Mohammad Ali Shabani

And as soon as the war had begun and things started going wrong, we saw Netanyahu go out and say, well, hold on, it wasn't the nuclear issue.

In fact, it was the missiles, that Iran had X amount of missiles that were going to fire at us, which would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, right?

And now that Iran has had this war and it's found that missiles are basically its only real means of deterrence and defense, they're not going to give them up.

So is that going to be the Achilles heel of these kinds of negotiations?

We don't know.

We're going to find out in the next 60 days or so.

I think the

based on what I've read, the people in the security circles and intelligence, they're essentially saying that their read of Iran, their understanding of Iran, is that these bottom lines they have on things like the nuclear program or things like the regional policies, such as also the missile program, they're not going to budge on them fundamentally.

These are points that they've been quite stubborn on for the past 20 years.

They may be right.

They may also be wrong because there's been one big change in Iran because we've changed from one Khamenei to another, right?

There has been a regime change, just not the kind of regime change that the United States and Israel may have liked, right?

So we don't know what this new leadership, how pragmatic they may be on things like the nuclear issue, things like the regional alliance networks.

We have no idea.

So I think this is a kind of a black box right now.

And again, we're just going to have to wait and see, and time will tell to what extent Iran and the United States can be flexible in their relations.

What we do know is that the former Supreme Leader of Iran, 86-year-old Ali Khamenei, he was quite stringent on certain things, and now he's gone.

And we don't know how Iran's bottom line may have changed.

Right.

Really, really good point.