Former US Ambassador to the UN and 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley stated that she believes the US will need to send a special forces team into Iran to remove the country's stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
“That’s probably what it’s going to come down to. I mean, this is a special force mission. It would take about a week to ten days to get done. They know how to do it. It’s dangerous," Haley said in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union program today (Sunday).
“It’s not something that we can, you know, just sit and think is casual. I think they have to do it. But once they do that, they’re taking away literally one arm of the Iranian regime to where they no longer can threaten any of our allies," she added.
Haley also commented on US President Donald Trump's announcement of a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and said that the move does not mean that the US Navy will remain in the area indefinitely.
"I think that this is just a matter of continuing to weaken the regime," Haley said in response to a question about the blockade. "No, we don‘t want an endless war. This needs to be completed fast. And I think Trump is showing he‘s not going to wait around for talks anymore to do this. Keep in mind, we‘ve got a lot of the naval military already there, so they‘re prepared to do this if they can show that they can de-mine that strait, if they can show that it‘s safe to go through, typically 135 ships would go through the strait a day. Now we‘ve got maybe a handful. You‘ve got a backlog of 400 ships. This is affecting the global economy. If the Trump Administration can manage to get the strait open without Iran having any leverage to hold it hostage, that will be a huge feat, not just for the us, but for the region and the global economy."
When asked about the possibility of a run for president in 2028, Haley said that she "will not" run, and added that it is too soon to say who she will endorse for the Republican nomination.