Radio Recap – President Trump: Obama Admin Paid for Iran's Missiles

After Iran fired missiles at U.S. soldiers in Iraq last night, President Trump addressed the nation stating the Obama Administration helped Iran pay for the weapons.

On Today’s Jay Sekulow Live, we discussed President Trump’s response to last night’s dangerous events.

As we came on the air today, President Trump had just finished addressing the nation. I think the best news to come out of that address was that there were no U.S. or Iraqi casualties. No one was harmed in this Iranian strike on U.S. troops inside Iraq. There was minimal damage to the bases themselves.  There was still information coming out as we went on air, but I believe there were over a dozen ballistic missiles fired.

Iran, of course, is using this as a propaganda tool, but at the end of the day if you fire over a dozen ballistic missiles at military bases and want to kill people you can, generally. They had obviously made the decision that they didn’t want to poke the giant too much, that they thought they had to do something in response to the U.S. killing Qasem Soleimani. So what they did was fire missiles that didn’t do anything.

In his speech today at the White House, President Trump made it clear that the United States would not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons:

As long as I’m President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

The President gave his assessment of the situation with Iran:

Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned, and a very good thing for the world. No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken, the dispersal of forces, and an early warning system that worked very well.

President Trump continued:

For far too long, all the way back to 1979 to be exact, nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond. Those days are over.

President Trump also made the point that the previous administration made the funds available to Iran and helped pay for the missiles that were used in the failed attack on U.S. troops last night:

The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tightened the reins on their own country, even recently killing 1,500 people at the many protests that are taking place all throughout Iran.

ACLJ Senior Counsel Skip Ash made the following point about Iran striking at the U.S. directly:

Iran is a master of asymmetric warfare. They realize they can’t beat us face to face on the battlefield so they normally engage us indirectly through proxies. That’s called asymmetric warfare. In this case, though, we had challenged the regime right at its roots. We had taken out this person who was very high in the regime and only answered to the Ayatollah, himself. They had a situation here where they could not afford to appear weak because right now there’s a movement afoot in their own country that is showing a great deal of unrest against the regime. They had to come across strong or they would have, the whole regime [would have], been undermined.

We’ll keep you apprised as this situation with Iran develops further.

You can listen to the entire episode with our full analysis here.