00:03:19.860And so we had this whole conversation about this.
00:03:21.380But then I said, this war is not about Iran's nuclear program,
00:03:25.700which you told me and the world that you eliminated back in last summer in June.0.90
00:03:31.600This war is being pushed by Israel with three aims.0.61
00:03:36.460One, its own regional hegemony, take Iran off the map.0.85
00:03:41.260They don't have freedom of movement as long as Iran is a regional power.0.62
00:03:45.120Two, diminishing the power of the GCC, the six Gulf states, which are a rival to Israel and are becoming this kind of Switzerland of the Middle East, and that's bad for Israeli interests.0.71
00:03:56.180And three, getting the U.S. out of the Middle East because we constrain their ambitions, getting our bases out, destroying our bases.0.78
00:04:04.280Israel wants our bases out of the Middle East.
00:04:06.760I said this to Trump to his face in the Oval Office days before the war began.
00:04:10.420And he looked at me and said, yes, you're right, but in the end, we all die anyway, so it doesn't matter.
00:04:42.040And I think it was, I thought it was true then, and I think it's been proven true now.0.95
00:04:45.840The goal was to get the U.S. out, to diminish the GCC, and obviously to take Iran off the map and sink it into permanent internal strife, into civil war, sectarian strife.0.96
00:04:58.540And he said, it doesn't matter because in the end, we're all dead anyway.
00:05:02.400And I was shocked by that because it's nihilism.
00:05:04.820And that's the last thing any leader should display or any person should display.