Off-Ramp or Escalator - The Iranian Regime's Final Act?: Dr. Seth Jones

The regime for the moment is still largely in place and could be a problem, a major problem down the road if it survives. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Dr. Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Jones joins us today for a discussion on the recent developments in the Iran conflict and the outlook going forward. Stay with us as we speak with Dr. Seth Jones. Seth Jones, welcome to NatSec Matters. Michael Allen, thanks for having me. I'm honored. This is going to be terrific. You have a long background in defense policy, including service in the Pentagon. I think you're going to be in a unique situation to help us understand where we are in the war with Iran. Let's just start generally. What's your assessment of how our military campaign is going? I think, Michael, I'll answer it by looking at a couple of different objectives. If one looks at some indicators such as the missile and drone capabilities of the Iranians, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, they've been severely degraded. I'm not going to talk in terms of eliminated because any country can eventually replace its stockpiles. In terms of the Navy, it's been severely degraded and sunk in most cases. If you look at, in general, other objectives, the nuclear program appears to be even further set back. There are still some questions about uranium stockpiles of enriched uranium, 60%, in and around places like Isfahan, buried underground, and whether it makes sense to try to extract them. They are buried underground. The shafts have almost certainly partially collapsed or entirely collapsed. It's tough to get to. In all of those areas, I think the regime has been severely degraded, which brings me to some big issues that I think are still before us, which is the regime itself in Tehran. It is the son of the Ayatollah, is in theory now in charge. We haven't really, we haven't seen him yet. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard still has a major presence in the country. The regime itself has in the order of a million or so security forces. So the regime for the moment is still largely in place and could be a problem, a major problem down the road if it survives. So I think in a range of different areas, I think key objectives that the US had set out for itself, that the chairman and the Secretary of War had outlined, have been achieved. The big question, which is, we're different administration officials, I've said slightly different issues, which is what is the political objective for the regime itself. And then of course, there are some other operational issues, Michael, like opening up the Strait of Hormuz, I think, which needs to happen. And that has not been achieved yet. Yeah. Seth, let's go to the Strait of Hormuz. Admiral Mark Montgomery was on this podcast recently and said, the plan was always to begin with attacks. We're also have a secondary mission of missile defense, but there's so many different things that need to be degraded before we would even be ready to run a high risk operation in the Strait of Hormuz. And so it's not only the things you mentioned, ballistic missiles and drones and the rest, it's the coastal cruise missiles, it's other things that seem near the Straits that could make our ships sitting docks. Does that sound right to you? We were always a few weeks away from an escort mission, if it was needed. Yeah. So Michael, none of this is surprising. I don't think it's surprising to anybody who's been involved in planning of this for the Pentagon, either now or in the last several decades. I mean, even when I was in the Pentagon, any contingency for Iran involved a significant amount of planning for the potential for Iranian mining of the Strait of Hormuz and then standoff attacks against oil tankers or others that were going through the Strait. So not a surprise, I think, to anybody who's been planning it. And it's not an easy mission as long as the Iranians have capabilities. So, I mean, in addition to really targeting severely degrading Iran's ability to shoot standoff weapons at naval U.S. or other coalition naval vessels or oil tankers or other commercial vessels going through the Straits. And, yeah, I think in there you'd need essentially permanent intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance of shoreline areas as well as islands, which I'll come back to in a moment around the Strait on the Iranian side. You'd also want to be able to strike anything that moves fast boats, for example, that kind of appear out of nowhere headed towards ships. You'd want mine clearing capabilities. There are a couple of different kinds of mines that you want to be mindful of if the Iranians start laying. You've got the moored mines, which are attached to the seafloor or a weight and are often a weight and a rate in minefields. You've got number two drifting mines, which float on the surface of the water and are harder to counter because they don't stay in fixed positions within minefields. Three, you've got limpid mines, which are attached to the hull of ships via magnets and are often detonated with timed fuse. So divers, for example, could get into the water and then attach lipid mines. And then the fourth are bottom mines, which sit on the seafloor in shallow water and explode when they detect a ship overhead. So there are a bunch of different kinds of mines that you'd want to also be mindful of. Then also, just to highlight it, as we've gone through the areas where we've seen a lot of ships move in the last several weeks and for that matter, years, I think there are areas along the Omani and the United Arab Emirates coastline where you'd want to hug pretty closely. But there are some islands along those lines that Iran either controls or that are contested like the the Jazeera Yikesham. It's a large island as you come around