President Trump's shift from calling for a ceasefire to backing the Israeli strike that killed Iran's Supreme Leader was driven by a single event: the regime's massacre of over 30,000 of its own citizens in 48 hours. Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has disclosed the key factor that altered the president's calculations.
McMaster shared the account on the GoodFellows panel at the Hoover Institution, as "Hvylya" reports.
The timeline matters. After the Israeli strikes on the Fordow nuclear facility during the earlier 12-day war, Trump pushed for a ceasefire. "A lot of Iranians were up in arms about that because they're like, 'Why did you guys stop?'" McMaster recalled. The regime's subsequent mass killing of its own people changed the equation. "I think that really changed the perspective," McMaster said. "They had just murdered over 30,000 of their own people in a 48-hour period."
The panelists also addressed the broader precedent of assassinating a foreign head of state. Cochrane framed it bluntly: "You don't assassinate foreign leaders in two circumstances. One is when they could assassinate yours. Or when you can't do it." He added that the US "would have happily dropped a bomb on Hitler's bunker in World War II if we had precision munitions, and it would have saved an enormous number of lives."
McMaster noted that Iran had also attempted to kill Trump directly. "They did try to kill President Trump also. And he did say, 'I got him before he got me,'" McMaster said. The Israeli operation, codenamed Roaring Lion, struck the Supreme Leader and approximately 40 senior officials who had gathered for a meeting above ground in Tehran.
Also read: Fatal Pattern Since October 7: Why Iran's Overconfidence May Prove Deadly