Rajan Menon

If Israel were to strike Lebanon again or Beirut again during the 60-day period and the Iranians fired back, you could have what we call in the business a conflict spiral.

That is an escalation that gets out of control.

And that could blow up.

the memorandum of understanding before the 60 days have elapsed.

Not much, because the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war began.

It is the war that closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, the nuclear issue has been elevated, so phase two is going to be very, very complicated.

It is not clear what kind of leverage Trump is left with in the phase two negotiations.

Now, he can say, well, we'll start the war all over again.

But of course, he doesn't want the war to start all over again because his approval ratings are tanking because of it.

And so he has a very strong incentive to make this deal work because we have our midterm elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives coming up in November.

On the other hand, I don't want to underplay Iran's desire for this to work as well.

But I think that they are absolutely insistent that the things that they want on phase one have to be given to them.

Otherwise, they won't go forward with phase two and they will not give anything on the nuclear front.