Matthew Schmidt

It's more right wing than it was.

It's now more controlled by the IRGC.

And it's learned that its nuclear program is not actually its chief leverage point.

It's the Strait.

And it now knows how to lever that.

And it knows that it can do that, whatever the U.S.

Navy decides to do.

I think that if you're Iran, you have to flex your muscles.

You have to wait 30, 40, 50 days and then find some reason to threaten shipping again, right?

Launch a few drones or something like that and just indicate that you're in control.

Because what we don't know, but I don't know any case, is the straight opening up in a way that allows Iran to essentially charge a toll for safe passage.

I think that Netanyahu has to recognize that in the end, bringing Trump in to do what he needed the American military to do that he couldn't do in Iran is going to end up with a strategic loss again because Iran figured out how to link Hezbollah

to the Strait of Hormuz, which gives it, again, a strategic lever point.

Yes.

I think the U.S.

should not have waded into Iran.

And I think it indicates that, you know, we've been talking about this for a long time

in venues like this, which is that the global order is shifting.

And I think you're seeing that this war has really made concrete a lot of that shift away from American power.

It has really shown the limits of what American power can do and can't do inside the system.