If the President knew that his allies would let him down so suddenly, he would have handled them with the greatest care.
If the President knew that his allies would let him down so suddenly, he would have handled them with the greatest care.
Solution
Solution: This question tests third conditional sentences (unreal past conditionals).
The third conditional expresses hypothetical situations in the past that didn't actually happen. It follows the pattern: "If + past perfect, would have + past participle." Think of it like saying "If I had studied harder, I would have passed the test" when you actually didn't study hard and didn't pass. We can also invert it by dropping "if" and flipping the subject and "had."
Option 1 → "Had knowledge" is clunky—we need "had known" for proper grammar.
Option 2 → Perfect! Inverted third conditional: "Had known" = "If he had known."
Option 3 → "Could know beforehand" breaks the past perfect structure we need.
Option 4 → Mixes present "can" with past "knew"—like wearing flip-flops with snow boots.
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