Ex-Biden Spox on Fox Calls on American People to Unite Behind Military During Trump’s Iran War

Former Biden administration spokesman John Kirby, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, joined Fox News’s Martha MacCallum on Thursday to discuss the ongoing U.S. operation against Iran. During the conversation, Kirby urged Americans to rally around the military now that the U.S. is in the war, regardless of whether or not they believe it is justified.

MacCallum began the conversation, “It’s good to have you. I heard you say earlier today that in one of your earliest missions in the Navy, you were in the Strait of Hormuz, protecting it in the Reagan administration. When you look at how much the world has changed, you know, what can you bring to that experience? And the questions that sit before us now—as there are concerns about mining the strait and shutting it down—what can you tell us?”

“The thing that worries me the most right now, Martha, in terms of the strait—remember, the Strait of Hormuz is only 20 to 25 miles wide at the narrowest point, and there’s about a six-mile what we call traffic separation scheme that kind of runs down the middle of it. So it’s a narrow way in and out. It’s a very, very dangerous choke point,” Kirby replied, adding:

But the thing that worries me most right now are the drones. I’m not too worried about the mine laying. You’ve seen that CENTCOM has gone after their mine-laying capabilities. They can’t drop mines from the air. They can only do it from the sea, from surface vessels, and as your reporter just rightly noted, many of those surface vessels have been destroyed.

And my sense is that Central Command has been focused on the Iranian Navy threat quite intensively for the last few days, and I think that will continue going forward. But it’s the drones that can fly low and slow and are hard to detect that can actually help shut down traffic in the strait itself, and that’s a whole different level of complexity to go after because they have thousands and thousands of them. Convoy missions are possible.

The U.S. Navy knows how to do it better than any other navy in the world, and I did do it a long time ago—our capabilities were different then, but it can be done. It’s labor intensive, Martha. It’s resource intensive. It requires a lot of ships and a lot of time, and I would hope that if the Trump administration goes down that route, they are able to enlist the support of our partners and allied navies as well to help share some of that burden.

MacCallum followed up, “You know, I’ve heard a lot of individuals—you know, Condoleezza Rice comes to mind, General Petraeus comes to mind—say that they think President Trump had a lot of guts to make this bold move and that it was the right thing to do to launch this attack in conjunction with Israel. Do you agree?”

Kirby replied, “I think there are a lot of questions the American people are rightly asking about the why now and the impetus to do this. And I’m sorry that there wasn’t more of a public debate and discussion about these decisions going forward. But you know what? We’re in it now. And the military has been very consistent. Secretary Hegseth, General Cain, Secretary Rubio have been very consistently about the limited objectives that they’re going after.”

“And now we’re in. And now I think it’s really important that the nation unite behind the military and make sure that the military has the tools, the equipment, the weapons they need to accomplish these limited objectives and degrade Iran’s military. And I think that’s what we ought to be focused on right now. So you think it was the right thing to do, or you don’t think it was the right thing to do? Post-conflict and what that looks like,” he concluded.

“Do you think it was the right thing to do?” MacCallum pressed.

“I wish we had more—I wish we had more of a public discussion and debate about the timing,” Kirby replied.

“Well, do you think Khomeini would have stayed in his house or would have gone to that morning meeting that day if we had had a lot more discussion about it, John?” pushed MacCallum.

“Martha, nobody’s in front of me in line in hating this regime and what they’ve done to the Iranian people, or to our troops in the region, or to their long history of supporting terrorism. I think the Iranian people deserve better,” Kirby replied, adding:

They deserve a government that is not a state sponsor of terrorism and that is not posing a threat to the United States and our interests around the world. But I think we need to be thinking about this. Exactly what we need to be thinking about is what post-conflict governance can look like, because I don’t see any indication that the regime is going anywhere anytime soon.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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