Wicker: U.S. must deal directly with Iran

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said the Biden administration should address Iran’s culpability head on.

“And we can do this without going to war against Iran,” said Sen. Wicker on March 7 during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on the fiscal year 2025 defense authorization request and the future years defense program.

“China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are banding together,” said the senator, the highest-ranking Republican on the committee. “They hope to weaken American resolve and shift the global balance of power away from the United States.”

Sen. Wicker led his colleagues in examining the U.S. military’s posture in U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) as U.S. forces deal with aggression on multiple fronts from Iranian proxies.

In his opening remarks, Sen. Wicker said that most of the instability in the Middle East continues to come from the Biden administration’s unwillingness to confront Iran directly.

“The administration spent its first three years offering Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief to restore the Obama-era nuclear agreement,” he said. “President Biden ordered minor counterstrikes on Iran’s proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, apparently hoping to manage escalation through pinprick responses. 

“This approach has failed and will fail, because it assumes that we can deter terrorist groups without causing pain to their chief sponsor, Iran,” added the lawmaker. 

Sen. Wicker also noted that China and Russia are both making major inroads into Africa, using the continent as a means to project power against U.S. global influence.

“They use the region to flex their muscles, undermine western influence, and bolster their economic interests,” he said. “Beijing and Moscow do all this through exploitative practices that often come at the expense of African communities.”

The United States must maintain sufficient force posture and resourcing in Africa to support its national security interests there, said Sen. Wicker, and must develop more effective non-defense tools in Africa, including the ability to use private-sector financing in non-development contexts through the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital.

“The world has changed drastically since the publication of the National Defense Strategy,” he said. “This is particularly true in the Middle East, but the strategy that drives our investments and force posture in both these command theaters must reflect those changes.”