Ben Rhodes

The Chinese and Russians saw that, wow, look, the Iranians can really bloody the Americans' nose, not by like directly hitting the United States, but just by kind of humiliating the United States by shutting down this whole Gulf infrastructure that the U.S.

depends upon for the supply of the global energy markets.

And by the way, we don't even know the damage assessments yet.

to our bases and facilities across the region.

The Pentagon has not been at all transparent about that.

So you're right.

They're strengthened in the sense that they've demonstrated that the Strait of Hormuz is like a nuclear weapon in some ways, right?

It's not as obviously devastating, but it is a deterrence capability.

Look, the weakness of the regime to me is it's this odious regime hated by most of its people.

And what needs to change the regime is the Iranian people.

And I actually think that this war...

made that less likely.

What it also did is it made the military option

look less scary as it was before in the sense that the United States and Israel have demonstrated that they cannot change the regime from the air.

And so now everybody knows that it would take a ground invasion to get these guys out, or it would take the Iranian people just doing it themselves.

But it's hard for them to do it, Tim, when their country is being bombed.

So I think it does change the dynamic in the favor of the Iranians vis-a-vis where things were before the war.

That I personally delivered based on the... Yeah, you brought them.

This whole thing is...

It's a pretty extraordinary life experience, Tim.