Mark Mazzetti

and our allies.

And that last part does make me wonder, how have our allies responded so far?

The American allies in the Middle East have responded with support for the operation, especially after they themselves were attacked by Iran on Saturday.

I'm thinking of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and other countries.

They have at least said that symbolically we support the operation, if not joining militarily.

Allies in Europe are far more cautious about

in expressing concern about the operation.

There is not a great deal, on Saturday at least, of cheering in Western European capitals about the operation.

This sort of makes me wonder whether the antagonistic stance that Trump has taken toward Europe is a factor here at all.

Stepping back here for a second, if we see the regime toppled as a result of this attack, President Trump said in his speech that he was giving the Iranian people something that no other president was willing to give them and that they have always wanted.

If this actually works, do you think we will look back at past presidents and ask ourselves why we didn't do this long ago?

Mark, what do you think?

So think back about where we were on October 7th, 2023, so two and a half years ago.

There had been this sort of static position where Iran was strong.

It had its most powerful proxy force, Hezbollah, in Lebanon that it was basically using to deter any attacks, right?

After October 7th and after the Gaza war, Israel started striking all over the place in the Middle East, including in Lebanon, to take down Hezbollah.

And once that happened, it sort of set off this kind of chain reaction where the bar got lowered for military action in the Middle East and specifically in Iran.

So I think it's important to really think about just how extraordinary the last two and a half years have been in the Middle East to sort of bring about the dynamic that we are actually seeing with a regime change war led by the United States.

Mark Mazzetti, David Sanger, thank you both so much for your time.

Thank you.