On Monday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) responded to a question on why Secretary of State Marco Rubio hasn’t been very visible since the MOU with Iran was signed by saying that “you have a little bit of different ideologies with how we’re going to approach” Iran and “I think you have some, like Steve Witkoff, who said, very clearly, he’s like, I’m a deal guy, I’m a real estate deal man, I’m going to try to make a deal anywhere I can. And that’s his mission” while “Secretary Rubio, and of course, Secretary Hegseth and others are in the camp of you can’t deal with Iran. And, quite frankly, as you well know, I don’t think you can either.”
Guest host Batya Ungar-Sargon asked, “So, what grade would you give Vice President JD Vance on his performance last week and this week?”
Sheehy answered, “Well, listen, I think the Vice President has obviously been empowered by the president here to make a deal. The president has unleashed the most aggressive campaign against this murderous regime that you and I know too well, and we have to give the administration credit for that. It was a huge political risk. It was a huge risk to our troops and their families, of which, of course, we lost 13. But this was an incredibly aggressive campaign and I credit the president, the Vice President, and the whole administration, from Midnight Hammer, all the way back to Soleimani in the first term, to the most recent pressure campaign. So, obviously, the negotiation, this week’s are going how the negotiations with Iran normally go, which is they string us along, they lie, they don’t negotiate in good faith. And I hope the Vice President is successful in convincing the Iranians to give up the nuclear weapons and convincing them to stop trying to wipe Israel off the map and stop murdering Americans. But I think you and I both know that’s probably unlikely. I think the Vice President is leading this delegation with the best skill available to say, Iran come to the table one last time, because I think they’re aware, as President Trump is showing them, if they don’t actually negotiate in good faith in this round, I think the next round of strikes is going to be equally ferocious and probably be more catastrophic than the last round.”
Ungar-Sargon then asked, “I think something a lot of people are wondering is where is the Secretary of State in all of this? We haven’t heard from Marco Rubio since this MOU was signed. What do you think is going on there?”
Sheehy responded, “Well, I think it’s no secret that, in the administration, that you have a little bit of different ideologies with how we’re going to approach this problem. I think you have some, like Steve Witkoff, who said, very clearly, he’s like, I’m a deal guy, I’m a real estate deal man, I’m going to try to make a deal anywhere I can. And that’s his mission. That’s why the president has brought him on as special envoy is to make deals. Secretary Rubio, and of course, Secretary Hegseth and others are in the camp of you can’t deal with Iran. And, quite frankly, as you well know, I don’t think you can either. For 47 years, they haven’t said things that are evil. They just do them every single day. We don’t have to wonder what Iran’s designs for America and our Western allies and Israel are, because they show us every day and they tell us every day, it’s not theoretical. They say death to America, death to the Jews, death to Israel, and their designs don’t stop at the Persian Gulf or Israel, Batya. They want a global caliphate. They want to kill you and me and our entire families and wipe our civilization off the map. That’s what success means to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That’s what success means to these radical clerics, who truly believe that we should be wiped off the face of the earth. And I think we have failed as leaders in America to educate the American people over the past 40 years that that’s the threat we actually face. $6 gasoline, listen, nobody likes it. Nobody wants forever wars. Nobody wants our troops in the Middle East forever. But you know what’s worse than our troops in the Middle East for the next 40 years? Is fighting those terrorists right here on our own streets at home, which is where the Iranians want to put this war on our front step. They want you dead and me dead and everyone else, that’s their intent. They don’t just say it. They do it every single day. So, I genuinely, truly hope as an American who’s fought in these wars that we can find a peaceful solution here. I do truly hope the Vice President is successful in finding a way to diffuse this. But I think the chance of that, unfortunately, [is] probably pretty slim. And we’re going to have to go back to a kinetic pressure campaign, and, eventually, hopefully, take this regime out in its entirety.”
He further stated that people don’t want troops in the Middle East, “and, as elected officials, we have to respond to that will and say, okay, message received.”
Sheehy added, “If we give them oil revenues or unfrozen assets, we have to have hyper-constricting controls to ensure where that money is going and what it’s being used for, because, as you well know, they’re going to take that money and they’re going to use it to kill us with it.”
He also stated, “[O]ur intermediaries are not the best intermediaries. Pakistan shielded bin Laden for a decade from us, through ISI, funded insurgencies against American troops in Afghanistan that I personally fought. Obviously, the Qataris, who we have a great military relationship with, but they’ve also been bankers for terrorist groups from Hamas to Hezbollah and other groups all over the world.”
Sheehy concluded, “I think the Vice President and Kushner and Witkoff are the right people for this round. And I think they’re trying to suss out what the way ahead looks like, and we’ll see where they end up here in the next few days.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Read the full article here