On Wednesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-CA) said that while we should covertly help protesters in Iran, after we struck the nuclear sites, “that was something that the Iranian people did not like. And they did kind of rally around their government. So, we don’t want to give them an excuse to kind of go in a different direction.”

Co-host John Berman asked, “If the Iranian regime is teetering on the brink — and this is all theoretical now — and, in theory, a U.S. airstrike could push it over the edge, would that be something desirable to U.S. interests?”

Cisneros answered, “Well, we don’t know that airstrike would push them over the edge, but we do know that they’ve threatened, if we do attack Iran, that they are going to go and attack U.S. assets, they’re going to attack Israel. They’ve already made that pretty clear. I think one of the things we do know, when they did go after the nuclear sites in Iran, that was something that the Iranian people did not like. And they did kind of rally around their government. So, we don’t want to give them an excuse to kind of go in a different direction. I think, right now, we should support the efforts of the Iranian people and kind of figure out a way that we can encourage them to keep this going, and there are covert ways that we can do that. But to just go out and flat-out attack them is just throwing us into another situation.”

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