00:00Let's talk a little bit about the change in tone that we've seen from the president of the United States
00:05just over the past 24 to 48 hours,
00:08bringing us to today, of course, with, again, that threat that I read out that, you know, the president vowing
00:14to hit Iran hard.
00:16I wonder what you make of that change in posture, because up until this point, up until, you know, this
00:21this week, really,
00:23we had been mostly talking about the ceasefire and the possibility of extending it.
00:28Yeah, I think the joke going around Washington, D.C. is we've been encountering a peace fire.
00:34But look, the fact remains is I think the president has found out as he continues to say two or
00:41three days away from an agreement.
00:43He's probably found out that the Iranians are backing off or are unserious about truly getting back to negotiations.
00:50And it doesn't surprise me at all because I've never really felt that the Iranians were serious about reducing or
00:59eliminating their nuclear program.
01:01And I do wonder, you know, what you make of what has been a big point of leverage when it
01:06comes to the Iranians.
01:08And that is the Strait of Hormuz, because we also heard from President Trump today posting that the U.S.
01:13military has supported the passage of more than 200 commercial ships through the key waterway,
01:19resulting in more than 100 million barrels of oil making it to market.
01:23And certainly we've been tracking the movement in oil.
01:25We're still below $100 per barrel on Brent.
01:30And, you know, if we are actually seeing flows move through the Strait, I mean, where does that leave Iran
01:37in terms of having any leverage?
01:39Well, I think we really need to understand on these separate issues.
01:44Is the Strait of Hormuz a core issue?
01:47Is Lebanon a core issue?
01:49Or, in fact, these diversions, because the war was started for three reasons, because of the Iranian nuclear program, their
01:58missile program, and their proxy program.
02:00But once the war started, I think the Iranians were quite clever in turning the focus on to the Strait
02:08of Hormuz.
02:09Now, as you say, there looks to be some leakage there in the eyes of the Iranians.
02:14And so what have they done?
02:16They've now diverted to the issue of Lebanon, trying to couple the Israeli-Lebanon war with the negotiations.
02:24So, again, to me, I think what we're seeing is a pattern of delaying, denying, diverting.
02:30To me, there is no logical reason for the Iranians to not want a nuclear program, except to relieve themselves
02:39of war and sanctions.
02:41But they've demonstrated they're pretty flexible, and they're pretty durable as well.
02:46So I don't see the Strait, nor do I see Lebanon as core issues, but I see them as diversions
02:52on the part of the Iranians.
02:53And we've already heard earlier today from the Iran foreign ministry claiming that basically a lot to go on.
02:59We've heard from the Israeli defense minister saying that the war is far from over.
03:03I do want to bring your attention to some comments that Nikki Haley made on Bloomberg earlier today, the former
03:08U.N. ambassador,
03:10basically in her view that she says that Iran never really wanted any sort of a deal,
03:14and she's urging the president to, I guess, finish the war in her words.
03:18And I am curious as to what finishing the war would even look like, given what we know about the
03:23landscape of the Iranian regime.
03:26Well, I agree with Nikki on the first point, that they never really have been serious about negotiating.
03:31I don't agree on the second point.
03:34It needs to be more than military.
03:36Military success alone, however we describe it, will not lead to strategic success.
03:43We are trying to use all elements of national power, diplomacy, information, economics, and military power.
03:52But as we found out, Iran is a tough nut to crack.
03:56I don't think that military success will be tantamount to victory unless we go significantly more in higher pressure
04:05and possibly going after infrastructure targets that we otherwise would not go for, civilian in particular.
04:12Well, give me a sense here.
04:14For a layperson, when we start to talk about what the military's role in all this,
04:18when we've been in the conflicts in the past, particularly in some of the campaigns that you've either been involved
04:23with
04:23or been advising on, what was sort of the symbiosis between the military leaders and, let's just say,
04:30the diplomats and that side of the administration, do they work closely together towards whatever the end goal was?
04:38Well, it certainly was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan that we had very, very large State Department elements
04:46working side by side with the military forces.
04:49I think in Iraq, Afghanistan, that really brought around this notion of having State Department military integrated
04:57all the way down into we had provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq
05:03that had a military leader alongside a State Department leader.
05:08So that's important.
05:09But as we've seen in these really tough cases like Iran and, unfortunately, Afghanistan,
05:16that that's not enough to bring about behavior change on the part of the enemy.
05:21And that's really what this is all about.
05:22What do we have to do to change the thinking and the behavior, in this case, of the Iranian regime?
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