House intel chairman says U.S. inflicting mass damage on Iran, mullahs are ‘circling the drain’

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford declared Tuesday evening that President Donald Trump’s military strikes against Iran have inflicted mass damage much quicker than expected and have left Tehran’s theocratic leadership "circling the drain," but he pointedly warned Americans to remain vigilant against terror attacks both on U.S. soil and abroad.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Just the News, No Noise television show, Crawford also sharply criticized congressional Democrats for sustaining a partial shutdown of the Homeland Security Department when the threat of terrorism on U.S. soil had markedly grown as evidenced by a gunman’s deadly attack in Austin, Texas, over the weekend that the FBI is investigating as Iran inspired.

“This is not the time to be playing politics with Homeland Security funding. So look, whatever your politics are, that's fine. I get it. We don't have to agree on everything. But we should agree that this is not the time to be playing games with funding,” the Arkansas Republican said. "...What they've done is they've taken these other agencies hostage when we need them the most. 

“I think we have to assume that there are bad actors here, that we have four years of open borders under President Biden," he added. "And is it reasonable to think that some of those bad actors made it across the border and may have established a foothold here and are waiting for an opportunity, maybe even being directed by Iran or their proxies.”

On the Austin shooting, the intelligence committee chairman said:  “Can you attribute that action in Austin directly to Iran, being handled by or directed by, ordered by Iran? Maybe not. But what you can say is that when they show up with the sweatshirt on that says Property of Allah, and they've got a flag of Iran in their truck, that's probably a sympathetic act, and we may see more of that."

Crawford said he was particularly impressed by the intelligence and planning the United States and Israel conducted ahead of Saturday’s first strikes, saying it was remarkable that Americans had air superiority over Tehran in just 48 hours.

He said it was obvious Iran had suffered mass losses in leadership and command and control in addition to the sinking of their navy, specifically citing the fact that Iran has launched random, scattered attacks on Arab countries that included two – Qatar and Oman – that tried to negotiate a peace deal for Tehran.

Iran’s haphazard response “got a lot of people kind of scratching their heads. It sort of indicates sort of a flailing response by a regime that is essentially circling the drain,” he said.

Crawford also sharply pushed back on Democrats and legacy media pundits who suggested Trump did not have a justification for launching the current operation against Iran.

“There was 47 years worth of predicate here,” he said. “But even if there weren't, we could go back to October 7, 2023. We could go back to, well, I mean, down through history. Look at 1979 when they stormed the US Embassy, took hostages for 444 days, the Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983, the mining of the Straits if Hormuz and the attack on the Samuel B Roberts in 1988 and the Khobar Towers in 1996.”

“I'm missing some. But you get the idea this is a there is a long history of aggressive behavior and attacks against thousands of Americans that you can directly attribute their deaths to Iran. So this didn't happen on a whim. President