Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) warned Iran on Sunday that it would face consequences should it choose to target the United States’s presence in the Middle East, where negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program have dissipated following a recent attack by Israel. 

Israel began launching a series of strikes against Iran Thursday, seeking to disable its nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities and decapitate its military leadership. While appearing on Fox News’s Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream, Thune explained that President Donald Trump has sought to come to a peaceful solution with Iran, but that the country became “defiant” amid negotiations, adding that Israel’s recent actions were taken to defend itself.