the strait or a range of the islands like Abu Musa that you just, you, I think you'd ideally want to be able to control or essentially get rid of everything on there out of concern that that standoff weapons or small boats could be used to strike. So I still think there's some more preparatory time that needs to take place to reduce, not eliminate, but to reduce any risks to either U.S. or other coalition naval vessels or any of the commercial ships that were to come through. So where does that put us? Here we are almost at the end of March. At one point, some estimates, I think that were around where it would be the first week of April, we might be able to do a freedom of navigation up and then shortly thereafter escort a tanker or two. Do you think we're well into April now before we can forcibly reopen the straits via an escort mission? Probably at least. I mean, it depends on, in part, on a couple of things. One is how, and they're really intelligence questions that I don't think any of us can definitively answer, but they're ones like what kinds of capabilities do the Iranians have left for strikes in the strait or formus and they include those missiles and drones, but they also include some of the fast attack boats and any of their unmanned or uncrewed systems that essentially could be used as one-way suicide, you know, surface boats or subsurface boats. In addition, so, you know, that's an intelligence question. And the other, I think, is in part is what are the key areas, land areas, that need to be controlled and do we control them or essentially have we eliminated any threats that they could potentially pose. And really, I'm talking about a number of the islands in the strait, especially as you get into those narrow areas around the shipping lanes. That's just that area where sort of, if you look sort of south on the strait of formus, where that tip where Oman is, that is the area, I think, and on to the east and west of that is the area you want to be very mindful of some of the islands and who controls them. And I, at this point, I don't know that we either control them or have eliminated any threats for them. And I think you that's probably a few more weeks at least, and then an assessment of what's on those islands and what's underneath. Yeah. Well, this gets to the question of, is President Trump going to see this through to reopen the straits or, and it seemed like this last week, late last week, when the president put out a tweet that said, we've achieved our military objectives, he cited ballistic missiles and drone and nuclear degradation, but we don't use the straits. So we're out of here. Now, it doesn't seem like that this week. It seems like we're back in the fight, but you know, I don't know. I think one of the questions will be, how long does Trump hang in there if we're seeing bad economic, bad economics on energy, other commodities, and in the stock market? Yeah, Michael, my worry is, is even if there were to be a sort of short-term, successful negotiation with Iranians, and I'm very pessimistic about that kind of outcome anyway, it would be, it would be hard to credibly believe that that would last for very long. I mean, you're talking about warring parties, and you're talking about an agreement between sides where there is very little trust right now. So even if one could reach a temporary agreement between the US and Iran and potentially some combination of other mediators, hard for me to believe that it would persist. So you may be back to the same point, eventually trying to figure out options to forcibly keep the strait open. So I think at this point, I think it's a very important consideration is to map out how do you forcibly open up the straits and keep them open. I mean, I would say, having talked to a range of US Navy officials that have transited the strait multiple times, like you'd probably want to bring in some commercial ships that were relatively fast moving at first and try a couple of trial runs, pilot tests into the strait before you get into some of the big slow tankers that would be potentially more vulnerable. Okay, help us decode some of these military assets that are apparently en route to the region. There's the 82nd Airborne, there's the Marine Expeditionary Unit, and I'm sure there's something else. But let's talk with the, explain what the Tripoli is and where it's coming from and what his capabilities are. Yeah, well, I mean, if I could start off by talking about potential ways that any of these ground forces could be used, I mean, there are several options, and then I'll talk about sort of where they're, yeah, yeah, and that's where I was there. I was going to say, Karg Island first. Okay, yeah, there, where they're coming from. I mean, there are several. One is Karg Island, which, which is really the epicenter of Iran's or production facilities. If the US were to seize it in some capacity, it would highly likely be an important negotiating point. So the Iranians control or at least threaten the strait or formus, the US would control a major location of value to the Iranians, could be useful in a negotiation. But is it necessary? Probably not. People say we could bomb a tanker or threaten to that's in route to Karg Island. People talk about a blockade. Why do we have to physically take it other than if it's just demonstrating to the Iranians that will take a hostage also? Yeah, I don't think it actually is critical. I wouldn't actually suggest using it for that purpose. But I'm just saying it's one, it's an option that could be used for, for that. A second actually is using some number of forces to probably secure the perimeter of and then help with excavation and then the removal of the enriched uranium out of canisters around areas like Isfahan, which if an objective is really to significantly set back Iran's nuclear program and you want to extract the enriched uranium, which can be further