During a recent interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, retired U.S. Navy SEAL Jocko Willink — who was a former commander of the most decorated special operations unit of the entire Iraq War — described President Donald Trump’s recent ordered strike on top Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force general Qassem Soleimani as a “gamble” that nonetheless clearly “paid off” for the president.
“Retired Navy SEAL and author Jocko Willink applauded the ‘gamble’ taken by President Trump in ordering the killing of top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, which was followed by anti-regime protests that erupted on the streets of Tehran,” Fox News reported.
“When you look at it from that perspective you could say that this was a brilliant move to kill a person that was an enemy of America and an enemy of the Iranian people,” Willink said on “The Brian Kilmeade Show,” Fox News wrote.
“Was it a risk to do this operation?” Willink continued. “Absolutely. And if you were to poll everyone that had knowledge about what the conflict is like over there, ‘Hey should we do this or not?’ There would have been mixed feelings.”
Willink then explained how such operations are always a risk, analogizing to the famous Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan to take down 9/11 mastermind jihadist Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda.
“It was a risk to do this just like it was a risk when Obama sent SEALS in to go kill [Osama] bin Laden. That was huge risk,” Willink continued, as also reported by Fox News. “He’s going into Pakistan, he didn’t tell Pakistan what we’re doing. There was massive risk. You know the whole building could have been bombed. That’s a massive risk to do that operation. Pulled it off. Bravo. Outstanding.”
“We don’t know what could have happened. Trump took a gamble and did this, and you know what? From what it looks like right now the gamble paid off,” Willink said as he wrapped up his remarks.
In a Daily Wire op-ed published the day after President Trump’s successfully ordered strike of Soleimani, I wrote approvingly of the “just and proper strike” of “mastermind Iranian jihadist” Qassem Soleimani:
The world has awoken today a safer and more just place. And the unraveling of former President Barack Obama’s pro-Iran regional Middle East realignment, which began with President Donald Trump’s thunderous exitfrom his predecessor’s pro-ayatollah nuclear capitulation, has now reached its logical conclusion.
The Obama Middle East foreign policy legacy is dead. As is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s infamous jihadist mastermind, Qassem Soleimani.
Good riddance to both. …
Qassem Soleimani was a monstrous thug. In addition to the hundreds of Americans killed in Iraq via Iranian-supplied roadside IEDs, Soleimani personally oversaw the jihad-led destabilization of all nations within Tehran’s coveted “Shiite crescent” of desired regional hegemony. He likely is responsible, on net, for tens of thousands of deaths. He was a relentless and unceasing foe of Western civilization, more broadly, though he held a special disdain for the mullahs’ “Little Satan” of Israel and “Great Satan” of the United States.
As The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported earlier this month, Iran hawk Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a formal Senate resolution praising the Soleimani strike. “Senator Ted Cruz wants Democrats to publicly declare their feelings on the Trump Administration’s mission to kill Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani,” Zanotti wrote.