KT McFarland: No matter what the United States does militarily against militia groups in the Middle East, attacks on U.S. interests will continue unless the money supply to Iran is shut down.
KT McFarland, a deputy national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, told Newsmax on Saturday after the U.S. retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria.
She explained on "Wake Up America Weekend" that the objectives should include degrading militia groups in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and other locations and then to change Iran's behavior in supporting their actions.
"You always want to follow the money," she said. "Iran probably has $100 billion in windfall profits beyond what they had in the Trump administration, partially because Biden's war on American fossil fuels pushed the price of oil up."
Biden also does not enforce Trump-era sanctions on Iran, allowing it to sell its oil overseas, bringing in money to pay for their proxies' attacks, said McFarland.
"Whatever we do militarily unless you follow the money and shut down the money supply, Iran is going to keep doing this," said McFarland.
She noted she's been working with governments and foreign policy since late President Richard Nixon's administration, and knows that Iran has had the same two goals for the past 45 years: to gain control of the Middle East and destroy Israel.
"The goals have not changed," she said. "The tactics have changed."
But the Biden administration isn't doing anything to "degrade those choices," or to stop the militias, said McFarland.
"They're not changing Iran's behavior," she said."They're probably encouraging this war to continue and escalate, the very thing they don't want to happen, but it might just happen."
Meanwhile, if the Biden administration changes its attacks from hits on Iran's proxies to hitting Iran itself, that increases the threat of Iran developing and using nuclear weapons, McFarland said.
"We never seem to get that part of it right, so I would rather see out of us a response that telegraphs to them that they better change their behavior, that they're going to go bankrupt and their own people are going to overthrow them," she added.
But already, Iran's leaders are pointing to Friday night's military strikes and saying that while President Joe Biden and Americans say they don't want a bigger regional war, now that American soldiers were killed, all options are on the table, said McFarland.
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