Yeah.

Well, it raises the question, okay, if you want to do a regime change war without any am-- uh, ground troops, how do you do it? And is that in itself even possible or feasible, right? If you want to do this, uh, uh, war to topple the government, uh, but not commit anyone on the ground, how might you do it? So they look for who are their proxy forces, who are their, who are their ground troops? And they're looking around, and the Israelis come upon this idea of the Kurds, who by no estimation of anyone we spoke to, were going to march into Tehran and take over the government.

The Kurdish, uh, the so-called Kurdish option, uh, w- involved, um, at the same time of, uh, airstrikes by the US and Israel around Iran.

There would be focused airstrikes by Israel in the northern part of the country that would sort of pave the way for a ground invasion by the Kurds, who would come in and basically claim territory, right? They would not be marching on the capital.

They are not the next government of Iran, but they are, um, claiming territory.

They are tying up the, uh, Iranian military, the IRGC.

Uh, they are basically, uh, a what they call a force multiplier, right, in the, in the military to make it even more difficult for the Iranian military.

What's the legacy of this been?

They could behave better.

So Netanyahu has framed these attacks as defensive, right? We are responding to Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, and we've a right to defend ourselves, so we're going to hit into Beirut.

That is also a card that Netanyahu will continue to play to see how far he can push Trump and test Trump's patience, right? Knowing, as we said earlier, Netanyahu has this sort of political situation where he has to deal with the security of northern Israel for his own political future, but also he can't entirely blow up his relationship with President Trump.

So he's gonna see how far he can push it.

And Mark, on the US side?

I think in the short term things can survive in terms of the aid continuing, fences can be mended, things can appear on the surface to be basically normal.

However, [gentle music] I do think that there is this fundamental shift in American opinion that has played out over time, but it's been particularly acute in the last two and a half, three years since October 7th, the Gaza War, two Iran wars, the war in Lebanon.

There's this view, especially among younger people, but not entirely among younger people, who associate Israel with Netanyahu, and they don't see the benefits of America's alliance with Israel.

Do you know where things are? Because it doesn't seem like the president does.

I mean, as he said, this could play out for a long time.

And this is the Iranian playbook.

They do this...

They basically say, we can do this for a long time because time is basically on our side.

There are more pressures on the United States side to get a deal to end the hostilities, to open the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranians... as is their custom, can play this out for a long period of time.

and Iran does get negotiated, the chances that it ultimately succeeds.

How is China going to leverage how Donald Trump is operating here in the United States and the Iran war?

I mean, this is not the state of affairs that President Trump wanted to walk into this summit.

specifically with Iran, right? He would not have wanted this stalemate and this ongoing negotiations and this idea that this war could go on for a long time with this trade reform moves closed, right? He wanted a quick engagement to show American power.

And now we have depleted American munitions.

We have economic pain.

And, you know, President Xi is probably seeing this as, you know, Donald Trump going in with a weakened hand.

Right.

And to Chris's point,

Say more.

Well, I mean, for one, you saw that increasingly President Trump and his advisors were growing frustrated that the war was not achieving the effects that they wanted it to achieve.

Iran was not buckling, right? And many in Washington were kind of looking for an exit, a way out of the war, a, a way towards a ceasefire, where in Israel, there was a determination among Prime Minister Netanyahu and his advisors to keep this going longer to make sure this would have a more conclusive end.

And on this issue of Lebanon and, and Hezbollah, I mean, effectively, President Trump, I don't think, cares what happens in Lebanon and with Hezbollah.

If, if a ceasefire in Lebanon is part of an ultimate end to the war in Iran, I think President Trump is perfectly happy with that, but this is something that's far more difficult for Prime Minister Netanyahu to digest, as Ronen said.

[explosion] And this divergence is on full display on Wednesday, the day after the ceasefire announcement-

And I just wanna ask, like, is this just the inevitable result of getting into a joint war with a partner that doesn't share your long-term goals?

I think that's partly right.

Um, has anyone else in the national security apparatus said what Donald Trump said about being at war in Iran because they were, quote, "two to four weeks away from having and using a nuclear weapon?"

I think it was the day before the war, Nicolle.

We spoke and talked about this, um, 11th hour case that was being made for war based on the idea that Iran was a kind of imminent threat.

And even then, the week before the war, you heard, uh, national security officials asserting all sorts of different things, one of them being Steve Witkoff, who had said, I think, that Iran was one week away from a bomb.

Um, and he then never repeated that, and then until we heard the president talk about two to four weeks.

Um, there has been, uh, odd not only the justifications for the, the, the goals of the war, but also the reasons about the threat that Iran poses have been all over, uh, the map.

I think what you saw today, um, is sort of how A- American officials are trying to square what's fundamentally intention.

Is there any, any acknowledgement, um, that that is an unintended consequence of this war that they've begun?

Right.

What we've seen over the last two weeks is the, uh, senior administration officials, like Marco Rubio, have gone out every day and said, "There are very clear objectives.

