00:00Are you hearing from these nations, do you have any kind of read about, even though they may not
00:04be fans of the Iranian regime, fears they might have around it imploding?
00:09Well, they are absolutely not fans of the Iranian regime. And you're seeing some fairly
00:13sharp statements come out of both Saudi Arabia, the UAE, with respect to strikes that Iran has
00:19already taken, retaliatory strikes on US targets in their countries. But that said, I think there's
00:26no doubt that this is a nightmare scenario for the neighboring Gulf countries. This is precisely
00:33what they had been hoping against and had been working diligently behind the scenes
00:39in order for negotiations and diplomacy to be successful. I heard early this morning from an
00:47Omani contact who said this is the worst scenario that we had feared playing out. And look, it's still
00:55early days. It's really hard to say exactly how the various repercussions are going to unfold.
01:02But I think this is going to get a lot more complicated in the coming days and perhaps
01:07even weeks.
01:09I'm wondering what your assessment was of the impact on Iran's nuclear program after that
01:14first round of strikes, because the president came out and said, we destroyed those facilities,
01:19we obliterated them. Nuclear experts I talked to were less sure. We're now talking about Iran
01:23having been able to build those back very quickly. Is that assessment accurate? We also heard the
01:29president say there was an imminent threat. Was that breakout time that much different than it was
01:34two, three, four, five weeks ago?
01:37I don't think so. I mean, I think surely the president said obliterated for his own political
01:43reasons last June. But by all accounts, the nuclear facilities did sustain some amount,
01:50if not significant damage. And more importantly, there were no intelligence reports suggesting
01:57that Iran was imminently going to have a nuclear weapons capability. On the contrary, the negotiations
02:05that were ongoing were in fact focused on whether and how Iran might be willing to compromise its
02:14ambitions, potentially even down to zero enrichment. Now, it's not at all clear that we were there. And indeed,
02:21by many accounts, we were far apart. But I do think it's very hard to make the case that there
02:26was an imminent
02:27threat of Iranian nuclear capabilities.
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