enriched for bomb making material. A second option is, is to use ground forces for something along those lines. I mean, at the end of the day, what is not entirely clear is how, how it would be a difficult operation, but how difficult it would be to extract the uranium from collapsed locations underground and what kind of excavation would be needed, how long it would take. And then presumably there are a ton of canisters down there, some real, some fake. So, you know, that, that might not be a short-term process. And then you're leaving potentially those ground forces vulnerable to, to fire your inside Iranian territory. There's a third, if you're trying to open up the straight forcibly, there's a third which is, one could use a range of ground forces to seize control of key islands in the, in the Strait of Hormuz. And I mentioned a range of them earlier, you know, ones like Abu Musa, for example, which, if you had projectiles, could strike a range of different targets, commercial vessels or U.S. or coalition navy vessels coming through. So, a third would be using forces for something along those lines. And then a final area, a final option for any kind of ground forces, I think it'd be unlikely at this point, but which is certainly possible, which is you could use them to help train, advise, and assist opposition groups to take down the regime in general. I haven't heard as much about the islands. If it's just for ballistic missile purposes or cruise missile, why do they need to be on the island? I mean, wouldn't they want to be on their territory proper? You could put them on territory proper, but again, the islands are in much closer proximity to where, to where the tankers or naval vessels would come. So, more likely they could land a punch. Okay, got you. They could land a punch. And then they could also be used for fires, including long range fire into Iran. So, again, these are a couple of different options. So, you mentioned earlier that, for example, thousands of Marines are slated to arrive in the Middle East shortly. One of the areas they're coming from is the Japan-based amphibious assault ship, the USS Tripoli. So, it is, there are others too. There's the amphibious landing dock, USS New Orleans. And then there are about 2,200 Marines coming from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which could be used for a range of these types of operations that I talked about. By the way, I mentioned islands. You could also use them for securing territory inside of Iran on the shoreline as well. Those would come with risks, obviously, because you're now on, you're now on Iranian mainland. There are other types of forces that are being deployed, including the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit on board the USS Boxer, it's California-based, and a few others. All could be used for these purposes. And Michael, also worth noting that the U.S. could also use special operations forces, either operating under Title X authority, so openly, or under intelligence authority, Title 50 authority as well. And that's how, if folks remember, that's how the U.S. conducted the operation against Osama bin Laden. It was using special operations forces operating under covert action authority. And then, of course, you also have intelligence units, including paramilitary forces that could be used as well. So these are the main sort of publicly visual ground forces, but not the only ones that could be used. So just to go in on the missing AGU, we've talked about this on previous editions of this podcast. It seems like an incredibly detailed, involved operation, not a special operations raid. It feels like you would need, I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of troops to set a perimeter. We've got to get earth-moving equipment in there. We have to excavate the AGU, presumably. We'd need helicopters to take it to a cargo plane, so we would need to maybe control airstrips nearby. This is a big operation. Maybe that doesn't deter President Trump, and we have an amazing military, but what does that tell you about the likelihood that we would run that kind of off? Well, I think the way I look at it, it's sort of, what are the other alternatives? We don't entirely know because you can't see it from, and I've been looking at satellite imagery of areas around Isfahan, for example. It's just so hard. Once you go underground, looking at the satellite imagery just is not that helpful. We don't have a lot of, we don't have boots on the ground there to be able to tell us. I have talked to folks at the International Atomic Energy Agency who have been on the ground in those areas. I think the question in part is, how difficult is it for the Iranians to access that material? And if it is difficult because it's buried and shafts have collapsed, and then the U.S. has, and the Israelis have pretty much air dominance right now, and presumably, I mean, they had it last year, they have it this year, took four days essentially for Iran to get complete air dominance over Iran last year, took two days this year. So presumably in six months from now or a year from now, you could also fly in aircraft for strike missions. That it would seem to me that the less costly and risky option would be to continue, if you've got a bomb, you've got to use more large bombs to basically continue to bury that enriched uranium underneath the earth and make it increasingly more difficult for the Iranians to access it. And then if they do try to excavate, then you strike those targets in the future, rather than what could be a long, tedious, and dangerous mission. But I think, I mean, it's probably worth noting that we don't have all of the intelligence, again, on some key questions like, you know, how easily accessible is that H.E.U.? Yeah, I mean, I'm still going off the New York Times article that said there was a narrow corridor. I think they said, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Seth Jones. