Ben Rhodes

“We have to come to terms with the fact that we have an empire. We've been acting as if we do. Because if I talk to some friends from other places, what they say to me is, this is what empires do. They break things on the periphery. They keep the rest of the world violent and chaotic so that you can dominate things.”

“The best thing Trump could get, literally the best thing that he could get out of this war, which still I don't think would have been worth anywhere near the cost that we paid, is something approximating the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA.”

“Every scenario we looked at, we war gamed it. We were briefed by Bibi Netanyahu on what a great idea it would be to bomb the Iranian nuclear program. We got the same version of the same presentation Trump did.”