Trita Parsi

You have several examples of this in some variations.

The Danish have for 400 years taken transit fees for ships going through Öresund, the opening to the Baltic Sea.

and that they will use that in order to recuperate money for all of the damages that have been inflicted on Iran as a result of this war.

So as these damages increase, it's not that the Iranians are hardening their position necessarily, it's that they have no choice but to try to find other ways of being able to compensate and pay for the massive cost of reconstruction that will follow this war that increasingly is taking an Israeli character.

And I think this is very important to understand.

I've been very critical of the Iraq war, but the United States did not deliberately, intentionally bomb universities or pharmaceutical factories in Iraq.

That's what the Israelis do in Lebanon.

That's what they have done in Gaza.

destroyed almost every university there.

And that is what they're starting to do in Iran as well.

Just today, they bombed a very important pharmaceutical or medical research institute that was built together with the French more than 100 years ago.

And the United States is now complicit in this Israeli form of warfare that is actually very different from how the U.S.

has conducted war.

Again, you know, I'm very critical of the Iraq war and other things, but this is just way beyond that.

This is just an absolute destruction.

And again, because Trump doesn't appear to have a plan by default,

He is following the Israelis' lead.

And this is also what we see when he says that he's going to bomb the Iranians back to the Stone Age.

That is an Israeli goal.

They don't care about the political fallout.