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security policy, geopolitical risk, global technology policy, and federal procurement trends. Beacon's insight gives business leaders the decision advantage founded in 2013. Beacon develops and supports the execution of bespoke strategies to mitigate business risk, drive growth, and navigate a complex geopolitical environment with a bipartisan team in decades of experience. Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. All right, let's talk a little bit about the Israelis. At the beginning of the conflict, I think we had divided up responsibilities and labor according to, well, certainly geographically, on what was closer for the Israelis inside of Iran. And I think for a time there, we were both prosecuting military targets, of course. It seems like the Israelis increasingly are almost exclusively working on a regime change targets. And by that, we mean, you know, they continue to hit scientists. I think they hit two more this week. There are, and I'm kind of amazed at their target set. I mean, it's not only the besiege, it's not only the IRGC, it's local police stations, it's even checkpoints. And they have this ingenious app or website for average Iranians, assuming they can get to the internet to post to them the locations, maybe the address, if you will, of where certain neighborhood watch type or checkpoint people are stationed in neighborhoods. And the Israelis are apparently hitting those as well. What do you think about Israel's role here? What's it after and comment on all of that? Well, Michael, I think a range of Israeli officials have been pretty clear, even before this war began, that the ideal objective or an ideal objective for the outcome of a war with Iran would be the end of the theocracy in Iran, because it presents such a strategic threat to Israel, and it has since 1979, both in the sense of Iran itself and its missile program and its nuclear weapons program, but also its aid and support to a range of partner organizations like Lebanese Hezbollah in Lebanon, like the Houthis in Yemen, which have fired a range of different missiles and drones at Israel and others, including commercial vessels and US Navy ships. And then a number of other actors. Historically, it's also been militias operating in Syria, as well as Iraq and other locations. So I think for the Israelis, I see an important part of the campaign right now as being weakening the regime largely from the air. I mean, I suspect they've got small numbers. I cannot imagine they're in in any kind of uniform. They've got small numbers of folks in in plain clothes in Iran. We know last year that they had Mossad on the on the ground in Iran, including flying drones against targets. So I wouldn't be surprised if there were efforts to provide some weapons, money, and other aid to opposition groups as well. But I think the if what comes out of this war right now is new leadership, but the same government in Iran, I think that would that would not be an ideal outcome for Israel, which means that is, I think, what their key target set is. That's what explains the targets of most of their operations. And that is a very important strategic objective. And I would just go further by saying several Israeli officials have said to me over the last couple of weeks, you know, even sort of contested civil war in in Iran is still a better outcome than the regime. In other words, if there was active fighting over control of the government, that would also be a better outcome than a stable regime in place. So my general sense is that's sort of where the Israelis are headed. And that explains the types of operations that they're conducting leadership strikes, weakening of the regime itself in various ways to try to collapse it. But again, you know, one big challenge is going to be there aren't large numbers of any boots on the ground. And that is a very difficult thing to do. And even with boots on the ground, as Michaels, we know from looking at wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya, even with some boots on the ground, it is very difficult to kind of engineer what comes next. And and so, you know, lots of risks anyway. So I'm wondering if you subscribe to the something I've found persuasive that I've heard different experts opine upon and that's that the regime's days are numbered. We don't believe they're capable of reforming themselves or making compromises with the international community to recover their economy. We're not sure when it's going to collapse. But they're bound it's bound to at some point. Do you subscribe, I assume, to that more than you do, we're going to have just an immense regime change move as soon as we quit bombing or where are you on this? Yeah, so I mean, I think the biggest challenge, frankly, with with Iran right now and and the sort of the future of governance in Iran is there is, you know, there are some options, but there are no good opposition elements that have sufficient money, weapons, training, and legitimacy of the Iranian population right now to come in and take over. And so that that I mean, that is going to be a key challenge right now. So I think, you know, there are a couple, the future could hold several potential options. One is the regime just stays around actually in various capacities just weakened the the the the and I think that is a possible outcome. I mean, this regime has spent considerable time trying to coo proof itself anyway, and has still has a, you know, I said this earlier, by our count, roughly a million security forces. The second option is it just significantly weakens. I mean, the regime has already faced massive protests. And what we see is actually the descent into civil war, where the government weakens even more, partly because of these actions by the United States and Iran. And then we actually see