John J. Mearsheimer

Or we can go off the cliff economically.

That's the choice here.

Yeah.

First of all, we had four demands regarding Iran's missiles, support for Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, regard to their nuclear program, and with regard to regime change.

Those were the four goals

that we started with.

None of them have been achieved.

That's the first point.

Second point is your point that they now control the Strait of Hormuz, right?

Third point I would make to you is they're going to come out of this in better economic shape in part because they control the Strait of Hormuz, but also because a lot of sanctions are going to be lifted off them, right?

And

That's good news for them.

So economically, they're going to be in a superior position after February 28th than before February 28th.

Finally, you want to remember that on February 27th, we had a basing structure in the Gulf and we had an alliance structure in the Gulf that looked quite formidable.

All those bases have either been destroyed or badly damaged.

And that alliance structure that we had with the six Gulf states has been wrecked in very important ways.

And it's not clear that we can stay in the Gulf.

So if you think about it.

It was so obvious.

You and I agree on that, that so many of these things are so obvious, but yet so many really smart people, people who went to fancy universities, have fancy degrees, worked for fancy law firms or what have you, were successful in business, you name it, don't see obvious things that people like us see in the foreign policy realm.