English transcript

The energy sector, my opinion, my advice to

him, if he would take it, is that look, we have

enough data on how the Israelis behave. If you

tell them that they might saying just that,

stop bombing the energy sector, my opinion,

my advice to him, if he would take it, is that

look, we have enough data on how the Israelis

behave. If you tell them that they need to stop

bombing this target or that target, they might

back off for a week or so, but they're not going

to listen to you. You have to take away their

ability to do that. You have to take away some

feature of their defense system to say, hey,

look, we're going to take away a feature of

your defense system and we are not going to

support you while you're on the offense. If

you go completely back on the defense, we will

support you. But until we take something away

from the Israelis, they will not listen to us.

If President Trump addresses that first, that

will give him the space to reach a deal. And

we already saw him today through his Commerce

Secretary talking about lifting the sanctions

on some of the Iranian oil that's already on

the water. And so I think we, I pray that we're

actually moving in that direction, but I think

the timing is crucial. I think we have a lot

of potential right now to get that deal. Yeah,

I mean, politically that would be a huge climb

down for him to have to overtly restrain the

Israelis as part of probably even an official

negotiation with Iran. I mean, I agree with

you that he should seek peace at almost any

cost, any way, but politically speaking, what

you're really saying is, boy, did he already

jump into the deep end of this ocean and, you

know, where he cannot touch the bottom. And

how is he going to get himself out of this thing

without something like that where he's implicitly

saying, boy, we just shouldn't have done that

or whatever, call it victory now. Um, but if

Israel's still in a position to force the war

to continue on and they're willing to without

him absolutely putting his foot down, then that

really goes to show that the best he can do,

the best he is doing is calling timeout rather

than actually achieving any kind of success,

much less victory like David Petraeus would

say. Yeah, I mean, the fundamental issue is

restraining Israel. And until we do that, we

may be able to buy some time, but we'll be right

back in the same situation all over again. So

that's why I say we have to actually be pretty

forceful with them and just say, look, we're

paying for the majority of your defense. We

will not pay for you to go on offense. We have

a different strategic goal than they do. Like

right now we share some tactical objectives,

like we've said that we want to take down their

ballistics, we want to take out their navy,

etc. And the Iranians or the Israelis are on

board with that. But beyond that, that's where

our interests go in completely divergent paths.

The Israelis want full regime change and the

Israelis have a very high tolerance for chaos.

Like they're completely okay destroying that

whole system over there and having a chaotic

situation where the Strait of Hormuz is still

in jeopardy, where potentially there's mass

migration, where you have different fractionalizations

within, inside of Iran that destabilizes the

region, but poses less of a threat to Israel.

The Israelis are fine with that. We are not.

That would be absolutely catastrophic for us,

for our partners, our allies in the GCC states,

potentially even in Europe, and then also for

the world energy trade. So the stakes are very,

very high from our strategic objective standpoint.

And so to let the Israelis continue to essentially

call the shots and drive the ferocity and the

strategic objectives of the battle, that is

not doing any service for the American people.

And I think as soon as President Trump can realize

that and use his force that only President Trump

has to restrain the Israelis, we're going to

continue to be in this...