Navy Seal: Trump traded Soleimani for failed missile strikes
Retired Navy Seal David Sears lays out Trump's options with Iran after the regimes revenge operations
Retired Navy SEAL David Sears said on “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday that he “would gladly trade [Iranian Gen. Qassem] Soleimani for a couple missile strikes that incurred no U.S. casualties."
Sears made the comment responding to Iran firing as many as 15 ballistic missiles into Iraq in a major retaliation by the rogue regime after a U.S. drone strike last week that killed Soleimani last week, officials said. The U.S. blamed Soleimani for the killing of hundreds of American troops and said he was plotting new attacks just before his death.
No U.S. casualties were reported in initial assessments of Wednesday's attack, a U.S. military official in Baghdad told Fox News.
Sears asked Wednesday, “If there’s [sic] no U.S. casualties, did Iran do deliberate misses? [Ain] al-Asad’s a pretty big airbase so did they deliberately miss?”
IRAN'S SUPREME LEADER CALLS MISSILE STRIKE AT BASES A 'SLAP IN THE FACE,' WARNS IT'S NOT ENOUGH
Sears said he thinks the attacks could have been a “face-saving measure.”
“I think it presents an opportunity, one, to de-escalate and so President Trump could step back, show some restraint,” Sears said. “You had [Iranian] foreign minister [Javad] Zarif’s text that came out that he said, ‘Hey, Iran has concluded revenge operations.’ So if there’s [sic] no further actions on the part of Iran, there's an opportunity to de-escalate and I think that that would be the wisest decision, if all those other factors that I talked about are in place.”
Responding to the attacks, Trump tweeted on Tuesday night writing, “All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good!”
Around the same time, Zarif tweeted, “Iran took & concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens & senior officials were launched.”
“We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression,” Zarif continued.
Responding to Zarif’s tweet, Sears said on Wednesday, “I think the most important word there is ‘concluded.’”
“I think Iran had to respond and they did this as a face-saving measure,” he continued. “They published it and they put it out in their TV networks, all over Iran, showing it and there’s likely going to be rhetoric in Iran, they've killed hundreds of Americans or something, and devastated bases, that’s the hyperbole that they normally use, but the message that he's sending seems to be, ‘We’re done, we’re good’ and in that case President Trump can de-escalate, I think.”
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He predicted Trump would likely "take a de-escalatory tone" and "declare some sort of victory" after the "failed" Iranian missile attack.
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