The United States would be in a "very different place today" with Iran had its missiles hit their intended targets in Iraq earlier this week, as there is "no doubt" Iran wanted to kill Americans, but thanks to the "incredible dedication" of forces on the ground and advance warnings through the intelligence community, there were no casualties, Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday.
"All the credit goes to our team, our military on the ground, because there is no doubt in my mind that when the Iranians fired those missiles, they were intending to kill Americans," Pence told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade on "Fox and Friends," pointing out that he and his wife visited the Al Asad air base in Iraq, one of the Iranians' targets, on Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump made it clear in his speech Wednesday morning, after the Iranian missile attacks, that "we are ready for anything."
He noted that the president took "decisive action" after the attack on Dec. 27 that killed an American contractor, conducting airstrikes on five northern Iraq militia facilities and then ordering the airstrike that took out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the "leading terrorist in the world."
"We have made it very, very clear that not only does America have the capability in the region militarily, but we have a commander in chief who is willing to use military force," he said. "We are going to remain vigilant but I think thanks to the president's leadership and extraordinary work in the region the world is safer today and American personnel in the region and America are safer, too."
Pence, also appearing on NBC's "Today," told show anchor Savannah Guthrie that on Tuesday, the military took far more action than "simply hunkering down" when it got the news of the impending missile attacks, and also said Iran had intended to kill Americans.
"Our military personnel repositioned people, we repositioned assets," he told Guthrie. "We also made it very clear that as President Trump said in his tweets and his statements, that any loss of American lives would be met with strong repercussions and a strong military response."
He also defended the decision to take out Soleimani to Guthrie, who questioned if the threat of an imminent attack that had been reported is now gone.
"The threat of Soleimani's leadership is gone," he told her. "Make no mistake about it. For the last 20 years, Qassem Soleimani led the Quds Force, the IGRC, the terrorist arm of Iran."
He also told Guthrie that by all information the White House has, Iran is continuing to stand down, but "our readiness level continues at the same level."
"The president said yesterday we hope for better things in our relationship with Iran," Pence said. "If Iran will abandon its long history of sewing terrorist violence across the region, abandon its nuclear ambitions, we can have a fresh start with the Iranian people and the Iranian government. We do not seek regime change, but we seek for the regime in Iran to change its behavior and join the family of civilized nations and bring an end to this violence and the threat of nuclear proliferation that they've been pursuing in the region."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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