John Brennan

No.

And all the ones that I had briefed and had worked for were very interested in hearing from the intelligence experts, hearing from the military advisors, taking very seriously what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says, because that is the principal military advisor to the president.

And clearly, General Kane, who's a professional soldier and very, very capable and competent, clearly saw and foresaw what was going to happen.

if we went forward with this military operation against Iran.

So as you pointed out in the introduction, everything that we've seen over the past four weeks is unsurprising.

And the fact that we are now in this mess, in this quagmire, with no good path forward in terms of how we're going to extricate ourselves from this, nor achieve the objectives that have been talked about inconsistently over the past several weeks, it's, again, clear that this president has no sense, no understanding, or doesn't really care about

about the impact, not just on the Gulf region and our financial energy situation, but also in the lives of U.S.

servicemen and women who are in harm's way now because he decided to go forward with a needless, unnecessary, and senseless war.

Well, I think as John pointed out, I think the Iranians have been very strategic in terms of husbanding some of their inventory of missiles, rockets, drones and others so that they would wait until a lot of the air defense capabilities in the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, even in Israel are going to be depleted as they overwhelm some of these air defenses and pointed out how many Patriot missiles have been expended.

So, again, I think the Iranians are being...

Well, I think the number of strikes against Iran is up in the 16,000, 18,000 going after targets.

The number of munitions that have been used by the U.S.

military is just astronomical.

And therefore, where are we getting those munitions from?

We're getting them from our stockpiles as well as from those munitions that we were sending to Ukraine or whatever else.

But we need to have a certain amount of munitions and missiles and capabilities around the globe, including in Ukraine.

in the area of China and Taiwan.

And so as we are continuing to draw down this inventory, it really does not allow us to provide the type of capabilities that we need in order to ensure that we're not just dealing with the current crisis, but also we are trying to make sure that our national security is not going to be threatened and at risk in other areas as well.

Well, I think it's the status quo ante as far as Iran's nuclear capability is concerned.

It's defiance of the United States, refusal to agree to allow the Strait of Hormuz to be open to free international shipping.