During an interview aired on Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) said that we haven’t put Iran’s regime into a box yet and while he believes that the economic strategy can work at breaking Iran’s economy, we have to either “increase military force to achieve very specific objectives that [put] Iran in that box” or “declare victory, and walk away from the situation” because “By continuing to pursue limited conflict with the hopes that we’re going to somehow, over time, change things and achieve unlimited results, that has never played out in our history before, and it’s quite dangerous for the strategic interests of the United States.”
Harrigan said, “Well, look, you have to put the Iranian regime in a box that, we have, at this point, failed to put them in, which is a decision-making box where they have only a binary choice to make. On one hand, they can choose to use the limited resources that they have left to continue to pursue red lines that are intolerable to the United States and its Western allies or it can actually take care of the 92 million people in Iran who are not members of the IRGC, that are just regular people that want safety and stability for their families, economic opportunity. And if the regime doesn’t provide that, they’re going to run the risk of staying in power six months, twelve months or 18 months down the road. We have not set the conditions for the Iranian regime to have to make that decision. Until we do, we are not going to achieve anywhere near those unlimited outcomes that I think we’re trying to achieve.”
Host Anderson Cooper asked, “Do you believe the — kind of the economic strategy, which the administration now seems to be pursuing or talking about pursuing, you don’t believe that’s going to be effective enough without unlimited military involvement?”
Harrigan answered, “No, I think that it has a chance of actually being effective. And I will say that I’m a big fan of the administration communicating exactly what that strategy looks like today. We’ve heard that the Iranian economy is now suffering 70% inflation. Its currency, the rial, is at a record low, 2.2 million to $1. And its oil exports have collapsed from 1.7 million barrels a day to roughly a quarter million. And I think when you juxtapose that against America’s private sector demand growing at [a] 4.2% annual rate this last quarter, and you have the question of whose economy is going to outlast the other, I’d certainly bet on the American economy standing strong while the Iranian economy breaks. But, up until today, we’ve not heard that articulated from the administration. They need to keep communicating like that.”
Cooper then asked, “So, in terms of military action, what would you like to see?”
Harrigan responded, “Well, I think there’s a choice, and the administration has to make this choice, right? We cannot risk a forever war. That is something that no American wants, none of my constituents want, certainly, none of us in Congress, Republican or Democrat, who are veterans of the global war on terror and watched what unfolded in the first 20-plus years of this century, we don’t want a forever war. And so what you can’t do is you cannot do just enough not to lose, but not enough to win. So, we have to decide, are we going to increase military force to achieve very specific objectives that [put] Iran in that box? Or are we going to take the tactical victories that we have actually achieved in this conflict, declare victory, and walk away from the situation? We have to make one of those two decisions. By continuing to pursue limited conflict with the hopes that we’re going to somehow, over time, change things and achieve unlimited results, that has never played out in our history before, and it’s quite dangerous for the strategic interests of the United States.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett