And all of a sudden, we end up in a military confrontation that no one wants. We’ve got an obligation to keep those channels open, those shipping channels open. Iran is a bad actor, and we are having some effect. But I am very concerned about the use of military force without some congressional authorization.”
The Alabama Democrat said given America’s heightened role in the world, the United States has a role to play in keeping shipping lanes open in the Persian Gulf, even if that means acting unilaterally.
“I think we are both the military and moral leader of the world,” Jones said. “And we need to continue to have that mantle. Part of the problem is this: The United States pulled unilaterally out of the Iran deal that we did with regard to nuclear weapons. Other nations have not pulled out. That makes for some very precarious situations for the other countries, the United States and Iran. So, I am confident of this. I do believe our State Department and our military are in constant contact with our allies.”
“It may end up being somewhat unilateral, but it is not going to be done without some consultation, and if this escalates I think allies will come to our defense,” he continued. “But having said that, we have got to recognize that when we pulled out of this alone, we started going at this alone. And that’s one of the concerns I think that a lot of people have with the administration’s foreign policy is just that everything seems to be just us going at it alone and we’re not bringing our allies in in the way that we should that has been done historically by both Republican and Democratic administrations.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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