TEHRAN - Democratic candidate and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has weighed in on foreign policy and her performance in the first primary debate on Thursday’s edition of FNC’s ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’ 

Gabbard said a war with Iran would make the Iraq War look like a “picnic,” according to a report of the interview posted on ealclearpolitics.com.

“The neocons in the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu have created a situation where it's going to be very difficult for President Trump to avoid a war with Iran,” Gabbard said.

“This is why the neocons hate you more than anybody,” Carlson told Gabbard.

Gabbard responded by saying, “We hear a lot of politicians say the same argument that we've got to stay engaged in the world otherwise we'll be isolationists as though the only way the United States can engage with other countries is by blowing them up or strangling them with economic sanctions by smashing them and trying to overthrow their governments.”

“This is exactly what's wrong with this whole premise and the whole view in which too many politicians, too many leaders in this country are viewing the United States role in the world. How about the United States be a leader in the world, work out differences and build relationships with negotiations and diplomacy and finding common interests and seeing how we can work together so that we can stop sending our men and women in uniform into harm's way serving in missions that do not serve the interests of the American people that make our country look less safe and end up causing more harm and more damage to the people in the countries where we wage these wasteful regime-change wars.”

The presidential hopeful added, “A war with Iran would make that war with Iraq look like a picnic. Escalating these crippling sanctions, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, designating Iran's military as a terrorist organization, something unprecedented, and continuing to deploy more and more U.S. troops. The neocons in the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu have created a situation where it's going to be very difficult for President Trump to avoid a war with Iran.”

“They have built all the building blocks, placed the dynamite and lit the fuse. And it's going to be up to Donald Trump and his leadership whether or not he is going to cut that fuse and say, hey, we need to get back on track and put the interests of the American people in our country first and avoid a war with Iran. Get back in that Iran nuclear agreement.”

Trump has imposed a series of tough economic sanctions on Iran since he pulled out of the landmark international agreement on the country’s nuclear program in May 2018.

Waiting a year for other parties to the 2015 deal to move to save it, Iran responded in May by restricting some of its commitments under the agreement.

Iran has indicated that it will step up nuclear enrichment if it is not protected from American sanctions.

Tensions between Iran and the United States escalated earlier this month after Iran shot down an intruding American drone above its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.

Facing growing criticism over his policy on Iran, Trump said hours after the drone incident that he had abruptly cancelled a counter attack merely out of concerns for civilian lives.

SP/PA