English transcript

- I'd love us to, to run the experiment, we

try that. - What would happen?

You know, the Israelis, again, they have great

intell- they have the ability to go out and

collect great intelligence. They have a very

capable military, but they're a very small country.

I think Israel would be able to defend itself.

I think it could conduct, you know, limited

strikes on its borders. I think it could continue

carrying out pretty impressive targeted assassinations

- Yes. - against its adversaries. And so I think

you would see it relatively contained. What

it couldn't do is go topple an entire government.

It couldn't do something like the Iran War,

the Iraq War. It couldn't aggressively, you

know, destabilize Syria. These big heavy lifts

of regime change that America has been engaged

in, Israel could not do on their own, which

is why you get back to the Israeli lobby being

just so potent and so powerful and so aggressive.

So that, and I want to ask you about that because

that's the line that you're being attacked for.

And so I want to go through and have you explain

more fully, if you would, why you said what

you did and read it. But before I do that, one

last question. Did, was any of this debated

that you know of before this war commenced three

weeks ago?

Did anyone say, well, wait a second, if we do

this and kill the Ayatollah, because that was

like the first order, I think, what are the

effects after?

And like, what's the goal?

Did these debates ever... - No, they happened

heavily before the 12-day war. I think that

when the Israelis came back around and said

they wanted to do this, I just don't think there

was any debate. I think just based on the ecosystem

and the amount of influence that was exerted.

Because in some ways this is a little humiliating

since we were told, I was told, the whole country

was told, that after the 12-day war, there was

no Iranian nuclear threat. We got rid of it.

I'm not imagining that. It just happened last

summer. - Yeah. - Do you recall those statements?

- Yeah, I mean, Operation Midnight Hammer. -

Yes. - Destroyed their nuclear capability. So...

So how was it that we wound up six months later

getting another lecture about their nuclear

capability and it's an imminent threat to the

United States and nuclear tip ballistic missiles

aimed at Miami and the whole thing?

And nobody, first of all, there was no organized

protest against this. Like in a normal country,

you think people would rise up and be like,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. - You just told

us six months ago the exact opposite. - Yeah.

What did internally in the intel world, people

say, what the hell is going on?

I just think that the planning for this was

so compartmentalized that there was no debate.

As in it was a foregone conclusion. Maybe the

exact timing they didn't, they weren't exactly

aware of, or that had to be debated, when do

we do it?

But it seemed to be a foregone conclusion. And

I'm sure others will say, no, that's not the

case at all. But there was no robust debate

like there was going into the 12-day war. Because

a big question that a lot of us had that were

skeptical of Operation Midnight Hammer was,

okay, so we do this, we know the Israelis' whole

goal is regime change. What makes us think they'll

stop?

And if they do stop for a period of time, why

won't we just be back in the same place in six

months where they're saying that we have to

go back in?

And that's essentially exactly what happened.

- So this was raised?

- This was raised to my knowledge in June. This

was like, hey, what happens next?

So you take out the nuclear, the ability for

them to enrich and to potentially develop a

nuclear weapon. That's done. We know the Israelis

have a completely different goal. Part of that

strike, Midnight Hammer, was also to get the

Israelis to wrap up the 12-day war. But we knew,

because the Israelis told us, that they want,

this is the time to take down the regime. And

they don't want the Ayatollah to be in power.

They want a regime change. They want a new government

there. So we said, okay, knowing that, we know

that this strike, this limited strike that we're

going to do, isn't going to be enough. At some

point, the Israelis are going to come back to

us and say, hey, we have to go again. And with

that knowledge, and I think because so many

of us had pointed that out, and because the

Israelis had said it, there wasn't a big debate

this last time. You know, they, I think they

had that discussion, you know, behind closed

doors, and there wasn't a chance for any dissenting

voices to come in.