We have three or four, depending on the day, uh, to destroy the missile capacity, the navy, uh, Iran's ability to use proxies around the region." And what constitutes victory is de- decimating these, uh, these, these, um, these four objectives, right? But then the president comes out and says things like, "Unconditional surrender," uh, uh, "We will have..." Uh, you know, "The Iranian regime will collapse.

We will have..." Um, you know, "The United States and, and President Trump will be picking the new leader," right? So it, it has depended on, um, you know, the w- the whims of the president.

Uh, the...

I can say that it, the administration is still trying to limit the objectives and not make this look like an endless war.

Um, but it's, um, it's been a mess, uh, in terms of the messaging of what this actually looks like, what an endgame actually looks like.

Yeah.

What is your sense of the current threat environment that national security officials feel we're under right now?

So obviously, you know, we don't wanna jump to conclusions about events of the last day or 20...

You know, uh, what directly links, uh, attacks of the day, uh, how, w- what inspired people, uh, why they did it, uh, how to directly attribute, you know, the current war in Iran.

However, as you said, i- w- how these things tend to work is that people are radicalized not, um, at once, but they're, o- radicalized over time and constantly in what they watch and, um, and who they listen to.

And, you know, we, the frank, the fact is is that we are in a situation right now where, uh, we have triggers for things that have radicalized, uh, terrorists in the past, and one of them is the actions of the United States in the Middle East, and another is the actions of Israel in the Middle East.

And what we're in right now is the first ever in history joint US-Israeli strike on, um, a country in the Middle East, um, a Muslim country in the Middle East.

And, um, so these are the type of things that, uh, are triggers that radicalize people.

It would appear they were not at all, but maybe I'm missing something.

How should we think about that?

So publicly over the last few months, we've seen President Trump take this sort of circuitous path to war.

Does he really wanna strike? Does he want a deal? Does he want peace? Who knows? So it's been very unclear which direction this was going, but I think the real story is that behind the scenes, this was every day pushing closer to war, and also behind the scenes, the constant was the pressure of Prime Minister Netanyahu to get Trump there.

And that issue blew up this week after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that, in essence, the war began because Israel was going to begin it, and that the United States needed to protect itself from possible Iranian attack.

So in other words, Israel was driving this, and the U.S. was responding as if there was no choice but to join the war that Israel started.

Hmm.

He's getting mostly support from his advisors.

We report that JD Vance, the vice president, who has been skeptical of American military interventions, tells the president, "Listen, I don't know if this is a good idea, but if we're gonna do it, go big." Right? So you have this idea being reinforced in the president's mind that military action should take place.

Your thoughts about where we are as a military and where the conversation with the country stands right now, um, as being led by Donald Trump.

Well, I mean, Nicolle, this is obviously turning, I think, into a major disaster.

Um, but the point that he was making about taking out senior leaders, I mean, I remember very vividly my time in Iraq.

You remember the decks of cards that we had with all the bad guys listed, you know, from the ace of spades to the two of clubs, whatever, and how every night we were trying to take out bad guys, senior leaders in the Iraqi military, Al-Qaeda and the like, um, and I remember the impact on the ground was pretty much negligible, that every time that they killed a bad guy, another one would jump up.

Um, these are not stupid people.

They've known that this attack was coming for quite some time.

Uh, they, they had an 86-year-old Khamenei that was leading this par- this, this country, uh, who had cancer and y- he knew that his days were numbered.

I mean, did we have any capacity to influence or weigh in with Israel? I mean, just, just tell me with all of your knowledge of the US-Israeli relationship, where does that relationship stand? And is it as Rubio describes, they were doing this with or without our, our, our approval or our buy-in, and so we had to strike Iran at the same time to what? I mean, just, just fill in the blanks of what Rubio has said publicly so I understand.

Two aircraft carriers, hundreds of bombers, fighter jets, refuelers, just a huge buildup.

And not only that, there's another important element here, and that's after last summer's conflict with Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, starts making the case that there needs to be another round of strikes, that last summer's war didn't finish the job.

So last December, he goes to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President Trump, and during that meeting, we believe that Netanyahu basically asks Trump's permission for Israel to strike sometime in 2026, particularly ballistic missile sites because this is of urgent concern to Israel.

Iran's missile program, as we've seen, is quite capable of hitting Israel.

And so even as Trump is talking about the protesters, Netanyahu is also making his own case for a joint US-Israeli conflict to be far more ambitious than what happened last year

If this actually works, do you think we will look back at past presidents and ask ourselves why we didn't do this long ago? Mark, what do you think?

So think back about where we were on October seventh, twenty twenty-three, so two and a half years ago.

There had been this sort of static position where Iran was strong.

Uh, Mark, take us through what you are reporting.

So Nicole, as this buildup happ- has happened over the last several weeks i, uh, in the, in the Middle East, there's been this pressure on the president and the administration to sort of make a case for why war and why now? What is the urgency? What is the threat? So you started to hear that over the past week, most notably in the president's State of the Union address, where the president made claims about the nuclear program and the missile program of Iran, uh, that we looked at, examined, spoke to, uh, a lot of people about, and basically determined that the claims made over the last week are either false or largely u- you know, unfounded.

