DORAL, Fla. — House Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republicans said Tuesday the U.S. should not be involved in nation-building in Iran, a day after President Donald Trump called the operation there “the beginning of building a new country.”
“I don’t” support nation-building, Johnson, R-La., said in a fireside chat with NBC News at House Republicans’ annual policy conference in south Florida. “I don’t think it’s our role,”
He added that “America has a very important role to play in the world” and that it is “the defenders of freedom and liberty.”
“Does that mean that we should be intervening everywhere around the world and nation-building and doing all these other endeavors?” Johnson continued. “No, because we don’t have the resources or the appetite to do that. That’s not our responsibility. Our responsibility, in my view, is to project peace through strength.”
Johnson echoed Trump’s appeal to the Iranian people in a
