David Sanger

And so if the president was going to decide not to use the force,

and not to attack Iran, he would have to make the case that he got an agreement, and not only any agreement, but an agreement that went far beyond the one that the United States and Iran reached in 2015 during the Obama administration.

That's right.

And you could argue that had he not pulled out of it in 2018, that we might not be in this situation today.

Because the fact of the matter is that while the deal was incredibly unpopular and certainly had some holes in it, and I wrote about those pretty extensively at the time and after, the Iranians were complying with it.

That's right.

Let's not underestimate their missile capability.

It can reach parts of Europe.

It can reach American bases throughout the Middle East, and we have a lot of them.

And they have hit American bases at various moments in other conflicts.

These are not nuclear missiles.

They are conventional.

So there is definitely a threat there.

to Americans in the Middle East.

There is definitely a threat to American allies in the Middle East, Israel first among them.

And some of the Iranian missiles got through air defenses and anti-missile defenses back in June and killed some civilians in Israel.

So I wouldn't underestimate the power of their missile program, but they can't reach New York or Boston or any place close.

He is talking about two different things.

He's talking about nuclear weapons and he's talking about their conventional existing missile force.

And he frequently conflates the two.