David Sanger, The New York Times:
Well, thanks for having me on.
So the Israelis have been threatening for months now to take military action because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes this is a unique moment of vulnerability for the Iranians. Israel knocked out many of their air defenses back in October during those missile exchanges, you may recall.
Obviously, Hamas and Hezbollah are no longer in a position to respond to any kind of attack on Iran by taking it out on Israel. So, the position that the Israeli government has taken is, you will never have a chance like this again and that the Iranians will rebuild.
President Trump has been saying, look, let’s give diplomacy one last chance here. And his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, turned in a proposal to the Iranians a few weeks ago that would have gradually weaned them of their own enrichment of uranium and turned all of this over to an international consortium that Iran would be a member of, but it wouldn’t be producing on Iranian soil.
And the Iranians rejected that. And so now the question is, what are the Israelis doing? Are they really about to attack? Or are they creating a condition that will allow Mr. Witkoff to go back on Sunday and say, look, you’re going to give this up diplomatically or you’re going to lose it militarily?
