Suzanne Maloney

And it's not clear that President Trump is prepared to sustain American leadership

Or that even if he were in the aftermath of this, what appears to be a catastrophic overreach and miscalculation with the attacks on Iran, that in fact the United States will be trusted to do that by countries around the world.

It feels like a Suez moment in some respects.

I think that's exactly what the Iranians are driving toward.

And at this point in time, it appears as though they may in fact achieve those aims of being stronger at the end of this war.

Even if the economy has been battered, even if they've lost thousands of their own people, that they believe that their ability to endure the worst, that two technologically superior, economically superior countries,

adversaries have given them and come out on top, I think will be tremendously emboldening for a regime that has been very dangerous, even at its weaker moments.

I would recommend a couple of books outside of the norm, perhaps.

I know you've had a lot of folks talking about Iran lately, and they all mentioned some of the great classics in the field, but especially because we're talking about the U.S.-Iran relationship, I wanted to recommend one, The Twilight War by David Crist.

The subtitle is The Secret History of America's 30-Year Conflict with Iran, so it's obviously a little bit outdated, but David Crist's

He's a Pentagon historian, and he writes about the tanker war period as well as other skirmishes between the United States and Iran.

I think it's a particularly important one for understanding how the history has shaped the crisis.

Another one I would recommend is an even older book.

It was done of the hostage crisis edited by Warren Christopher, of course, served in many senior positions and really just talked through all of the diplomats, the military officials and the bankers who played a really important role in helping end what was also a very protracted and a crisis that diminished the United States in many respects in the world.

It's called American Hostages in Iran, the Conduct of a Crisis.

And the third book I'd recommend by an Iranian author, Iranian academic, now retired, Misog Parsa, Democracy in Iran, Why It Failed and How It Might Succeed.

And I hope that it will in the long term.

Thank you.