some version of what we saw in Syria under Assad after 2011, which is the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Americans, the Jordanians, and others get involved in providing assistance to opposition groups in Iran against against the Ayatollah. In that case, it was against Assad. Now remember, that aid was limited in Syria. It's certainly possible that it could persist until the regime falls. But I don't see any near term future where the regime itself quickly falls and gets replaced by a legitimate entity. I think you're looking at either the regime stays in place or an active civil war for control of the state. Okay, so then we're both in the same camp, which is status quo with an IRGC dominated government continuity here in Iran. I think we're yes, or potentially as the country starts to slip into civil war the way Syria did. Okay, got it. Good. I don't know if that's good, by the way. No, no, no, I just mean that we're thinking through this. So, Seth, you're a leading voice on defense policy issues. And you recently had a well received Wall Street Journal article about munitions shortages in the defense industrial base here in the United States. Can you walk us through that and tell us the point? Yeah, so I think there have been some concerns, some justifiable, some less so about munitions stockpiles. And one of the things that just to back up that really became evident during the US assistance to the Ukrainians starting in 2022 is that the US essentially had to quickly turn on the production lines for javelins, stinger missiles. There were problems with one 5.5 millimeter ammunition. And so in a couple of different cases, the US had to quickly turn on its production lines because it spent years after the end of the Cold War focused largely on counterterrorism missions, not in protracted war. And it's worth noting that that war in Ukraine is now in year five. So when you talk about protracted war, you're talking about running through large numbers and amounts of munitions, both offensive, but then defensive as well. And then also your equipment starts to break down, it gets destroyed, you need additional spare parts. So one of the good news story from the war in Iran right now is the US is its strike capabilities are deeply impressive. The US is using Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles to destroy Iranian radar installations and command centers and missile sites. The US has also used a range of ground based systems like army tactical launch missile systems, ATACMS, or guided multiple launch rocket systems, Gimlers or precision strike missiles to precisely hit Iranian targets. The bad news on these offensive weapons is that some of them were low even before the Iran war started. So you know, I think modern war, it's not just about drones. It requires a high low mix of both long range missiles and other munitions and relatively cheap drones. The challenge has been the US stockpile of Tomahawks, joint air to air surface missiles or jazms, and some other missiles are now even lower than before the war. And that is particularly important because any operational plan or war plan that the US has, whether it's for the O plan for Russia or the O plan for North Korea, or most importantly, in my view, for China, which is kind of the US's most significant challenger, require a large number of these offensive munitions. And if people remember last year, the administration said it couldn't afford to give Tomahawks to Ukraine. I mean, I remember sitting down with President Zelensky after his meeting with President Trump, the US couldn't afford to give Tomahawks because it didn't have enough of them in the Indo-Pacific war, yet we've now churned through a bunch of them in Iran. The same thing is also, Michael, true in the air defense side, where munitions were low even before the war started. In 2025, the US fired by our estimates well over a quarter of its THAAD interceptors in just a few days of operations against Iran, including in the Red Sea. In the current war, the US is further depleted at stockpiles of Patriot and THAAD interceptors. And in addition to that, we've got at least one THAAD radar, the tippy-two radar on the THAAD that was hit. There are only eight THAADs that the army has around the world. And the radar system is the, these are the eyes and ears, or the eyes really, to detect, track, and provide targeting for the THAAD. So the big point here is some offensive munitions and defensive interceptors. US is in dangerously low supply right now. And many of these take 18 to 24 months to get off the production line to build. So this does not a real quick solution to building more of them quickly. So what does this tell you? I mean, we need to hurry up and wrap up operations here against Iran. Does it tell, I mean, when we talk about spending more on the defense industrial base, we've been doing that. And, you know, I, I, what kind of new investment do we need? I thought we had just had the deputy secretary of defense arrange with two leading defense companies, you know, ramping up substantially the production of some of these missiles. I mean, if, if a policymaker is saying, Steph, what exactly do we need to do? What's the answer? Well, I think there are a couple of things. And, and, and the first is not necessarily to wrap up the war in Iran. I think for Iran, that we do need to get to an important strategic objective that we can, that we can live with. What I would say is the supplemental and future size of the defense budget, I think should grow. And the supplemental that's being discussed with Congress right now really should not be, in my view, in Iran supplemental. It needs to be an industrial base supplemental. By supplemental, you mean, I'd explain for the audience what you mean. I mean, at least a temporary increase in funding to take care of a lot of the money that has, has been allotted so far. It's