“What happened last night, in my estimation, isn’t about starting another forever war in the Middle East, it’s about ending the longest one.”
Victoria Coates, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, discussed Saturday’s military action against Iran with Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo.
Her interview has been slightly edited.
Maria Bartiromo: With me now is former Deputy National Security Advisor, Victoria Coates. Victoria, your reaction?
Victoria Coates: What happened last night, in my estimation, isn’t about starting another forever war in the Middle East, it’s about ending the longest one. 50 years, this has been going on with Iran. And last night, the president demonstrated that he’s not going to stand for this anymore after giving diplomacy every chance. He showed the Ayatollahs that he can reach out and touch them anytime.
We have these extraordinary stealth bombers, $2 billion, a plane that got in and out of there before they even knew what was happening. And he’s made it clear this isn’t about regime change, this isn’t about some kind of social engineering experiment, this is about ending a war and getting to the negotiating table to create peace.
Bartiromo: What kind of a reaction are you expecting from Iran?
Coates: The Iranians have very few cards, and the one that really stands out for me is this threat to close the Strait of Hormuz where all the oil tankers go in and out. We had a week earlier in June when the United States did not import a single barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia.
That’s only happened once in the last half century. That’s because of the shale revolution and President [Donald] Trump’s policies during the first term. So it’s not a kill switch in the hands of the Ayatollahs anymore. This is a card that President Trump can play.
Bartiromo: Yeah. This is a message, obviously, to the Iranians who, as you say, President Trump gave a lot of time to come to the negotiating table, but it’s a message to others as well. Is it not?
Coates: Absolutely. If I’m [Chinese] President Xi [Jingping] or [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin, I am saying, holy cow, this morning. We didn’t know they could do that. And we had over a hundred planes involved.
And all of this comes from the president though, Maria. Imagine trying to do an exercise like this under President [Joe] Biden, it simply wouldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen. We had messes like Afghanistan. You talk about America’s back, that’s what happened last night.
Maria Bartiromo: What do you want to say about the actual operation, the decoy, the president directing the military to set up those jets from Missouri to cross the Pacific, and then no one expected that other jets and the stealth bombers came from a different area?
Coates: Now, that’s the one thing that got my spider sense up when I got a text from my brother saying, “Why are we telling people the B-2s are in Guam? They’re stealth. They’re not supposed to know where they are.” And I thought, well, that is weird.
And he apparently has better information than I do, but I think it was just masterful the way this was coordinated. And this is why it’s so important the president has his team, Secretary [of Defense] Pete Hegseth, [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan] Kaine handpicked by him who he trusts, who are enormously competent to carry off this kind of complex, really unprecedented operation. That was just such a massive success for the US military.
Maria Bartiromo: Are you expecting any issues from operatives operating in the United States right now, Iranian sleeper cells?
Coates: That’s the greatest concern, Maria. They are here, they are active, and that’s what we need the FBI director, Kash Patel, to be keeping after for all of our safety.
