Greg Myre

The U.S.

and Israel will be able to keep hitting targets indefinitely in Iran, but at what point do you say, we've achieved what we want to achieve, we're ready to call this off?

And you could see two things being true, where the U.S.

and Israel could inflict a lot of damage on Iran and its security forces,

But the basic elements of the Iranian government and regime stay in place and don't surrender, don't give up, are still in position and strong enough to prevent an internal uprising by Iranian civilians.

So you could get to some sort of standoff in the sense where the U.S.

and Israel can't achieve much more in an air campaign, and the Iranian government, while very weakened, would still be in full control.

Mara, I would just add to that.

I think you're absolutely right in terms of politics and voting in the midterms.

But I do think these things are related, and Libya being the perfect example where the U.S.

didn't send troops on the ground.

It bombed from the air, helped depose Muammar Gaddafi, and then left the place.

And it devolved into civil war.

President Obama said that was his biggest mistake of his presidency at one point.

Right.

So it does have consequences by destabilizing the Middle East.

And the war we're seeing here relates to other wars that we've seen over the past two years.

You could draw a pretty direct line from the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza to fighting in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Syria.

Oh, there's no doubt about that.

that could lead to further issues down the road, even if it doesn't have a direct impact on elections this year.