Katty Kay

If he was serious about wanting to use force again, every time the Iranians present him, how many deadlines has he pushed back now?

Five times he's pushed back deadlines.

He's had...

multiple attempts when you'd think he would have given up at peace negotiations.

He's trying this because he wants to choke them economically.

He can just about handle them choking them economically, but I think he really doesn't want to escalate with boots on the ground.

I may be wrong.

I think we're in this position where he's weighing this up.

If there is some kind of an incident in the Gulf because of this

blockade against a blockade, then I think he may be forced into taking some sort of action.

If American warships are fired on, and God forbid if any American sailors were hurt, even worse, then I think he has no choice but to escalate.

Then he'll have to do it.

But he's going to try everything he can not to in the meantime.

And he wants out of there.

Okay, so it wouldn't have cost $125 billion in fighting, which the Secretary of Defense said, told Congress that it cost at the end of last week.

So you'd have saved that money.

It wouldn't have depleted America's stock of munitions, which has been seriously depleted.

You wouldn't have had American army bases in the region hit.

And apparently the reporting is coming out at the moment that they've been much worse hit than we were led to believe.

So you wouldn't have had that.