CNN’s Jim Acosta: Iran Missile Attack ‘Exactly What Foreign Policy and National Security Analysts Have Feared’ After Strike on Soleimani

CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta warned that the Iran missile attack on the joint US-Iraqi Al-Asad airbase, in retaliation for a US airstrike that killed Iran’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, was “exactly what foreign policy and national security analysts feared.”

Speaking with Wolf Blitzer, Acosta noted that the rocket attack, which Pentagon officials said was launched from inside Iran, marked yet another escalation in the ongoing military back-and-forth between the US and the Middle Eastern country.

“This president now faces a very critical test,” Acosta added. “He will face perhaps the biggest question of his presidency and that is whether to retaliate and how severely to this apparent Iranian retaliation and we’re going to have to wait and see what happens in the days ahead and the hours ahead.”

The CNN reporter pointed out that Trump himself visited Al-Asad during the Christmas holiday in 2018. “The president’s attention has been gotten by the Iranians,” Acosta explained. “This is exactly what many foreign policy and national security analysts feared here in Washington.”

And it’s not just Democrats who have been critical of President Trump’s brinkmanship—candidate Trump dismissed foreign wars in the Middle East as wasteful and pointless. “By targeting Soleimani, [he] has set this chain of events into motion and the question is whether the president will be able to get on top of it and handle it, without this blowing up into just a full blown military conflict between the United States and Iran, which is obviously not something the president campaigned on when he ran for president in 2016. He campaigned on getting the US out of these kinds of entanglements in the Middle East, but he’s entangled right now.”

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