Nancy Youssef

And without that clear objective, it is harder for the military to make plans, right?

Objectives sort of set the agenda for their strike plans.

And so until that is outlined...

How long does the United States give the Iranians to reach a deal?

How much patience does the president have for talks?

If they fail, what are the military options?

What is the U.S.

hoping to achieve through those military options?

That hasn't been, in my mind, clearly articulated such that you see a military planning towards that.

Right.

Not every, because they don't have enough.

For example, we don't have the 170,000 U.S.

and allied ground troops that we did in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, right?

We don't have the capability, for example, to go in and remove the leadership of Iran or...

put in a regime change such that we are there and able to shape that post-outcome.

They're preparing for an outcome where it's the same strikes over targets, potentially nuclear targets, potentially ballistic missile and other defense targets, I would say, and potentially to go after leadership from the air.

No, it's such a great point.

So right now we have two carriers in the region, more than 120 aircraft and drones and roughly 40,000 ground troops.

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion, we had five carriers, multifold more aircraft, and 170,000 U.S.

and allied troops assigned to go in Iraq.