Fox Analyst Warns ‘There Still A Lot’ Iran Could Do To Target the US Amid Ongoing Conflict

 

Fox News contributor Dan Hoffman, a former CIA chief of station, joined America’s Newsroom on Monday to discuss President Donald Trump’s stunning announcement that the U.S. and Iran have had “concrete” negotiations toward ending the current conflict, something Iran quickly denied.

Anchor Dana Perino asked Hoffman for his take on what Trump’s announcement means for the operation going forward.

“President Trump saying that he’s instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes for five days, and then followed up by saying that we’re having — I think it was ‘good talks.’ Iran immediately said we’re not having any talks, and that the president is not telling the truth. Obviously, I have plenty of reason to be skeptical of anything the Iranians say. How do you measure it right now?” Perino asked.

“Well, the United States and Israel have decapitated Iran’s leadership, destroyed much of Iran’s ballistic missile capability, their drones, and targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, Iran has demonstrated the ability to continue to launch drone and missile strikes, including at the Diego Garcia base, at a distance farther than many thought Iran was capable of,’ replied Hoffman, adding:

And Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, and I think for every moment the Strait of Hormuz is closed, that’s Iran’s regime demonstrating their resilience. What they’re telling us by doing that is that we can bomb them into oblivion, decapitate their leadership, and force them to go deeper into their security apparatus to find new leaders — but they’re still standing. And they will want to dictate when this war ends and how it ends. At the heart of it, Iran doesn’t want to negotiate with the United States — at least there’s no evidence that they want to — about their ballistic missile nuclear program and support to proxy terrorists.

That is the reason why the United States got into this war at the very beginning. So look, this is going to be a critical week for us, clearly. We’ll stand by for evidence that any discussions are happening. But how the war ends will be as important as how it began and why it began.

“All right. Well, let me show you — you mentioned the United States being able to eliminate many of the notable Iranian leaders. Let’s put them on the board. So here are all of them, and yet they are still able to make decisions. And one of those decisions was to launch these missiles. I can pull up this map here. You mentioned Diego Garcia — so that’s way down, and I believe that would be the Indian Ocean. Am I correct?” Perino continued, adding:

I actually got to go there one time on a refueling stop. There’s nothing there, but it’s a key strategic location. And if you pull up the next map, everybody — Dan, this is what you were telling everyone. Iran is much more capable, apparently, and we don’t know how many missiles they have, of being able to reach other places. So in some sense, Iran could widen this war quite a bit.

“They could, and there’s still more that they could do. Our intelligence community has to be on high alert for Iranian cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure. We also have to be on high alert for Iranian terrorist operations all over the world, including here in the homeland. And remember that the leader of al-Qaeda, Saif al-Adel, has been enjoying sanctuary in Iran. So we have to be on high alert there as well,” concluded Hoffman.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!

Tags:

Alex Griffing is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Send tips via email: alexanderg@mediaite.com. Follow him on Twitter: @alexgriffing