‘Actually Stunning’: MS NOW Host Shocked By Trump’s Former Defense Secretary’s Blunt Critiques on Iran War

MS NOW’s Katy Tur called it “stunning” to hear former Secretary of Defense Gen. Jim Mattis so bluntly criticize President Donald Trump’s handling of the Iran war.

While speaking on Monday in Houston, Texas, Mattis, a retired four-star general who served as secretary of defense in Trump’s first term, argued that there have been great military achievements in the strikes on Iran, but they have not been “matched by strategic outcomes.”

Matis said:

What we’re seeing is a situation where targetry never makes up for a lack of strategy. And by that I mean 15,000 targets have been hit. There have been significant military successes, but they are not matched by strategic outcomes. Now, some of the strategic outcomes early on, unconditional surrender, regime change, we’re going to dictate who the next supreme leader is — those were clearly nonsense. Those were delusional and you don’t hear those bandied about anymore. There are some that have been achieved in the military realm. They no longer have a Navy of any note. They no longer have the numbers of ballistic missiles and the defense infrastructure they had before. But the bottom line is it is not matched by success in the strategic area, and that’s a bad thing. That means that we’re now in a position where either one side or the other side escalates, probably to be matched, and you saw that threat rise over the last 48 hours. It’s been pushed off five days. But right now, we’re in kind of a show me. The one side is saying, you show me that you’re willing to do something that we want. The other side is looking for the same thing in return, and neither one of them is making a move in that direction.

Mattis admitted later he feels the U.S. has gone too far to turn back now and if they did, they could completely lose the Strait of Hormuz where Iran has been targeting cargo ships and attempting to stop the transport of oil. Around 20% of the world’s oil supply moves through the area.

Tur played the “sobering take,” calling it “actually stunning,” and she admitted it played into some anxieties that the Iran war is feeding.

“The world as we know it feels like it’s breaking apart with no one left to hold it together,” she said, blasting the “ruddlerless leadership” of the Trump administration when it comes to Iran, rising gas prices, and more.

Tur said:

It is actually stunning to hear former General Jim Mattis, a man who was Donald Trump’s first secretary of defense, speak so bluntly and honestly about the war with Iran. Over the course of the 45-minute discussion, he explained how badly the Trump administration had misjudged the war, that never in history has air power alone changed a regime, that the American-Israeli strategic objectives remain murky, that Trump’s original stated goals of unconditional surrender and regime change were, quote, delusional. There is no clear winner, he says, and while there are no good options on the table, he also said the United States can’t just walk away.

All in all, it was a sobering take from a man who, before he was defense secretary, spent nearly half a century in the Marines, and retired as a four-star general with leadership roles in the first Gulf War and then the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Now this war and its rudderless leadership is making it feel like the U.S. Is toggling from one crisis to another. Everything everywhere all at once. Gas prices are near $4, ICE agents are patrolling airports after violently patrolling the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago, and L. A., 450 TSA agents have quit rather than wait for Congress to get its act together, air travel seems scarier than ever, tariffs are still up in the air, NATO is hanging on by a thread, China looks both more stable and stronger by the day, climate change is taking its toll from fires to floods, and AI is threatening everything from the coffee barista to the to the coder. The world as we know it feels like it’s breaking apart with no one left to hold it together.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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