KARACHI: White House correspondent for The New York Times Maggie Haberman shared with CNN exclusive reporting on how President Trump made the decision to go to war with Iran and how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was influencing him.
According to her, the president and Bibi Netanyahu have actually been much more aligned in certain ways over a very long period of time than certainly a lot of the president’s base of supporters, want to see.
She said: “And then some of his own advisors either recognise or want to admit. And if you look back at his first term, President Trump’s term, you know, the strike on, General Soleimani was something that a lot of people opposed around him. He really didn’t have any hesitation about doing it and just did it.
“There were some people who were thrilled that he did it. It had it had repercussions, right? I mean, Iran has been, looking to, go after him in one way or another ever since. And it has escalated tensions there.
“But it shouldn’t really be a surprise if you look at the decade long relationship, when Bibi Netanyahu came to this Situation Room meeting, with the president and the president’s senior advisers, I on February 11th. It’s pretty extraordinary, because it is clearly unusual for, A foreign leader to be in this kind of an in-person meeting in the Situation Room. It certainly speaks to the magnitude of it.
“But Netanyahu was laying out a number of different ways in which they believed this could go, that a war could go, and it would involve, taking out a ballistic missile, capacity. It would involve Iran not attacking its neighbors so aggressively. It would involve, Iran not choking off a minimal likelihood of choking off the Strait of Hormuz. And then there was the possibility of regime change, that change that it could happen.
“He played a video of possible options for who could take over, if there was, you know, a some, some change or, disruption to the clerical leadership in Iran, although most of the Americans didn’t really favour the people that he was talking about, or some of the people he was talking about. So he didn’t suggest us all as if this, then this is the absolute outcome.
“But certainly President Trump was impressed by what he heard. He didn’t completely say yes right there, but he did say sounds good to me or something to that effect, to the prime minister.
“And it was clear that that was a likely green light. It was clear to the president’s advisers that he was impressed with what they saw. The next day, there was an overnight assessment that was done by U.S. intelligence officials, and there were aspects of what Netanyahu described that could be done. But, the regime change scenarios were described by the CIA director as farcical, and by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, as bullshit.
“And so that is where it becomes a conflation of a lot of different points. Most notably was a J.D. Vance was the most adamant voice against doing this in the president’s circle and repeatedly said this in front of his colleagues to the president.”
