On October 7, 2024, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, boarded Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the United States, heading to New York.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
Vice President Kamala Harris says she considers Iran the United States’ “biggest adversary” in a new interview with CBS60 minutes of overtimeThe Democratic presidential candidate’s choice of Iran over Russia or China underscores the extent to which war in the Middle East has changed the priorities of U.S. foreign policy.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” reporter Bill Whitaker, Harris was asked which country she considered “our biggest adversary.”
“I think there’s an obvious idea, and that’s Iran,” Harris responded. “Iran has American blood on its hands. This attack on Israel, 200 ballistic missiles.”
She added: “What we need to do to ensure that Iran can never become a nuclear power is one of my top priorities.”
Whitaker then asked: “If Iran were building a nuclear weapon, would you take military action?”
“I’m not going to talk about what-ifs right now,” the vice president said.
It is not surprising that Iran has become one of the United States’ main adversaries. For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been locked in an asymmetric Cold War on behalf of the United States.
But for Harris, the fact that concerns about Iran appeared to have eclipsed worries about China, Russia and North Korea, even if briefly, was noteworthy.
Already hostile relations between Iran and the United States have worsened over the past year as a military confrontation between Israel and Iran expanded previously localized operations into a regional war in the Middle East.
Last month, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon, killing hundreds, including Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. The missiles were intercepted by U.S. and Israeli armed forces.
Global financial markets fell on concerns that Israel might respond by attacking Iranian oil facilities, with President Joe Biden discouraging such a move at a news conference on Friday.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018 from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which provided Iran with sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. Iran remains officially part of the deal but has not complied with it since Trump reinstated U.S. sanctions.
The Biden administration is encouraging negotiations on a 2022 recovery deal.
In September, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi stated that Iran was ready to restart multilateral nuclear negotiations during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The White House reportedly said the United States is not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran.
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