Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said President Donald Trump’s objectives in Iran were unclear.
According to the outgoing North Carolina Republican, it was a problem.
Partial transcript as follows:
KARL: So let me ask you about Iran. Are you — how would you define right now, three weeks into this? What is the objective, the primary objective?
TILLIS: I don’t know, and I think it’s a real problem. I think the president did a really good job with Venezuela talking about what the objective is. It was in, it was out, and — and I think they did a good job there with that — with extracting Maduro. I did — there’s still some argument about whether or not that regime is going to have a long-term commitment to the U.S. or going to realize what I think the president wants to achieve there long term. But I think that it’s trending in the right direction. Here, you know, I thought the initial bombing raid a while back was —
KARL: Last summer.
TILLIS: — very successful. I could see why we needed to finish some of the work and go back in and maybe have a week or two back in there, really degrading their capabilities. Now, it’s very — it’s ambiguous. I don’t know what our long-term strategic goals are, but we’re going to need to know that. I generally support what the president’s doing in Iran, but if we’re going to get anything close to the $200 billion supplemental request, we got to get 60 votes, and we’re going to have to figure out how to accomplish that.
KARL: Yeah, I mean, they’ve said four to five weeks to do again, what the objectives are, unclear —
TILLIS: Yeah.
KARL: — but $200 billion doesn’t sound like four or five weeks.
TILLIS: No, it –I mean, if you do the math, my guess is right now — there were estimates of a billion to billion-and-a-half a day spent. So, let’s assume at this point that about $30 billion has been spent sustaining the operation, paying personnel, supporting the kinetic strikes. We need to know how that money is going to be spent, and if it’s going beyond a 60-day horizon, then we really do need to talk about the authorization for the use of military force and longer-term funding trails. So, we’ll look at the request here and see what’s baked into it, and then we’ve got to work on getting Democratic support.
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