Experts: Trump's Illegal Iran War Likely to Trigger Dangerous Unintended Consequences

"I'm always good, always good."

"I'm always very happy." "I'm always happy." "I'm always happy." I'm Theresa and my experience in all entrepreneurs started a shopping trip.

I'll tell you the first day of shopping. And the plan for making me no problem. I have a lot of problems, but the plan for it isn't just one step. I have the feeling that shopping trip is a platform that can only be optimized.

Everything is super integrated and convenient.

And the time and the money that I can't invest in there. For everything in VaxTum. Now, Kostenlo's test on shopping trip.de.

“To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know,”

there's no better place than right here on the DSR network. And there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member. Members enjoying ad-free listening experience, access to our discord community, exclusive content, early episode access, and more. Use code in DSR 26 for a 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR network.com.

That's code in DSR 26 at the DSR network.com/buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. 9, 12, and 28, 2, 23. This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio

in the third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C.

and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world.

“Hello and welcome to a special episode of DSR's Need to Know.”

I'm David Rothkuff and I'm joined by three experts and friends who are here to provide a perspective on the events that began unfolding over the weekend with the attack of the United States and Israel on Iran and then with Iran's responses to those attacks. And we're joined by a terrific group including Christine Warmouth, who is a former U.S. Secretary of the Army and President Chief Executive of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

How are you doing, Christine? Great. Happy to be here. Good to see you, David. Good to see you.

Thank you. And Frank Kendall, who's the former U.S. Secretary of the Air Force. How are you doing today, Frank? To be with you, David. Thank you very much.

And of course, our friend and colleague and all of these things, Rosa Brooks, of Georgetown University Law Center, how are you doing, Rosa? I am very well, David. You forgot to mention that I am the Secretary of the Ministry of Snark.

“Yes, well, I believe most of our listeners know that.”

But for any new listeners, that is why you are here at all times. Now, having said that, one of the things that is striking to anybody who has been following events coming out of the Middle East and White House comments on the events and Department of Defense comments on the events is that it's hard to get a beat of, on where we are. And why we're doing what we're doing and what our goals are on how long this is going

to last, et cetera. And so I thought, because we have three people with a lot of experience here, and working in other roles in the, in the U.S. Department of Defense, to just get your reactions. So sort of your sense of what this means and where we are and what your concerns are starting with you Christine.

Well, David, I think, you know, it's pretty clear that we're in uncharted territory. The President has said today that this could be four to six more weeks, although I gather. He's also said that things are going ahead of schedule. One of the biggest concerns I have is that one of the goals that President Trump has articulated, although he's saying different things, you know, from day to day, is regime change.

He has certainly called upon the Iranian public to, you know, rise up and take back their

But I think if you look at history, regime change achieved from air power alone is pretty tricky business. So how we're actually going to get a better regime than the one under Havana, just through air power is, is one of the biggest questions I have, you know, the regime doesn't have a leader, it's not organized, the internet has been cut off, they don't have weapons.

It's very unclear to me how we get from a series of military strikes against military targets to a new, less hostile government in Iran. Yeah, it certainly becomes more difficult when, as part of your airstrikes, according to the President, you've killed the people you think would be the regime you had changed it.

Because he did comment last evening that the people they thought were going to step up and fill the roads also were killed in the strikes. Frank, what's your reaction?

“I think it's about the same as Christine.”

I'm astonished, I'm trying to think of anybody professional who would have recommended this course of action, and I can't come up with anybody. If you're going to do something like this, you better have a plan in place for what you expect to happen next and have some control over that plan. And we don't seem to have either.

There's a wish out of prayer here, I guess, that people will rise up and create a more bit of benign regime from our perspective. I don't know what he reason to believe that. Christine was right, I can think of two cases where AirPower was decisive. One was Serbia about 30 years ago, it took several weeks to get Serbia to change their

government to basically capitulate.

