And as we consider what has happened domestically in just the last few days, not just the hurricane, but also the dock worker strike, that has not been all the news cycle has brought us. As this campaign enters its final five weeks. Also news from the Middle East. As Ran yesterday launched one hundred and eighty missiles at Israel. Those were largely intercepted. But this is something that was
talked about on the debate stage last night. It was the very first question that was fielded by Walls in Vance and this is sum of what Senator Advance had to say.
Iran, which launched this attack, has received over one hundred billion dollars in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.
What do they use that money for?
They use it to buy weapons that they're now launching against our allies and god forbid, potentially launching against the United States as well. Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the United States, you needed peace through strength.
They needed to.
Recognize that if they got out of line, the United States global leadership would put stability and peace back in the world.
So for more on what's happening in the Middle East, and the paul surrounding it. We turned now to Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who is of course a veteran and a member of the House on Armed Services Committee. Congressman, thank you so much for being with us. We heard that kind of notion not just from Jdvans, but many Republicans yesterday as the attack was on going in in its aftermath, a suggestion that it could have been a
result of this administration being too soft on Iran. Is there any validity in that?
No, I mean, let's just go back in time a minute to the Trump administration and understand what their policy did. They pulled out of the nuclear agreement, which not only kept Iran over a year away from a bomb, but gave us very tight surveillance on exactly what they were doing. So even if you're someone who just believes that we ultimately need to strike them militarily, we had the intelligence back then to know exactly where to hit them.
But Trump pulled out of that deal.
As a result, Iran accelerated its nuclear program so that now they're within just a few weeks of producing a bomb, and Trump replaced that program that deal with what he called a maximum pressure campaign, and his Secretary of Defense testified before our committee on the Hill. He said there
were three goals of the maximum pressure campaign. One to keep them away from building a nuclear weapon, Two to force them to the negotiating table to get a better deal, in three to reduce their support for other militias in the region. On all three counts, Trump's plan failed miserably because they're way closer to making a bomb, they were pushed further away from the negotiating table, and we've seen the effects of their support.
For militias in the region.
So the reality is that our Iran policy is in tatters because of Donald Trump, not because of the Biden Harris administration.
Well, I wonder, Congressman, and welcome back, what you think Israel's next move should be. They're promising a significant response to what happened yesterday, and I just wonder your thoughts here, as a combat veteran marine, what would be considered proportionate, what would be appropriate? I know that the Biden administration is trying to contain this, but should Israel not strike at Iran's nuclear program?
Well, Joe, Proportionate and appropriate are really important questions here, Not just for Israel, but for the United States, because let's be clear, we do not want to get drawn into a war in the Middle East with Americans fighting and dying and taking our eye off the ball in the Pacific where our number one national security threat, something that Democrats and Republicans agree on is with China's threat
to Taiwan. So how do we achieve that while also sending Iran a very strong message that they can't just shoot one hundred and eighty ballistic missiles at Israel, a close ally of ours, with impunity. So there has to be a response, but it has to be a response calibrated correctly to send a very strong, definitive message to Iran but also not start a w war that involves the United States.
I remember back to decisions.
We made in Iraq where when we first by marine unit first showed up in Naja, a town that had been controlled by the army. The army had this uneasy truce with the militants that allowed them free reign in parts of the city. We thought that was totally unacceptable, so we initially made a huge show of force with our patrols right into places the army refused to go in part to draw out the militants, to make them attack us so that when so that then we could respond,
have a fair fight, and ultimately finish them off. That's an example of where we wanted to provoke a response. In many ways, this is kind of the opposite. You want to send a very clear message to Iran, but ultimately it's a message of deterrence, not something that provokes a wider war that's not in Israel's interests nor in the interests of the United States.
President Biden was asked as he was boarding the plane bound for South Carolina today Congressman if he would support an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. He answered no, Is that because it is too great of a provocation.
Well, that's the question, really, and we have intelligence estimates that can try to get at this. What would Iran's response be if we tried to take out their nuclear facilities? Actually, the most important question that we have to ask is how quickly would they reconstitute their nuclear capabilities and would they then just go right to producing a bomb?
Whereas up until now.
Even though they're very close they have the weapons material to produce a bomb, they haven't actually built a nuclear weapon. That's a really important question because I get the fact that it sounds like a great opportunity here, you know, just bomb their nuclear program into oblivion. But what happens
next really matters. And if what happens next is that they very quickly reconstitute their program but actually then have live nuclear weapons because they say, Okay, we learned our lesson, we're not going to let this happen again, then we've
actually taken a step backwards. And that's why the President is being very careful about advising Israel on whether or not to target their nuclear program as opposed to all sorts of other targets like the ballistic missile program that was actually used against Israel.
For this response, Congress, when we had a recent conversation with you about stolen valor and some of the criticisms accusations against Tim Walls misrepresenting some of his military service record, I expected this was going to come up in the debate last night. These are charges that JD. Vance has repeatedly leveled against Tim Walls, and we never went there. And I just wonder what your thought was, if that might be what we call progress at this current moment in American politics.
Well, I'm an optimist, Joe, and I'd like to say that's progress because the debate last night, if there's one thing you can say about it, it was actually quite respectful, and that's the kind of political dialogue that we should see in the United States of America. Now, there were a lot of things that jd Vance said that were simply untrue. I'd love to get not only too respectful, but too truthful when.
We have a debate.
But the fact that they didn't just attack each other's service was certainly heartening to I think many of US veterans who were watching last night.
Well, I think a lot of us were surprised by the true political conversation, substantive policy conversation that these two seemed to be having. But there was not just a military service thing that was avoided on the stage, and maybe that is to the benefit of the American people, but other subjects as well, like the ongoing war in Ukraine. There wasn't even a direct question asked about policy when it comes to China, though the candidates did work that
into some of their answers about other subjects. As we have these foreign policy conversations surrounding the Middle East. Was there something missing last night, Congressman, did the American people need to hear from, say jd Vance what his views were on Ukraine.
Look, I think there's a lot missing because even though political presidential elections are almost always focused primarily on domestic issues, that's usually how presidents win elections. This is an incredibly dangerous time for us in the world. And we've got this conflagration in the Middle East that could explode all overnight into an all out war drawing in the United States. A Siezing Ping could choose to invade Taiwan any day, which would literally start World War three. I mean, we're
talking about war games that predict this goes nuclear. So everybody in the world would be affected by a war in the Pacific. And of course, we have an ongoing conflict in Ukraine that's absolutely devastating, not only to the Ukrainian people, but to economies around the world and to you know, it's a real threat to the future of NATO. Donald Trump is on Putin's side with Ukraine, Let's not mince words. He is on Russia's side in their war of aggression. He refused to even say in his own
debate whether he wanted Ukraine to win. I mean, this is unbelievable, and yes, jd Vance should have been asked to answer that question and explain this horrendous, really traitorous policy that he and his boss have when it comes to the war in Ukraine and the threat that it poses to all of Europe. So that's a very important topic and I sure wish we got into it last night.
Indeed, a couple of other things I wish we'd heard more about. Congressman.
It's good to see you.
Thanks for helping us understand and distill what we saw and heard last evening. Seth Moulton, the Democrat from Massachusetts, beaming and loud and clear in the city of Boston on ninety two nine FM our new signal in Boston