Mike Baker

Joining us to break it down is retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Senior Director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.

Sir, thanks very much for joining us again here on the Situation Report.

Thank you for having me, Mike.

Good to be here.

Absolutely.

Well, I guess let's start with Iran.

I want to get to Ukraine in the second segment, because I know you've just come back from Ukraine.

But with the Iran conflict, I've been asking our viewers and listeners the same question, but what do you call a ceasefire when nobody's ceased fire?

Yeah, I guess the I mean, it's it's straining that the definition of ceasefire.

I understand why the White House is reluctant to reignite a full scale military campaign.

I get that.

But.

I mean, at some point, you have to think that in this staring contest, the Iranian regime, which I think is viewing this as if they're in a position of resilience and strength, right, which could explain sort of the illogical nature of these supposed negotiations.

I think they look at it and think that they just outweighed the White House.

And I think they're pinning a fair amount of hope on the idea that the White House will at some point make some concessions in order to get the straight open, in order to get gas prices down, in order to get votes during the midterm elections.

Am I looking at this wrong?

Yeah.

And I think he's the president just recently come out and said, look, the red line that he's got is if U.S.

troops are killed, at which point then this ceasefire or whatever we call it is done.

And so he's kind of set that up and essentially saying he's willing to put up with a certain level of aggressiveness from the regime.