And the other was Japan, that the animal were two, and that took a nuclear weapon. So I don't have high hope that there'll be a fundamental change in the Iranian regime. There'll be different people in charge, obviously. And there is some chance that there will be an uprising that will all over through. There's only so much we can accomplish with AirPower.

President Trump laid out several objectives that he had.

“Some of them like destroying the Iranian Navy, I think are quite achievable.”

But forcing regime change to AirPower is very difficult, and I'm skeptical that will happen. Yeah, and I would point out that in the case of Serbia having been sort of on the edges

of that myself, that it didn't work for a while, and finally they said, "Well, what

have we started bombing the factories of the friends of Malosevich?" Maybe they'll start calling him up and suggest that he capitulate. And once we started doing it, but that was something very, it was creating a specific kind of pressure point, and it doesn't seem we've done anything quite so strategic. Here, Rosa, what's your reaction to all this?

Everything Christine and Frank said, I agree with, and I would add another element of this, which is disturbing. So these strikes are a blatant violation of international law. Now a lot of people might say, "Oh, who cares international law?" They're also a blatant violation of U.S. law in our constitutional system.

It's really hard to wiggle your way around the War Powers Act restrictions on this one.

“But I think the -- just -- sometimes people say, "Well, international law, why should”

it matter who cares?" But here's the big picture issue, right? We, the United States, have spent decades championing the rules-based international order that came out of World War II that emerged from the U.N. Security -- the U.N. charter system and so forth, which prohibits exactly this kind of military action, nobody would dispute

that the Iranian regime is a pretty nasty regime.

Undemocratic, repressive, cruel in a million different ways.

But the whole point of having a system where states don't go around assassinating foreign leaders and bombing sovereign countries and so on, just on their own on what appears in fact in this case to be little more than a whim or persuasion from Netanyahu, the reason that we don't want a system like that is there are a lot of crappy regimes around the world. There are a lot of repressive leaders around the world and the instability it introduces

into an already pretty fragile international order when you have a nuclear arm superpower. That's us that goes around saying, "We don't need allies. We don't need to consult anybody. We don't need the U.N. Security Council. We don't need to really bother to clearly lay out either for our own citizens or for the world.

Any either legal or strategic justification for what we're doing. We're just going to go around attacking other countries and assassinating their leaders on top of the, you know, our kidnapping of Meduro and Venezuela are threats to the territory of a NATO ally, Greenland, etc. the pattern that starts to emerge is just of the U.S.

only, I think, is there a real danger that the specifics the Iranian conflict widens.

It's already, times are, it's already beginning to widen in the region causing regional instability, you know, in danger, in American service members, in danger, in civilians around the region and danger in the global economy.

“But I think it starts pushing our allies into the arms of people we shouldn't be pushing”

them towards. You know, it starts pushing out, you know, when people think, well, you can't count on the United States because at any moment they're going to do something crazy without bother and to consult anybody, you know, that creates a really dangerous situation that, that I think it will come back to bite us.

Yeah, you know, it's hard to really understand where we are for a variety of reasons Christine.

I mean, as all of you have indicated, first we said we were going to possibly take action

because of the nuclear threat that was perceived partially, but perhaps we would then do it because of, it's a support of protesters and then perhaps we're going to do it because of their ICBM program and then maybe all those things, then maybe none of those things. And so that's confusing and then, you know, the statements out of the administration ever

“since a bit of bit confusing, ranging from Pete Heggseth who gave a press conference today,”

which was kind of incoherent, which in which he said, we didn't start this war, but we're going to finish it as far as I can tell we actually started it to President Trump saying, well, there's a perfect model for how we're going to handle this going forward and that is Venezuela and I was like, what? Well, I don't understand what's happening in Venezuela, you know, we don't understand.

And so the issue that this raises for me that perhaps you and Frank can speak to is, we have a great military with great leaders in the military, how would they supposed to handle these conflicting incoherent signals? Christine, you first. It's a good question, David.

