Page 5 - Tanker Attacks News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I just heard someone saying that inside the administration, it's trump versus bolton. and a bunch of different swing votes. and i think to myself, here it is. senior white house official tells me it's bolton versus trump versus how to proceed on iran. trump does not want conflict. pompeo, pence, esper are swing votes, et cetera. the president seems to be essentially a kind of pundit/commentator sitting at a bar on his own administration, as it moves almost inexorably towards actual military confrontation. >> and what's so absurd, as you said in your intro, it depends what side of bed he got ou...

He makes hawkish statements one moment, then he says, it's just a small thing, these tanker attacks are not a big deal. and you have people on left and right trying to give trump cover, saying, he doesn't want a war. and i don't buy that. i don't think you can give him a get out of jail free card on this. because he's the one who appointed john bolton, knowing that bolton's lifelong mission has been to start a war with iran. he appointed mike pompeo who said, when he was a member of congress, that we shouldn't have a deal with iran, he should have 2,000 sorties. that's pompeo's phrase, air str...

Pressure they're feeling from the united states. >> that's one thing. what the iranians are doing to push back. what else are you looking at, though, today, in terms of signs that there is another shift happening in the region? >> well, i think the big question mark here, erica, is not so much in the region, it's in washington, d.c. you're getting very conflicting and mixed signals from president trump. remember that last week, you had the tanker attacks. then on monday, president trump said they're very minor. seemed to dismiss their importance, and perhaps encourage further iranian escalatio...

Han and say sorry. that's not the way they work, so what happens now? >> in the way he has created a little maneuver room for himself but in another way it's closed down around him because the revolutionary guard is not accountable to the state government. >> and they were also accountable for those tanker attacks. so is this part of a pattern of the iranian revolution guard trying to provoke a confrontation? >> remember, they are the hard-liners. nobody hated the iran deal more than them than maybe trump. just a month ago or so a revolutionary guard commander was calling for regime change in ...

Intelligence sensors around the clock. so how much they want to declassify remains to be seen. i think we will see in the coming hours and day some addition -- and they have done it with they tanker attacks, and talking in details about the troops they are sending to the region, because they know there's doubter, and they know to have to get support from allied governments in the region if they want to conduct any kind of military action. this could not be a go it alone proposal for very long. they will need support from u.s. military and security partners. >> joining us is maisy ohrono.