On his podcast The McCarthy Report today, National Review Institute fellow Andy McCarthy said that everything in U.S. policy “should be organized around the idea that we want to turn [Iran] into a starving pariah until their people can rise up and take them out.”
Asked what the U.S. should do in light of the attack on Israel by the Iranian-supported terror group Hamas, McCarthy said a return to Trump’s policy would be insufficient.
“Trump was adamant — and I think this is because this was out of fashion after Bush — . . . that he wasn’t trying to achieve regime change in Iran, he was simply trying to squeeze them to get a better deal at the table. I don’t think you can deal with them. So my position on Iran has never changed. My position on Iran is we need regime change.
“I think, and I’ve been saying this for, I don’t know, since forever, but I think that you have to organize American foreign policy around the idea that Iran is an incorrigible enemy . . . whose regime needs to be gone . . . in order for the American people to have security and for the Iranian people to have any potential of having a decent life.”
He added, “And that if they do anything, if they touch an American anyplace, we ought to be blowing stuff up in Iran. You know, during the whole Bush administration, I could never understand why Iran would sponsor operations against Americans in combat theaters, and we would respond only against the Iranian proxies; as if Iran’s homeland was — because it was — . . . was off limits, it was like a safe haven. To the point where Iran was harboring al-Qaeda’s chieftains in Iranian territory, because that was the place where they’d be the safest.”
“So, I think,” he continued, “the Iranians need to be a pariah. You need to cut them off financially from all American markets. . . . Every single country or financial player who interacts with them should be barred from American markets, and we need to starve them . . . in every single way that we can.”
The McCarthy Report records once a week and is available wherever you listen to your podcasts.