Ross Douthat

So we're talking, I'd say, about 24 hours or a little more after President Trump postponed his professed plan to strike Iran's power plants if they did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

And we're also talking in the background of conflicting reports about possible talks between the United States and the Iranian government or elements of the Iranian government.

All of that seems very vague and nebulous at the moment.

But that's roughly where we are in the timeline right now.

So given where we are, first question, very easy one, is the United States winning its war against the Islamic Republic of Iran?

Yeah, well, we'll talk about the Battle of Hormuz.

Let's just stay with military degradation for a moment.

In a scenario where this conflict ended soon...

And those objectives were seen to have been met.

There's no world where you're going to eliminate completely the Iranian regime's capacity to have a military unless you invade Iran and occupy it and so on.

Does that mean that this military operation in its limited form is just about buying time so that we just don't have to attack Iran again for five years or something like that?

So now let's talk about the regime, because you already gestured at this by mentioning Israeli attempts to degrade the regime's capacities.

A week ago, you co-wrote an essay for The Atlantic entitled Glimpsing Victory in Iran.

I think it's fair to say that you have a broader definition of what victory looks like than the military objectives laid out by the Trump administration.

So tell me what your vision of victory in the war is.

And in that essay and elsewhere, you've talked about what you've described as a kind of three-phase process of getting there from where we are now, where the first phase is the kind of military campaign that the U.S.

has embarked on, degradation of the Iranian military.

Just talk through briefly what you think each phase would look like, again, in a best-case scenario that ends in regime change.

In phase two- Phase two.

Okay.