Janice Gross-Stein

So what we're seeing with your big picture, when you look down from the top and you abstract from the details, it's a classic competition in risk-taking.

Who can hold firm longer, although both sides face fundamentally the same problem?

Who's going to blink first, right?

what you saw this week um is iran absolutely refusing to blink there was a ceasefire negotiated by the white house between lebanon and israel left hezbollah out of the story iran sent the message to hezbollah no way do you agree to this and there's no ceasefire right so it's a mistake to think that those two fronts are separate they're not they're completely integrated which really says

Iran's strategy is drag this out virtually to the point of pain as long as it can.

What that tells me, they believe they still have time.

Yeah, that was a stunning comment.

Absolutely stunning comment because everywhere around the world, everywhere around the world, but obviously first and foremost in the Gulf states, what is the value of an American security guarantee?

Right there.

What is it?

If it only means we are going to get involved militarily when an American dies, when an American soldier dies, then it's not only the Gulf states, it's Japan, it's South Korea, it's all of Europe that heard that comment.

And that to me is one of these moments where all of America's allies have to question

the value of an American security guarantee under this president.

Oh, no, look, I think it has no credibility.

I really don't.

I would give that no weight whatsoever.

Yeah.

Look, I don't think so.

For the poem, it is in some ways...

a fascinating situation in a bizarre way.