just very expensive for operations and maintenance costs right now to run a war the way the US has with Iran. But again, for me, if you're talking about providing the Pentagon with more money right now, because it's in a war, I think what is critical is not just to shore up money for the Iran war, but also do this with an eye towards providing help for other theaters. And let me give you a couple of examples of where I think more needs to be done and fast. First of all, the Pentagon, I think, needs to focus on fully funding multi-year contracts for several critical munitions that Congress has already authorized, but the Pentagon had not fully appropriated the money for. And there are several of those. There's like joint air-to-surface standoff munition, Standard Missile 6, Patriot Advanced Capability 3. I think there also should be a real effort to fund a development produced cheaper alternatives to those, because those are extremely expensive in many cases. Second, Michael, I really would focus on contracts, the multi-year contracts. In a number of cases, the Pentagon has reached strategic framework agreements, not contracts with defense companies. And look, for any company that has to report to its shareholder and is worried about a future where the government, because the defense industry is a monopsony, there's one major buyer, that's the Pentagon. It's not necessarily a free and open market for a range of these weapons systems. There is always a worry. And if you look at the cold, the post-Cold War period, a worry that the government will reduce defense spending again. So contracts commit the government, essentially, in ways that some of the agreements that have been signed don't. And I think multi-years in particular are important, not just for companies. People shouldn't look at these in just the primes, the prime companies that are the final assembly points for a range of these systems. But it is probably just as important, maybe more important for the supply chains. These are the suppliers that need to be reassured that they should be devoting resources to stockpiling, rocket motors, castings, forging, seekers for munitions that are building important parts of this. And if I could add a couple of other parts that I think are absolutely critical that the war in Iran shows us, one is that we see U.S. bases, but also critical infrastructure, commercial infrastructure, are big targets. The Chinese, if we look at the Indo-Pacific, have infinitely better standoff capabilities than the Iranians do. More missiles, more capabilities, more on the hypersonic side. But just to put a finer point on it, tell us about Taiwan contingencies and why we need so many of these munitions in Asia. I mean, a couple of things. One is, I think what we have seen is the Chinese expanding their activity, surface ships, drones, aircraft in and around Japanese islands, Senkakus, Taiwan, including a growing number of exercises. One might call them rehearsals in and around Taiwan, in and around the Philippines. We've been involved in running, including for Congress, Michael, a number of war games where we run out of long range anti-ship missiles, which are long range. They strike surface vessels. So key parts of, say, a Chinese invasion, we run out of them, in a week of a war. I mean, how do you expect to deter if you've got empty bins? And that's kind of the crux of the problem. Got it. As we begin to wrap up your stuff, talk a little bit about what you think Trump is up to. Is Trump trying to buy some time to set the theater? Is he really trying to pursue talks with the Iranians? Is he trying to jawbone the market to keep oil prices down by suggesting we're either nearly done or the talks are in the offing? What's your analysis of all this? Well, it's a good question. It's hard to know definitively the answer to what the administration is doing. And I think there are good reasons for it. I think no government in a time of war wants to necessarily indicate exactly how it's planning to move forward, wants to keep everybody, including its adversaries, guessing. I think part of what the administration is probably doing is buying time. If part of what the administration really wants to do, and if negotiations fail, is to open up the straight of four moves to commercial traffic, then the administration, I think, needs more time. It needs more time to strike targets in Iran. It needs more time to get its forces into position if it needs to seize some territory. It needs more time, I think, to expand a coalition of countries willing to participate in that. And so I think with a lot of these statements and even reaching out to the Iranians and having conversations, I think part of the incentive is to buy additional time. One last thing, Michael, along these lines that has been interesting, it does appear that the longer this conflict continues and the more that Iran strikes commercial targets in the Gulf, whether it's energy infrastructure, hotels, whether it's commercial airports, the more it looks like a number of governments in the region are pushing for the end of the Iranian regime. And so I'm wondering, actually, the more this drags out, the more that the administration and the Israelis in a number of Gulf states actually start trying to take steps to end the Iranian regime as we know it. And I think that explains the Israeli targeting that you mentioned earlier. That explains the calls for opposition to hit the streets once this bombing starts. That may be also increasingly where we're headed. Wow. Big things to come. Seth Jones, thank you so much. That was tremendous. We hope to have you back again on NatSec Matters. Thanks, Michael. Always happy to be back. That was Seth Jones. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of NatSec Matters. NatSec Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Berry. NatSec Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.