I mean, I'm sure it has been an enormously challenging year for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs' Cain and the other members of the Joint Chiefs at the SENTCOM commander and others.

You know, I have no doubt, first of all, I would say, you know, the fact that the operation

“has gone as well as it has so far is a testament, I think, to the incredible professionalism”

and planning skill of our military leaders and military planners. And, but, you know, I can imagine that the Chairman and there were some press reporting along these lines last week brought forward a range of options to try to talk to President Trump about what some of the risks that were inherent in this kind of approach were going to be and certainly at least based on press reports, it sounds like there have been those

inside the Trump administration that have had some reservations about what we're trying to do. You know, something we haven't talked about yet, but I think it's pretty significant and is the Iranian nuclear program and what's going to happen to it going forward. You know, if there's, in fact, a regime collapse and there's widespread instability, we

could lose, you know, or positive control, if you will, over the highly enriched uranium, which, oh, by the way, could be used to make a crude nuclear device at 60% enrichment. Whatever centrifuges survive the bombing last summer, you know, the expertise in embodied in the nuclear scientists, positive control over all of that could be lost, which would be deeply concerning because there are bad actors who would want to get their hands

on all three components of that program. But again, just like, you know, conducting regime change with air power alone is really hard securing nuclear materials without having boots on the ground is very, very hard. So, you know, one of the things that I worry about going forward and I'm not sure what kind of military planning has been done along these lines is if, in the worst case, there

is instability, you know, bordering on chaos, rival, rival factions, you know, struggling for power, how do we assure that the nuclear elements of the program don't get out and get lost? Yeah. Same question to you, Frank.

I mean, there's a lot of pressure being placed on those involved with air power right now, but almost all the solutions they seek require something more than that. And yet, the message is also getting get out because that's kind of the way that we seem

Are those reconcilable goals?

“I think we have a number of problems here, David, and I would start with the politicization”

of the military. I'm in worried about that since I left office, and I wrote a piece about a year ago about America having a rogue president, and as Rosa comic commented, now he's making us into a rogue state. We have a very professional military, I think they have good values, I think they're very,

very well trained, they're very professional at what they do, but also in terms of how they look at their role in society and as part of America. That's all being undermined. President Trump has put in place legal authorities, either it's a way or military now. We were put in place specifically to allow to state that things like this were lawful,

and they were clearly not. We had the attack on the drug boats, suddenly it's a war with the drug dealers, and we're allowed to just go and execute them, including survivors in the water, which is in the manual of laws of armed conflict for the DOD, something that is not permitted. We had an attack on another sovereign state in Venezuela, and now we've gone to war, and

I don't know anybody can deny that this is a war with Iran, and without congressional authorization, which is the Constitution requires. So we're getting to a point where I don't know if there's anything our military is going to refuse to do, that this president or is it to do, and that includes possibly putting down domestic on rest.

So I'm very concerned about where there's added very famously in the first Trump administration,

the Chief of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Joe Millie, was asked to go to Portland to command troops to shoot protesters. He refused, and the Attorney General and the United States at the time agreed with him that he should not be could not be ordered to do that. Those characters are not there anymore.

Those players are not, I'm not on the stage, there are other people there.

“I know Dan Kane, I think he's a professional, I don't know any reason to think otherwise,”

but I am very worried about what the next steps are going to be that this president is going to ask our armed military to do, and I'm waiting for them to say no to anything. I'm waiting to see some indication that any officer or a senior level is stood up and said, I won't do that.

You're going to have to relieve me if you want somebody to do that.

Yeah, the certainly the case. Rosa, one of the things that Higgs had said today was we're very happy to be working with the Israelis, one of the things we like about, I'm paraphrasing, and one of the things we like about the Israelis is, you know, they've got the same attitude as us as opposed to like our European allies who are hand-wringing and have all these ridiculous rules of engagement.

