America’s Greatest Adversary? Kamala Harris Says Iran Is ‘An Obvious’ Answer

WASHINGTON — Though the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community have long identified China as America’s number one geopolitical challenge, when Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was asked who America’s top “adversary” is, she said one “obvious” answer, right now, sits 5,600 miles west of Beijing.

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But analyst Becca Wasser told Breaking Defense that observers shouldn’t read too much into Harris’s answer as forecasting a change in priorities in a potential Harris administration, as much as a “recognition of what the current challenge is.”

“Maybe that answer doesn’t comport with what the current National Defense Strategy says, but there is the reality of acknowledging the ways in which Iran has, time and time again, complicated US efforts to focus elsewhere,” said Wasser, a senior fellow for the Defense Program at the Center for New American Security.

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Wasser said she wouldn’t have necessarily put Iran at the top of her list of adversaries, but said she didn’t believe Harris was “wrong” that Iran is “an obvious answer for one of the potential threats that faces America today and could face America tomorrow.”

“If you looking at the current threat environment, the current world in which [we] stand, Iran does stand out as truly one of the most relevant adversaries that is actually causing problems for the United States at this very moment,” she said. “You hear a lot about China as a DoD ‘pacing’ challenge, but that is a long-term challenge. And so here I think we have to sort of view her answer in different time frames.”

Wasser also suggested it’s possible Harris may have taken issue with Whitaker’s use of the word “adversary” in the original question, as the Biden administration, including the Pentagon, has attempted to frame American competition with China as just that — a competition, not a conflict.

“It is a US-China strategic competition; war with China is not inevitable,” Wasser said, noting that it’s an eventuality the Biden administration has been trying to avoid “at all costs.”

Read the full article and more from Breaking Defense.