Chairman Pfluger Joins Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy to Highlight the Success of the Strategic Strikes Against Iran

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman August Pfluger (TX-11) appeared on Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy to commend President Trump and the United States military for their successful precision strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities. Drawing on his combat experience as an Air Force fighter pilot with Middle East deployments, Pfluger praised Operation Midnight Hammer that eliminated Iran's nuclear threat and demonstrated the skill of our armed forces.

Highlights of the conversation can be found below and the full interview can be found HERE.

Chairman Pfluger on the Success of the Tactical Strikes in Iran: "A huge shout out to our forces, to our Airmen, to Secretary Hegseth for the professionalism that they displayed on these missions. These missions are incredibly difficult to fly with the precision that you saw this weekend. Minimal communications joining up at a point in the sky and then carrying out a mission over hostile territory. I've been there. I've been in combat situations. I know many of these Airmen that actually flew these missions last night, especially the F-22 pilots like I flew, but you know, you're facing a variety of unknowns timing. So. the difficulty starts with just getting to the right place at the right time, and then you have to carry out the mission. So proud of what the B-2 was able to do to truly devastate Iran's nuclear capability. The F-22 and the other aircrafts sweeping the area to make sure that there were no enemy fighters, that there were no Surface to Air threats, and when you think about this, the technology that we have is second to none. Congress funded the military decades ago to get to this point, to offer the President the opportunity and the option to be able to use these weapon systems to degrade their nuclear capabilities."

Chairman Pfluger on Increasing Deterrence and Investing in Airpower: "The biggest shout out goes to President Trump on this. He has raised the stock of our deterrence level across the world. It is incredible what he was able to do to use the weapon systems to do something that had to be a tremendously hard call for him to make but to see the success rate and to use airpower, cannot speak enough about airpower, the deterrence of United States of America has rested on airpower for many decades and once again we see not a single shot was fired at the airplanes and we brought everybody back home but we need to continue to invest in airpower. I hope in this One Big Beautiful Bill we can double the funding that the Air Force and the Space Force to make these investments to have deterrence for what the fight looks like tomorrow."

Chairman Pfluger on the Possibility of Retaliation from Iran: "There certainly are indicators and warnings that they will have some sort of  retaliation and I think everyone in the region is in high alert. I trust Secretary Hegseth and the President of the United States...their number one mission is to keep them safe. They're going to follow the procedures and make sure [our military] stays safe. I think we've degraded Iran and I hope whatever the retaliation is that we meet that with full force and the President has levied a warning to them about what that can look like."