Joe Kent

I think he has a very good view of how things have strategically changed.

However, we will avoid the most catastrophic outcome, which would be us getting sucked into –

a further escalation cycle because if we double down militarily, the Iranians are going to hit us back.

Then we're going to take losses and we're going to be in this cycle that takes around 20 years for us to be able to break if we just look at recent history.

So I think the most pragmatic thing he can do is just declare victory, declare it loud in a very Trumpian style and pull everybody out.

But the problem, Joe, is right now, literally today, this is part of why I wanted to have you on, you had this shooting, and now Monday there's a Situation Room meeting, literally, that's going to happen, where they're going to discuss whether they should resume bombing or not.

By basically leaving us in this quasi, you know, like semi-ceasefire, but with the blockade, and yet the still closure of the Straits of Hormuz, we have this impending energy crisis.

Considering where and how you've seen the president act,

And considering your own experience, you literally resigned, tried to plead, you know, basically elevate the profile enough to try and change decision making.

Where do you think, and I'm sure you talk to a lot of people still who are around, where is Trump's head at?

And are people willing to speak a little bit more truth to power now that the war has gone so poorly?

How do you think things are going to go in that situation we're meeting today?

I'm concerned that he is just going to have people around him that are going to tell him that the blockade is working and that this idea that we can somehow get a backlog in Iranian oil and that's going to make the Iranians basically tap and say that they'll do whatever we want and they'll give up their nuclear enrichment red line.

They'll give up their proxies, et cetera.

They'll give up their ballistic missile capabilities.

I just don't see that as happening.

The Iranians have shown over the course of 47 years that economic pressure really doesn't move the needle very much with them.

And again, we've killed a lot of the moderates there.

So our trade space for negotiations is limited.

This is why I'm also more skeptical of us getting a deal with the Iranians than I was just three, four weeks ago, or even at the beginning of the conflict, because we've continued to kill the moderates.