Um, separating these out, the first is about the missile program.

Now, there's no question that Iran has this incredibly large arsenal of missiles, short and medium-range missiles.

The, as we saw, these missiles are capable of hitting Israel.

They are capable of hitting American troops in the region.

But what the president said on Tuesday night was that they have long-range missiles, uh, that could soon hit the United States, and that is a new claim, and it's just false.

Are we on the precipice of an attack?

Like, what countries are we talking about, and what are the various stakes they have in this?

So there's a number of Arab and, more broadly, Muslim countries that were part of this negotiating group.

But more specifically, there's three, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, that over the years have had a great deal of influence over Hamas.

They have supported Hamas in different capacities over the years, and they all saw, for their own reasons, an opportunity to pressure Hamas because they wanted an end to the war.

The Turks would love to have greater cooperation, defense real- cooperation with the United States.

They want arms.

They want planes.

Mm-hmm

Take us through it.

Well, it was a sort of a chaotic eight days from the time that Israel first struck, more than a week ago, uh, inside of Iran, uh, to the American strike Saturday night in Iran.

And it was, uh, this period where, uh, the president sort of was projecting publicly that he hadn't made a decision.

Uh, but increasingly as the days went- went on, he moved closer and closer to making a decision.

And by early last week, he had pretty much decided that he was going to, uh, authorize an American military strike on Iran.

And that was the time when American military planning was sort of ramping up.

Obviously, the military had been looking at these sites for years.

Mark, there i- Mark Mazzetti, there is still an effort in even trying to read through the lines of what Trump is trying to communicate in his statements and in his posts of conveying this is one and done, a one-off, and I wonder if your reporting suggests that is his personal aversion to taking the country to war or if that is an awareness that his own political coalition has fractured over this?

Just set the stage for us as to what is happening right now between these two, um, powerful, powerful countries seemingly hell-bent on doing as much damage as they can while the MAGA movement figures its- itself out.

Well, on the US, Israel, Iran side, um, I mean, as you know, the timeline on this story goes back really several decades, right? Uh, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been with us for about that long, um, has pushed American presidents since the George W.

Bush administration, um, to j- join Israel in striking Iran, uh, for a nuclear program that he has always said is weeks away from getting a bomb.

Um, the US presidents, Obama, Bush, Biden, Trump I, basically rebuffed this, uh, basically thinking that Netanyahu was not gonna do it alone, uh, because he knew the consequences if the US didn't, uh, join the strike.

And, um, and that sort of existed up until recent months when a number of things happened last fall where Netanyahu saw the calculation change, and he saw that, uh, for one, uh, Iran couldn't retaliate like it once could with Hezbollah missiles, uh, with the Syrian regime, with its own missiles.

And, um, and so Netanyahu saw a path to possibly start a war and have the US come in to finish it.

And so last, late last month, American intelligence agencies picked this up, this intelligence that basically said that, that said Netanyahu is going to go to war and with or without the US.

Yeah.

We started talking about it, walk us through it.

Well, as, uh, David Ignatius pointed out earlier this, uh, show, the, you know, Netanyahu, as we know, has been pushing for years, uh, decades for the United States to join in a Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.

And ultimately, several American presidents decided that he was bluffing, because if the United States was not gonna join, he would not start the war for several reasons.

Um, Hezbollah had thousands of missiles, uh, in southern Lebanon that Iran could use to retaliate.

Uh, the Iranian missile program seemed incredibly capable.

Uh, Israel didn't have access to over Syrian airspace and Iranian airspace.

Well, a lot of that changed in the fall where, um, Hezbollah was largely knocked out, the Syrian regime fell, the Isr- the Iranian missile capability seemed less than previously thought.

What happens after those actions are taken? Who takes responsibility? Have you heard any discussion of that?

Mark, based on your reporting, how aligned or not-Had President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu been on Iran in the weeks leading up to Israel's airstrike and what's changed in recent days, particularly it seems, in the past 24 hours?

Well, they, they weren't really aligned for weeks and months.

Uh, and, uh, you know, back in April, Netanyahu was pushing, uh, similarly for a strike.

Uh, again, as you know, Anderson, Netanyahu's been pushing for years for the United States to join Israel in a strike against Iran.

Uh, Trump kind of beat this back.

Uh, but then in late May, uh, American intelligence agencies picked up what they thought was pretty indisputable intel that Israel was about to do this and they were about to do it without the United States.

And I think what's important to point out is that Netanyahu, since last fall, has felt very emboldened to go after Iran because he no longer has a Hezbollah threat of retaliation from Lebanon, uh, Israel has hit Iranian miss-, uh, air defenses, and the Iranian missile, uh, capabilities have shown themselves over the last year to be weaker than expected.

According to your reporting, the president took notice of all the credit the Israeli government was getting on Fox News, is that right?