So, you know, this goes to the point of road president rogue state, Higgs that for a long time has been the advocate for committing reward crimes. I mean, it's been a kind of signature, and I'm just, you know, there's plenty of opportunity for that here, and I'm just wondering if that as a factor going forward, also as negative consequences, where our allies, how we're perceived, how these things get resolved, even

where our enemies motivate themselves to keep fighting us. That's a music for your eyes. How do you feel about the next one? With Shopify, you can help you to help a real help. Start your tests today for only one of your promo.

On Shopify.de/record. You can contact your own company with Shopify and business. And to be honest with you, with the checkout with the world for the best conversion, you're right. The checkout with the world for the best conversion.

The legendary checkout from Shopify, just on your website, just on social media, and above either it's sufficient. That's a music for your eyes. Videos of the rest of the vendors, with Shopify, can set to a real help. Start your tests today for only one of your promo.

On Shopify.de/record. Yeah, I think that's right.

“On the one hand, I think obedience to the law, to the uniform code of military justice,”

to the values and norms embodied in the Geneva Conventions and so on are pretty deeply internalized, by seeing your members of our military. I think that the challenge comes, and we've seen this move before, to some extent, during the George W. Bush administration, is that unlawful orders rarely come in the form of manifest the unlawful orders.

They rarely come in the form of shoot that baby. They tend to come in the form of, well, we've had a bunch of lawyers who've determined that such and such as a lawful target or such and such as lawful conduct. And there's just enough ambiguity.

and unless they are manifest the unlawful, their careers are on the line,

“and they're in legal jeopardy if they disobey.”

So on the one hand, it's easy for us to sit here and say, well, they have a legal duty to disobey an unlawful order. But if you are kernel so and so, much less lieutenant so and so, or even admiral so and so or general so and so and so and you get a whole bunch of memos that are waived at you and all the lawyers have signed off, you know,

it's really hard to be the guy who says, no, under those circumstances, because you're placing your career in jeopardy. I mean, I think we, it seems clear from, I'm sure that Christine and Frank have have friends still inside the Pentagon inside the military. It seems clear that there is substantial unease and unhappiness

and that there have been people who've been forced out. Obviously as well, some resignations, including, including, apparently over the boat strikes, which were clearly unlawful, the admiral who's a commander of self-com, resigned. And the, you know, he has not been public about his reasons for resigning,

but the scuttled butt suggests that he resigned because he was not willing to not comfortable with what the Trump administration was trying to do. But I agree with Frank. I mean, I, I'm both quite worried about the longer-term impact of the military of, of having to operate under a

commander-in-chief and a secretary of defense who, who basically could

care less about the law.

“You know, I think it, it deeply undermines decades of important work”

trying to make sure that everybody in our military understood the reasons that, and there's strategic reasons as well, that why we care. Here's why we don't commit work crimes. Number one, it's wrong, but number two, it actually hurts us. You know, it, it, it, it emboldens our enemies.

It makes them less willing to collaborate to cooperate with us when it comes to intelligent sharing. It makes them less willing to surrender. It makes them more vicious when they are fighting against us. So there are all kinds of reasons that we have worked so hard to build a

culture, a rule of law culture that is now being really eviscerated. You know, Christine, you brought up a good point before regarding the nuclear weapons program and what might become of it. And, you know, when I look at what's going on now, and I see, you know,

no planning process to speak of, yes, the military's planned its contingencies. We don't effectively have an NSC. We don't, the president doesn't take advice. And so all the alternative scenarios that can come out of something like this, go, you know, undiscussed or minimally discussed.

And, you know, you brought up a scenario where there's, you know, fiscal material, it's enriched. You could use it for a dirty bomb. And another potential consequence of all of this is you destroy a lot of Iran's military capability.

But there are a lot of hardliners who remain either in the government or out of the government. And all of a sudden, after we, you know, finished 20 years of global war on terror, you're taking the largest state sponsor of terrorism, and you're putting them back in the terrorism business

because they don't really have any other choice. And I'm wondering what you think of that, and as a sort of corollary to it, Iran's been an enemy of the United States or an adversary for a long time. And the threats we're talking about here have existed for a long time, and yet president, after president administration,

after administration have said, no, I don't think we're going to do this.

