MADISON – Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy critical infrastructure in Iran, warning such a move could usher in the “end times.”
Johnson made his comments a day before Trump said in a social media post that “a whole civilization” will be destroyed if Iranian officials do not fully open the Strait of Hormuz, a key choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in a trade route where large amounts of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas travel.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on April 7. A day before, Trump warned he would direct the U.S. military to destroy power plants and bridges if Iranian officials did not comply by the evening of April 7.
“Open the (expletive) Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” Trump wrote in an April 5 post on Truth Social.
Johnson said in an April 6 interview with conservative podcast host John Solomon that he supported Trump’s decision to attack Iran to keep officials there from developing a nuclear program but was “hoping and praying” that Trump’s comments about attacking civilian targets were just “bluster.”
“I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure. I do not want to see that. We are not at war with the Iranian people. We are trying to liberate them,” Johnson said.
“These people are, they are fanatics. They’re apocalyptic,” Johnson said of the Iranian leaders. “They may just be happy to try and usher in the end times. We need to prevent that.”
Johnson said in an April 7 interview with the Wall Street Journal that blowing up infrastructure that civilians depend on would “be a huge mistake.”
“I mean, he loses me if he attacks civilian targets. Whatever we do has to be within the laws of warfare,” Johnson said.
A recent Marquette University Law School poll found 61% of Wisconsin voters disapprove of the war in Iran, compared to 39% who support the U.S. strikes.
That includes 97% of Democrats and 73% of independents who oppose the war. A majority of Republicans, 75%, approve of the war in Iran.
But the poll found divisions among Republican voters on the war.
Among Trump loyalist Republicans, who align most closely with the president, 88% approve of the war, compared to just 28% of Republicans who don’t strongly identify with Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson warns Trump’s threatened actions could trigger ‘end times’
Reporting by Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
