The Daily Beast reports:

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson made waves on Friday when he criticized not only President Donald Trump, whom he described as being “complicit” in Israel’s attack on Iran, but also former Fox News pals like Sean Hannity and Rupert Murdoch for acting as “warmongers.”

In his Friday morning newsletter, Carlson wrote of Trump’s prior knowledge of the attack on Iran, “While the American military may not have physically perpetrated the assault, years of funding and sending weapons to Israel, which Donald Trump just bragged about on Truth Social, undeniably place the U.S. at the center of last night’s event.”

He continued, “Washington knew these attacks would happen. They aided Israel in carrying them out. Politicians purporting to be America First can’t now credibly turn around and say they had nothing to do with it. Our country is in deep.”

”It’s worth taking a step back and wondering how any of this helps the United States,” Carlson added. “We can’t think of a single way.”

In another piece of commentary, Carlson explicitly stated his position, writing, “The United States should not at any level participate in a war with Iran. No funding, no American weapons, no troops on the ground.”

He continued, calling on the Trump administration to “drop Israel [and] let them fight their own wars… If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases. But not with America’s backing.”

Carlson cited concerns over American involvement in the conflict having the potential to “whip up the radical Islamic world’s hatred for the West and fuel the next generation of terrorism,” but also the risk of “thousands of immediate American deaths, all in the name of a foreign agenda that has nothing to do with our country.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports:

After months of urging Israel not to strike Iran while he worked toward a nuclear deal, President Donald Trump told Reuters in a phone interview on Friday that he and his team had known the attacks were coming – and still saw room for an accord.

“We knew everything, and I tried to save Iran humiliation and death. I tried to save them very hard because I would have loved to have seen a deal worked out,” Trump said.

“They can still work out a deal, however, it’s not too late,” he added.

Trump had repeatedly pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay an Israeli attack to give diplomacy more time, though the president himself had threatened to bomb the Gulf nation if nuclear talks failed.

Trump’s shifting stance around the Israeli strikes, which he called “excellent” and “very successful” in a series of media interviews on Friday, offered one of the most striking examples yet of how he conducts high-stakes negotiations through both frank public rhetoric and behind-the-scenes maneuvers.

The U.S. president offered support for Israel’s decision to launch a series of devastating raids in Iran, showing a willingness to embrace the use of military force to set back Tehran’s nuclear program. In contrast, some allies stressed the need for restraint. [Continue reading…]