the irgc is obviously a threat, but it s not just a question of this action. it s also understanding what will happen next. yes, iran attacked ships. they downed this they downed this spy plane, and the question is where do we where do we go next? if there is a response, a military response against the satellite against the missile batteries or against the satellites that were used, the areas to monitor the strike, perhaps that s proportional, but there needs to be some discussion with congress and our allies about what our plan is. we can t simply wait and expect we re going to be able to do something with respect to iran that benefits america without understanding what our plan is. when the secretary of state s position is laid out of 12
this happened, the president s decision to call this off. but more than that we want to understand if there s a strategy here. we want to understand what it is the administration is trying to accomplish when you have different messages coming from you have one coming from john bolton, one coming from secretary pompeo, and then you have a different one coming from the president. this gives us an opportunity, i think, to try to understand that. but if they don t provide clarity there s no leadership of congress and amouultimately no leadership of our allies. maybe what they re trying to accomplish is getting iran to stop blowing u.s. aircraft out of the sky. there s no question iran is dangerous regime. that s why this discussion is so important. they re the largest sponse supporter of state sponsored terrorism, they support huz
fact we re between acting defense secretaries. but you have national security advisor john bolton who seems to be for regime change, for extreme action visa vi iran. and mike pompeo is trying to put himself betweenbolt bolton and prez. if there s one issue he went into the trump administration already caring extremely passionate about it was iran. he was probably one of the leading critics of the iran nuclear deal. it seems to me he and bolton have often differed or tactics over the last year, what exactly they should be doing at any given moment. i think he in his own way perhaps not as much of a hawk, but an extreme hawk on iran, and then measures that are necessary to take to counter their aggression in the region. what s striking to me the disagreement seems to be between president trump and many of his
plethora of troops in the region are used for that specific person. and nick robinson talked about this also, iran isn t just its own military presence. it has allies, surrogates, cut outs everywhere. and they have other targets they can hit that aren t just necessarily american assets. completely. we have friends, we have allies, we have partners. if you depot after one of those, you have a weak link and put everybody on a heightened state of concern. if we could put a map up on the region just in general. stay on the map, and we do know the u.s., the president had order a strike, called off at the last minute. tell me exactly what this would have looked like. you don t know exactly where the aircraft was coming from, where they would have gone. it is fair to assume and we may not know that, that the strike would have gone through
region and fast. here s why. iran will fight an asymmetric war, use its network of regional proxies to target the u.s. and its allies far from iran. shea militia in iraq could target u.s. forces. hezbollah and lebanon could fire missiles. hezbollah and shea militias in syria could target u.s. forces there. hu houthi rebels in yemen could target saudi forces, and even in afghanistan iran has loyal fighters who could attack u.s. troops there. the u.s. would suddenly be threatened on many fronts far from iran. iran would also use its conventional forces currently close to 1 million personnel to target u.s. allies and bases in