Senator Chris Murphy

Listen, that argument has been made before, right?

I heard our leaders make that argument to Congress on Afghanistan over and over and over again, give us more time, give us more troops.

That is literally the reason why we stayed in Vietnam for as long as we did, because if we can just escalate a little bit more, if we can escalate in a slightly different way, ultimately the enemy will come to the table.

So I just see this quagmire getting worse and worse.

I don't disagree with you that this is going to make us look weak,

But for us to just continue to perform ineptly, for us to just invent new, bold, strategic mistakes on a weekly basis, that makes us look even weaker.

Right, but our allies there, maybe with the exception of Saudi Arabia, begged us not to do this.

And Saudi Arabia right now is telling us to, at the very least, end this nonsensical plan to blockade the Strait of Hormuz because what they worry about is that that will end up with Iran and the Houthis activating to close or harass traffic inside the Red Sea.

The Saudis see...

our continued escalation as bad for the region.

So I don't know that our allies there are doing much else than hoping Trump ends this as quickly as possible so that they can try to put the pieces back together.

It may be that it's going to end up being a sort of broader Sunni-Shia dialogue in the

reopened, it's not likely going to be Steve Witkoff that delivers this deal.

And again, this is also a function of our broader alliance structure being shattered.

The success of the JCPOA, of real diplomacy with Iran, was built on the United States and Europe working together.

The fact that we can't do any of this with Europe

it greatly deleverages our ability to end this conflict in a meaningful way because Europe is, you know, basically running their own play in the region right now.

Hey, so we're not paying taxes this year, right?

Yeah, I mean, I...

I worry about the lack of coordination in U.S.