-When somebody assassinates the head
of another country's military force
and takes credit for it,
that's a unique event in history.
People should realize, whatever else this crisis is about,
it signals the entry into a new era of warfare and,
if we feel that we have the authority to use armed drones
to kill senior officials of other nations,
you can be sure other nations will assert
that same privilege and opportunity for themselves.
-Overnight, we learned that President Trump ordered
the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
-In a major escalation in tensions
between the US and Iran.
-The targeted killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani
inside Iraq is a dramatic escalation
in the confrontation between the US and Iran.
-We are now essentially in a state of war with Iran.
We have killed their leading military figure
in what is an assassination in a third country.
We're in a state of war.
American diplomats have been counseled
to leave Iraq and American citizens, generally,
were told today to leave Iraq quickly.
By air, if they can; by land, if that's the only way;
but they were urgently advised to leave the country.
That's a sign that we think there's real trouble ahead.
President Trump does have the authority,
as commander-in-chief, I think,
to take actions to protect Americans
against an imminent attack.
In the case of assassination of a very senior official,
I find that such an unusual step.
I'm surprised.
I'm troubled that there wasn't some process
of informing Congress prior to this action being taken.
If we're, as a nation, now, going to war,
our Constitution requires certain processes.
We don't just go into new wars because a president thinks,
you know, he has the authority and power.
We have a process that needs to be followed.
Trump's strategy, in dealing with Iran,
it's a complicated question,
but his basic strategy, since he took office,
has been to tear up the deal that his predecessor,
Barack Obama, made with Iran, backed out of the deal,
and imposed sanctions against Iran in 2018.
Maximum pressure campaign has been succeeding,
but it has not succeeded in the thing
that President Trump wanted,
which was to bring Iran into a new negotiation.
He had been quite restrained in dealing with Iran, until now.
Through the summer of crisis,
Iran has repeatedly struck at American targets.
They shot down one of our drones.
They disabled the oil facilities
of our closest Persian Gulf ally, Saudi Arabia.
They attacked an American consulate in Basra a year ago,
all without major American military response.
I think this is not a president who wants to go to war,
especially in an election year.
He wants to be at a negotiating table.
He wants a big deal.
He wants a backdrop of flags
and he wants to get the deal that his predecessor,
Barack Obama, couldn't get, an even better deal.
But, no sign that that was happening
and, indeed, it's all but inconceivable now.
Iran, in the last ten years,
has become increasingly adept in using cyberweapons.
Iran feels, correctly, I think,
that it was the target of the first major cyberattack,
by the United States and Israel,
in what was known as the Stuxnet virus,
that disabled the Iranian nuclear program, in part.
The Iranians, having been a target,
have tried to develop their own cyberweapons
and, although it's not publicized much,
they've been pretty aggressive.
They've gone after US banks and financial institutions.
The banks didn't wanna talk about it,
but, in the last two or three years,
there have been major Iranian hits on our banks.
Something to think about,
when you think about retaliation.
So when I try to make sense of this crisis,
I turn to some basics.
First, it reminds me of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Iraq's Saddam Hussein was a brutal murderer.
He killed [chuckling] a lot more people
than Qasem Soleimani had.
He was a man who governed by torture.
And we had this idea that we were gonna sweep away
a terrible man, terrible regime,
and that, you know, wonderful things would happen.
We entered a world of consequences
that we couldn't begin to predict.
This reminds me of that.
We've entered into a new paradigm.
We don't really know what's ahead.
We don't know how Iran will respond.
Since 1979, the United States and Iran have been drifting
towards a direct conflict, an all-out war.
We've managed to avoid it, despite incredible provocations.
At the same time, we've cooperated with Iran.
In the fight against ISIS, Iran was a silent partner
and guess who was the most important silent partner.
General Qasem Soleimani, that's who.
After these 40-plus years,
America appears to be in a direct warlike,
I'm gonna call it war, with Iran, following this attack.
Something that we've anticipated, feared, dreaded,
now seems to be upon us.
And it has the weight of all that history and anger
behind it.