John Bolton

I mean, I think the military side of the current campaign shows good planning and good preparation for some objective, whatever it is.

My only surprise really is that they didn't act earlier against the possibility of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

That was a possibility from day one, and I would have thought there would have been –

In addition, in the early days to trying to take out retaliatory capabilities like Iran's ballistic missiles, that one retaliatory capability that needed neutralizing was their capacity to close the strait.

And yet we were a couple of weeks in before that really started.

Well, in the course of events since March the 1st, they've given a half a dozen or more different alternative objectives.

And I'm not sure which is which on a given day, but I do think it reflects the lack of strategic planning and failure to think through what would happen when you undertake a military operation this big.

I mean, I think one...

danger now that they're not thinking about is what is the likely future if you leave a badly wounded regime in place in Tehran, but one that's determined to recover, rebuild the nuclear program, refinance and arm the terrorist groups.

and now see palpably what the power to close the Strait of Hormuz can do.

I mean, that in a sense could make a more dangerous regime by rebuilding what's left of it and would have argued if they weren't prepared to see regime change through, they shouldn't have started this to begin with.

Right.

Four to six weeks might have been a good estimate of the Pentagon's initial campaign, but the military action alone was never going to cause regime change, or at least it would have been a lucky event had it done so.

This has to come from inside Iran.

It's the people, the opposition, the ethnic groups, the young people, the women that have to figure out how to actually accomplish it.

It's clear they were badly intimidated in January when the regime killed

30,000 or 40,000 protesters, literally machine gunned them in the streets of Iran simply for protesting against the regime.

That needed to be taken into account.

That's why contact with the opposition, disorganized though it is,

but contact with figures inside Iran who could say, we know how to get things moving again at the right time.