President Trump explicitly rejected the notion that Israel dragged the U.S. into war with Iran, saying that, “if anything, I might’ve forced Israel’s hand.”

Asked Tuesday, “Did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran?” Trump offered the following answer:

No, I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first — they were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first, I felt strongly about that. We have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successfully. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I thought that they were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to........

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