Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera advised President Donald Trump in a Tuesday night Twitter post to avoid an escalation with Iran.
“Take apparent absence of US casualties as important intentional gesture by Iran,” Geraldo tweeted. “@realDonaldTrump recognize this as step in right direction. They could’ve targeted barracks etc. Seize initiative to counsel further restraint. No escalation. Don’t make mistakes you once criticized.”
Take apparent absence of US casualties as important intentional gesture by Iran. @realDonaldTrump recognize this as step in right direction. They could’ve targeted barracks etc. Seize initiative to counsel further restraint. No escalation. Don’t make mistakes you once criticized
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) January 8, 2020
Rivera’s exhortation comes as over a dozen missiles fired by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck two Iraqi military bases that hosted U.S. military service members. The strike was admittedly in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike on Jan. 2 that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani near a Baghdad airport.
So far, no U.S. service members have been reported dead or wounded from the strikes, leading to speculation that it could have been a deliberate miss. (RELATED: ‘They Are Liars, And They Don’t Care About You’: Tucker Warns Of ‘Reckless And Incompetent’ Proponents Of War With Iran)
After the strike that killed the Iranian general, Rivera expressed his concern during a dramatic Friday morning discussion on “Fox & Friends.”
“This is huge,” he said. “That does not mean to say that I believe that this was a smart move. I think that what we have done, we have been fighting bees. Bees have been swarming all over us. We swat ’em here, we swat ’em there. They attacked our bases, they took out the contractor, they wounded a bunch of other people, they’ve killed a lot of people over the years. What we have done is killed the Queen bee, the hive is now busted open. I fear the worst. I think that what we have done is unleash the bees to keep that metaphor going.”
Others, notably Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, have also encouraged the president to avoid an escalation that could eventually lead to a war with Iran. The anti-interventionist Kentucky senator used Twitter to lament “feckless intermittent eruptions of violence w/ no clear mission for our soldiers” after the drone strike that killed Soleimani.