00:00U.S. President Donald Trump is casting the military campaign in Iran as a success,
00:05arguing that American and Israeli strikes have weakened Tehran's military.
00:10Emeritus Professor Amin Saikal of the Australian National University says
00:14Trump might even frame the next phase of the conflict
00:18as the responsibility of the Iranian people as he looks to exit the war.
00:23Well, President Trump has indicated that he's already won the war,
00:28and he's said it so many times.
00:30And I think that might really be the sort of a pathway for him to, at some point,
00:37declare that, no, we have achieved our objectives by hitting all the targets that we really want to target.
00:44And also, we have really weakened the Iranian regime.
00:48No, it's really up to the Iranian public to rise and take over their government and overthrow this regime.
00:54I mean, that option is open to Trump, and he's already indicated, or at least given some indication,
01:02that this is the way he could go.
01:06Militarily, U.S. strikes have weakened Iran's capacity, but politically they may have strengthened Tehran's cohesion.
01:13Moshtabah Khomeini's appointment as Supreme Leader after his father's death signals resolved in Iran.
01:21Saikal also warned the conflict could become increasingly difficult for Washington to sustain.
01:27Well, first of all, the war has already become unpopular.
01:30Something like 60% of the Americans have opposed it,
01:33according to some of the public opinion polls that have already been published.
01:37And, of course, the war has been very costly already,
01:41and the longer it goes, it's going to become more costly.
01:44And that will be added to something approximately $39 trillion that the American federal government is in debt.
01:57And, therefore, this is going to be a very expensive war that the United States has been fighting.
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