War in the Middle East

Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, foreign policies editor-in-chief.

This is F.P. Live.

War is underway in the Middle East.

Early on Saturday morning, Israel and the United States struck Iran.

Later that day, we learned that Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, was killed.

But crucially, both before and after confirmation of that news, Iran was shooting volleys of missiles

at Israel.

As of this taping on the afternoon of Monday the 3rd of March, Iran is continuing to fire

back even as it takes heavy incoming.

And this is now a regional conflict.

Iran has also attacked the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, and

more.

Major airline hubs like Dubai and Doha have basically shut down, crippling a lot of

air travel across Asia and Africa and Europe.

All prices have spiked, shipping in the area is coming to a standstill.

As we've been discussing on this program, the fact that we've reached this point isn't

exactly a surprise.

Few were expecting a massive breakthrough in talks between the Iran and Washington.

But if there was an attack, I think few expected Iran's top leader to be killed this quickly.

Khamenei, of course, leaves behind an awful legacy.

He has suppressed and even murdered his own people, all while pursuing policies that have

held back Iran's economy.

As a reminder, the United States is in this war, a term President Trump himself used on

Saturday without permission from Congress and certainly without any international consensus.

So what comes next?

How does this end?

How long can the Iran sustain this fight?

And what does the Middle East look like when this is all over?

This is a fast-moving story, so I turn to an expert who is not only a scholar of Iran

and the Middle East, but has also served in the U.S. State Department.

Ali Nasr is a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

He's the author most recently of Iran's grand strategy of political history.

Let's dive in.

Vali, welcome back to FPLive.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

So let's start with the death of Ali Khamenei.

He was 86.

He was a brutal leader for more than three decades.

Vali, how are you processing and thinking about his passing?

Well, I think in some ways it was expected, not just because he's in advantage, but because

it was part of both Israel and the United States' war goals was to take him out of the picture.

And even in June, Israel had tried to kill him.

It's a momentous moment for Iran and for the Middle East.

I mean, this is a leader who was in charge of Iran for 36 years and also was the main focus

of the strategy that Iran has actually been following of confrontation with the U.S.

of resistance in the region of anti-imperialism.

So his passing essentially is a turning point for Iran one way or the other.

Interesting.

Now, but on that point, it's also clear that Iran is not Venezuela, for example.

So one month ago, when Nicolas Maduro was captured by the United States and replaced by

a deputy in basically a one-day mission, you know, Iran is continuing to retaliate despite

Khamenei's death.

Talk a little bit about who's in charge right now.

Iran's Islamic Republic has been designed to survive.

This goes back to the early years of the Republic when there was a lot of assassination of

its President, Prime Minister, senior leaders.

And he went through the Iran-Iraq war.

And then even during the 12-day war with Israel, a lot of revolutionary guard commanders

were killed.

This is a system that is built not to rely on one person.

When the Khamenei was the most significant leader in Iran and set the course for the country

and made final decisions on things like nuclear deal, et cetera.

But operationally, Iran is a multi-nourel system.

There are different institutions, there are different operational leaders, et cetera.

And as we see that even removal of Khamenei, so early in the war, has not impacted at all

Iran's war footing.

It has engaged in the war, is executing a plan, and it's going forward.

So I think he created a system in which there are key leaders, like his National Security

Advisor, Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Parliament, Kali Baf, the Head of the Judiciary,

commanders of the Revolutionary Guard, and several layers below them, as well as the operational

side of the state, which is under the presidency, et cetera, that constitute what I would call

a deep state in Iran, of senior statesmen, bureaucrats, military commanders, and clerics.

And that deep state and the institutions they control is collectively managing Iran

and is managing the war.

So who might eventually succeed Khamenei?

Is that even important in the here and now as we look at these continuing attacks?

We don't know.

And I don't think Iran will name a leader immediately, largely because they have in

their rear view mirror what happened to Hassan Nasrallah's immediate successor.

That Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, his brother, and then killed his immediate successor

as well.

So they will appoint the successor at some point, and they are moving in that direction,

but we may not see it right away.

But that I think is largely to signal continuity to both the world and Iran's followers in

the region, as well as to the Iranian population, that the system will continue in accordance

to the constitution.

There will be a supreme leader.

But in reality, that supreme leader, it will take some time for that supreme leader to

actually assert control and consolidate power.

