Washington: Republican presidential nomination contender Vivek Ramaswamy said the United States has an outdated interventionist strategy in the Middle East.
“They’re attacking us in places that we shouldn’t have been. Why are we in Syria? Why are we in Iraq? We shouldn’t have been in either of those places,” Ramaswamy said at the Hudson Institute on Tuesday.
Ramaswamy said some bad intentions have been involved in pursuing such a strategy at present, but it is mostly an outdated vision of an “interventionist foreign policy.”
“That put us in a place to be attacked,” Ramaswamy said.
As Israel appears to be moving toward a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the concern grows that it will become exposed to a potential attack from the north by Hezbollah, Ramaswamy added.
On October 7, the Palestinian group Hamas launched surprise attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip. Israel declared war on Hamas and launched massive strikes as well as imposed a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, cutting off supplies of water, food, medicines, electricity, and fuel to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
The escalation of the conflict has resulted in the killing of 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians and more than 5,000 Palestinians with multiple thousands injured.