Ben Rhodes

I just sincerely believe that the United States and Israel bombing Iran to bring about regime change creates more risks, frankly, than it does opportunities.

And principally, the reason I believe that is, to your point,

When I think of the places where there have been regime change, let's expand it beyond even US wars to Arab Spring.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, I'm leaving some out, but in every case,

Sudan, where the people did rise up.

In every case, you either had like a civil war that was hugely destabilizing and disruptive and a loss of life, or you had the guys with guns come back and be even more repressive, right?

Like the Egyptian government that emerged was more repressive even than Mubarak, right?

And so...

That's that's why we sincerely like just don't think this is the right way.

It's not out of any, you know, no love for this regime.

It's been horrible for the Iranian people.

But I think we just have to learn from history.

And I just want to come back to what you mentioned it, Tommy.

And if you have a final thought on this.

The media coverage, some of it's very good, but some of it is just, what are we doing here, people?

I know.

You had people credibly referring to the Israeli statement that this was like a preemptive strike, like preemptive.

What?

What are we preempting?

That's Iraq war language.