message sent from president trump to the iranian leadership, a message relayed to the supreme leader of iran, the ayatolla khamenei in which president trump was saying the united states doesn t want war. that there is this attack that is imminent but that the u.s. prefers to have talks and the iranians said they would relay that message to the supreme leader but that the supreme leader in the past has said that he is not interested in face-to-face talks or direct talks with president trump. then a few hours after that report came out, there were multiple denials including to nbc news that that exchange happened. and the white house has come out and said officially, no comment on that report. but like i said, that is just one of the he said/she said. there is also the ongoing dispute of where this drone was. the u.s. insists that it was in
a very complicated asymmetric war essentially but it can escalate really fast into a real and deadly and costly war against an adversary in iran that is much more sophisticated, much more ready for this than iraq or afghanistan were and look at how those conflicts turned out. the iranians have been preparing for this contingency with a conflict for the united states for a very long time, and i don t think you can assume that they re going to take a military strike inside of iran is something they re not going to respond to at some point. tessa, the price of oil, ben was talking about the strait of hormuz, a remarkable proportion of the world s oil, much of that comes around the area of the persian gulf goes through the strait of hore hughes and the price is up 5.5% in one day on these increased tensions but a lot of people have been saying in the last few weeks the president doesn t want war with iran, bolton does, and pompeo does. these have been guys who have been hawkish about ira
pressure they re feeling from the united states. that s one thing. what the iranians are doing to push back. what else are you looking at, though, today, in terms of signs that there is another shift happening in the region? well, i think the big question mark here, erica, is not so much in the region, it s in washington, d.c. you re getting very conflicting and mixed signals from president trump. remember that last week, you had the tanker attacks. then on monday, president trump said they re very minor. seemed to dismiss their importance, and perhaps encourage further iranian escalation. now, today, you have donald trump tweeting that the iranians made a very big mistake. we don t know what that means and it suggests some u.s. retaliation. and from weeks he said he doesn t want war. he wants to talk. as you just heard from fred pleitgen, they re saying, listen, we don t want war either, but we are prepared. let s look at this region in
events, we have been the aggressive actor. how? iran was by all accounts, in which they accepted the most stringent oversite of their nuclear program we pulled out of it, we started violating it. the whole idea for them was sanctions relief. we sitened the screws. we re not going to allow you to export any oil, which is where they get most of their revenue, and then we basically designated the iranian revolutionary guard even though military reporters say, don t do this. we have been pushing them and pushing them and pushing them back against the wall. this is not a secret, has been calling for war with iran for more than a decade now. the person we re relying on who doesn t want war inside the administration is donald trump. who doesn t want any part of
preserve all existing pro-life protections and future spending bills and has questions about the buildup of troops in the middle east amid growing tensions with iran. republican senator from utah mike lee sits on the senate judiciary committee among other things. good to have you with us tonight. not often i see your name alongside bernie sanders but you have signed a letter together in which you are asking serious questions about what is going on with iran. as part of the letter, a bipartisan group of senators say we want to reiterate as of this date congress has not authorized war with iran and no current statutory authority allows the us to conduct hostilities against the government of iran. the administration says it doesn t want war with iran. what answers are you pressing for? i believe that and respect that about this president, the most constitutionally conscious president we have had relating to war powers in decades, literally decades, this is a president who respects the b