A GOP senator who has frequently broken with the president on issues of foreign policy and government spending warned Donald Trump against invading or launching strikes in Iran on Sunday after the president released several statements on Truth Social indicating that he was considering supporting protests within the country with military or other assistance.
Sen. Rand Paul spoke on ABC’s This Week as it was reported that the president was briefed in recent days on options for military strikes within the country. It isn’t clear what the administration’s target or goal for military action would be if strikes were to be authorized by the president.
Paul told ABC that while the protests, which are now nearing a third week, are a sign that many Iranians are tired to living under the current regime, there isn’t enough evidence that they were calling for or wanted U.S. intervention of any kind.
“I don’t think it’s the job of the American government to be involved with every freedom movement around the world,” Paul told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. “I think the protests are directed at the Ayatollah, justifiably so, and the best way is to encourage them and say that, of course, we would recognize a government that is a freedom-loving government that allows free elections. But bombing is not the answer.”
“[W]hen you bomb a country, then people tend to rally around their own flag,” Paul said. “They tend to see this as the — you know, a foreign country coming in and bombing us. And so, I don’t think it always has that [intended] effect.”
Paul was one of five Republican senators who broke party lines to support a War Powers resolution aimed at restricting Trump’s military campaign against Venezuela on Thursday, causing the measure to pass the Republican-controlled Senate in a rare victory for Democrats.
One of Paul’s colleagues, Sen. Lindsey Graham, has called for the U.S. to directly support protestors as the death toll continues to climb amid a security forces crack down.
Trump himself issued a pair of statements on Truth Social vowing to support Iranian protesters in the event of a violent crackdown, which seems to have occurred in many areas.
Graham is publicly and privately urging Trump to take action to topple the Iranian regime, of which the South Carolina senator has been a vocal critic on the Hill for years. During both of Trump’s presidency, the senator supported military action against the Iranian government including the killing of Revolutionary Guard chief Qassem Soleimani and, years later, targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Trump is also seeing calls for intervention from the likes of Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed former Shah of Iran. Pahlavi now lives in northern Virginia. He has publicly encouraged the protesters and his supporters (largely in the U.S. and Europe) claim that demonstrators are pining for his return.
Other Iranian dissident groups like the MEK-linked National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) have amplified the protests but do not support military action by the U.S., calling instead for countries to expel Iranian diplomats and shutter the regime’s embassies.
Last week, Paul didn’t take a position when asked by The Independent whether he would also support a War Powers resolution introduced by Sen. Ruben Gallego that would prevent the administration from going to war over Greenland. On Sunday, however, he said that a similar or greater level of resistance existed in the Senate against that idea.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in Greenland for it, but you’d also be hard-pressed to find somebody in Washington who’s for a military invasion on either side of the aisle. So, I think there’ll be enough pressure to stop it. But the problem is, is they keep rattling the saber,” Paul said on Sunday.
Adding that he didn’t dispute that there were reasons for the U.S. to consider purchasing Greenland, the senator added that Trump’s rhetoric made that prospect much harder.
