(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Mike Turner defended the U.S. war with Iran on Sunday and said that he doesn’t believe an American ground force would be required to restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
“I don’t think U.S. ground troops are going to be necessary in any direct conflict,” Turner told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos after being pressed on whether troops on the ground would be needed to reopen the strait.
“The straits are going to be open,” Turner told Stephanopoulos, but said that the U.S. cannot allow Iran to continue developing missile technology or nuclear weapons that could threaten the American homeland and Europe.
“You have to be able to address this … great sponsor of terrorism, this … global power ambition that Iran has,” he said.
Turner’s comments come as President Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated that the Strait of Hormuz is not the U.S.’s problem.
“The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it. We haven’t needed it and we don’t need it,” Trump said Wednesday in a prime-time address to the nation, adding that it was the responsibility of other countries to secure the strait.
“We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on,” he said.
Turner said that despite the impact of the war on global oil markets, the consequences of inaction from the U.S. against Iran would have been greater.
“Certainly, you know, Iran is going to have some things that they’re going to be able to do during the conflict,” Turner said. “But if you don’t undertake the conflict, if you just step back and watch, as the Obama administration was going to do while Iran became a nuclear power and they became North Korea, we wouldn’t be looking at the Strait of Hormuz,” he added, claiming that if Iran had developed nuclear weapons the world would be “held hostage by a terrorist state.”
“They still are being significantly diminished,” Turner said, “and their ability to be able to be marching toward a nuclear state is being eliminated.”
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