00:00There's been the word ceasefire thrown around a lot over the past week and a half, but we also
00:05heard from the president saying that if we don't see the strait opened, if we don't see a deal
00:09with Iran, that strikes on their energy infrastructure is coming up next. We know that
00:15the U.S. has said that they're going to pause those strikes until a week from today, but it
00:21seems like the idea of a ceasefire and a quick end to this conflict is getting further and further
00:26away. I think that's right, Katie. And if the president were to follow through on the threat
00:35that he made today, I think the consequences of that would be to really expand and prolong
00:41this war. I think that Iran would be very likely to respond to that by striking at energy and
00:49water targets throughout the Gulf region. And you could end up in a situation where you
00:56have a humanitarian disaster with millions of people without access to water or electricity.
01:02Now, I think the president made that threat in order to try to build leverage for potential
01:07negotiations, which he says are proceeding. And I hope that's the case. From what I've seen
01:14in the public reporting, I'm really concerned actually that there are some challenges to
01:20diplomacy here. And I also believe that Iran thinks perceives that it is actually that actually
01:28has the upper hand. And when it hears these kinds of threats, it believes a strategy is
01:34working. And why does Iran believe that? It's because they have a very different definition
01:40of winning here. They believe they have survived a very ferocious assault. They continue to have
01:46a stranglehold on the global economy with the Strait of Hormuz. And they're able to launch retaliatory
01:52strikes against their neighbors. Well, I am curious. I mean, you mentioned a lot there to dig
01:58into. And President Trump did say that the U.S. is possibly looking at desalination
02:04infrastructure as well. But when it comes to the idea of diplomacy in this situation, we also heard
02:10from Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt earlier today saying that the U.S. is not sure who is in charge
02:16of Iran. Given, you know, your time as a senior advisor when it comes to Iran, how would diplomacy
02:23even be possible in a situation like this? You know, if we're still trying to figure out who is
02:28actually in charge of the country that we're trying to talk to? Yes. And we had some of these
02:34debates as well early on in the Obama administration. And at the end of the day, this is really a
02:41system.
02:42Not that system through the course of this conflict and the leaders that have been basically eliminated.
02:48They've been replaced by even more hard line individuals, more radical individuals who are very
02:55skeptical of diplomacy. We don't know the condition of the new supreme leader, the son of the late
03:00supreme leader, much to Bahamani. The president said, we don't know if he's alive, if he's injured,
03:07what his status is. Now, that said, Iran is continuing to make decisions. And we see that in the way
03:13that
03:13it's executing operations. I think we can assume that there is a group of individuals, as there always
03:19has been in this leadership structure. And now that leadership structure is heavily skewed towards the
03:27radical Islamic revolutionary guard corps. So I think you can have diplomacy in this situation.
03:34But I think it's going to be very difficult. And it's not just that the positions are very
03:38far apart. You have a paradox, even though the United States and Israel have destroyed thousands
03:44upon thousands of targets in Iran. Iran, again, still believes that it has the upper hand because
03:50it has survived that assault. It has a stranglehold on the global economy and is continuing to launch
03:57attacks against neighbors. And so the positions that have been put forward, the 15 points
04:02that was reported in the press that the president put forward and Iran's five point response are sort
04:08of maximalist positions. And so there's a lot that you could do to get diplomacy on track,
04:14I think. But we're not there right now. And the first thing really would be to have more realistic
04:20set of priorities that one goes into for the negotiation.
04:2423.
04:2426.
04:2428.
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