Astead Herndon

I would love for you to slow that down for me.

I mean, take me through those moments in the first Trump administration when you were arguing for things like regime change in Iran.

Was the argument against it some of the things we've seen now, the possibility of retaliation, the possibility that Iran would control the Strait of Hormuz?

Are we seeing the realities of what that debate was?

So Trump was aware of the possibility that this was a likely retaliatory action?

So considering that, I guess I keep going back to do we know why there wasn't a plan in place or the administration seemed seemingly surprised by some of these actions?

I mean, Trump said that nobody expected Iran to retaliate against neighboring countries.

What you're saying, you briefed him or you were in discussions about that exact possibility.

I guess the other possibility here is that the administration just doesn't share your goal of full regime change, that they might be seeking some sort of off-ramp or have a different sort of objective.

Do we have any sense of what that other objective could be?

Yeah, that's the question I was going to ask you from a sense of someone who, again, wanted to see some of this happen, but necessarily does not seem that the Trump administration maybe shares your conviction to see this all the way through.

There's a sense that they want to make this around four to six weeks, not necessarily the timeline that a full regime change could take.

Is it your position that if they are willing to kind of see that all the way through, they shouldn't have started this in the first place?

More from John Bolton in a minute.

We're back.

It's Today Explained Saturday, and I'm with Ambassador John Bolton.

I'm going to ask about a couple of recent developments.

Trump announced that he, you know, over the weekend that he was going to pause strikes on Iranian power plants for five days, claiming that the U.S.

and Iran had had very productive conversations.

Iran's foreign ministry immediately said that there had been no dialogue.