In terms of the next two, three weeks, I think that deep state will continue to run the

country and run the war, and who takes over as supreme leader will not have an immediate

impact on the conduct of the war.

So when you hear the likes of US President Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

say that they're encouraging Iranian people to rise up and protest, given everything

that you're describing about the deep state in Iran, what is the likelihood of people wanting

to protest and having any chance at success?

Well, the anger that the people felt, which led to the uprising in January, is real, and

there is still a lot of anger and sorrow regarding the way in which the system cracked down

in a bloody way to suppress those demonstrations.

But there are a few things going against an uprising right now.

First of all, is that despite the anger, there is no political movement on the ground outside

of the Islamic Republic to actually organize and direct political sentiment and political

anger in a sustained, resilient way towards the goal.

And exile leadership cannot provide that and doesn't have the ground game in order to

manage it.

Secondly, there is a very heavy presence of security forces, particularly in the capital city,

to discourage demonstrations in the streets.

And thirdly, that the Iranians are facing a war.

In other words, they've worried about the fate of the country, they've worried about their

own security, and they're also worried about where the war will end and whether they

would lose their livelihoods.

When the dust of the war settles, when there is no war, that's when actually we can see

political expression.

I mean, let's just quickly go back to when Israel attacked Iran in June of 2025, Prime

Minister Netanyahu called for an uprising to topple the regime, thinking that after

the anti-Hajab protests, Iranians were ready to take advantage of the war.

And there was no political uprising.

Political uprising came six months later in December of 2025 and January 2026.

And in the middle of the war, people are not organized.

They're too concerned with survival in order to be, and also the country is completely

securitized in a war environment to allow for a popular uprising.

So whatever comes from the people, we're going to see it after this war is over.

And of course, what happened in December in January was an uprising, but then it was

met with brutal repression, shooting protesters, and reportedly many thousands of deaths.

Vali, you've worked in the U.S. government.

What are you able to discern right now about the White House's objectives?

What does it want to achieve?

And at what point are you imagining that it concludes that the job is done?

It's very difficult to tell because the president has never really made a case for

this war.

It looked like he was very satisfied that in June, the United States destroyed Iran's

nuclear program.

There was no reason for him to talk to the Iranians.

He was completely disinterested.

And then he suddenly became interested in military intervention to bring about regime change

in Iran.

So, you know, America's objective went from Iran's nuclear program to regime change.

And then when that moment passed with the suppression of the protests, he went back to

a nuclear deal as an argument.

And then he started the war and he's also, again, asking for regime change in Iran.

So, it's not clear why the United States felt this urgency to go to war with Iran right

now.

And I think now that the war has started and the Supreme Leader has been killed, I think

the president is ready to call victory and come out.

I think it's the Iranians that don't want to stop right now, largely because they think

there's no gain in a quick ceasefire and they'll be back in the same box that they

wore.

And that gradually, I think, puts the president in a pickle because it's not caught in

a war where it's expanding.

It's becoming more costly in terms of energy prices, what's happening to the Gulf and could

expand even further in terms of U.S. casualties and damage to U.S. assets.

And he still has not defined what the goal is and at what point it would be good enough

for the United States to declare victory.

Wow.

So, I guess what I'm hearing from you now is that this war ends to some degree when Iran

wants it to end.

And so, I have to ask how long can Theran keep this up?

I mean, what would need to change for Theran to not be able to keep shooting missiles at

so many countries in the region?

Well, I would say, I would just caveat what you said is that it's up to Iran and Israel

because I think Israel would like this war to go on longer until it's achieved its

war goals, which in Israel's case is much clearer.

In other words, Israel wants to topple the Islamic Republic or at least degrade it to a

point that is no longer a real regional actor.

And also to basically also degrade Iran's missile and other military capabilities to the

point that they're no longer a threat to Israel.

And it believes that it has to bomb Iran for a much longer period of time in order to

get close to that goals if not achieving it.

Iran also thinks that a short war, a short war in which the United States does not pay

much of a price, can claim that it got a big scalp in the form of killing of itolohamene

would only lead President Trump to believe that war with Iran is easy and he can go back

to it.

And there's no reason why the United States would treat Iran any differently after this

war than it did after the June war.

But whereas if the war went on longer, it got bloodier, more complicated, that then

it would establish a deterrence against further American aggression against Iran down the road.

It kind of deterrence that Iran did not establish after the June war.

