‘We’re going to see a reckoning’ of the global order: Middle East scholar’s verdict

I'm Sophia Yan, and this is Iran The Latest. It's Thursday, the 27th of August, 2026. On today's episode, more attempts at reopening diplomatic options to end the war in Iran. And a look at where we stand nearly six months on. I'll be joined today by Vali Nasser, a leading scholar on the Middle East and professor at Johns Hopkins University. But first, a quick look at the headlines at the news today. The Qatari prime minister is in Tehran. He's joining a growing regional diplomatic push to find a way out, to find a resolution. An oil tanker was set on fire, struck by an unknown projectile. That's according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Center. And this undermines what U.S. President Donald Trump was just saying, calling the Strait of Hormuz a, quote, a functioning strait. And the USS Abraham Lincoln will finally make a stop in Thailand after its record-setting deployment of more than 250 days at sea. The crew will be able to go ashore for a break. And this comes amidst concerns of mental health and supply issues on board. Well, I'm very pleased today to welcome Vali Nasser. He's a renowned scholar on the Middle East. Welcome to our show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, I wanted to start today on the flurry of diplomatic activity we've seen in the region. And this week alone, I just mentioned the Qatari prime minister coming to Tehran. Earlier this week, we had the Pakistani army chief. We've had the Omani foreign minister. This comes after a reopening of talks between Iran and Oman for some sort of temporary management of the strait. Do you have any sense that these meetings are able to move us closer to some sort of resolution for the war? Well, they may not be yet a pathway to ending the war, but they could be a pathway to opening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the blockade and relieving a great deal of pressure on energy markets and the global economy. And then they could basically pave the way for a broader deal that would end the war itself. In effect, this is a pathway to going back to the memorandum of understanding that was actually signed in June and then was supposed to be followed 60 days later by a larger deal that would have ended the war. So this is really a negotiation and a pathway to go back to where we were in June. What do you think Iran wants at this point? I mean, they've certainly made lots of demands for the U.S. side to meet, but none of those things are items that Trump has made any indication that he'd be willing to agree to and to make a compromise on. How do we get to that point, just roll back to that 60-day period? Well, I think along the way, the Iranians learned that if President Trump can make really outlandish claims like, I'm going to send you back to the Stone Age, and I want the moon and the sun and the stars, that the Iranians can play the same game as well. So if you're going to make these kinds of demands, we're going to basically say you need to take all your soldiers out of the Middle East, pay us this many hundreds of billions of dollars, this and that. But in reality, what they've been saying very clearly, and they repeated it to the Pakistani army chief only two days ago, is that Iran wants the United States to go back to the MOU it signed in June and actually implement that MOU. So in effect, their ask is much less than the outlandish aspirational list that they put out. Now, President Trump at some point basically said, I don't want the MOU. I don't want to basically revive it. I'm going to go back to war, and I'm going to force Iran to give up the Strait of Hormuz. And then when that didn't work, he said, I'm going to put maximum pressure sanctions on them and get what I want. And that's not working either, or it's not going to work in the timeline that matters to him. So he also needs to go back to the MOU. I think the difference right now is that President Trump wants to go back to aspects of the MOU, not necessarily the whole MOU. Iranians want to go back to the MOU. There is now differences that have happened over the past two months. For instance, the United States is no longer in a position to deliver on Lebanon, for instance, which it had signed on to in the first MOU. Iran and Oman have already negotiated a management of the Strait, which basically handcuffs the United States for the Article 5 of the MOU, which says that Iran, in collaboration with Oman, would manage the Strait. And whatever ambiguity existed in June no longer exists, because Iran and Oman have sorted that out. There are lots of other issues, for instance, when and how will Iran get some of its frozen assets, which is, I think, the reason why the Qataris are in Tehran, because the Qataris are important in terms of facilitating that aspect of the MOU. And then there are several things that I think Iranians and Americans want to clarify that wasn't there in the hasty MOU of June, which is timelines of implementation, who does what, like when we say the Strait of Hormuz would be opened, on what schedule, at what pace, what is expected to happen on the American side in tandem with that, how quickly would Iran's frozen assets be made available to it. I think the Iranians have now greater urgency for receiving that money than they had before. So I think we're on the pathway of these things being negotiated right now. Where do you see the UAE in all of this? Because the UAE could have been very key in being part of the solution for releasing some of these frozen assets, because they have for so long been a financial hub for