English transcript

We knew not that Iran was going to attack, he did not say that.

He said we knew that Israel was going to attack Iran, and in retaliation for those attacks

by Israel against Iran, Iran might attack American forces.

So the imminent threat that the Secretary of State is describing is not from Iran, it's

from Israel.

Exactly.

And I think this speaks to the broader issue.

Who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East?

Who's in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?

In this case, with what the Secretary described, and later on the President, later on the Speaker

of the House, and the way the events played out, the Israelis drove the decision to take

this action, which we knew would set off a series of events, meaning the Iranians would

retaliate.

Now I think there's a potential there where we could have done several different things.

We could have simply said to the Israelis, no you will not, and if you do, then we will

take something away from you.

I think that it's fine that we offer defense to Israel, but when we're providing the means

for their defense, we get to dictate the terms of when they go on the offensive, otherwise

they stand to lose that relationship.

And the Israelis felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter what situation

they put us in, that they could go ahead and take this action, and we would just have

to react.

And so that speaks to that relationship, but also it just shows that there was a lobby

pushing for us to go to war.

I know we'll get into that later on in the statement, but we had a real potential, I

think, knowing what we know of the Iranians and how they react, and in particular how

they react to President Trump's leadership.

The Iranians under President Trump's leadership, especially in his second term, they have shown

that they take a very calculated approach to the escalation ladder.

For instance, in the lead up to the 12-day war before Midnight Hammer, the Iranians didn't

attack us.

They were engaged in negotiations with us.

When President Trump came back into office, they stopped their proxies who were attacking

us under the Biden administration because they knew Biden was weak.

They stopped their proxies from attacking us as well.

So they knew President Trump was someone who wanted to negotiate, but more importantly,

they knew that President Trump was not someone to mess with because he killed Qasem Soleimani.

He killed Abu Mahdi Mohandas.

He had defeated ISIS.

They knew that President Trump was a man of action.

He is militarily strong.

And so they said, before we take an action, we need to make sure that it's calculated.

So I think in this scenario, even if the Israelis told us we're going to strike on this date

at this time, and we didn't try to negotiate with the Israelis and say, hey, we'll take

something away from them.

I think we still could have back-channeled to the Iranians and said, hey, if something

happens here in the next couple of days, it's not us.

We're still serious about negotiations, and we don't want to escalate this because it's

well known what the Iranians' plans were.

We knew that they were going to hit potentially our bases in the region, potentially our allies.

We knew about the Straits of Hormuz.

All of these things, I think, were fairly well-known.