So I think the Iranians think right now that they have the stamina, and although we don't

know exactly what they can and cannot do, to keep hitting targets in the Gulf, create

risk in the Gulf, raise energy prices, raise concern on global markets, financial, etc.

And also gradually bring the Europeans into it.

In other words, shutting down LNG terminals in Qatar ultimately impacts Europe's energy

supplies, attacking European bases in Cyprus or in Abu Dhabi raises a specter that Europe

may have to get involved.

And all of this essentially makes the war more and more complicated.

I think to the point where the United States may decide that, okay, it has to pay a higher

price for a ceasefire rather than just demanded at this point in time.

Although I have to say, Ravi, this is a subjective target.

It's a subjective metric.

It's not clear when Israel and Iran think that they have reached a point where they would

accept a ceasefire.

It's clear that those two right now don't see that they're in a point that they would

want a ceasefire.

You know, Vali, I have to ask you because last year, it struck me that Iran, when it

was striking back during the 12-day war, it was holding back.

It wasn't using its full capacity.

It was picking targets that maybe it had some sense of telegraphing ahead of time.

It wasn't looking to cause maximum damage.

That's my assessment.

And right now, it is clearly escalating beyond what it did last summer.

Do you know how much more capacity it has?

How many more cards does it have to play under these circumstances?

How bad can it get?

I agree with you.

I think Iran is only sort of escalating gradually in this war.

Whereas with Israel and the United States, the biggest punch came right at the beginning,

killing of the Supreme Leader, killing 30-40 other commanders, devastating military bases,

et cetera.

Iran is only escalating slowly.

So it is, first of all, trying to deplete the supply of Patriot missiles, interceptors,

that missiles across, not only in Israel, but also across the region.

In other words, every little, you know, Iranian drone, which might cost $10,000, $20,000,

is requiring a large amount of Patriots and other interceptors to bring it down.

And ultimately, they calculate that after some point, this will become an issue for the

Gulf countries and for Pentagon, as well as for Israel.

And that actually is one of the games they're playing.

Secondly, they're not trying to necessarily hit targets in the Gulf or in Israel.

But keep constant pressure.

So in other words, now in Israel, they are sending missiles throughout the day, not in large

volumes, but on a continuous pattern, similarly with the Gulf.

So the goal is not to send many, many missiles so that the percentage would get through,

although some are.

But rather to keep constant pressure on the air defense systems and on the populations

in those countries.

In other words, the continuously people have to run to shelters or in the Gulf.

They can completely disrupt activities.

And then I think at some point, they're going to go to a higher grade missiles and capabilities,

once particularly that the air defense systems have been depleted.

So I think we actually haven't seen the worst of the war.

Of course, you know, this war has now become a test of stamina and who can knock out

whom first?

Do a day Israelis and Americans break the back of the Revolutionary Guard and hit enough

missiles, silos and launchers to incapacitate Iran's missile capability.

They clearly have not achieved that.

What is it that the Iranians can stay in the game long enough that basically they changed

the calculations in particularly in Washington, but also in Jerusalem?

So I think the Iranians are going to continue to escalate gradually and make this war more

and more costly, both in terms of financial for the Gulf, for Europeans, as well as in

material terms.

And then there's also the possibility that not only Houthis and Hezbollah can come into

this fight at some point in time in order to force Israel, the Gulf countries, the United

States, to actually have to fight on more than one front than with Iran and generally

we create a much more complicated battlefield scenario and risk scenario for the United States.

Yeah, Valia, I was just going to ask you about that.

Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what you've called the axis of resistance

Iran's so-called proxy groups in the region?

What is their capability right now?

And at what point do you think they might enter the fray?

I mean, there was some semblance of Hezbollah over the weekend trying to do something, but

it didn't seem like very much.

The proxy that has the greatest capability to actually have a material impact on this war

is actually the Houthis because their power, missile power, is intact.

They could start targeting Israel.

They could target shipping again in the Suez Canal and in the Red Sea.

And also they can, in certain scenarios, they may end their ceasefire with the Gulf countries

and start shooting at Saudi Arabia and UAE from the rear side as well as an American

basis in the Gulf.

You know, then that expands if you would the battle front away from just the corridors

between the Gulf and Iran and Israel and Iran to actually include the Houthis as well.

And yes, the US and Israel can take him on and the Saudis, but that also means diverting

certain attention to Yemen.

