Mark Mazzetti

What kind of attack will the United States be willing to do?

Would it be limited?

Would it be large?

And what would the goal of any such attack be from the United States perspective?

That was the biggest question over the last several weeks as this military buildup in the Middle East was happening, the largest military buildup since the Iraq War of 2003.

The military is planning for a very large-scale conflict, but what would the president decide and why and why now?

And how is the Trump administration justifying this conflict?

What is the reason for war?

What is the evidence of the threat?

And what you saw this week was President Trump and some of his senior advisors making a case for war on many different fronts, and that case didn't hold up very well under scrutiny.

So you heard the president in the State of the Union address on Tuesday night saying that Iran has ballistic missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States.

That is not true.

The Iranians have a ballistic missile program.

They have been interested in long-range missiles that could hit the United States.

But the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that it could be a decade before they have an arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles, and they haven't even necessarily committed to the technology.

Separately, you heard various advisors talking about Iran restarting its nuclear program.

Steve Witkoff even said it could be a week away from a nuclear weapon.

And what we reported is that that is also not the case.

The strikes last June did enough damage to Iran's nuclear program that it would –

take far longer for Iran to really be able to restart it in a way that would constitute a real threat and certainly wouldn't be able to do it within a week, as Witkoff said.