And, you know, because they're 93 million people there

because they have certain capabilities and because of risks like this. And I'm just wondering about, you know,

“do your views on, you know, this basket of unintended consequences?”

Well, clearly, I think President Trump made the assessment that Iran, to your point, David, that Iran has been a threat to the United States for decades and that, you know, a number of presidents have had to confront that threat in different ways, and have handled it in different ways. President Trump clearly, I think, made the assessment that Iran right now

is the weakest it's been, you know, since it came to power, you know, in the late 1970s. And he might not have been wrong about that, frankly. But at the same time, you know, and that weakness came from, you know, the decimation obviously of a lot of its proxies in, you know, since since the attack on Israel a couple years ago, you know, with the big strikes that we had last June or July

against the nuclear program, a particular.

But the reality is, especially because of the strikes against the nuclear program last summer,

there was not an imminent threat of a nuclear of an Iranian nuclear weapon. If anything, the program, you know, had probably been set back multiple years.

deliverable nuclear weapon with as much of its uranium, you know,

buried under rubble and so on. So, so the fact that, you know, the President Trump decided to roll the dice this way.

“I think is a very big gamble, and to your point, you know,”

if now with how many and many of the other senior leaders in Iran dead, you know, who will take power will it be? Will they elect a new Supreme Leader? Will it be sort of a junta of, you know, military leaders? Will it be members of the, you know, IRGC?

Any of those actors are going to want to continue to hold on to the elements of the nuclear program, and arguably may feel an even stronger sense that they've got to race to the bomb, because it's all they have left in terms of trying to secure, you know, the remnants of the old regime, new regime. I mean, a lot of their ballistic missiles are going to be gone, their Navy's going to be gone.

Their proxies have been decimated. All they have is the nuclear program, and arguably these strikes, you know, may be creating more pressure to rush for a bomb rather than less. Yeah, you know, Frank Christine brings up an awkward point here, which is we will be doing this, but we wouldn't be doing this if Iran had a nuclear weapon.

We wouldn't have launched this attack if Iran had a nuclear weapon. And we've got examples in the past where states have given up their nuclear weapons, and we've seen them collapse as a result in Libya, or we've seen what happened to Ukraine as a consequence of what happened there. So we may be creating all the wrong incentives here.

David, I was a cold warrior for about 20 years, and I remember growing up on a nuclear region, living with it, and being part of the effort to target the feet of Soviet Union. We don't want to go back to that. And what we're doing is incentivizing people to acquire nuclear weapons. And we were pretty successful after the Berlin Wall fell in the Soviet Union fell apart.

I had getting rid of a lot of nuclear weapons. We had a reasonable level of arsenals between ourselves and Russia, and there was some hope to bring that down further. China was fairly disciplined at that time. They had about a two or three hundred war had forces of deterrent.

Clearly, a second strike capability. I'm getting a little bit of Christine's turf here now at this point in time, but I'll just make a couple of comments. Money and the water is warm. There you go.

So we're moving into a three-part, or we're all with all three of us having large arsenals.

We've never had to contend with that before.

And now, because of these actions, there is an incentive for a lot of people to acquire their own nuclear weapons. If you can't count on the United States, it's safe to defend you and provide an nuclear security umbrella. Maybe you need your own countries like Iran. Obviously, might feel more secure if they had one. You can contrast North Korea, for example, to Libya, as you did a moment ago.

“So I think we need to take a lot more pay a lot more attention to this issue.”

And you start thinking very carefully about how we work with our partners to create a safer world for nuclear weapons, and to save from nuclear weapons. And we're going in the opposite direction right now. Yeah, absolutely right. You know, when you think that we were going to have this negotiation to control,

and eliminate a nuclear arms threat from Iran ostensibly as our goal. And we're now in a world in which the polls are talking about it. The Scandinavians are talking about it.

