House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast told FNC’s Maria Bartiromo this morning on “Sunday Morning Futures” that he thinks the U.S. naval aramada in the Middle East will go forward and strike Iran.

REP. BRIAN MAST: So I expect, number one, that diplomacy continues. You have Kushner, you have Witkoff meeting in Geneva, trying to offer, here’s the off-ramp. You have to end nuclear enrichment. You have to end ballistic missile program. Stop having the ayatollah kill your people. Stop threatening the United States of America. I don’t think they will take that off-ramp. I think we end up using the capabilities of our two carrier battle groups that are in the region when that timeline hits to say, the threat to America comes to an end. It’s destruction or diplomacy. It’s one or the other. And I think they choose destruction. MARIA BARTIROMO: So, just to be clear, the president has given a deadline of the first week in March. You are expecting a strike from the United States on Iran? MAST: I expect that Iran does not take the diplomatic off-ramp and that it comes to a strike for the president to protect the homeland of the United States of America, which absolutely this is against an imminent threat against the American people. I can give one example of Americans literally killed the end of — at the beginning of 2024, three American service members killed by the hand of Iran while they were in Jordan. That’s one example. Continual attempts to fly drones to our Merchant Marine fleet, drones to our Navy vessels. You name it, they are constantly threatening America. And the president says, no more. This comes to an end. He is always about protecting the homeland and about protecting our people. And this is no different. BARTIROMO: And, of course, we saw him stick to his promises when he tried to give them a timeline to end their nuclear ambitions and ultimately had to direct our military to strike and destroy much of that facility — facilities. MAST: The president told Iran, end your nuclear weapons program. They chose not to do it. He gave a certain number of days. Israel closed the skies over Iran and then America brought in the B-2 bombers, a capability only we had, and destroyed that infrastructure, obliterated it. BARTIROMO: And Secretary of State Marco Rubio is going to be meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel in the coming week. Can you assess specifically what the threat is? What is Iran trying to do? MAST: Iran is doing what they’re always trying to do. Any place that they can use one of their proxies, the Houthis, Hezbollah, arm them, train them and then direct them to kill Americans, they will do it. If they can attack our Merchant Marine fleet or our Navy vessels, they will do it. They constantly chant, as we have all become so numb to, they will say, “Death to America.” They want to kill Americans. But they want the capabilities to kill Americans at an even higher rate with ballistic missiles, with nuclear weapons. And that’s not going to be allowed. And that’s what that whole thing is about, on top of which, again, they’re killing and imprisoning tens of thousands of their people. It’s time, I think, one way or another for this regime in Iran to come to a close. And I think it’s inevitable that this — that there is regime change there. But what we know about this administration, any action that they take, they take it because they meet the trigger of making sure that tomorrow is a better day, just like in Venezuela.

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