Ben Rhodes

And then they had like someone called Steve Witkoff, probably a Rachi from the foreign ministry who's been around there forever and be like, hey, your threat really got to us.

We're not going to execute these people.

We're not going to hang them.

They killed potentially tens of thousands of people already, you know, and they're not releasing the political prisoners like now.

So to your list there, I think all those things mattered.

First of all, it bears in mind, we said, a lot of people said, when you move all this military assets to the Caribbean, they're not going to be there.

And you can't...

He didn't have a military option.

And the Iranians knew he didn't have military options.

They knew we weren't postured there.

We knew we didn't have a carrier strike group.

They knew that we'd be worried about retaliation and we couldn't provide the missile defenses to our bases or to the Israelis.

And so they knew they had a window to crack down because this guy was irresponsible.

And then I do think at the end of the day, he listens to the Gulf Arabs and they saw those threats.

They saw where things could be going in the region and called them.

And he's like the combination of this seems like a lot of effort.

This seems like it could go wrong.

I got the Gulf Arabs telling me not to do this.

All of a sudden, it's not Lindsey Graham in his ear.

And he's like, he backs off.