The Japanese, the French just said today that they're going to start building nuclear warheads for the first time.

That we are back in an arms race, the last strategic nuclear weapons agreement expired a couple of weeks ago. And we are now moving into an era where we're going to spend more time, more nuclear warheads on ballistic missile submarines, where the Chinese, as you say, will going from 300 to 600 with a goal of getting to 1,000 pretty soon. This is, you know, for those of us who grew up during the Cold War, and thought we had sort of put our arms around this problem.

It is very chilling to see it re-emerge.

“But you know, rows of the question then becomes, what do we do now?”

And as we sort of get into the wrap-up portion of this, I'm going to do a spoiler alert and tell you what I think's going to happen. And then you can tell me why I'm wrong, okay? They know, well, I just want to make it easier for everybody. What I think's going to happen is this is going to go three, four weeks at most,

because the price of oil is too big a threat to the Republicans in Congress. And the ongoing attacks on different Gulf states are too big a threat to their business interests and business models.

And so what Trump will do as soon as there is any kind of leadership to talk to in Iran

is cut some kind of a deal. And the deal will be the 2015 US deal struck by the Obama movement. Well, it was a five-party deal, but struck then water down. It'll be a less than deal. But it'll, it'll allow Trump to say, you know, I've got victory here.

I've mission accomplished, but if they violate it, oh boy, are they going to see a new set of strikes?

And he's then going to move on to whatever the next thing is.

Because doing this longer term seems unlikely to me. And by the way, parenthetically, because I'm giving you spoiler alerts here, I think the next thing is Cuba.

“But, you know, if you want to get to that, you can't.”

What I'd like to know from each of you is what are your things going to happen next? And Rosa, you're up. I'm Teresa and my experience in all entrepreneurs started a choppy fight against her. I'll tell you the first day of the fight. And the fight will make me no problem. I have many problems, but the fight is not a step from it. I've felt that choppy fight is a fight from the continent. Everything is super-integre and dangerous.

And the time and the money that I can't be able to invest in there. For all in the vaccine. Yet the cost in those tests of choppy fight is point-to-date. Oh, okay. I think something like that is very possible, David.

I certainly think Trump is always looking for the quick exit.

And some way that he can declare victory. And that may indeed be what it is. You know, that somebody emerges from the rubble and says, "Yeah, I'm in charge now." And he cuts some deal.

“And it's even possible that he cuts a deal that is marginally better than the old one, right?”

I don't know. I think that's a possibility. But I also think there's a real possibility of this continue to kind of escalate and spiral in ways that we can't control anymore. I mean, and I think that's one of the reasons that many many advisors suggested not doing this. That it's just very hard to control.

And we're seeing already so much regional instability. It's not totally clear that you can stick that genie back into the bottle at this point. So I don't know that there is going to be somebody who emerges and says, "Hi, I'm in charge." And even if we're perfectly willing to hold our noses and close one eye and squint with the other and try to pretend that there is some possibility of emerging stable and marginally better leadership in Iran, it may be that things just continue to be so chaotic and so dangerous and the amount of violence that Iran is exporting as well as the violence with the Iran makes it impossible to do that.

I do think Trump is potentially going to face real blowback from his own base. You know, his base by and large is not particularly fond of international military adventures and his shifting justifications for this one. I don't think we're doing him any good, including with his base because they range from well we're punishing people who are dangerous to the US to well we're helping our friends. It is real to well it's all about oil to well actually we're bringing democracy. You know, these all of these are things that he himself has many many times said the United States should not be doing this kind of thing.

And especially if this does drag on and more US service members are killed and there's more regional chaos and oil prices go up.

“I think he he will face a real backlash and and yes at some point right we get pushed he gets pushed by his own his own US allies and business leaders to to back off, but I don't think we leave the world to safer place than then before this began.”

