White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared on two news shows on Tuesday, where he said that the death of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri “undoubtedly made the United States safer.”
“He was the man who was the most inspirational figure, the strategic leader, someone who sent guidance regularly to affiliates around the world, someone who sent out messages inspiring his followers to attack and kill Americans and harm the United States,” said Sullivan on ABC News’s “Good Morning America.”
Sullivan went on to describe al-Zawahiri as “someone who tried to hold together a global network of terrorists that could continue to threaten both America and Americans, and taking him out has undoubtedly made the United States safer.”
Al-Zawahiri, who led al Qaeda for a decade after the death of Osama bin Laden, was killed in a drone strike this weekend in Kabul, Afghanistan.
President Biden claimed that no one other than al-Zawahiri was killed in the strike, adding that “justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more.”
Al-Zawahiri was a key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, as well as bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that occurred in the late 1990s.
“We do believe he was playing an active role at a strategic level in directing al Qaeda and in continuing to pose a severe threat against the United States and American citizens everywhere,” Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today.”
Sullivan emphasized in both segments his belief that the killing of al-Zawahiri justifies Biden’s rocky withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year.
“It has proven the president right when he said one year ago that we did not need to keep thousands of American troops in Afghanistan fighting and dying in a 20-year war,” Sullivan said on “Good Morning America.”