And similarly, Hezbollah is not in a position to really dent Israel, but he actually can

basically create sufficient amount of distraction for Israel to have it to focus on its northern

border, either in terms of air campaigns or ultimately pushing troops into Lebanon.

And so I think the Iranian game is not that any one of these things is really going to

make a big difference to Israel and the US.

And that's the combination of all of these things across a much larger battlefield that

the US and Israel had planned for can actually change the, change the calculations that the

other side has.

And I would say just say that Israel and the US have calculated and fighting on Iran along

two corridors, the air corridor between Israel and Iran, both defense and offense.

And then the corridor between Iran and US bases in the region.

And the Iranians are actually trying to expand this to civilian areas within the Gulf, as

well as also across the broader region.

So that benefits Iran to fight longer, fight across the broader region and sort of keep

the war at a sort of a low boil, not terribly aggressive, but at a low boil that they can

stay in the fight for longer.

We'll be back in a minute with more of foreign policy live.

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I want to ask you about pain tolerance.

It strikes me that the three main actors here, Iran, Israel, the United States, each of

them has a different pain tolerance of how much they're able to sustain in terms of civilian

losses, infrastructural damage, military damage, before they might radically change any of

their calculations.

From what you're describing, Iran seems to have a remarkably high pain threshold where they've

lost their top leader.

And from what you're saying, they're still holding back militarily with their proxies.

How much more pain do you think they could take before any of these calculations change?

I think they can take the pain.

The question is when their capabilities may falter.

I think they have made a decision that the only way that the Islamic Republic, their evolution

and even the country in their eyes would survive is actually to persevere in this fight.

And particularly these cycle of assassinations has also convinced the leadership that all

of them or any of them may be killed at any moment.

So in other words, they're all in in this fight.

Israel also has a fairly high threshold of pain.

It has now made its mission to defeat Iran and its proxies.

And it has a commitment and support of its population to do so.

Although one can see at what point that might change, because the difference is that in Israel

you do have public opinion that the government may actually have to respond to, and Iran

you don't, especially after the suppression of January, that what the Iranian people think

about what is the time to get out is not material here.

The United States, if you would, is the Achilles heel of this, particularly because I think

a president that he himself has been skittish about, you know, messy military entanglements.

His base doesn't like this.

And also he hasn't even made a case for war either to his base or to the American public,

is the most likely to cringe at hired gas prices at, you know, substantial damage that

would provide bad optics in the United States.

And I think so it makes sense for the Iranians to actually put their thumb on that on that

vulnerability.

It's really a test for president Trump as to, didn't completely miscalculate and discount

how messy this can become.

And if that's the case, that the Iranians are not going to let up until he's willing

to give them something much more substantial than just a simple ceasefire, which is a return

to status quo ante.

I think part of the danger here is that the Iranians don't want to go back to where they

were at the end of the June war.

Because that's a question of slow death.

They will be back in an economic vice facing an angry population and potential of Israel

and the United States returning at will to move along for the Iranians.

This is, this is the last battle, either they will lose completely and fall, which is

a quick death instead of a slow death, or they actually are able to change the rules of

the game going forward, which means that there will not be about a war with US and Israel

for some time to come, perhaps potentiality for a much more serious negotiations over

the future of their nuclear program missiles in exchange for real economic relief.

So as I said, their calculations is very, very different from President Trump's.

I mean, given what you say, is it your sense that the White House has enough Iran advice?

Are they properly gaming out the Iranian pain threshold as you're describing it?

I don't think so.

I mean, I think when the Special Envoy Steve Whitkov said that the President's frustrated

why don't the Iranians capitulate?

It just meant that they completely misunderstand what the situation is in Iran, what the calculation

is in Iran.

I'm sure they are seeing and getting battlefield evaluations that tells them that this is

not going in the direction that they thought and the Iranians, even despite the killing

of Khomeini, are not ready to throw in the towel.

And I think they probably there's an awakening to what they're confronting, but I don't

think there's expertise in terms of understanding how the other side really thinks and calculates.

What's their history?

What is their reference points here?

Who's running the show?

How you might influence their decision-making?

I don't think they're there.

I think we may end up seeing this as a huge miscalculation on the part of President Trump

based on a misreading, if you would, what the adversary's thinking is.

And of course, coming right off to Venezuela, one has to imagine some sort of a comparative bias

among policymakers in the White House.

Valya, I wouldn't broaden this out just a little bit more now.

