Ross Douthat

global energy markets, the global economy, and just sort of the core economic and civilizational functioning of the Persian Gulf.

And so with that said, what do we do about it?

why was it inevitable if we were able to, again, substantially degrade both their terror proxy networks and their nuclear program?

Iran was not going to close the Strait of Hormuz six months ago.

It didn't close the Strait of Hormuz in response to our bombing of Fordow.

It only closed the Strait when we went all in, and more than going all in on military elements, when we went all in

in targeting regime leadership.

And I'm just going to use the U.S.

and Israel interchangeably here for this campaign because I think that that is accurate to what is practically going on.

In a world where we didn't target the Iranian regime leadership, where we didn't attempt to force regime change, where we just carried out periodic bombings of their military and so on,

It's not clear to me that you can say definitely, oh, well, of course, eventually Iran would have closed the straits.

They closed the strait in response to our attempt at regime change.

Isn't that fair?

So essentially what has happened is, in your view, Donald Trump was the only American president capable of confronting Iran in any meaningful way, allowing Israel to confront its proxies.

And so in fact, it is that we have chosen to fight an inevitable battle of Hormuz now because we don't trust our own political system to restrain Iran without an epic battle right now.

Well, but again, I don't think by your own account we would have to fight a major war.

We would just need the next president to continue giving Israel permission to degrade Hamas and Hezbollah and continue to do periodic strikes.

And you're saying you don't think any president would have extended even that permission.

Okay, so it's not enough for...

a future US president to allow Israel to conduct these raids, we also have to be involved in them.