BREAM: “‘Interventions by Rahim Safavi and other senior Iranian policymakers will be seen by Iran’s long-running regional rival Saudi Arabia as a threatening signal that Tehran is willing to stir up regional conflict to prevent Riyadh from normalizing ties with Israel, as the U.S. wants.’ Do you think that is what this is about?”

POMPEO: “Shannon, good morning. This is, at its core, about historic efforts by Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Make no mistake about it, these were barbaric attacks, they’re continuing. Women and children, there’s now hostages being held. You know, I was on this very show a few weeks back talking about the fact that when the United States pays a billion dollars per hostage, there will be more hostage-taking. Look what happened yesterday. More hostages taken by the Iranian regime’s proxy, Hamas, in Gaza. This is bad set of policies here. When I hear Mr. Finer talk about the fact that that decision to give them $6 billion did not matter, we cannot forget, too, we gave Palestinians $230 million on nearly day one of the Biden Administration. The responsible party here are the leadership, the terrorists in the Gaza Strip, Hamas. They’re funded by Iran. And the United States policy to cozy up to Iran has created enormous risk for Israel, which we are seeing play out today. And then you should note, too, the Gulf states all are watching what Iran is doing here. They can see. This was a moment of clarity for the world. Do not avert your eyes. I hope the world will continue to watch what is taking place here, because this is precisely why we built out a structure which isolated Iran, caused at least four countries to normalize relationships with Israel. And when the Biden Administration disrupted that, there’s so much risk for the American people as well.”

[When you set incentives like this, don’t be surprised when people respond to them. But it’s not just the US that has set those incentives; Israel has too. They routinely offered Hamas severely lopsided prisoner exchanges, in one case over 1,000 Hamas terrorists for one Israeli soldier (Gilad Shalit). Clearly Hamas thought they could use hostages in this case to bargain for concessions. Let’s hope they finally get a lot more than they bargained for in the *right* way. — Ed]