00:00At the end of the day, for the Islamic Republic, this is the battle for survival. This is the
00:05battle of the century. Whereas for President Trump, especially coming out of Venezuela,
00:11he had a hot hand and he thought this would be easy and could be done in a matter of
00:16days.
00:17When the US military had warned him against the consequences of Iran shutting down the Strait
00:22of Hormuz, he had dismissed it as an unlikely possibility because Iranians would capitulate
00:28by that point. In the same way that his envoy, Steve Witkoff, even when the US Armada arrived in
00:35the region, was surprised, as he said publicly, that Iran had not capitulated even just by seeing
00:42the Armada right off their shores in the Gulf. And so I think in general, there's been a lot of
00:52underestimation of Iranian planning and resilience and overestimation
00:57of the US and Israeli military might. And again, the states are very different.
01:04For Iran, this is the battle of the century. For President Trump, it's just a stumbling block
01:10on his way towards the midterm elections in the US in November.
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