Natalie Kitroa

Got it.

And how does Trump respond to this argument?

I wonder, Ronan, if Netanyahu is also looking at this moment, at the extraction of Maduro, as a sign that Trump is willing to go very far and be very aggressive now on the global stage.

I wonder if he sees it as an opportunity.

And then soon after the Maduro capture, we get the January protests in Iran, which Trump reacts to by promising to help the protesters with possible American strikes.

We all heard that.

So how does that fit into this story, Mark?

Trump doesn't strike in January, right?

We know that they wait until February to do that, which suggests that he did heed Netanyahu's warning.

And all of this, what you've described, really suggests that Israel and the U.S.

are very clearly coordinating things.

on all of this.

It's not just Trump telling Netanyahu yes or no, giving his blessing or not.

In this case, Netanyahu has quite a bit of influence on what kind of path both sides are going to take here.

OK, so by this point, I now understand why Netanyahu wanted this and how he made his case to Trump, how he was perhaps more successful than he even bargained for.

What's less clear to me is why exactly Trump got on board this time around, why he went this far.

What he calculated was in it for the U.S.,

So, Mark Ronan, I assume that as Trump was considering a potential attack on Iran, he was hearing from advisers, from allies around the world about just how risky that would be.

You said these were complicated deliberations.

What do we know about them?