I had mentioned at the start how a lot of the Gulf countries, UAE, Qatar, Saudi,

Oman, Bahrain, Jordan as well, have been facing incoming from Iran.

And they've had some civilian casualties in some cases,

infrastructural damage, and many others.

Can you give us a sense of where they sit in this conflict,

how they might be reacting in this moment?

And I recognize they are not a model it, so they will have different reactions, but broadly.

So I would put Jordan aside, because it's not a neighbor of Iran,

and it has very different sort of equities in this war.

But I think the Gulf countries face a massive dilemma,

which is that they host US bases who are there in order to attack Iran

or protect against Iranian attacks.

But in reality, these bases are not able to provide protection to the Gulf countries.

And Iran has also made a decision that it's going to go after them,

not because of lashing out or because of their support for the US,

although that's the excuse, but really go after their economies,

because that's impacting the Gulf countries, economies,

and impacting energy supplies, impacts global economy.

So Iran is after creating pressure on President Trump

by disrupting and impacting the global economy.

And that means that you have to create some degree of risk for the Gulf,

and also disabuse the world of this notion that somehow the economies of the Gulf

can be purring, generating money, becoming a source of varieties of economic prosperity

around the world, somehow divorce from a war with Iran,

and what else goes on in the region.

So by emboiling them, Iran is basically creating pressure

on the entire global economy to its own advantage.

Now, the problem the Gulf countries have is that unless the Iranian regime goes away,

if they join the US fight,

not that they can actually really change the military balance in any way,

the US and Israel have enough firepower,

but if they join and the regime survives,

then they're going to be under a risk of an Iranian attack for decades.

And that will ruin their economies.

If they don't join and the regime survives,

the risk from Iran doesn't go away.

In other words, they're stuck between a stone and a hard place.

They cannot go back to before the war started to somehow protect their economies from war.

Not that the war has started, and Iran has shown how vulnerable the Gulf is to a conflict,

unless the Islamic Republic disappears or somehow ends up in a peace with the United States.

I think the Gulf countries now are facing a very big challenge of how they manage

the risk and how they convince the international community that they should look at the Gulf the way

they did before the war started.

I mean, a lot of the top policymakers in the Gulf countries,

they have very strong connections in the Trump administration with Israel.

I mean, if you were advising their foreign minister,

let's say of Saudi Arabia or Qatar,

what would they be asking for at this point?

I'm guessing some sort of a quick de-escalation.

If they were asking, and many of them were asking before the war,

for the United States not to go to war, clearly their counsel did not prevail,

despite their enormous amount of influence, their counsel did not prevail.

Now, they don't have a way to actually influence Tehran.

They don't have a way to influence Jerusalem.

And then, yes, even if President Trump is right now ready to have Qatar and

Oman and Saudi Arabia mediate,

Iran and Israel are not ready to do that.

I think the instinct of the Gulf is for this conflict to finish soon,

and the damage that is being done to be plugged as soon as possible,

and this doesn't become a much longer conflict,

because the longer the conflict goes on,

the more that risk factor after the conflict will stay,

you know, it's more difficult to actually make it go away.

But I don't think they have much ability to actually be influential.

There is a point they might be, but not right now.

Well, this and as they're, you know, all the big airline hubs are currently grounded mostly,

so they're suffering. Let me take some subscriber questions.

This one's from Kostra Modabri, who wants to ask you about the talks that were ongoing,

that were happening between Iran and the United States before these attacks.

And it's curious how Oman's foreign minister, who was the chief mediator in these talks,

he flew to the United States last week, and he was telling the media that,

you know, the talks were going better than the US side had been making public,

and he said that Iran had essentially given up or agreed to give up its nuclear program.

What is your sense of why Oman came forward in that very public way

to diverge from the US version of events?

I thought that was actually quite interesting and also worrisome,

because I think when he did that, my impression was that this was an act of desperation.

This was a belief that maybe the president was not being appropriately briefed,

or the United States was not getting a sense of what has been achieved in Geneva,

and this was a last act for him to come here and relay that achievement directly.

