Ben Rhodes

And that's the thing is that the day that the supreme leader is killed is there's not another thing that Trump's going to do in this war that is going to drive up public opinion about this war.

You know, I cannot imagine.

And even if it ends, like how much to your point, like get the answers to how much this costs and what's the damage and what was the economic cost?

Because all this is already are things that have already happened and that are ongoing.

And another reason to be vociferous, and I have a piece out in the New York Times if you want to check this out today, but he's going to do this again.

So one reason to really oppose him here is I don't, do you trust that this is the last war Donald Trump's going to start?

Yeah, it's always reassuring to have a president launch an illegal and unnecessary war wearing a baseball cap in the middle of the night at Mar-a-Lago.

But putting that aside for the moment, I think the headline here is that this is the regime change war.

And we've walked up to this precipice with Trump like several times.

And each time he took a more limited action, whether it was assassinating Qasem Soleimani or whether it was the 12-day war when he bombed nuclear sites principally.

But this is clearly based on rhetoric and targets, like an effort to change the Iranian regime.

Now, the problem with that, though, is that even though that's clear,

Nothing is clear about what the end game is, right?

Even if the Supreme Leader is killed, the Iranian regime is a very deep regime.

He mentioned the IRGC, the police, and the military.

That's millions of people who are under arms in the Iranian regime.

And so whether this devolves into civil conflict and chaos, or whether some IRGC-led regime emerges, we have no greater clarity today than we did before this began about how the US sees this thing ending.

And we do see already some of the consequences that could come from this war.

We're only one day in, but we've already seen Iran, unlike last time where they showed some pretty calibrated restraint.

It seems like they're firing missiles in all directions.