Sen. Lankford Q&A on possible U.S. involvement in Israel-Iran conflict

One week after Israel launched an attack on Iran in particular, on its nuclear program and its military leadership, it remains unclear whether President Trump intends to involve the United States military directly in the offensive. On Thursday, Trump said he would decide on whether to strike Iran within two weeks. President Trump has said he would prefer not to have to resort to military action, but that, if that's the only way to ensure that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons, then he may decide he has no other option. Oklahoma Senator James Lankford (R-OK) is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and has traveled extensively, in line with his congressional duties, throughout the Middle East. I spoke with him Wednesday morning about the current situation.

CAMERON: First, just to clarify, is the U.S. directly involved currently in an any of the bombing of Iran?

LANKFORD: The United States is not part of the bombing of Iran. What's interesting is, all the different variations that are out there of how we can get involved...There are ways that we could be helpful to Israel to say, 'hey, Israel's our ally, Iran wants to kill us', and Iran has been very, very clear, they want to kill us, over and over again, as they've repeated 'death to America' in the leadership chants, over and over. So, it's clear who our friend is and who our enemy is in this situation. But it's different if we actually put troops on the ground, if we put planes in the air. That's very different than providing resources to the Israelis as we have to the Ukrainians.

CAMERON: The administration is reportedly weighing whether to provide Israel with these bunker-busting bombs -- how much of an escalation would that be, and do you feel this is the moment to do that?

LANKFORD: So, I have a lot of questions about the bunker-busting bombs because Natanz, where you've got that nuclear site that's there that no question has centrifuges in it, is enriching uranium, and also has storage of highly enriched uranium, as well...You drop a large bomb on that mountain and you collapse that system, you may shut down the centrifuges, but you've also just buried highly enriched uranium inside that system. I'm not sure that's a great idea to be able to leave that buried inside that system as well. You still have the same problems and issues that are there. So, simply dropping a bomb on top of highly enriched uranium and centrifuges doesn't really fix the issue. So I think it's more complicated than that and people are oversimplifying it with just saying, drop a big bomb on it and it may solve the problem. That doesn't solve the problem on it. You've got to be able to get that highly enriched uranium out. It's not that it will explode if you drop a bomb on it, that's not how it works in a nuclear explosion. But you still do have radiation, you have all those effects that are there that's not being managed. We don't know how the canisters would do with all of the chaos and collapse of a mine and the storage area around it. There's a lot of unknowns with that. So, best case scenario, you destroy the centrifuges, you remove the highly enriched uranium, not just drop a bomb on top of it.

CAMERON: So, it sounds like, if you were advising President Trump. you'd be saying, let's keep our posture the way it is right now and not get more involved.

LANKFORD: Yeah, my focus is we need to stand with our ally Israel and say Israel is being repeatedly attacked by Iran. Obviously, Iran launched missiles at them months and months ago, back in October of last year, but Iran has been launching missiles at them for a long time. Iran is the funder of Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. Iran has been repeatedly attacking them as they have for us. I happened to be in Beirut on Memorial Day and was standing there next to the memorial in Beirut for 241 Marines that were killed with an Iranian-funded operation against United States Marines all the way back in 1983. So this is not new, what we're experiencing now. Iran has been sending proxies to attack the Jewish nation of Israel, as well as the United States, for decades now. And the best thing that could happen for the Iranian people and for the entire region is for that regime to not be in leadership. The people of Iran live under the oppression of that leadership as well, but that doesn't mean we need to militarily go out and take out that leadership. Two times in the last ten years, the Iranian people have tried to rise up and to be able to form their own government that represents them. And two times they've been brutally crushed by the regime. So, giving an opportunity for the people of Iran to be able to speak out for the future of Iran, I think, is a good thing for the entire region and would help us in reestablishing relationships with that country that we should have relationships with, but they never have with us.

CAMERON: We're seeing some of those who support President Trump express concern about getting involved in a conflict with Iran. On the campaign trail last year, Trump said he would disentangle America from overseas conflicts. How much is politics weighing on this decision he has to make?

LANKFORD: I think this is a natural thing for President Trump that he does not want to get involved in foreign wars, but many leaders don't get to choose that, the wars come to you, and then you've got to decide what's the best option for the United States. 'America First' doesn't mean isolation from the rest of the world. The rest of the world still gets a vote in this. So, whether that is trade policy or whether that is military action, the rest of the world still gets a vote, to determine how America is going to have to get involved. But the president's been really good to be able to say, I want to get us out of the Middle East, I want to get us out of Syria. I want to get us out of Iraq. I want to get us out of any involvement in what's happening in Ukraine and in Russia. He doesn't want a war with China. He's not trying to pursue that. But at the same time, the president's trying to be able to build up our own defense, our own navy, our own missile capability, what he calls the Golden Dome over the United States -- a missile protection system here for the United States like Israel has over Israel, to be able to make sure that we're prepared to be able to defend ourselves as well. So, just saying we don't want to get involved in foreign wars may not always be the best option for Americans, at that point. We've seen from September the 11th, when people thousands of miles away say they want to kill us. Sometimes they really do. And you've got to actually step out and to say, we're going to stop you from killing us.