00:00The biggest question, of course, is one you just alluded to. What are the actual goals
00:04that President Trump is committed to and that he says the campaign will be sustained until
00:10they're achieved? Because he said some very different things along the way. He said this
00:16was a war to produce a change in the regime by weakening it so that the Iranian people could
00:21then rise up and take over the government. He spoke about the nuclear program. Of course,
00:26we've spoken about the threat of the ballistic missiles. He's also said it could go on for
00:30four weeks, but it could end in two days, and that he might be unwilling to talk to the regime,
00:36and then that he will be willing to talk to the regime. So there's a very confused and
00:40inconsistent presentation of the case and the strategy for this war, and that, I think,
00:45produces a lot of uncertainty. Now, of course, a second question is how much fight do the
00:51Iranians have in them. At the moment, they are suffering severe blows dealt to them by the U.S.
00:58and the Israeli military, including, of course, wiping out their top leadership, including the
01:02Supreme Leader. They are still, however, able to get ballistic missiles fired. I'm speaking to you
01:08from Tel Aviv, and there have been, yet again this morning, sirens as rockets and missiles have been
01:14fired from Iran toward Israel. Hezbollah has now joined. And so if Iran has weeks of fight in it,
01:23that they continue to get these rockets, missiles launched, this could go on for quite some time.
01:29Well, you also, under President Biden, were a liaison to Israel on Iran. So you know Ali
01:35Larijani pretty well. Can he hold the loyalty of the IRGC? And also, what is his intention here?
01:43He's just posted on X in the last hour that he will not negotiate with the United States.
01:50He's a creature of the Iranian system, about as establishment a person as there is in the Iranian,
01:57in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Close to the IRGC, he was close to the Supreme Leader. It would not
02:08surprise me if at some point he is willing to reenter negotiations, obviously part of the regime
02:13that previously did conduct negotiations. If they do so now, though, it would be as part of a regime
02:18survival strategy. Now, that will pose a dilemma for President Trump, who days before the war began
02:25said he would have foregone this conflict if he had gotten the concessions he was seeking
02:30on the nuclear program. Maybe that would still be his position. But having started the war,
02:35having said it's for changing the regime, having called on the Iranian people to come out and take
02:41over and this is their moment of freedom, it would be inconsistent for him to then take that deal
02:46that maybe now Larijani is willing to offer when they weren't willing to offer those concessions
02:51before the war began. I mean, Larijani has said in the past that if Iran were to be attacked by
02:56the
02:57U.S. or Israel, that it would have no choice but to develop a nuclear weapon. What are the odds
03:02that
03:02instead of backing down, Larijani and all associated with the leadership goes all in on this? And if they
03:10don't have the military capacity, they find other ways to fight back, Dan?
03:15That's always been the risk of this kind of a conflict is that you know how it starts, but you
03:21don't really know how it ends. There certainly could be scenarios in which an even more hardline
03:27regime takes hold in Iran, one that is not willing to observe actually the limits that Khamenei put on
03:36the nuclear program, much as close as they were before last June to achieving a nuclear weapon. He had
03:41never given the order to produce one. Maybe a different leadership would decide that now for
03:48their own survival, they must have that deterrent. However, knowing what the U.S. military was capable
03:54of last June when it destroyed underground facilities and probably would have to take into account to
04:01destroy similar facilities if they saw Iran making that move, I think that would be a very risky
04:06decision by anti-Iranian leaders. And they might themselves be at risk given what Israel has
04:11demonstrated in its precision targeting of individuals. But these are scenarios that
04:17could have this war spinning out over weeks rather than over days. That is something that
04:23obviously people watching the markets are going to be very concerned about. If it's something that is
04:28contained and there's a quick resolution or a quick surrender or a quick deal, then some of these
04:36instability producing events can be contained. But we've already seen 11 countries in the region
04:43struck by Iranian missiles. This is spreading. It's not being contained.
04:48Dan, are the lifting of sanctions and various other sort of sweeteners, are they just off the table now?
04:55Is that just not going to happen?
04:58It's among the reasons I had no expectation that a nuclear deal was possible before the war began, because
05:06first, Iran wasn't willing to make the necessary concessions of no enrichment and shipping out all of their highly enriched
05:12materials.
05:13But even if they were, after that regime had slaughtered 10, 20, 30,000 of its own people who were
05:19out protesting for freedom,
05:21there's no validity, no political viability to provide the sanctions relief that they would have demanded.
05:27So this regime is so tarnished that it's almost impossible politically to imagine the U.S. Congress
05:35and various other actors agreeing to give it an economic lifeline while it still survives.
05:41So if it manages to survive this war, it's going to do so with the Iranian economy crushed even further
05:47than it was going in. Only an end of this regime creates a possible opening to that.
05:54But there's no clear strategy or clear path that produces that goal.
05:58And there's even indications for President Trump, depending on which reporter he's talking to,
06:02that maybe he'll cut a deal within two or three days, stopping the fighting, leaving this very weakened regime in
06:09power.
06:11Just very, very, very briefly, because we're out of time, Dan, what's your read on whether President Trump
06:16will have any say at all on leadership in Iran like he might have done in Venezuela?
06:23I don't see a Delcy Rodriguez-style figure emerging from the Iranian regime.
06:28I don't think that system lends itself to it.
06:30The country is very different than Venezuela.
06:34The ideology is very, very deep.
06:36So this regime falls and is replaced by a different regime, maybe or maybe a very chaotic situation,
06:42or it will remain a very hostile regime to the United States, dangerous, even if very much weakened.
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