The two Iowa Republicans who serve in the U.S. Senate are expressing support for President Trump’s objectives in Iran and for the soldiers involved.
Senator Joni Ernst said President Trump “is standing up for American lives that have been taken…by the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies.” Ernst, a combat veteran, said Trump’s decision to strike Iran “will bring peace and stability to the Middle East and the world.” Senator Chuck Grassley said Trump gave Iran “plenty of time” to negotiate and “regime change is badly needed,” according to Grassley. Grassley added that the U.S. cannot allow “unpredictable leadership in Iran” to have a nuclear bomb.
Third District Congressman Zach Nunn said as a combat veterans, “I do not take military action lightly,” but Nunn said Iran “slaughtered thousands of Iranians who bravely stood up against the regime” and the future of Iran “rests in the hands of the Iranian people.” First District Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who served a nurse in the Army, said for decades Iran “sponsored terrorism…and openly threatened to obliterate the United States” and the world “cannot allow a nuclear armed Iran,” but Miller-Meeks also said the U.S. “cannot rush blindly into another endless conflict” and she looks forward to “a full briefing on what comes next.”
Fourth District Congressman Randy Feenstra, who’s running for governor, called Iran’s nuclear ambitions “dangerous” and he agreed with President Trump “that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and this operation works to prevent that from happening.” Second District Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, said Iran has been run by tyrants and the operation “makes clear that the U.S. will not sit down while Iran threatens our troops, our allies including Israel, or our homeland.”
The two Democrats who are competing for the chance to face Hinson in the General Election are both expressing reservations about a prolonged war with Iran. State Senator Zach Wahls said his generation “grew up witnessing and experiencing the horrors of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars” and congress must act to keep the U.S. from “being dragged into another foreign war of regime change.” State Representative Josh Turek said “while there is no question Iran’s regime is brutal and repressive, bombing Iran is not the same thing as bringing lasting change” to Iran and Turek said Washington has again shown it’s “quicker to send working class kids into combat” than do anything to make their lives at home easier.
Republican Jim Carlin, who is also running for the U.S. Senate, has not issued a statement about Iran.
