On the third night of the Republican National Convention, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, and Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg—Pence’s national security advisor—heralded U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel accomplishments.
“Last year, American armed forces took the last inch of ISIS territory, crushed their caliphate and took down their leader without one American casualty,” said Pence at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where America successfully defended Baltimore Harbor from an attack by the British Navy during the War of 1812. “And I was there when President Trump gave the order to take out the world’s most dangerous terrorist. Iran’s top general will never harm another American again because Qassem Soleimani is gone.”
Soleimani, general of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was targeted in a U.S. airstrike on Jan. 3 at Baghdad International Airport.
Pence also remarked that the administration has “stood up to our enemies, and we’ve stood with our allies.”
In his speech in Washington, D.C., Grenell said, “After the end of the Cold War, Democrats and Republicans in Washington bought into the illusion that the whole world would start to resemble America. And so they started to pursue unlimited globalization. They welcomed China into the World Trade Organization. They engaged in ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan and tried to export democracy to Iraq. They signed a nuclear deal with Iran and a global climate agreement in Paris.”
The United States withdrew in May 2018 from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord and reimposed sanctions lifted under it, along with enacting new penalties against the regime.
Grenell went on to warn that “a return to the Biden way of thinking means America gives the radical terrorist regime in Tehran a planeload of cash in the middle of the night.”
“President Trump also sent an aircraft in the middle of the night to deal with Iran. But that plane was on a different mission—an airstrike to take out the head of Iran’s terror machine who plotted the deaths of Americans,” said Grenell, referring to the elimination of Soleimani.
Kellogg, also speaking from the nation’s capital, said the president “demolished the terrorist ISIS Caliphate in the Middle East and eliminated its leader, al-Baghdadi, one of the world’s most brutal murderers.”
Al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. forces in northwest Syria in October 2019.
The opening prayer was given by Rabbi Aryeh Spero, president of the Conference of Jewish Affairs and a longtime Republican. On the live feed by the Republican National Committee, streamed on TV networks and online, his first name was incorrectly featured as “Shubert.”
In his address in Washington, D.C., Spero said, “We pray that God gives strength and health to our president, who has splendidly demonstrated daily his determination to defend and maintain the God-given rights of our citizens, as enshrined in our constitution and our declaration, eloquently passed down through our Judeo-Christian tradition. President Trump has stood up fearlessly against those who are corrupting the term ‘social justice’ so as to deny Americans their birthrights, and these Divine gifts.”
The GOP convention will conclude on Thursday night with a nomination acceptance speech by Trump.