Leon Panetta, former Defense secretary, White House chief of staff and CIA director, hammered President Donald Trump on Sunday over his handling of the Iran war, telling The Guardian the president was “sending a message of weakness” as he continued to escalate the conflict he initiated.
Panetta specifically criticized Trump for failing to anticipate Iran’s response to U.S. aggression – namely, its move to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping channel, to U.S.-aligned vessels.
“He tends to be naive about how things can happen,” Panetta said, speaking with The Guardian by phone. “If he says it and keeps saying it there’s always a hope that what he says will come true. But that’s what kids do. It’s not what presidents do.”
Given his experience spanning decades as a top official in the federal government, Panetta said it was difficult to comprehend how Trump had failed to predict Iran’s response.
“In every national security council I’ve been a part of where we’ve talked about Iran, that subject always came up,” Panetta said. “For some reason, either they didn’t consider that could be a consequence or they thought the war would end quickly and they wouldn’t have to worry about that. Whatever it was, they were not prepared for it and they’re now paying a price.”
Panetta also fiercely criticized the assassination of Iran’s previous supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in late February in the initial joint strikes from the United States and Israel.
“We replaced an old guy, a supreme leader who was near death at a time when the people of Iran were willing to take to the streets with the hope that they could ultimately change their way of government,” Panetta said.
“And instead today we have a more entrenched regime, we have a younger supreme leader who’s going to be there a while, and he’s much more of a hardliner than the first supreme leader. That didn’t turn out too well.”