Ben Rhodes

You had UN Security Council resolutions.

This is like a handshake agreement in Pakistan, right?

And so it just doesn't have the same legitimacy, legal basis.

Someone could walk away from this in six months or a year without the kind of same drama and consequence of walking away from the JCPOA.

So they will rebuild their ballistic missile capability.

The nuclear program, by the way, they may very well say, like, we're not going to enrich uranium for a period of time because part of what they've learned, Tim, is that as long as they have a nuclear program, right, that's an option available to them.

And by the way, we don't know what they might try to do covertly, right?

Because if the inspections regime, you're counting on intelligence, and clearly the U.S.

and Israel have pretty good intelligence, but they could just take that nuclear program underground, right?

But they'll restart their ballistic missile program.

What they've also learned though, what this war has demonstrated is that a bunch of drones that they can build in the garage were actually in some ways more damaging than even their ballistic missiles because they were able to shut down the Gulf.

They were able to disrupt the entire global economy by hitting the largest natural gas field in the world in Qatar, right?

They were able to end the Dubai model.

We'll see how long it takes for tourism to crank back up there, right?

So,

Just with drones and some ballistic missiles, they demonstrated a deterrent capability and an ability to shut down the strait.

And so the regime will take that revenue and they will reinvest in all those different military capabilities.

Yes, I think they will also rebuild.

I think that's exactly right.

And look, they could use that money to buy more effective missiles from China, right, which they began to do.