competing interests, right? one is the fact that he has urged prime minister netanyahu, he has a very long relationship, as well, going back decades as they both have risen through the ranks with their respective countries politics it has been a good relationship and it has been one with points of conflict at times and this is certainly one of them. so he is certainly going to be regretful that they may have y taken this step against the guidance, the advice that this administration has offered at the same time her president sa biden has also been clear whatever disagreements he has with the israeli government, he is not going to step back from his deep support for the country, its right to defend itself, its continued support for israel point that is the nature of what is happening inside the white house right now. they are doing the same thing in the situation room and t elsewhere in the west wing that i am doing right now which is trying to gather information. we are hearing any usu
that is a good question, they locked down the white house right now point the normal sources are keeping quiet because they want to see how this plays out. they want to see how far this goes. it will depend on the scope and the scale of this operation is this something that is of a ha restrained enough nature that potentially iran does not feel a the need to respond in kind or is the kind of overwhelming operation that will trigger that escalation that andrea talked about. this is exactly is than error that president biden was afraid of. on october 7th last year and every day since then, he did not want the war in gaza to spread beyond that enclave to the rest of the region and here we are now for the very first time in decades, israel and iran striking each other s home territory, not just the proxies in iraq and syria where they had a shadow war for years. this is their home territories, in a significant way. you are hearing the white house, jake sullivan, the national security adv
too optimistic if i was in the white house tonight. michael, just today, the u.s. announced sanctions on iran over there strike over the weekend. what other leverage does the u.s. have over iran moving forward? moving forward, you know, i think it would be right for the biden administration to begin to rethink their iran policy. they wanted very badly to w return to the obama era , joint plan, which limited certain aspects of the iranian nuclear program. but that is obviously not in the offing, especially now. i think the only way for them to create leverage is honestly to go back to oil sanctions and to enforce the sanctions that are on the books. now some of the people will say so quickly that the last thing the world economy and the united states inflationary numbers need is less oil on the
levels of government here and with our allies to try to put together a picture of what exactly has transpired, what may still be transpiring, what might still be coming in the next few hours overseas and f putting together a picture for the president to begin making further calls himself a think it is interesting as we head close to midnight now that we consider the time zones and different positions across the world right now. it is worth flagging that tony blinken, the secretary of state, has been attending a meeting of g7 foreign ministers in italy. they are set to resume some of their meetings in just a few hours. and so that might be a time where, courtney at the pentagon , the white house, have been getting some information publicly from u.s. officials. we have been exciting to see tony blinken in just a matter of hours to be speaking as part of that foreign ministers brief meeting. so that might be our first opportunity to hear from a senior u.s. official about whatr
is happening also is a key opportunity with our closest allies gathered in one place for the work of diplomacy to be gone and ernest if it hasn t already begun, steph. do you know who is with the president right now? we know that the president, when he returned tonight from what has been a three day campaign swing in pennsylvania, he didn t go to the residence, he went straight to the west ht wing. some of the senior advisers who had been traveling with him. be we also know that jake sullivan was in the west wing this evening. it is likely that the president would have wanted to get a briefing directly from his national security team about a very important call that took place earlier today jake sullivan, the national security advisor had a meeting of what is known as the u.s.-israeli consulting group to discuss not just the situation in gaza but there was a smaller meeting of that group, just jake sullivan and his israeli counterpart as well as a senior minister in the israeli gov