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ICYMI: Granite Post: Kelly Ayotte Spent Years ‘Agitating for Armed Conflict with Iran.’ Now She’s Silent.
In Case You Missed It, a new analysis from the Granite Post details Kelly Ayotte’s years-long record “agitating for armed conflict with Iran.” Confronting Iran was “central” to Ayotte’s “efforts to build a national profile during her time in the U.S. Senate.” Ayotte repeatedly opposed diplomatic efforts with Iran and called the Obama nuclear agreement “an historic capitulation,” yet Ayotte, who “was never quiet about Iran,” has gone “mute” as Trump’s war of choice rages on.
It’s all too convenient that Ayotte hasn’t said a word about Trump’s war in Iran. Gas prices in New Hampshire have risen back up to more than $4 a gallon, and energy prices are through the roof. Nearly two-thirds of Granite Staters believe going to war was the wrong decision, and a whopping 62% of Granite Staters disapprove of Trump’s overall job as president.
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Granite Post: She called for armed conflict with Iran for 10 years. Now it’s here, raising prices, and Kelly Ayotte is silent.
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Few American politicians have built their careers agitating for armed conflict with Iran more than New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte.
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Now that conflict is here, driving gas prices back above $4 a gallon, and recent polling in New Hampshire shows nearly two-thirds of Granite Staters believe going to war was the wrong decision—opposition on par with the historic peaks of disapproval Americans ever registered against Vietnam and Iraq—dragging the approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of foreign policy in the state to the lowest levels of either of his terms.
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Iran’s grip on the strait has been among the most costly US miscalculations of the conflict, with Granite Staters paying for it on every gas pump and heating bill in the state.
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It is hard to overstate just how central confronting Iran was to Ayotte’s efforts to build a national profile during her time in the US Senate in the 2010s. In 2015, she signed Republican US Sen. Tom Cotton’s open letter to Iran’s leaders. It was an attempt to kill President Barack Obama’s nuclear diplomacy in mid-negotiation.
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The backlash at home was ferocious. The Nashua Telegraph called the letter “shameful and stupid.” The Concord Monitor also ran editorials at the time criticizing her decision to sign the letter, saying, “It’s not every day that a United States senator attempts to undermine U.S. foreign policy and weaken the nation in one cursive swoop.” She refused to yield.
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When Obama’s deal was finalized anyway, she branded it “an historic capitulation.”
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Leaving the US Senate didn’t quiet her. In 2019, she joined United Against Nuclear Iran as a senior advisor, a hardline pressure group whose gatherings drew advocates of overthrowing Iran’s government.
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This year, Donald Trump brought the conflict with Iran that Ayotte so desperately wanted. And the politician who was never quiet about Iran went mute.
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When Statehouse reporters pressed her on the war this spring, the Concord Monitor reported, she said questions about it should go to those in DC.
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Granite Post asked her office on June 18 where she stood on Trump’s Iran deal to end the conflict, which pledged a $300-billion reconstruction fund for the Iranian government—a provision so toxic it turned even staunch Trump allies like Ted Cruz against the deal. Ayotte did not respond.
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More than a month later, she still hasn’t.
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With that deal now falling apart and the United States seemingly on the precipice of another forever war in the Middle East, Iran hawks like Ayotte seem less vocal than ever.
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By spring, Republican governors elsewhere were acting. Georgia’s Brian Kemp suspended his state’s fuel taxes in March. Indiana’s Mike Braun followed in April and has extended the holiday ever since, saving drivers roughly 60 cents a gallon. “This is a gas savings [that] is kind of a lifeline through a tough period like this,” Braun said.
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Ayotte declined, saying only that she was “always concerned about the affordability of energy for Granite Staters.”
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