Dr. Alan O'Sullivan

I'm absolutely delighted to have PCA Research's chief geopolitical strategist, Matt Gertgen, on the line with me.

And how timely is this?

I follow Matt closely on LinkedIn and in other places, and I find his commentary really insightful and really useful.

And today is the day we all woke up this morning wondering where this was going to go, this war between the U.S.

and Iran.

And then we get this tweet.

It might be instructive just to start with the tweet.

from the President of the United States where he said that I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.

Based on the tenor and the tone of these in-depth, detailed and constructive conversations which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to

postpone any and all military strikes against iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions thank you for your attention to this matter so that kind of rubbish is my first question matt which was where's the where's the potential off-ramp but i'd love to get your initial reaction to that please

You would wonder as well, I suppose, how much discipline there is within the Iranian regime.

I mean, they don't really know who are they negotiating with.

Let's say, for example, there were no discussions with the Iranians, which people are hinting at.

And in that scenario, then, is there a risk that we could see that ill discipline in inverted commas from the Iranians and leading to, you don't know where does Trump go from there?

It's interesting you talk about pain thresholds.

So there's two words that I've kind of used to help describe this, explain this to my clients.

It's, you know, the pain threshold for Trump on one side and then the sufficient deterrent that the Iranians have created on the other.

So I suppose if we can agree that President Trump's pain threshold has been met and you can imagine the pressure he's coming from Republicans in his own party, let alone Democrats, but

Have the Iranians extolled enough deterrent force, do you think, to actually come to the table on this?

If we go back to U.S.