Tehran, helping them skirt sanctions. But now they have this trade embargo against Iran. Where do you see that? In what way do you see that challenging the current status quo of what you're talking about, of trying to get to a point where they can maybe try to talk to each other, the US and Iran? I don't see the UAE as being a big player right now. First of all, most of Iran's frozen assets are not in UAE. UAE froze some of Iranian assets that were part of the bilateral business money that came in and out of UAE, and putatively, it released three billions of that maybe about a month ago, which is why perhaps UAE has not been targeted right now. Most of Iran's frozen assets sits in countries like Qatar, India, South Korea, for instance. And ultimately, they would have to come to Iran through some mechanism. Qataris look to be like the ones who would be facilitating this, starting with the 15 billion dollars that is actually under Qatar's direct control, frozen on the orders of US Treasury. I think the relationship between Iran and UAE is the most difficult of all the Gulf countries with Iran. All of them have been battered in this war, but UAE alone is Israel's ally, as opposed to the others. UAE has been much more on the front foot of encouraging the US early in the war to finish the job. It claimed that it had also attacked Iran directly. And again, the mood in Iran is that UAE got ahead of the United States in cutting off trade with Iran. Anticipating the D-Day economic sanctions, the UAE was moved very quickly to shut down trade. Now, there are even very moderate voices in Iran that are basically saying that Iran has to start moving away from UAE. These are not the hardliners, revolutionaries. These are actually even Iranian businessmen. We're saying that the environment with UAE is now too unpredictable. UAE is much more antagonistic towards Iran than the other Gulf countries. And it just doesn't make sense for Iran to continue to rely on the UAE. Although that's not going to happen overnight. But I think you can see that Oman is involved with Iran. Qatar is involved with Iran. Saudi Arabia is involved with Iran indirectly through Pakistan, which is now its Mecca alliance partner. But UAE is not directly engaged with Iran at all. And so it is the odd man out. And that, I think, will continue for some time. You said earlier that you didn't think what Trump is threatening now, this economic D-Day, would succeed in the timeline that he needs it to. Why do you think that's the case? First of all, economic sanctions are not like bombs. They don't impact right away, especially on a country that has already been sanctioned enormously. And you basically are not imposing massive sanctions that all of a sudden can be a shock, like the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, where it went from being an open economy to being sanctioned. The sanctions right now are basically tightening the screws on the margin. The maximum pressure sanctions that the United States put on Iran, even before D-Day, over 3,000 sanctions, has virtually sanctioned everything that there is about Iran. The only thing that the United States can do further is to sanction other countries who may be doing business with Iran. But that's also pretty difficult. First of all, even if you were successful, it's going to take time before sanctions go into effect, before they have an impact on Iran. In maybe a month, it might be two. Some of the biggest countries that are doing trade with Iran, it's very difficult for the U.S. to sanction them, foremost among them China, and Russia, and for instance, Turkey, India. A lot of business that Iran does with these countries is not government-to-government business. It is in private sector, through secondary companies, shell companies. It's not as easy for the United States to basically sanction a country very quickly and expect that would have an impact. And thirdly, because I think there is a boomerang effect. The tighter these sanctions become, the more likely it is that it could impact the U.S. economy, European economy, if the Chinese react like the way they said they would do, or other countries react. Ultimately, the United States basically will also be paying a cost for imposing these sanctions. The Iranian president, Massoud Pazashkian, said in recent days at a conference he was calling for Muslim unity in the region. He said, quote, no Muslim country should pursue its security and the insecurity of its neighbors. No Muslim country's territory should be used against another Muslim nation. I'm just wondering what you make of this kind of message. Does it tell us anything about what Iran might be thinking in this moment? Yes, Iran is thinking about a post-American Middle East. What it's basically telling, particularly Arab countries who have been very close allies of the U.S. and have hosted U.S. bases, which then Iran has targeted and attacked and has been a cause of its escalation with these countries, starting from Oman across the Persian Gulf and on to Jordan, for instance. It's basically telling these countries that the U.S. obviously bases, a lot of them have been damaged. Many of them may not come back, that the presence of those bases did not protect you against Iranian attacks. They were used as a base for war on Iran and that in order to have peace and security in this region, we have to be thinking about bilateral regional sets of relationships where one country does not give its territory to the United States to wage war against another country. And sort of couched in this is that if you want security from us, if you want peace from us, then your territory cannot be