Trump is different than the typical American leader in a lot of ways, including in the way that I mean, Nancy, there's a reasonable chance that Donald Trump on Tuesday comes out and declares victory.

Yes, we've won.

You could say, look, we did, we've we've destroyed for a second time the nuclear facilities.

We've taken out 80% of the ballistic missiles.

I'm done.

And we also know that he has a short attention s pan So I mean, what, what are the chances that by the end of the by next Friday, by next weekend, we're going, oh yeah, I remember the the the war that we had in Iran, in the same way that we talk about Venezuela in the past tense.

There is a chance because look, this war, the preliminary estimates says that it's costing a billion dollars a day.

It is draining air defense capabilities.

It's putting a huge strain on the force, and he has set the groundwork to say that any military campaign is successful because it's a weaker Iran, and if it doesn't go well after that, he'll, he can say, I gave the Iranian people a chance, and they didn't take it.

And so he created an exit ramp for himself in terms of his narrative around this, but that doesn't mean that there won't be 2nd and 3rd order effects on the ground.

He can't stop the economic impacts of this going on well beyond the military campaign because you will not see ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz until they are confident that the security situation is stabilized, so he can stop it on one level, but he can't control all the timelines that are related to it.

Kareem, I have an impos s ible question for you.

What is the Trump doctrine?

I mean, what, what have, how would you define Trump foreign policy based on what we've seen in Venezuela.

Nigeria possibly Ecuador now and Iran, and maybe in a theater near you very shortly, Cuba.

How how do you, how are you thinking about what what category does this fall in in international relations terminology.

Well, if I had to summarize it in one word, I'd say improvisation.

Um, I, I, I think that he wants big victories, obviously big dramatic victories, but very short term thinking and totally improvised, uh, hour to hour the way he articulates his endgame can change and what Nancy mentioned now is, is important, uh Jeff, because what Iran's strategy is right now it's retaliatory strategy is to actually negatively impact American public opinion.

They're trying to spike the price of oil.

There there's some service members who have been killed.

There's explosions happening in different places throughout the Persian Gulf, and they want Americans to look at their television set and say, what's going on here?

How do we get into ourselves into this situation, and they, they're hoping American public opinion is going to restrain these ambitions that Trump has.

You have written about the long and sorry history of the American presidency and the Islamic Republic.

Talk about that for a minute and talk about whether your own sources inside the administration recognize that Iran has the capacity to undo American presidencies.

So from 1979 when the revolution happened to the present, by my count, Iran has consumed at least 5 American presidencies, so the revolution and the hostage crisis ended Jimmy Carter's presidency, right?

Iran Contra tainted Ronald Reagan's presidency, uh, 9/11 was not Iran, but then when George Bush launched the Iraq war, Iran sabotaged the Iraq enterprise for President Bush, you know, consuming his presidency.

Then we go to Barack Obama and the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which consumed the second half of his presidency, Joe Biden, October 7th, 2023.

That was an Iranian proxy, Hamas that invaded Israel and then two years of wars with Iran, and now President Trump, and so I do think when you listen to the president's own language, he's hoping to be the guy that ends this 47 year nuisance of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and I, I do think as we've all said that he has the shortest attention span to try to do that.

Yes, Peter, it's interesting though.

It has been a stalwart enemy of the United States and is undone the US in various ways, yes.

It's not the worst theory in the world to say, let's just deal with it once and for all, right?

It's certainly true that there are plenty of reasons why the United States would want a different regime in Tehran, no question about it, and he outlined them in that eight minute video he put on air in the middle of the night when the strike started.

What he didn't explain is why now, and I think you could have come out and said, look, because it's been 47 years, it's now time to finally deal with it.

OK, maybe the public would have accepted that, but he did nothing to lay the groundwork for that.

He did nothing to convince the Americans.

This is necessary to do now, because if you sit there and say, look, they've been a thorn in our side for all these years.

They've killed these people.

They've they've been, you know, maligning force in the in the in the neighborhood.

A lot of Americans say, OK, and then, so why now?

I want to, I'll come back to you, Susan, but I want to talk about one thing, PAs.

You mentioned the deaths in, in, in this war so far.

6 Americans have been killed so far.

It's a small number relative to other wars of America and the Middle East, but it's still 62 many.

Here's Pete Hegseth.

I want you to watch this for in a talking about this just the other day.

This is what the fake news misses.

We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground.

We control their fate but when a few drones get through or tragic things happen it's front page news I get it.

The press only wants to make the president look bad, but try for once to report the reality.

Susan, this is out of the norm for the way defense leaders speak about wartime casualties.

That's probably an understatement.

I think it's fair to say it's an understatement, Jeff.

You know, when you accuse people of getting themselves killed because they want to make Donald Trump look bad, you know, I would wonder what he would say when he looked the families of those people in the eye, uh, and, you know, as, as your colleague Nancy has reported, uh, you know, those, those folks in in Kuwait were killed by an Iranian d ro ne and there are real questions about whether the American military was actually prepared for this kind of drone warfare that we've seen previewed on the ground over the last 4 years in this horrible conflict between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia has been fighting with Iranian-supplied drones that are exactly the drones that are now being flown against American targets and allied targets all across the Gulf right now, so it's, it's not only a fairly shocking statement, but in general, if you look at the perform ance of Pete Hecket this week.

What you've seen is war as video game, and in fact the White House literally released a video in which it intersplaced what you could only call sort of, you know, pounding music and, you know, sort of a war porn images of targets being struck, and I think it's a pretty shocking moment, I think for many people who see this power being wielded.

Nancy, the last word to you.

on this.

I, I am curious to know what you're hearing from inside the Pentagon.

Still a Pentagon correspondent, even though they kicked you and your colleagues out of the Pentagon.

What are the generals and flag officers, other flag officers saying about this.

About that moment in particular, there was a real stunned silence about it.

We all remember Robert Gates, for example, asking for news clips about the fallen, sitting in the plane, you'd watch him cry over the loss of these men and women.

That's right, because the Secretary of Defense gave the order, gave the order to send him in harm's way, and a lot of generals still carry pictures, even in retirement of people who've lost in their command.

So it, it was painful to hear.

Well, uh, we're going to have to leave it there.

We'll be talking about this next week, of course.

I want to thank you.