Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., issued a press release on Thursday in which he declared that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ‘wrong’ in the past and is again now.
In the statement, Sanders pointed to comments Netanyahu made while speaking about Saddam Hussein at a U.S. congressional hearing in 2002.
Netanyahu said at the time that ‘if you take out … Saddam’s regime,’ the move ‘will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.’ He said that there was ‘no question whatsoever’ that the Iraqi leader was pursuing the ‘development of nuclear weapons.’
‘Netanyahu was wrong. Very wrong. The war in Iraq resulted in 4,492 U.S. military deaths, over 32,000 wounded, and a cost of roughly three trillion dollars. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also died as a result of that tragic war. Netanyahu was wrong regarding the war in Iraq. He is wrong now. We must not get involved in Netanyahu’s war against Iran,’ Sanders asserted in his statement.
President Donald Trump has not ruled out the prospect of U.S. military intervention as Israel targets Iran in a bid to stop the rogue regime from achieving its nuclear weapons ambitions.
‘Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,’ President Trump said, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who read out the president’s comment during a press briefing on Thursday.
Trump has been clear that he opposes the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.