housing U.S. bases. That's what he basically is saying. So it's a very clear message to the Gulf that the source of our problem, which has brought our attacks on you, is not between us and you, is because of the U.S. bases that were used against us. So let's think of a future that does not have that. Again, it's an aspirational desire in Iran. It doesn't mean that the Gulf countries are going to go along with it or believe in it, but that's what he means by what he said. The flip side of that approach is that it could also be that the attacks could have been worse had the Americans not been in the region. How would you assess that age-old question for the Middle East? Does the U.S. bring greater security or does it actually bring potentially a weakness to these countries by having the American presence there? I think we're at the point of debate in the Arab countries of the region. There is no straightforward answer. There was being shock and awe within this war, not only because Iran attacked and not only because of everything they've seen, but also one has to think about it, as you just said, that for decades the Gulf has lived under an American security umbrella. First of all, this security umbrella was there to protect these Arab countries against an Iranian attack. The idea was not that the security umbrella should be used to start a war. So the United States started the war with Iran. It didn't defend these countries against the war that Iran started against them. And secondly, once the war started, it proved itself to be incapable of defending them. It couldn't even defend its own bases. So even if you're an Arab country sitting across from Iran, 90 kilometers from Iran's shores, you would be extremely angry at Iran for what it's done. You would be extremely fearful of this hawkish government in Tehran that is willing to do things that, let's say, nobody in the region had seen until this point. But at the moment, you have to basically say, but can the Americans actually protect us in this environment? They started a war that they couldn't protect us. They can't finish the war. They cannot defeat Iran. They cannot even defend their own bases. Most of these bases have been destroyed. Their own ship has nowhere to dock in the Middle East. It has to be deployed over 200 some days. Now they have to take it to Thailand to give it rest and relief to its crew. The United States, of their imagination, the United States that they relied on, has proven itself to be far less capable than they had assumed. So all of these countries now have to go back to the basics and think very hard about how do they protect themselves? How do they get security? Will it be more China? Do they have to find a way to assuage Iran? How much of the U.S. security would they trust in? Everything about the sense of security the Gulf had, around which it builds its vision of future economies, data centers, high technology, expatriates moving there, all of this was built under the assumption of an impenetrable American security dome, which now has proven itself to be quite penetrable, full of potholes. There is no easy answer. I think when this war ends, we're going to see a reckoning with the whole American-Arab alliance. My sense is that there won't be one Gulf answer. I think different Gulf countries are going to answer this very differently. In a way, one of the outcomes of this war is that this notion that there is a GCC, there's a single NATO-like Arab bloc on the other side, may no longer be the case. We see Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, sometimes agreeing with one another, sometimes not. Already we see Saudi Arabia is leaning on Pakistan and Turkey. UAE is leaning much more on India and Israel, for instance. Oman and Qatar are leaning more forward towards Iran of building a kind of relationship that would be less antagonistic. So they're not on the same page anymore. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about this, the trilateral defense pact, the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistan deal that was signed. I mean, they've made clear that they're happy to have other members, Egypt, Bangladesh. It's interesting that you say that you think there will be greater fracture, particularly amongst the Gulf nations, because wouldn't it be a better idea to try to band together when everything is shifting? I mean, as you say, the U.S. security architecture is not something that they believe they can rely on anymore. On the other hand, you have Iran, you have Israel, you have other very destabilizing factors right in the neighborhood. So wouldn't it actually make sense for them to try to find a way to work more closely together? Yes, if you have actually only one enemy and one theory of how to deal with that enemy. The theory of how to deal with the enemy for many years was laid down by the United States, but its theory is no longer credible to the region. So now that each country has to come up with its own theory of how you deal with Iran, they have different kinds of views. Like Omani say, if you're nicer with Iran, you will be less threatened. The Emiratis have taken a much hawkish position vis-a-vis Iran. Then, you know, even in terms of these alliances, the Turks now have more problems with Israel than they have with Iran. The Pakistanis have more problems with India than they have with Iran. Whereas the main alliance of UAE is with Israel and with India. And so there is a crisscrossing over here. And yes, at some point, I think the Mecca Accords, the Mecca Alliance can be expanded to become the basis of a regional architecture. But we're only at the very beginnings