During an interview this week, Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis explained that the recent Iranian-backed terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas were personal for him because when he served in the U.S. Military, the Iranians were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers.
DeSantis made his comments during a Tuesday morning interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in the wake of Saturday’s unprecedented terror attack that included a pro-peace music festival in which civilians were massacred by Hamas. The attack has so far left more than 1,000 people in Israel dead and over 2,500 wounded.
“In terms of Iran, look, this is personal for me in the sense of, I served in Iraq back in 2007, 2008,” he said. “We were in places like Fallujah and Ramadi. Mostly Sunni Arab al Qaeda fighters at the time, but most of the casualties U.S. troops were suffering were at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia militias. They killed hundreds of our troops in Iraq, probably over 1,000.”
“Of course, they were responsible, through Hezbollah, for killing our Marines back in 1983 in the Beirut barracks bombing,” DeSantis continued. “So Iran has a lot of American blood on its hands. Look, I think that Israel should be focused on uprooting Hamas. To make this a larger role, I think, does have some risks, but I would say the United States should turn every screw so that Iran is not getting money flowing into its coffers, particularly with their oil.”
DeSantis went on to say that the Biden administration made a mistake in unfreezing $6 billion of Iranian assets that Iran made from illicit oil sales, which allowed Iran to continue their funding of terrorism. He added that the U.S. government needs to reverse its loosening of sanctions on Iran and to expand domestic energy production so that the United States was less vulnerable to periods of instability in the Middle East.
