Astead Herndon

Ambassador, I would love for you to just run through your credentials for a second.

We're going to be talking about, obviously, the growing war in Iran, but I wanted for you to give our audience just a sense of how closely you've been tied to this for a while.

Yeah, and obviously that's the part that we really want to focus on.

I think you've become known as one of the most prominent American advocates for military action in Iran over a set of decades.

And this war is, in a sense, something that you've argued for long through your career.

But in recent weeks, you've emerged as one of the sharpest critics of the Trump administration's actions and how it's conducting this war.

I wanted you to walk me through your critiques.

Where do you think they went wrong from the perspective of someone who wanted to see this happen?

I think there's a very— Yeah, that didn't happen.

I hear that.

I guess the question then becomes, why is this happening now?

I mean, my working theory is that Trump got a little trigger happy after Venezuela and has ignored the different context that has taken place here or has simply underrepresented the differences from country to country.

I guess my question is for you then, like, why do you think this is happening now, considering he didn't take those steps of preparation?

I would love for you to slow that down for me.

I mean, take me through those moments in the first Trump administration when you were arguing for things like regime change in Iran.

Was the argument against it some of the things we've seen now, the possibility of retaliation, the possibility that Iran would control the Strait of Hormuz?

Are we seeing the realities of what that debate was?

So Trump was aware of the possibility that this was a likely retaliatory action?

So considering that, I guess I keep going back to do we know why there wasn't a plan in place or the administration seemed seemingly surprised by some of these actions?

I mean, Trump said that nobody expected Iran to retaliate against neighboring countries.