Victoria Coates

Wonderful to be with you.

Now, we're definitely in a sort of holding pattern for the moment.

And I think the real reason for it is the disarray of Iranian leadership.

Essentially, the 40 top people in Iran were taken out in that original strike in late February, and they haven't recovered.

And we're not sure we even have a supreme leader.

And bear in mind,

The previous supreme leader, Khamenei, had been in place for 40 years and had been a very, very stern and firm decision maker.

He was the ultimate decider in the Iranian regime.

And not only is he gone, but everyone around him is gone except for his son, Mujtaba, who became the supreme leader.

But we haven't seen him.

I mean, he hasn't even done a proof of life video in the month that he's been supreme leader.

So I think you do have disarray.

I think the president does want to give them a chance to accept the terms, but he wants to be confident that whoever is accepting them has the authority to do so.

The short answer is we don't know.

Bear in mind, Iran has been at 1% internet access now for almost two months.

It's inconceivable what's going on inside that country.

I certainly think it's fair to say there's a power struggle going on, and I think this will all hinge on that nuclear program.

I think the IRGC officers believe that to be their only ticket to relevance and to power.

And so they're going to fiercely resist any attempt to relinquish that enriched geranium or give up their terrorist proxies or their missile programs.

Well, I do believe they think that every day that passes makes their leverage greater because of the economic pressure that Iran is under because of that Internet outage.