() A former Middle East editor for The Associated Press is trying to read between the lines of Israel’s strike Thursday against Iran given that the Trump administration was ostensibly working on a deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Dan Perry joined from Tel Aviv to discuss the backdrop of Israel’s attack and to try to answer: Why now?

“The idea that the U.S. was negotiating with Iran as an equal was always ridiculous,” he said, considering President Trump voided a U.S.-Iran pact in 2018 to restrict the country from developing nuclear weapons.

And yet the Trump administration had begun its own talks with Iran to do just that, he noted.

“I always thought that the idea that he would do this would be so ridiculous that it wasn’t entirely tenable,” Perry said. “It now appears as if that might have been a misdirection and might have been a part of a more complicated set of negotiating tactics. Because clearly (Trump) let loose the dogs, and he let the Israelis attack the Iranians.”

He said there was no reason for the U.S. to negotiate with Iran to allow that country to enrich uranium “at a level that is weaponizable.”

Trump “clearly allowed Israel to go ahead and do this,” Perry said, referring to the military strikes.

“This is the U.S. allowing Israel a great degree of rope to go ahead and attack some of the nuclear sites in order to make a point about these talks,” he said. “The U.S. needs to ask for more of Iran than just to end the enrichment of uranium to a weaponizable level.”