I wonder and I'd be curious to know what Christine and Frank think I mean it does seem as though we are revving up to do something in Cuba. It's a dangerous AFO as as Iran, but I actually wonder whether at some point it's going to be North Korea which does of course have more nuclear capability, but there are various ominous mutterings that you hear and and I do you know I think that I find so frightening about all of this is I don't think there are really any restraints on Trump, you know that law clearly is not a restraint.

I'm sorry about that question on his base does not appear to be a restraint you would think I mean you suggested that a nuclear capable adversary would be a restraint. I'm not sure with Trump that that is actually true. As they say in Japan Sharpen take a breath, could you see what are you what are you for see? Well I think really hard to predict what happens next David, I am less sanguine about the prospects for a deal for a couple of different reasons.

Giving that up I think there's at least an equal chance that they would just hunker down and continue to experience the deprivation of sanctions and again like I said potentially try to you know rush to speed up their nuclear weapons program. You know up until now the Republicans have sworn you know six ways to Sunday that any deal with Iran has to be stronger than JCPOA has to be better has to address you know not just the nuclear program but zero enrichment plus ballistic missiles plus proxies.

“They've said a high bar for themselves and you know it's not clear to me that they can get a deal that is better than the JCPOA just inside their own tent so that's something.”

That to me is a big question mark and then the the last big question mark for me again is I can see the possibility of just a lot of instability and internal jacking like say Iran you know announces a new leader. Inside Iran how solid is that new leader really going to be I mean the IRGC has got a lot of economic interest you know that they're the they're bread is buttered around and I can see a scenario where the leadership of Iran and the energy and Iran really turns inward as there's a lot of jacking and again I think that could create.

Second and third order instability effects. It's very unusual that we get on this show and I end up being the person there's accused of having a rosy idea of the world.

But I feel like it's had that way in Frank I don't think you're going to you're going to reverse the momentum but go ahead.

“I was trained by people like Rosen Christie and that when you think about international relations you start by thinking about domestic politics.”

And in the US that's about the midterms right now and they're very conscious of that in the White House Donald Trump's going to want to deal as fast as you can get one.

It's some way to be able to claim victory. In Iran they want to deal also they want the bombing to stop being a chance for what's left of the regime to reassert control.

Donald Trump I don't think cares about who's actually in charge he just wants something that he can say as a success for him. It doesn't have to be a treaty it can just be a verbal commitment to some kind. He's accepted generalities a number of times and then gone off and claimed to you know a great victory. So I would I would predict as you did or that this won't last very long.

The internal motivation is pretty high to get it settled but there's some huge wild cards here.

The Iranian people are wild car the internal power structure even within the theocracy if you will is a wild car behaviors of a number of other players in this game is a wild card. So we'll see. But I would I would guess if there was a higher probability outcome it was the one you described it to be here. Well in that case I was playing the video tapes of the Republicans with all of their many criticisms of JCPOA. I'm forward to putting that on loop.

“Absolutely. Well by the way I don't think these are mutually exclusive. I think this is what Trump will seek.”

He will try to cobble it together in the way Frank is doing and I think unintended consequences along the lines those described by Rosa and Christine will then come into play. And that you know you can have both things happen he tries to put a bow on it the bow comes unraveled and we end up dealing with this in a more dangerous. In chaotic world. But look you know for the point of view of somebody sitting at home listing try to understand this. There is really nothing that could be better than to spend some time with people who are as knowledgeable as Christine and Frank and Rosa.

And so I am deeply grateful to you guys for having joined. We will keep covering this and discussing it as we go forward hopefully we'll be able to revisit some of these issues with you specifically. But for now just know this out there in the world of the DSR network that this week and for each of the ensuing weeks there will be lots of special broadcasts. There will be lots of perspectives from experts and we will try to give you views and depth that you can't find someplace else. So for now thank you Christine. Thank you Frank. Thank you Rosa. Thank you everybody and please join us again each and every day. Bye bye.

make this a beautiful day on the moon. Just a hotel. It's a hotel.