Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis discussed Hamas' attack on Israel and said that the US needs to be tough on Iran.
"I think the most important thing is that we remain unequivocal in that we’re united as a country in saying, ‘Israel not only has a right to defend itself, they have a duty to defend themselves to the hilt by using overwhelming force,’ because what’s happened for really decades is there will be terrorism against Israel, they will respond, but it’s always Israel gets attacked for responding,” DeSantis told The Daily Wire. "And so they face all these constraints, getting condemned by the UN, Europeans, all these different things, and we just have to be willing to stand with them and say they have to deal with the problem of Hamas."
The candidate called the targeting of women and children by Hamas “evil, evil stuff” and said that the only appropriate response involved using “overwhelming force against” the terrorists.
DeSantis also pointed the blame to Iran and said that the US needed to clamp down on the Islamic Republic: “I think that you need to turn the screws on Iran always, not just in response to this, that should have been what happened for Biden’s whole presidency, he should have turned the screws on them because them getting a financial lifeline whether it’s through their oil, whether it’s through some of the things that Biden’s done, that will be used for bad purposes. It’s a terrorist regime. That’s what they’re going to do. So yes, I would turn the screws on them with every mechanism that we have, I’d make sure that they’re in a box and make it very difficult for them to operate with respect to advancing terrorism in the region.”
DeSantis pointed out that, if adjusted for population size, the terrorist attacks against Israel were “equivalent of multiple 9/11s” and that the attacks were “a mark in history”.
“That region will never be the same as a result of this,” he said. “And Israel will never be the same as a result of this. And so we’ll be standing by, they’re a great ally, they’re a great friend. When I’m president, we’ll definitely have an ironclad relationship, and that’ll be good for the US, it’ll be good for Israel, and it’ll be good for the Middle East.”