House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) publicly panned the idea of working with Iran to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, even though the Obama administration has said it’s open to the idea.
“We must do effective counterterrorism because the ISIS or L, whatever you want to call them, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, for one title, really is a counterterrorism challenge for — a terrorism challenge for us. And we have to do what is necessary,” Pelosi said yesterday at a press conference.
“That is different from being engaged in a sectarian war in Iraq, what is in our national interests in terms of counterterrorism. I’m not one who is interested in working with Iran on this. I think you have to be open to where you can get support for things, but I don’t have the confidence level — right now we’re trying to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon,” she added. “That can’t happen.”
“The funny thing — funny is not the word. Funny in terms of peculiar, odd, strange thing that here we are talking about, cooperating with Iran in terms of Iraq, possibly cooperating. I’m not advocating it.”
Pelosi added that “for so many years it was the Iran-Iraq War, they were a check on each other.”
“On the basis of false information willfully presented to the American people, we go into Iraq, free Iran to be Iran,” she continued. “No more border problems with Iraq, acting in a way to support terrorists in Syria, you know, problem all over, including our own development of a weapon of mass destruction, and they’re free and clear because we took out their main — the main check on them, which was Iraq.”
“So I’m not one who would be in a hurry to be having a conversation with Iran about this. I’m concerned that they think we’re going to go in and then they’re going to go in after us, but we’re not going to go in.”
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