Nancy Youssef

That's the difference in scale.

That doesn't mean that this is small.

It's one of the largest military buildups we've seen since 2003, but it is not on the same scale of 2003.

Stephen Wyckoff said as much.

He said in an interview with Fox earlier this week that the president was curious that the presence of U.S.

military forces near their shores wasn't enough to lead to a capitulation of some kind.

So they've said that.

I would argue that that's a fundamental misreading of the Iranians in that the Iranians see the threat to their program as an existential threat and are prepared to risk war to protect it and are prepared to suffer casualties arguably more than we are prepared to suffer casualties to dismantle it.

So it was revealing to me in terms of how they're revealing the Iranians if what Stephen Witkoff is saying is an accurate description of the president's position.

The other thing I would note is if the use of force is designed to be leverage, and let's assume that I'm wrong and they're right and they've read the Iranians correctly, it is a very, very large presence for leverage.

I think the accurate way to think about it is that at one point it was potentially a form of leverage, but they're also there in place to be ready to go should negotiations fail.

Why is this happening now?

That is the question.

And I don't fully know the answer.

There are pieces of it that we know.

You remember at the end of December 2025, we saw remarkable protests that were happening across Iran and a bid by Iranians to change the leadership within their own country amid resistance.

real economic hardship.

And at that time, the president sent out social media posts saying that we were coming to help, and the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group started moving towards the region.

And then protests were put down, frankly, by the Iranians.

Potentially great costs.