Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich challenged White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Monday in the wake of an attack by an Iranian-backed militia that killed three U.S. soldiers.
“It’s clear, obviously, that ‘Don’t’ didn’t work,” she observed.
The “don’t” refers to a speech that President Joe Biden delivered in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas against Israel, in which he warned Iran against escalating the war:
“Let me say again — to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t.”
The “don’t” was embraced by Israelis, who trusted it as a security guarantee. But Iran appears not to have been deterred by Biden’s posture at all — a fact that both Israelis and Americans are starting to realize.
Heinrich challenged Kirby, who became defensive as he tried to argue that the U.S. had not been a pushover for the Iranian regime — even as he was careful to reiterate: “We are not looking for a war with Iran. We are not looking to escalate the tensions.”
While he acknowledged that Iran had been responsible for the deaths of U.S. troops, Kirby said: “This idea that somehow we just whistled past the graveyard here, and walked away from the challenge that Iran poses, is just not borne out by the facts.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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