US Congress disagreed after a briefing: Speaker Johnson said Israel faced an existential threat from Iran and needed US support. Senator Warner argued there was no direct threat to America itself.<\/p>\n
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – A briefing on Operation Epic Fury exposed sharp divisions in Washington, as House Speaker Mike Johnson said Israel viewed Iran\u2019s capabilities as an existential threat and was prepared to act with or without US backing.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters after a classified briefing on Monday evening, Johnson described the recent US-Israeli strikes on Iran as a defensive measure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsrael was determined to act with or without us,\u201d Johnson said, adding that Israel was \u201cdetermined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Israel\u2019s assessment shaped American deliberations and that administration officials had to carefully weigh risks before supporting the operation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had to evaluate the threats to the US, to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region and beyond. And they determined, because of the intelligence that we had, that a coordinated response was necessary,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Johnson added that had the United States not acted, the Trump administration would have faced scrutiny from Congress.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guarantee that if the US had not acted, the Trump administration would have been hauled in by Congress and asked why they waited if they had \u2018existential intelligence,\u2019 knowing that that would happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am convinced that they did the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Sen. Mark Warner, a top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, offered a sharply different assessment after emerging from the same briefing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. It was a threat to Israel,\u201d Warner said. \u201cWe equate a threat to Israel is the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States. Then we are in uncharted territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe have seen the goals for this operation change now, I believe 4 or 5 times.\u201d<\/p>\n
The contrasting statements underscore growing debate in Washington over the intelligence assessments and strategic rationale behind Operation Epic Fury, even as the broader confrontation with Iran continues to unfold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Congress disagreed after a briefing: Speaker Johnson said Israel faced an existential threat from Iran and needed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,13410,3,21,19,22,20,25,47158,228030,24],"class_list":["post-500549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-mike-johnson","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-congress","tag-us-israel-iran-war","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}