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Former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Newsmax on Saturday he doubts warnings of stepped-up Iranian plots against Americans, suggesting some such reports are being “circulated to affect the midterm election.”
Fleitz, who held the post under President Donald Trump and is now vice chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for American Security, spoke on “The Count” a day after Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio a memo warning that “the lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages,” NBC News reported.
“I’m always skeptical of these reports that Iran is stepping up attacks against Americans when it’s already trying to conduct these attacks,” said Fleitz, who spent about 25 years in national security posts at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department and the House Intelligence Committee staff, according to his AFPI biography.
He questioned the motive behind the disclosure. “To some extent, these reports are being circulated to affect the midterm election, whether the CIA knows that or whether they’re trying to meddle in the election, I don’t know,” Fleitz said. A U.S. official confirmed the memo’s authenticity to NBC News.
The State Department has nonetheless acted on the threat picture. It ordered further staff reductions at posts in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan and placed the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia under ordered departure, citing the threat of Houthi attacks and Iranian plots against U.S. officials.
Fleitz pointed instead to economic pressure on Tehran. “I do think we’re seeing an Iran that is under enormous pressure from this effort to strangle its economy by cutting off its trade and oil,” he said, warning that “there may be some extreme efforts by Iran to try to stop that policy.”
Trump said on Oct. 8 that the U.S. naval blockade of Iran would stay in place and that “we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections.”
Still, Fleitz cautioned against treating the memo as a break from the status quo. “I have to wonder how much of this is new,” he said. “I think there’s already been a high level of threat.”
Walid Phares, a Newsmax foreign policy analyst and former Trump foreign policy adviser, said Fleitz’s view “deserves merit” because intelligence assessments are not proof of intent.
“That is not 100% proven that they’re going to take into that direction,” Phares said, arguing that Tehran’s priority is for Trump’s party to lose control of the House so Iran could “go on the offensive.”
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