‘This War Is Going To Continue for Some Time’: Former NatSec Official Gives Grim Response To Trump’s Iran Speech

Brett McGurk, the former White House Coordinator for the Middle East, gave a grim interpretation of President Donald Trump’s Wednesday night address, claiming it made him believe that “this war is going to continue for some time.”

McGurk joined CNN’s The Source after the president finished his remarks, speaking with host Kaitlan Collins about Trump’s goals for the speech and its implications for the future of the US military conflict with Iran. Collins claimed the president wanted to lay out the reasons for the war in Iran to the American people, asking McGurk if he felt Trump had succeeded in making that case.

“I thought he started with the necessity we talked about. You need necessity, the objective. Then, what’s the plan? I thought the necessity, laying out the bill of particulars on Iran, was fairly effective,” said McGurk to Collins.

McGurk claimed that while the need for the war may have been made clear, the plan for the future of the conflict was not.

“I thought when he laid out the objectives and the plan, I don’t think we heard too much,” said McGurk. “And my takeaway was that we might be in for an escalation of this war.”

He went on to tell Collins that if viewers were waiting for a signal from the president that he was winding down the war, this speech did not deliver.

“He said, if it’s not a deal, the enemy targets everything else he’d been talking about. So if we were– thought we might hear a de-escalatory speech, we’re going to wrap this up in a couple of weeks, I actually heard something quite different,” said McGurk. “He said he visits the families at Dover, and he said, ‘We must honor them by completing the mission.’ And then he basically threatened Iran that we’re going to prepare to send you back to the Stone Age. So I think this war is going to continue for some time. I mean, that’s what I heard.”

Watch above via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!