Anne Applebaum

until it has destroyed not only the regime in Iran, which I think is still its ultimate goal, but also all of these proxies.

And so the war in Lebanon is not from either from the Israeli or from the Iranian point of view.

It's not a separate story.

It's part of the same picture.

I'm not sure that Donald Trump understands that or that his team understands that, but for the Israelis, it's part of the story.

If the war isn't over there, if the Israelis haven't defeated Hezbollah there, which, by the way, I should say is probably a generational task, then the war is not over.

Yeah, I think there are some things the Iranians want, actually.

I mean, they want their frozen assets.

They want, I mean, they say they want some kind of compensation for damage done.

I mean, that seems pretty unlikely.

They want lifting of sanctions.

There are things that they want and they...

think they might get them.

And there actually have been moments over the last few weeks when it looked like Trump was willing to give them some of those things.

But of course, then that gets us back to where we started with the first question, was that then that looks a lot like previous attempts, including the one led by Obama, to do a nuclear deal or a sanctions-lifting deal with Iran.

And then as soon as he realizes that, he backtracks again.

You know, the things that they want are things that he doesn't want to give them because that makes him look bad.

And so he keeps reverting to this language of, you know, we need absolute surrender or we need regime change or we need, you know, some kind of—he needs some kind of maximum, maybe even just some show of genuflection or some, you know, some demonstration that he's the greatest leader in the world.

Maybe that's what he wants from them.

And, of course, that's not what they're going to give him.