John Kirby, White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, was confronted Monday about President Biden’s repeated use of the word “don’t” as a warning to foreign adversaries. As Fox News’s Peter Doocy noted, it was a message Biden once again sent to Tehran on Friday, which carried out an attack on Israel anyway.
“John, has President Biden considered maybe beefing up the public Iran posture to be more than just one word?” the reporter wondered.
“You — you’re referring to, ‘don't’?” Kirby replied, insisting they instead discuss “what we did.”
“Let's talk about Saturday night,” Kirby continued. “[Biden] made it clear that he didn't want to see escalation in the region.”
“And yet, there was,” Doocy followed up.
“Let me finish,” Kirby shot back. “[Biden] added military resources to the region right after October 7 and then, when we had an inkling that this kind of thing was coming, he added even more military resources to the region, more destroyers that were capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, fighters — a fighter squadron that was able to shoot down drones and that's what we did. So, you can talk about the ‘don't’ word all you want, but let's talk about what did happen. And what did happen was Iran utterly failed. And if I'm sitting in Tehran right now, I'm betting that President Biden takes it pretty seriously when he says, ‘don't’ escalate, he’s going to act to make sure that you can't, and they didn't. Yes, they fired an unprecedented amount of munitions, but how much of a success that they have, Peter? None. Zero. Very little infrastructure. It was an embarrassing failure for the Supreme Leader for the IRGC.”
Q: "Has President Biden considered beefing up the public Iran posture to be more than one word?"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 15, 2024
KIRBY: "Let's talk about what we did. Let's talk about 'don't' and did. Let's talk about Saturday night." pic.twitter.com/DNuWvXZy99
Israel's military chief said Monday that Iran's attack “will be met with a response," but did not elaborate.