Dr. Trita Parsi

This is meant to attack bases that are being used directly or indirectly to attack our soil.

end result of all of this may very well end up being that rather than having American bases on your soul providing you with security, it actually may end up becoming the opposite, that the very principle is negated, that you're actually at a greater risk of being attacked precisely because you have these bases on your soul.

And very importantly, in this case, as well as the case of the past summer, the United States vacated all of those bases.

before it attacked.

Both the personnel have been moved out and most of the equipment have been moved out, which then raises the question, what's the point of these bases?

If they were supposed to defend these regions, these states against Iran, and now when you're having a war, you're actually vacating them.

What's in it for these states?

I could.

Let me first say, I think the most likely scenarios is either that Trump continues this until he gets some sort of a regime implosion and he declares victory, but also washes his hands of whatever follows.

And this has been very clear in the internal conversations that no one wants to take responsibility for what happens to Iran afterwards.

And this is the big difference between regime change and regime collapse.

In the regime change, you're actually actively trying to install a new government and their track record becomes your track record.

In regime collapse or implosion, all you're doing is getting rid of the existing one and then you say that you have nothing to do with whatever comes afterwards.

Mm-hmm.

So I can see that scenario in the sense that if this goes on for a time and if they manage to kill a lot of the different leaders of the current system, that there would be some sort of an implosion and then he would declare victory, even though, you know, you would have instability, potentially civil war, all of these different kinds of things.

The other scenario is that the Iranians continue to strike back.

They last, they outlast Trump.

This becomes very costly for the U.S.

Casualty rates, inflation, global ore markets are destabilized, all of these different things.

And then the pressure on Trump internationally from the American public, from his own base starts to become so strong that he looks for an exit.