Conflict with Iran was effectively unavoidable, as recent U.S. strikes were necessary to prevent a growing missile threat, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and retired four-star U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday.
Speaking on Newsmax's "Finnerty" on Tuesday, Clark said the geopolitical environment surrounding the strikes is far more politically divided than during NATO's 1999 campaign against Serbia.
"I think we're in a much more partisan political environment, honestly. That's what it is," Clark said. "It was pretty partisan then, and I remember when my flyers were in the air, the Republicans in Congress didn't vote to support it. I thought that was pretty disappointing."
Clark noted that, unlike in 1999, Congress has not moved forward with a resolution opposing the current military action.
"Right now, there hasn't been a congressional resolution that's actually gone forward in opposition," he said. "So, you know, it'll be budgetary support. I think the American people will support what's going on."
Clark also said the confrontation with Iran had reached a point where military action was unavoidable.
"I think this conflict was inevitable," he said. "And the question is, how do we make it as effective as possible?"
He said the U.S. faced increasing danger from Iran's expanding ballistic missile capabilities.
"I think we were at the point where if we hadn't taken action on the ballistic missiles, that within months there would have been so many ballistic missiles with so much more effective that they would have simply been able to take out Israel before we could get enough interceptors in place to really stop them," Clark said.
Show host Rob Finnerty asked Clark to compare the current strikes with the NATO air campaign against Serbia that he led in 1999 under former President Bill Clinton.
Clark emphasized that the two conflicts had very different objectives.
"The campaign in Kosovo was not directed at regime change. It was directed at stopping ethnic cleansing in Kosovo," he said.
Clark said NATO initially attempted diplomacy before launching airstrikes against Serbian forces.
"We'd already had ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and we had tried to negotiate an end to the fighting in Kosovo, and we tried to use air power in a way for coercive diplomacy," he said. "We warned President Milosevic what would happen. He disregarded our warnings."
Clark said NATO escalated its air campaign gradually while also pursuing mediation efforts to end the violence.
"We began our air campaign. And we did. We moved it up gradually. We got escalation dominance," he said.
Clark cautioned that it is too early to declare success in the current conflict with Iran, even after the reported killing of the Iranian ayatollah.
"We don't know where this campaign is going," he said. "I hope it's going to be ultimately successful."
He added that eliminating a leader does not necessarily end a conflict.
"But the idea that you can finish it off by simply taking out the ayatollah, I wish it were true, but we have to deal with the consequences," Clark said.
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