There’s something profoundly broken when an elected United States senator can type “Awesome” in response to news that Iranian vessels successfully evaded American military enforcement and the only real surprise is that people are still surprised.
Chris Murphy did exactly that. The Connecticut Democrat saw a report about 26 ships from Iran’s shadow fleet slipping past the US blockade in the Gulf of Oman and his reaction was to celebrate it. One word. Awesome. Like he’d just watched his favorite team score a touchdown, except the team wearing his colors was the Islamic Republic and the losing squad was us.
You know what’s remarkable here? This isn’t some fringe Twitter personality or campus activist with a Che Guevara poster. This is a sitting US senator with actual power over foreign policy, defense appropriations, and intelligence oversight. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. He helps decide how we engage with the world’s most dangerous regimes. And when America’s adversaries win, he cheers.
The backlash was swift and deserved. Social media lit up with accusations of treason. People asked if his account got hacked because surely no American senator would openly root for Iran against American interests. But here’s the thing. Murphy’s tweet wasn’t an aberration or a moment of poor judgment. It was perfectly consistent with years of his Iran policy positions.
This is the same senator who’s spent the Trump presidency attacking every move toward holding Tehran accountable. He opposed maximum pressure sanctions. He criticized the elimination of Qasem Soleimani, the terrorist mastermind responsible for hundreds of American deaths. He’s consistently positioned himself as Iran’s most reliable defender in the Senate, wrapping his advocacy in the language of diplomacy and restraint while the mullahs fund terrorism across the Middle East.
Murphy’s defenders will claim he was being sarcastic, that he meant the opposite. Fine. Let’s accept that charitable interpretation for a moment. That means a senior senator thought the best way to criticize American foreign policy was to post something indistinguishable from genuine celebration of an enemy’s success. The judgment there isn’t much better than the alternative.
What this really exposes is the intellectual bankruptcy of the progressive approach to national security. There’s this persistent delusion on the left that American power is the problem, that if we just retreat and apologize and let bad actors do what they want, somehow peace will follow. Iran isn’t a misunderstood partner seeking dialogue. It’s a theocratic regime that chants “Death to America” as official policy, that arms proxies across the region, that’s racing toward nuclear weapons capability.
The shadow fleet Murphy inadvertently or deliberately celebrated? Those ships carry oil that funds Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas. They generate revenue that pays for the drones and missiles targeting American troops and allies. Every ship that breaks the blockade is a win for terrorism and regional instability. That’s what he called awesome.
This moment matters because it crystallizes the choice Americans face on foreign policy. Do we stand firm against adversaries who mean us harm, or do we elect people who find creative ways to justify their victories? Do we project strength that deters aggression, or do we signal weakness that invites it?
Murphy went on television recently claiming Trump is engaged in a “deliberate campaign” to “increase violence” in the United States. The irony is almost too much. Here’s a senator whose Iran policy would empower a regime that literally sponsors violence against Americans, accusing the president of warmongering for actually defending American interests.
The word traitor gets thrown around too easily these days. But when an American senator celebrates an enemy’s success against American military operations, what else should we call it? At minimum it’s a catastrophic failure of judgment. At worst it’s something much darker. Either way, Connecticut deserves better representation and America deserves senators who remember which side they’re supposed to be on.
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