Tucker Carlson reveals Israel’s three aims in the Middle East — and says Trump knew them before the war

Tucker Carlson revealed in an interview with NPR that, days before the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began, he warned Donald Trump during a private meeting in the Oval Office that the conflict was not about Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump had previously said had been eliminated, but was being pushed by Israel for three purposes: establishing regional hegemony by taking Iran “off the map”; diminishing the power of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states; and ultimately getting the United States out of the Middle East because the U.S. presence constrained Israel’s ambitions. Carlson says he told Trump this directly and that Trump looked at him and replied: “Yes, you’re right. But in the end we all die anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

Carlson added he was shocked and asked, “But what about our kids and our grandkids and like our country?” According to Carlson, Trump responded only with “Ah,” without otherwise answering him. Carlson described the conversation as a “verbatim exchange.”

In Carlson’s own words: “This war is not about Iran’s nuclear program, which you told me and the world that you eliminated back in last summer in June. This war is being pushed by Israel with three aims: one, its own regional hegemony — take Iran off the map. Two, diminishing the power of the GCC, the six Gulf states, which are a rival to Israel and are becoming this kind of Switzerland of the Middle East. And three, getting the U.S. out of the Middle East because we constrain their ambitions, getting our bases out, destroying our bases. Israel wants our bases out of the Middle East. I said this to Trump to his face in the Oval Office days before the war began. And he looked at me and said, ‘Yes, you’re right. But in the end we all die anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’”

Carlson, in other words, says that he warned Trump before the war about what he described as Israel’s three strategic aims in the Middle East, and that Trump acknowledged his assessment by telling him, “Yes, you’re right.” Carlson’s account therefore presents Trump as having been warned about these objectives before the war began and as accepting the substance of Carlson’s warning, while his assertion warns for a greater war in the Middle East.