US congressman who volunteered with IDF says Iran war reshaping the Middle East

U.S. Congressman Brian Mast, chairman of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee said that he believes military operations currently being conducted by the United States and Israel have the real possibility to reshape the Middle East. 

“I think it absolutely has the reset in this way,” he told ALL ISRAEL NEWS. “One of the most contagious things that can exist out there is freedom, is the opportunity that the United States of America, Israel, and some others across the globe offer in terms of freedom.” 

Mast thinks freedom itself can spread, and he pointed to the courage of ordinary Iranians as evidence. "There are people seeing this on their horizon that haven’t seen this in this way or form before. That is contagious...I think that’s the biggest thing that resets this.” 

Mast says there’s one vivid example of that contagious spirit that’s been in the news recently. “I think most evident to me would be the Iranian women’s soccer team,” he said. “They not only made a protest, and some of them, for various reasons, are not going back into Iran, some of them are going back into Iran. All very courageous decisions, because if they go back, they’re going back to certain death. If they don’t go back, their families are almost facing certain death as well, and so it’s a catch-22 that they’re in, but incredible courage...” 

“They had this taste, this sense that it’s the opportunity to reach freedom for their people and that is contagious. And I think that resets everything in the Middle East, brings more into that fold for Abraham Accords and other things like it.” 

When the conversation broadened from Iran itself to the wider region, Mast made clear he thinks this war may be doing more than weakening Tehran. He believes it may be exposing the weakness of the entire anti-American axis. 

“It is, and it’s really the greatest opportunity that has existed to change the landscape of the globe when you see the world shrinking for China, for Russia, for North Korea because of what’s taking place in Iran, what has taken place in Venezuela, what’s likely to take place with Cuba,” Mast said. 

“It’s showing all of those adversaries. Look, you don’t have a future in the path that you’re taking and it’s showing all of our allies, this is why you’re on the right team.” 

Mast has a unique perspective on all of this. He does not arrive at these conclusions from the seminar room. He arrives there on prosthetic legs. 

Before Congress, he served more than a decade in the U.S. Army and worked as a bomb disposal expert. On September 19, 2010, while deployed in Afghanistan, he was severely wounded by an improvised explosive device and lost both legs. He thinks about it every day. “I think about it when I put my legs on in the morning and set out to walk around the day,” Mast said. 

Then he took me back there. “I remember very vividly when I was injured in Afghanistan...My job was to go into the dark of night as we were looking for high-value targets that we were going to kill or capture because there’s very real evil in this world.” 

“And that was – our job was to dispose of them or at least bring them in and learn something from them,” he said. “And at that time, as I was going out into the dark of night that evening, I found an improvised explosive device in a way that I didn’t want to.” 

After his military service, Mast volunteered alongside the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a decision he has said was rooted in shared values of freedom, democracy, and mutual respect. He is the only congressman ever to have volunteered with the IDF. That chapter is one reason he has become such a forceful pro-Israel voice on Capitol Hill.  

That experience, combined with what happened to him in Afghanistan, will forever shape his life and views, especially when it comes to war. When discussing that horrible day in Afghanistan, he actually sees it as a net positive. 

“The last thing I remember from the evening is when I’m being loaded onto a helicopter,” he said. “And my men, as we’re trained to prevent shock, and you’re going to be all right, you’re going to be OK, that’s something that we do when you’re on the battlefield, and somebody is injured.” 

“And the last thing I remember from that night is them telling me those things and they’re loading me onto a helicopter, and they give me one last salute, and they tell me you’re gonna be okay.” 

“And the fact of the matter is, I am okay today. I am okay today for three very specific reasons. My God, my country, and my family.”