He obviously had the support of his king, and he came with that support, which suggests

that Oman also decided that he was worth going against President Trump,

by basically going out there and saying that the deal was achieved, and it was being undermined,

although he didn't say it, but basically that President Trump was not interested in the deal,

was not interested in the progress. He had made up his mind to go to war,

and that Oman felt it necessary to make this a matter of record that this was a war of choice,

regardless of what had happened in Geneva. I think it's going to be important down the road

when there is a moment in which the Americas are going to look back at whether this war was

necessary and why now. But if there is ever going back to the negotiating table,

now the Omani Foreign Minister has made public where things were before, and whether that's

actually the starting point for another round of talks. Another subscriber question,

this one from Michael Patterson. Iranians remember a long history of Western interference,

the coup against Mossadeg, the white revolution, decades of support for the Shah.

Even if a new regime government emerges, how do you imagine Iranians will react to

Western involvement in shaping the events of the last few weeks and months?

So my own reading of Iranian history is that there are points that Iranians welcome

foreign intervention, but then later on disowned the fact that they welcomed it.

So I think even in 1953, there was far more popular support for overthrowing Prime Minister Mossadeg

than later history remembers. And also when the Reza Shah was removed by Allied powers,

there was actually celebration and glee in Tehran that he was removed.

It all depends on circumstances. I mean, there's a lot of Iranians now inside and outside

that are calling for U.S. intervention to remove the Islamic Republic.

But how down the road, they will feel about the new government that came to power

will be decided at that point in time. I don't think the U.S. is able right now or willing to

intervene at a level that would decide what the future government in Iran would be.

We don't have boots on the ground. We're not in a position to decide who will take over if

the current leadership were to falter. But it also depends a great deal about where Iran

goes from that point forward. One more subscriber question. This one's from Gina Wind Stanley,

a former U.S. ambassador. She points out that success looks very different from the Israeli point

of view, the American point of view, and from Iran's point of view. Vali, you and I were talking

about pain thresholds being different. But talk a little bit about how when you have three

definitions of victory that seem quite different and maybe potentially irreconcilable,

what happens then? I mean, Iran is the adversary, so it's the definition of success in a way

adversaries always have a different definition of success than the other side. I think what is

really, really material here in the next week or so is a divergence between what Israel's

objectives are and how long does it think the war should go on to achieve those and at what

costs versus America's objectives and what President Trump thinks should be the duration of

war and what's the pain threshold. I think part of Iran's game plan, having watched President

Trump looking at the war, is actually to draw a wedge between Israel and Iran. I mean,

the longer this goes on, the more Israel's objective, which is a longer war that actually

really, really batters the Islamic Republic at whatever cost, will diverge from a President

who will begin to look for a quicker exit. And I would just say that President Trump already

is murmuring about this. When he says Iranians want to talk to him, it really means I want to talk

to them. When he says, you know, there could be negotiations with Iran's new leadership,

when he told the, you know, Axios that there are off-ramps for me, you know, it's from day to

he's already looking at off-ramps. So it also suggests to you that he's not really committed to a

long decisive war. And so I think that wedge is much more important to how this ends than what

Iranian definition of success is. Fascinating. Vali, I know it's so hard to do this because we don't

know how this war is going to end. But assuming it ends somewhat along the lines of what we're

describing with the three sides basically testing their thresholds for pain. And then Iran's regime

of course, suffers the most in this scenario. But in part, because it's willing to tolerate that,

if you're able to talk to look past this conflict, past the strikes, past the retaliation,

what kind of Middle East are you seeing emerging one, two, three, six months from now?

I think for a while where the Middle East is going to be unstable, not just because of this war,

because I think everything that's happened since October 7 has disrupted a certain balance of power

or security architecture that was dominant in the region for about four decades. And

there are winners in that, there are losers in that, but a new balance has not been achieved.

And this war is part of establishing that balance by finishing off Iran by a certain

Israel's position in the region. So I think even past this war, depending on also how it ends,

for a while, the Middle East is going to be negotiating what is going to be the new equilibria.

And what worries me is that the U.S. administration is not thinking along these lines at all.

It's dealing with the region transactionally without having any kind of a vision as to what is

the United States optimum equilibrium in the Middle East and how to achieve it. Fascinating.

Valley Nasser will have to leave it there. Thanks so much. Thank you very much.

And that was Valley Nasser, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author,

most recently, of Iran's grand strategy, a political history. This is a great time to read more

about Iran's history and the geopolitics of the Middle East. Take a look at our website.

We're leaving lots of gift links to our articles in the show notes. Do try us out.

FPLive, the podcast is produced by Rosie Julin. The executive producer of FPLive is Donna

Scherne and I'm Ravi Agrawal. I'll see you next time.