|
|
Nikki Haley on War & Peace |
HALEY: Keep in mind, there would be no Houthis without Iran. There wouldn't be Hamas without Iran. And what truly fueled Iran was when Biden fell all over himself to get back into the Iran deal. When he lifted the sanctions on Iran, it was the most dangerous thing he could have done. When he lifted the terrorist label off the Houthis, that was another thing he never should have done. When Iran and their proxies get cash, it goes to fuel terrorism. And now we have that area of the Red Sea. That's a dramatic part of our global supply chain. And so now that they have started causing trouble there, you know, what we're seeing Biden do is now he's like, "uh-oh, we're going to go put the terrorist designation back on them." And now even if he put the sanctions back on Iran, it's going to take a while to do that.
HALEY: I think that there's a little bit of fault to go around to all sides. The pressure by the American public to get out of wars was important. We had been in Afghanistan way too long. My husband served in Afghanistan; they will tell you, "you can't go and build a new country." And I think that was a terrible mistake. But when you know you want to pull back, you do it in a way that's smart and sensible. Biden wanted to hit it by a certain date. He wanted to do it by September 11.
Q: Trump ultimately negotiated with the Taliban.
HALEY: What Trump did, we never want to see Taliban on U.S. soil ever. No agreement, no anything. I don't want them at Camp David or anywhere. I think it was a mistake to even try and negotiate with the Taliban because this is a group that you can't negotiate with.
HALEY: When I was at the U.N., the two-state solution came up over and over again. And Israel always showed up at the table. The Palestinians always rejected the two-state solution, because they want a one-state solution. The Palestinians don't want Israel to exist. We saw that over and over again. Any discussions we had with them, the Palestinian Authority doesn't want to negotiate with Israel. So all the heat always goes to Israel and people always forget the fact that the Palestinians are saying "no" at every breath. When the Palestinians demand anything, Israel has every right to demand security. Israel has every right to say we don't want terrorists on our border. And so will there ever be a two-state solution? Maybe. But Israel has to defend themselves first.
DESANTIS: When Gov. Haley was at the U.N., she supported the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The problem with that is the Palestinian Arabs don't recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Under no circumstances as president am I going to pressure Israel to risk their security to do a so called two-state solution. She was wrong when she embraced that.
HALEY: When I was at the United Nations, I fought every day for Israel. I said a two-state solution wasn't something that was possible because Israel would always come to the table and the Palestinians wouldn't. But right now, we have to make sure that Israel has the support that it needs. There should be three things. Give Israel whatever it wants to get the job done. Two, eliminate Hamas once and for all. And three, do whatever it takes to bring the hostages home.
HALEY: When it comes to Iran, what we have to understand, there would be no Hamas without Iran. There would not be Houthis without Iran. There wouldn't be Hezbollah without Iran. And when you look at the strikes that are happening in Iraq and Syria, that is because of Iran. They're pulling the puppet strings. We've had over 130 strikes on our men and women in Iraq and Syria is unconscionable. We're supposed to have their backs.
DESANTIS: After the attacks against Israel, anyone with half a brain knows Iran is behind this. They fund Hamas. They fund Hezbollah. We did a special session of the legislature down in Florida. We expanded sanctions against Iran.
Haley: No, I was not saying it's time to bomb Iran. But I dealt with Iran every day when I was at the United Nations and they only respond to strength. What they don't respond to is when you weaken the sanctions like they did on Iran that allowed China to send them billions to fill their proxies, what they don't respond to is when you give $6 billion for five hostages, that only makes them want more hostages. What they don't respond to is when they do 140 strikes on our men and women in Syria and Iraq and we do nothing but just some small shots back. You've got to punch them, you've got to punch them hard and let them know that, that's the only way they're going to respond. So the way you do that is you go after their infrastructure in Syria and Iraq where they're hitting our soldiers.
If China pulled the rug out from under us tomorrow, would we be ready? Think about what happened during COVID. Everybody told you to wear a mask, they were made in China. Everything that happened, if you go to the drugstore, all those medicines are made in China. We have to make sure that we are not relying on China for anything related to our national security, which means let's start focusing on doing deals with our friends now.
So when you're dealing with Russia and China, I'll give you an example. The Russian plane knocked down our U.S. drone a couple of weeks ago. Remember that? What do we do about it? Nothing. You know what I would have done if I was president? Put two drones up there in a fighter jet and put our naval fleet back in the Black Sea because it never should have left in the first place.
HALEY: Obviously this was cumulative. Assad had been using chemical weapons multiple times. But more so, this was about the Security Council resolutions--Russia had vetoed all of them. So we felt like we had gone through every diplomatic measure of talking that we could, and it was time for action. We hope Assad got the message [that] the international community will not allow chemical weapons to come back into our everyday life, and the fact that he was making this more normal and that Russia was covering it up, all of that has to stop.
Q: Are there any consequences for Assad's patrons, Russia and Iran, who continue to protect him?
HALEY: Absolutely. So, you will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down. They will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons used.
HALEY: Because there should never be a time we don't want to lift up countries. There should never be a time we don't want to make them more independent. If we're there all the time, all you're doing is creating dependence. So what we're looking at is you're going to see us wind down. But guess what? We're going to work harder on those areas that truly don't have peace, those areas that are trying to get stability and can't get there.
If we are going into an area like South Sudan, there is a serious problem when we can't get food and medical equipment to those people who need it. The reason we can't get it to them is not just because of extremists. It's because of their own government. When you've got that issue, we actually have to punish the government for not allowing us to bring in aid to those.