Former CIA Director John Brennan condemned the U.S. attack on Iran that began this weekend during an appearance Monday evening on MS Now:

JOHN BRENNAN: I think this is the second time this century that the United States has made a drastically bad mistake in terms of engaging in conflict in the Middle East. The first one was in 2003 when we invaded Iraq, and that ushered in years and years of chaos and violence and terrorism. It gave birth to ISIS, and we’re just getting over 20 years of that confusion and chaos. Now we’re going ahead and carrying out this major attack against a very large country, Iran, which is much larger than Iraq. There’s a lot of history here, obviously, in the region and so on. But what we’ve seen in the past several days is devastating attacks against Iran and the Iranian government. The Iranian regime is not relenting at this point, and that’s why they’re throwing everything they have at nearby targets, whether it be U.S. bases or the Gulf Arab states. Such a tragic, tragic, senseless, and needless loss of life that we’re seeing right now. As Senator Warner said, there was no imminent threat. Clearly, I think the administration is now making things up in order to try to justify what is happening. What’s clear to me is that Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long wanted to have this type of military operation against Iran, was able to bring Trump along and get him to engage in something like this. The rationale that Marco Rubio gave today-well, they were going to get hit, so we knew they were going to lash back, and that’s why we had to hit them-doesn’t hold up. We could have said to the Israelis, You do not go forward because we’re not going to help you. Don’t we have leverage over Israel? You would think, yes. But going ahead with these types of strikes while we were engaged in negotiations with Iran-for the second time in a year-and for the second time in a year, while negotiations are underway, they get hit. So clearly, there’s been deception toward the Iranians. My view is that Donald Trump, irrespective of the intelligence, irrespective of the fact that the nuclear program has been damaged and hobbled significantly as a result of last year’s attacks, is making things up about what the Iranians are doing. When they say that the regime is tottering, it’s not. Yes, there are a lot of Iranian people who despise the regime and hated Khomeini and are glad that he’s dead. But the regime and the theocracy also have a lot of people who support them. It’s a country of over 92 million people. They have their equivalent-in rural areas, conservative areas-of the MAGA movement in Iran that sees what the United States is doing now as just one more example of the United States carrying out violent attacks inside the Middle East and directed against Iran. Again, I think what’s happening here now is something we’re going to live with for many, many years to come. Clearly, there is the initial military response that Iran has, but I think this is going to reset the landscape in the Middle East, and it’s not for the better. We don’t know what’s going to happen here. We don’t see any indication so far that the Iranian military is fractured or splitting away from its leaders. This is clearly on Donald Trump. If things go well from here on, good on him-he gets the credit. But as happened in Iraq, if this unleashes a period of protracted violence and instability in the Middle East, he owns it fully. He cannot blame it on any predecessors, especially since he tore up the Iranian nuclear agreement that the Obama administration had negotiated and that got the Iranians to give up 90% of their centrifuges and allow an intrusive inspection regime. All the things that the Trump administration couldn’t get right now through negotiations were already achieved. So again, this is so unnecessary, so needless. And the fact that he’s doing it without engaging Congress, without engaging our allies and partners-this is a decision on the part of Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump to go ahead and unleash this military fury.

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