Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) criticized former President Barack Obama‘s policies in the Middle East, warning President Joe Biden has copied them.
Cotton appeared on Life, Liberty, and Levin Saturday to analyze Biden’s foreign policy with Israel amid its war against Hamas. The conversation shifted to the president’s overall treatment of other Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, which is akin to Obama’s foreign policy when he was president.
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“From 2009 forward and under Barack Obama first and now Joe Biden — Democratic Party’s Middle East policy has been to elevate Iran and to empower Iran, in part because of Barack Obama’s delusional ideological beliefs that it’s the United States to blame for the tensions our country has had with Iran going back to 1979,” Cotton said. “Not the crazed Ayatollah who took Americans hostage and held them more than 400 days or have been killing Americans in various ways and places ever since. But Barack Obama believed it was Iran that was faulted by the United States.”
Cotton went on to lament that despite the attack from Hamas on Oct. 7, Biden’s policies still haven’t changed from Obama’s.
“This heinous attack has not changed a single thing,” Cotton said. “They’re continuing to waive sanctions, they’re continuing to pay off the Ayatollah, they’re continuing to look the other way on attacks by Iranian proxies on American troops. It is the height of folly and going to lead to mass casualty attack against Americans in the Middle East, not just empowering terrorist proxies to attack Israel.”
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Biden celebrated the deal between Hamas and Israel that induced a pause in fighting and allowed for the exchange of hostages between the two. However, Hamas broke the deal early in launching attacks against Israel before more hostages could be released.
Various Iranian-aligned groups carried out at least 66 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria between Oct. 17 and Nov. 23. While there have been injuries, there are no reported casualties yet.