Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…Can’t the IDF handle it? Can I just finish just who can handle it, who cannot handle it? I think that it’s a potential scenario, which is why I don’t think anybody should be advocating for a US decapitation of the regime in Iran. I have long been on record of supporting the Iranian people, providing support to the Iranian people, to at one point take back their country and take back their flag. It’s very much sort of Reagan’s strategy that Reagan ran in the Cold War of maximum pressure on the regime, maximum support for anti-Soviet dissidents. While by the way, he was negotiating arms control agreements for the Soviet Union in order to try to reduce the number of nuclear tipped ICBMs that both countries had pointed at each other. I think the Reagan strategy of providing support to the people is a far better strategy for trying to get transition, leadership transition, government transition inside Iran. But I think the scenario of decapitation strikes, killing Khamenei, taking out the entire government could potentially lead to that scenario. I think we have to be conscious of that. We have to guard against that. I think that’s important. I think Scott’s right. I mean if a scenario happened like that, I mean I think the Israelis have demonstrated extraordinary capabilities and they could go in there and they could secure loose nuclear materials that you would be worried, could be fashion for nuclear weapons. Scott doesn’t seem to worry about these materials. I worry about these materials and capabilities in the hands of anybody because they’re all capabilities that just the physics of it, you can produce nuclear weapons. Best case scenario, negotiation. We fully dismantle their program in Oman. Worst case scenario is having to return for continued military strikes that continue to escalate the situation. Worse situation is some kind of decapitation strike that collapses the regime and causes chaos. There are a whole bunch of other scenarios we can talk about that are embedded in that, but I think if you’re a responsible person and a responsible analyst, and certainly if you’re a responsible policymaker, you got to be planning for all of these scenarios and more. Scott, what do you think is the best case and the worst case here?…

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