Shawn Ryan

Now, at the time, we had seen...

Myself and others had seen how aggressive the Israelis were about wanting regime change inside Iran.

So when Midnight Hammer, in the lead up to it, we assessed that, hey, even if we did these strikes, the Israelis were going to come right back to us after a couple months and say, no, no, now is the time for us to do regime change.

And that's exactly what happened.

The difference is we had robust debates in the lead up to Midnight Hammer.

After Midnight Hammer, President Trump's decision-making circle was very, very tight.

And that's his prerogative, he can do that.

However, he had all pro-Israel hawks, like, really in his ear.

Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz.

And then on the outside, again, the media echo chamber, knowing that President Trump was watching Fox News, knowing what media he was consuming, and they're all saying the same thing, Iran can't have any enrichment.

which basically put us on this collision course towards a conflict.

I think the Israelis once again got nervous about a month ago because they knew that Witkoff and Kushner and others in the administration were actively engaging with the Iranians to get a deal.

And that's why the Israelis launched their attack, knowing they could force our hands.

And that's why I think you saw Marco Rubio and others come out immediately and say, well, yeah, there was an imminent attack.

And the imminent attack was the Israelis attacking the Iranians.

And then we knew that they would retaliate back against us.

Why would the Iranians retaliate against us?

Because they know that basically we fund the Israelis, that Israel would not have the offensive capability without us.

The Israelis are, you know, very competent at conducting, I'd say, like smaller, more clandestine intelligence type of assassinations.

Very good at doing that.