Winter Haven resident ID\u2019d among soldiers killed during US conflict with Iran<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve pointed out, for many, many years, that when I was serving in Iraq back in that critical time, 2007, 2008, the U.S. was incurring a lot of casualties at the time, and at the time I was over there, 90% of those were because of the Iranians,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
He said Iran financed and directed Shiite militia groups and named Iranian leaders as their controllers, and he supported the U.S. strike that killed Qasem Soleimani.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were funding and orchestrating the Shia militia groups, Islamist groups. They were under the tutelage of Qasem Soleimani, but ultimately, directed by the Ayatollah.\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was supportive of the Soleimani strike back in the day. And I was glad to see that justice was brought there.\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
Drawing on frontline detail, DeSantis blamed Iran for supplying explosively formed penetrators that drove casualty rates and described a broader pattern of Iranian support for militant groups across the region. <\/p>\n
He tied that activity to historical attacks on U.S. personnel, referenced the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, and suggested Iran has repeatedly sought to harm American leaders.<\/p>\n
DeSantis called Iran\u2019s government \u201ca fanatical, apocalyptic, militant Islamist regime\u201d while expressing hope that the Iranian people might one day be freed from clerical rule and realize the country\u2019s cultural and economic potential. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"YULEE, Fla. \u2013 Governor Ron DeSantis drew on his 2007\u20132008 Iraq service to argue that Iran and Iranian-backed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[1278,34,94,81,4385],"class_list":["post-6940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-florida","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-politics","tag-ron-desantis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116183394680108328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}