Niall Ferguson

And I think we now see, as usual, President Trump loves the brink.

He likes to go up to the brink and he saw how the markets reacted, which was pretty negatively.

And as usual, back we go away from the brink.

So I think a lot of people would agree with your distraction thesis, but would say it's a distraction from the Epstein files, not from an impending attack on Iran.

Do you believe that, in fact, it's a bit of a head fake?

And there's some evidence to support this, that U.S.

military forces are coordinating and choreographing around a potential military strike.

You understand geopolitics as well as anyone.

Where would you put the odds that there is something resembling some sort of a military strike?

impending on Iran?

Certainly north of 40%.

I mean, I think that the president made a very clear threat to the Iranian regime.

I think the Iranian regime has, by the standards of totalitarian regimes, been astonishingly brutal towards its own people.

It's hard to think of

A single day of repression in any context in which more than 10,000 people have been murdered.

But I also think that President Trump has a strategic concept to an extent that people underestimate here.

We've already seen that in Venezuela.

Venezuela was part of the Axis sphere of influence.

By the Axis, I mean China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the bad guys, the authoritarians who've been working together very overtly, not only in Ukraine, but elsewhere.

And by decapitating the Venezuelan regime, which is only a couple of weeks ago, President Trump sent a very clear signal.