Is the United States winning its war against the Islamic Republic of Iran? Well, short answer is yes. Longer answer is it depends what you mean by winning. And if you mean based on what President Trump laid out as the objectives of the United States, then we are winning. In those objectives, he was very clear. It’s essentially to destroy the war-making capabilities of the Islamic republic, which includes its missile program, its Navy and its nuclear capabilities. And I think, with that in mind, it’s only been three weeks in. I think the U.S. military, along with the Israelis, have done a pretty extraordinary job of severely degrading those capabilities across all lines of power projection. The Iranian Navy has been decimated. The nuclear program, I think, is still to be determined. But between the 12-day war last year and Israeli strikes against nuclear facilities during the past three weeks, the program has been set back even more severely. But there’s still the Battle of Hormuz to be won or lost, and I think that’s going to be a decisive battle that will determine whether President Trump can legitimately claim, at the end of all of this, a major military success. OK, I think that’s a good overview. There’s no question, as you’ve said, that we have degraded Iran’s military. However, it’s also clear that at the moment, the Iranians are still quite capable of firing missiles and rockets at their neighbors, menacing the infrastructure that the entire Persian Gulf depends upon, meaning not just oil and gas, but desalinization plants and power plants. And then, more importantly, the Iranians have essentially closed the Strait of Hormuz, throwing global energy markets into turmoil. What do we do about that? So before answering the question about what we do about it, it’s worth a little bit of historical perspective on this. Imagine this regime, even under the Obama nuclear deal, a regime that, starting this year, the restrictions on the nuclear program, would begin to sunset. Iran would emerge with an industrial-size nuclear program. So imagine this regime with nuclear armed ICBMs. Tens of thousands of missiles. This regime threatening the Strait of Hormuz, threatening the Gulf allies, threatening U.S. bases, U.S. embassies, Israel and the U.S. homeland. – I just think it’s important for your listeners —— – Yeah, it’s good to imagine that. But I just want to say we’re not in the Obama timeline. We’re not in a timeline where Iran has been just steadily building and building. We’re in a timeline where the U.S. and Israel successfully delivered some significant blows to Iranian power. And now we’ve decided to deliver another, more profound one. And it is that blow that has yielded the Iranian closure of the straits. – And so with that said, what do we do about it? – Yeah, I make the point, Ross, only to say that the battle of Hormuz was a battle that was inevitable. And the only question was, were we going to fight it in a way where we were stronger and they were weaker, or they were stronger and we had very limited options in order to open the strait.
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