Analysis of Middle East Conflict Dynamics

This war

is not about Iran's nuclear program, which you told me and the world that you

eliminated back in last summer, in June.

Yeah.

This war is being pushed by Israel with three

aims. One, its own regional hegemony, take

Iran off the map. You, you can't-- They don't have freedom of movement as

long as

Iran is a regional power.

Two,

diminishing the power of the GCC, the six Gulf states, which are a rival to

Israel and are becoming this kind of Switzerland of the Middle East,

and that's bad

for Israeli interests. And three, getting the US out of the Middle

East because we constrain their ambitions, getting our bases out,

destroying our bases. Israel wants our bases out of the Middle

East.

I said this to Trump, to his face, in the Oval Office days before the war

began.

And he looked at me and said, "Yes, you're right, but in the end,

we all die anyway, so it doesn't matter." That's exactly what

he

said. "In the end, we all die anyway." And I said to him,

shocked, "But what about our kids and our grandkids

and, like, our country?"

And he goes, "Ah." That's, that is ver-

What does that mean?

That's a ver- I don't know. He didn't res- That's a verbatim exchange.

And I said, and I'm,

I'm-- And it was, "God watches I said that."

Okay.

And I think it was-- I thought it was true then,

and I think it's been proven true

now. The goal was to get the US out, to diminish the

GCC, and obviously to take Iran off the map

and sink it into

permanent

internal strife, into civil war, sectarian strife.

Um, and he said, "It doesn't matter because in the end,

we're all dead anyway."

And I was shocked by that because it's nihilism,

and that's the last thing any

leader should display or any person should display.

It does matter.

Who lives or dies does matter. The future does matter. I believe it.

I have four children.