Harris says Iran is America’s ‘greatest adversary,’ as Mideast war weighs on U.S. priorities

Vice President Kamala Harris said she considers Iran to be America’s “greatest adversary,” in a new interview on the CBS show “60 Minutes Overtime.” The Democratic presidential nominee’s choice of Iran, rather than Russia or China, underscores how much the Mideast war has shifted U.S. foreign policy priorities.

Speaking with “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker, Harris was asked which nation she considers “to be our greatest adversary.”

“I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran,” Harris replied. “Iran has American blood on their hands. This attack on Israel, 200 ballistic missiles.”

“What we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power, that is one of my highest priorities,” she added.

Whitaker followed up, asking, “If Iran is building a nuclear weapon, would you take military action?”

“I’m not going to talk about hypotheticals at this moment,” said the vice president.

That Iran would be among America’s primary adversaries is hardly a surprise. The Islamic Republic has been locked in an asymmetrical Cold War by proxy with the United States for more than 40 years.

But the fact that, for Harris, concerns about Iran appear to have eclipsed those about China, Russia and North Korea, even briefly, is noteworthy.

Iran’s adversarial relationship with the United States, already set in stone, has been degraded further in the past year as military confrontations between Israel and Iran have expanded what was formerly localized operations into a regional Middle East war.

Last month, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon that killed hundreds, including longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. U.S. and Israeli armed forces intercepted the missiles.

Global financial markets fell on fears that Israel could respond by striking Iranian oil facilities, a move that President Joe Biden discouraged in a press conference Friday.

Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-era Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, which had provided sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for limitations on its nuclear program. Iran is still formally part of the deal, but has not been honoring it since the reinstatement of U.S. sanctions under Trump.

The Biden administration encouraged talks on reviving the deal in 2022. But they collapsed after the White House accused Tehran of providing lethal weapons and training to Russian forces invading Ukraine.

In September, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said that Iran was ready to restart multilateral nuclear negotiations on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The White House reportedly signaled that the United States was not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran.