00:00We knew not that Iran was going to attack. He did not say that. He said we knew that Israel
00:04was going to attack Iran and in retaliation for those attacks by Israel against Iran, Iran might attack American forces.
00:12So the imminent threat that the Secretary of State is describing is not from Iran, it's from Israel.
00:17Exactly. And I think this speaks to the broader issue. Who's in charge of our policy in the Middle East?
00:22Who's in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?
00:24In this case, with what the Secretary described and later on the President, later on the Speaker of the House
00:29and the way the events played out, the Israelis drove the decision to take this action, which we knew would
00:35set off a series of events, meaning the Iranians would retaliate.
00:40Now, I think there's a potential there where we could have done several different things. We could have simply said
00:44to the Israelis, no, you will not.
00:45And if you do, then we will take something away from you. I think that it's fine that we offer
00:51defense to Israel, but when we're providing the means for their defense, we get to dictate the terms of when
00:58they go on the offensive.
00:59Otherwise, they stand to lose that relationship. And the Israelis felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter
01:04what situation they put us in, that they could go ahead and take this action and we would just have
01:10to react.
01:10That speaks to that relationship. But also, it just shows that there was a lobby pushing for us to go
01:15to war.
01:15I know we'll get into that later on in the statement, but we had a real potential.
01:19I think that there was a potential, I think.
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