A former National Security Council official from the Bill Clinton administration claimed over the weekend that former Vice President Kamala Harris would not have had the “courage or fortitude” to strike Iran’s nuclear program if she were commander-in-chief.
“I’m not a blind tribalist and am perfectly comfortable praising President Trump for bold and courageous actions in support of America’s core national interests, as he took last night,” Jamie Metzl, a vocal critic of Trump and a self-described Harris voter, wrote on X.
“Although I believe electing Kamala Harris would have been better for our democracy [and] society,” he went on. “I also believe VP Harris would not have had the courage or fortitude to take such an essential step as the president took last night.”
On Saturday, the US attacked Iran’s Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites with B-2 stealth bombers and Navy Tomahawk missiles in a dramatic attempt to ensure the theocratic regime does not obtain an atomic weapon.
An official damage assessment hasn’t been made public, though Trump has already claimed that “monumental damage” was done to those facilities.
Metzl, who also served as Sen. Joe Biden’s deputy staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, further warned about the dangers of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Iran has been at war with the United States for 46 years. Its regime has murdered thousands of American citizens,” he stressed. “Its slogan, ‘Death to America,’ was not window dressing but core ideology.”
“It was racing toward a nuclear weapon with every intention of using it to threaten America, our allies, and the Middle East region as a whole. No actions like this come without risks, and I imagine the story will get more complicated over time, but that’s why these types of decisions are complicated.”
In addition to his roles in the Clinton administration and the Senate, Metzl served as a United Nations human rights officer and is currently a member of the World Health Organization advisory committee.
Since launching his first presidential campaign in 2016, Trump has long maintained that the US cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
During the 2024 campaign, Harris described Iran as America’s “greatest adversary” and said all options were on the table to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuke.
Trump greenlit the bombing campaign on Iran just over a week after Israel launched a series of preemptive strikes on the regime to degrade its military capabilities and nuclear program.
Many military experts said the US was needed to take out the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, which is cut deep into a mountain.
The Air Force dropped 14 30,000-pound GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators — known as “bunker-buster” bombs — during Saturday’s attack.
