A standard of imminent threat. They had to leave pretty quickly, so about 10 to 15 attending senator scott to ask questions paid many others did not yet to ask questions. But based on the presentation was made, it does not meet to be what i consider an imminent threat. Reporter [inaudible] [indiscernible voices] senator menendez i went into this briefing today with some critical questions that i wanted to hear the answers to, the eminence the eminence he of the threat, the nature of the threat, the intelligence that would lead us to understand that delimiting that eliminating soleimani alone would eliminate the threat, and i walked away unsatisfied. It draws real concerns for me that we do not have the type of information that is critical for members of the United States senate. Dont feel bad, that is what they did to us as well. They closed the Briefing Rather quickly. We have more questions than we have answers, at the end of the day. [indiscernible voices] just a quick history lesson. Five or six years ago the idea came up, why dont we try to negotiate a deal to reduce the likelihood iran will develop Nuclear Weapons . Some folks in this body thought that was a bad idea. Some folks in iran thought that was a bad idea. It felt they should not engage with us, but they did and we did and we reached an agreement, an agreement called the jcpoa. It worked. Among people in iran who thought it was a bad idea and thought they should not negotiate jcpoa was soleimani. They thought it was bad to negotiate, bad to enter into that agreement. Do you know what happened with that agreement . Iran kept the agreement. 17 rounds of inspections, they kept their word. There were elections three years ago. You know what happened in those elections . Field, cityept the councils, mayors, the parliament. Today the moderates have been diminished and do you know who has been raised up . The radicals, the ayatollahs, people like soleimani. That is not the kind of victory we want. Senator murphy, senator merkley and i and others want to make a few comments about our take away from this briefing. Judgmentad about the Administration Officials make in the newspapers and in the media. These Intelligence Briefings are supposed to focus on facts behind the judgment, so we can make an independent evaluation of the judgments that are being made. And i would say that the onefing was incredibly thin facts. And to the extent they provided they provided facts, they did not support any claim of an imminent threat that would justify the actions they have taken with respect to eliminating soleimani. And it is important that you have that justification. I did notice president trumps remarks at the white house today. He mentioned they were engaged in planning attacks. The president himself did not use the word imminent this morning at the white house. And it is an important distinction. I want everyone to think about this. We are engaged in a very, very tense situation with iran, even before the latest actions. The u. S. Military plans what targets it will hit under circa hit under certain circumstances. It is not surprising the iranian s will also determine what targets they will hit if they are attacked by americans. So the idea that people might be planning to take certain actions is not surprising, just as we planned to take certain actions under certain circumstances. And the take away from my perspective is that they did not the factsin any way that would support the claim of an imminent threat that was meaning someone had decided to attack u. S. Forces and kill lots of americans. Let me turn it over to senator murphy. Murphy let me concur with senator van hollens analysis. I was deeply surprised at the lack of information presented by the administration regarding a specific, imminent threat. This appears to me to be a strike of choice by this likelytration, one that would have required congressional authorization before hand. Of this strikes in the first six days have been cataclysmic. Our troops are being pushed out of iraq. Iran has started its Nuclear Weapons program again. All counter isis operations have been halted. There are serious consequences politically to the situation that was made, and we did not get information inside that briefing that there was a specific, imminent threat that we were halting through the operation conducted last thursday night. And i cant say i was both and i can say that i was both surprised and saddened to not have that information before us. I think it is likely because it doesnt exist. But the fullness of the briefing is complicated by the fact that it only lasted 75 minutes. Days, theing Six Administration barely gave 100 senators and our. We left with multiple important questions that were still unanswered. As it is unacceptable to not prevent to not present iselligent as it exists, it also not sufficient to give the u. S. Senate just over an hour of time to explain a military action that likely has grave longterm consequences as far as security. And letl say one thing my colleagues take over. There were so many important questions that they did not answer. A plan, a see satisfying plan for the future. We had 97 senators there. 15 got to ask questions. At questions began to began to get tough, they all walked out. We have asked for commitment to answer more questions in a week and have not gotten that commitment. One thing that was troubling is that there was no indication that there was due thought given to the consequences of the action. Before the action against soleimani, we had massive protests in iran against the iranian government, and now we have massive protests against the u. S. No clarity of how this would affect the unity of the radicals and undermine the moderates in iran, no sense that they an attack inat iraq without permission of the Iraqi Government would undermine the authority of the Iraqi Government, which had a formal relationship with the militias. No sense that they would interrupt the training of the troops who are taking on isis. No sense of how this would impact the increase in nuclear refinement, enrichment, being done by iraq. Consideredat they how this would put the assets of our allies at risk. In fact, quite frankly there was no presentation at all of a comprehensive understanding of hurthe consequences might all our Strategic Initiatives in the region. And in that sense, this was very frustrating. It seemed to reflect a very rushed and reckless action. In addition to what my colleagues said, one thing that was thed me as well fact the president has said he will not let nuclear not let iran develop a nuclear weapon. When asked if they would come back before us before taking action going forward, they were not willing to answer that. So what is the threshold . What happens when the intelligence says iran is within six months or three months of a nuclear weapon, and they then choose to take action . Does that require congressional sent congressional consent . Yes, it does. And we had no indication from them that they might feel they needed to come to congress to get support for that action. It was deeply concerning today. The last thing i would say is that i think we all know that iran and soleimanis strategic objective in iraq has all along been to push out the United States, and reduce our influence in iraq. They have been very open about that for years. And our strike, what we did, actually is allowing iran, and in death, not in life, to be able to accomplish that objective. Because we have already seen actions calling for the complete withdrawal of u. S. Forces there is no doubt our position in iraq today is weaker than it was before. We are all seeing the results of that right now. Reporter can you explain why republicans [inaudible]