00:00You know, there's something I've been trying to get my head around, Ryan, which is the fact that
00:03a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the possibility of regime change in Iran,
00:09and President Trump literally posted, help is on the way. But fast forward a couple of weeks,
00:15and he seems to be open-minded about actually negotiating with that same regime that he had
00:21sent the threat to a couple of weeks ago. What's changed in the U.S.'s calculus?
00:25I mean, in the short term, I think President Trump got his intelligence briefings. There hasn't been
00:32much optimism within the U.S. intelligence community that regime change in Iran would be a simple
00:38or straightforward task, and certainly not something that can be accomplished from the air.
00:44And they continue to counsel him that if the United States begins military action against Iran,
00:49there are a range of ways that the Iranians can respond, and it's very hard to predict the way
00:54that that might go. So I think President Trump is getting a little bit of a sober moment of taking
01:01in the facts, and then calculating his next move. Obviously, the U.S. has struck Iran before. The
01:07Israelis have struck Iran multiple times, and the region did not erupt into the worst-case scenario.
01:13So he has to keep that history in mind as well, as he tries to accomplish his ultimate goal,
01:18which is defanging Iran, turning Iran into kind of a normal country, so to speak. Maybe not a
01:24friendly country, but one that can't threaten Israel or the United States and isn't advancing
01:29a nuclear program. Kind of pie-in-the-sky dreams, but nevertheless, that's what he's still going for.
01:36Okay. So in your mind, you think this is about defanging, quote-unquote, Iran, and less about
01:41supporting the protesters on the street. So if that does happen, what concessions would Iran
01:50need to bring to the table this time around that they hadn't already made in JCPOA many, many years
01:57ago? Well, you know, in the JCPOA, the Iranians were still allowed some very limited enrichment
02:03capabilities, and they kept their centrifuges. There were tight inspections to make sure that
02:08they didn't amass too much enriched uranium. Trump wants all of that gone. He wants the Iranian
02:13nuclear program largely dismantled, with no enrichment taking place on Iranian soil. And
02:18then he wants to tack on the same demands he had from his first term, limitations on Iran's
02:23ballistic missiles, and the end of Iran's supports for its regional proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon
02:29and the Houthis in Yemen. Those are all pretty big non-starters for Iran traditionally. It's very
02:36hard to assess right now if Iran has decided that with the protests and with this significant
02:41U.S. military buildup in the region and the lessons of the 12-day war last year, that they
02:47might be in too weak of a position to resist all of those demands. Again, you have to be in the room
02:52with the Iranians. You'd have to be in the room with their guardian council to really know what
02:56they're thinking at this moment. But they certainly can't be going into these negotiations believing
03:01it's a position of strength. No, but at the same time, it possibly is they have to be thinking
03:09existentially and maybe this time around yielding to some of those concessions because the very
03:16survival of the regime could be at risk and they don't want to be risking military action from the
03:22U.S. once again. So if the Iranians do actually offer concessions, what could they look like at this
03:28time, Ryan? Well, there have been rumors that they might be able to compromise on the proxies. Those
03:34are, after all, expensive. And that's a guns versus butter argument that they can take to the protest
03:38movement and say we're no longer supporting these foreign movements. But that probably won't be enough
03:43for the Americans. The missile limitations is something that the Iranians see as existential.
03:49They believe that if they get rid of their ballistic missiles or reduce them, they're simply opening
03:54themselves up to further attack, particularly from the Israelis. So that seems to still be a red line
03:59for them. There may be some compromises on the nuclear front, but because of the Trump administration's
04:06maximalist approach to the nuclear program, it would make, it would be a very significant climb down
04:11if Iran decided to offer that. So right now it looks really pessimistic in the outlook that there will
04:17be some kind of U.S. action against the Iranians. And it seems to be more a question of what the scope
04:22and scale of that action would be. Yeah. And just a question for you. These
04:28provocations this week, the Iranian drone flying near the aircraft carrier, you hear about Iranian
04:34vessels accosting a U.S. ship carrying oil around the Strait of Hormuz. Why are they doing that?
04:40Why are they testing the U.S.? Well, that's exactly it. It's testing to see whether or not the United
04:45States has the resolve to maintain its positions in that area. It's also probably elements of hardliners
04:52within the IRGC, also trying to see what their capabilities are within that area. They're
04:59looking to see if the Americans truly are as serious about this military campaign as Trump's
05:04rhetoric suggests. At the same time, these are relatively cheap operations where if it does
05:10provoke an American reaction, it could provoke an American overreaction. And that would generate
05:15international sympathy for the Iranians. It would make the Americans look like the aggressor
05:19if the Americans overreact to an incident like this. So they're not just testing, but they're
05:24also trying to provoke the U.S. into doing something that will shift the narrative, at least internationally
05:30and domestically inside of Iran into the regime's favor.
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