Ben Rhodes

They're trying to exact a cost on the Gulf countries for hosting U.S.

bases or just to kind of create a sense that if we burn, you burn too.

They're launching missiles at not just bases, at Israel as well.

And so we're seeing the beginning of what could be a kind of regionalization of this conflict.

And so this is a very dangerous moment.

And I have no reassurance from Trump or anybody around him that there's a plan for how to land this plane beyond we're going to go in there and destroy as much of this regime as we can before it becomes kind of almost politically unsustainable for us to be bombing this country.

Then we'll stop.

And, oh, you know, you Iranians rise up.

Yeah, I mean, the war is illegal domestically and internationally.

The war is unnecessary as a matter of timing.

The threats that they're pointing to do nothing to explain.

I mean, the fact that in that litany that Trump gave, he was talking about roadside bombs in Iraq 10 years ago.

Is that a reason to go to war now?

I mean, obviously those are terrible things that happen, but it's an absurd reason to launch a war now.

The only new pretext they developed is this ICBM threat,

which is totally false.

Iran has long had an ICBM program.

It cannot hit the United States with an ICBM, is nowhere near being able to do that, and doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

And so it matters that this is being done under false pretenses with very little public support and no legal basis,

because it's not a very strong footing to take the country into a war of regime change in a country over 90 million people.