Chris Wallace invokes Obama to criticize Trump on Iran – Washington Examiner

Fox News host Chris Wallace said that while a forceful U.S. response against Iran will bear certain costs, such as escalating tensions and possible causalities, so will a soft answer to Tehran’s aggression.

“There’s a price to action and obviously that is the possibility of escalation, the possibility that the Iranians could shoot down a U.S. war plane just as they shot down the U.S. drone,” Wallace said on Fox News on Friday. “But there is also a cost to inaction.”

Wallace reminded viewers of Obama’s “red line” and threat of military action against Syria if President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, and his subsequent decision to stand down after Syria did so anyway.

“A lot of people, including Donald Trump as a candidate and even as president, said that there was a real cost to that in terms of the U.S. threatening to do something and then not going ahead and doing it,” Wallace said. “So there’s a cost to action, there’s also a cost to inaction.”

Tehran downed a U.S. drone flying over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, escalating tensions with the U.S. Last week, several countries, including the U.S., blamed Iran for carrying out attacks on Japanese oil tankers sailing through the strait by planting mines on the ships. Iran denied the accusations.

The U.S. military had laid plans to strike several radar installations and missile sites in Iran, but Trump called off the attack after hearing that it would likely kill 150 Iranians. Trump said he thought the response would not be “proportionate.”