of this. I think, you know, there is a period of vacuum between the collapse of the old order, which was very America-centric, and it's collapsed because trust in the credibility of the United States has collapsed. And then for countries to come up with some kind of a formula that they agree on, and then they all feel comfortable with. I mean, right now, what we're seeing is that Riyadh is creating its own initiative, UAE is following. There's no kind of a region-wide Arab meeting, for instance, that these countries all get in a room and all of them come out with one formula. And so I think the region is going to go through a period of experimentation until it arrives at some kind of a clear pathway. It's interesting to see all this change. It's just been shifting now, really, since the Gaza War began. What role do you think China could play in all of this, in this new order for the Middle East? I mean, in some ways, China is the big winner of this war. First of all, the kind of battering that the U.S. credibility has taken is only advantageous to China. I mean, imagine President Trump had to cancel his trip to Beijing because of the war. And then when he went, eventually, the trip ended up being far less than what it had been advertised. The shortage of U.S. munitions, the U.S. military not being able to defeat a secondary power like Iran has damaged its standing in Asia. Countries like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, they're all assessing what does this mean for their own security situation in Asia. The U.S. is incapable of getting a deal with Iran. It also diminishes its capabilities. So the Chinese actually look at the United States as having been bruised and battered and somewhat downsized by this war. Now, in the region, I think that what they probably will see is that the U.S. control or hold over the Gulf countries and the Arab region will basically lose it, which means that the Chinese will find a lot more room to maneuver, particularly economically, particularly on technology things. And imagine one of the issues President Biden and President Trump put before the rich countries of the Gulf is that if you want to have a close alliance with us, you cannot have Chinese technology. That if you want to be part of a tight strategic partnership with Washington, not only do you have to recognize Israel, but in effect, you have to divorce Chinese technology. That will become much less. I think whether it's Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE are going to try to deepen the relationship with China. And the Chinese are not going to step in to basically become the policemen of the Gulf, but they will play a role if invited, as they did when they held normalization between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And so they are sitting on the margins. They are watching the United States hurt itself in the Middle East. They expect that ultimately the region as a whole will provide the Chinese with much greater room to operate. And then they're going to look at what opportunities there are. And I think their inclination is, of course, that all the Gulf countries, Arab and Iranian, work together and are not fighting with one another because that's good for Chinese business. They're not going to impose that on the region, but if opportunities arise to promote it, I think they will. I just want to stay on this general discussion of what the future looks like. There are a lot of discussions and options now being proposed, starting to be implemented within the region for alternatives to Hormuz, like new pipelines, for instance, maybe building out a route through Syria to the Mediterranean. In a couple of years, some estimates have been that Iran will just lose its leverage over Hormuz, that this could never happen again if these projects all succeed. What's your take on that? With all these different proposals in place, could that actually kneecap Iran's ability to do this again? I think the way the Iranians see it is that you have to survive the short run before you can think about the medium run to the long run. The fate of Iran, the fate of its relationship with America, everything is going to be decided in the next six months. None of these pipelines will matter in the short term. Iran's entire leverage right now to bring the U.S. to the table, to get a permanent deal, to get economic opening, all of these things are about what can happen to the global economy in the next three months. So this, to me, sounds like sort of a Pollyannish thinking about the future, hopefully thinking about the future, but it really doesn't have a bearing on today. Secondly, only part of what the region's oil provides or energy provides can go through alternative routes, and it's not necessarily satisfactory. The Qataris are not happy with the entirety of their gas depending on Saudi territory. This is a country that wanted to overthrow the regime and put a blockade on Qatar only five, six years ago. So does Qatar really want to depend on Saudi Arabia for all of its exports? What about Kuwait? What about Iraq? Also, some of these projects could take much longer than two years, and some of them will not be far away from Iranian reach anyway. I mean, if there's another big war in the region, the Iranians can easily hit the Red Sea. They can easily hit sites in the Sea of Oman. In other words, the Strait of Hormuz is not just this particular waterway being closed. It's a symbolism for the kind of old Iran has on choke points around the world's largest energy sources. And so, in other words, yes, the value of the Strait of Hormuz can go down, but it will not be zero. And also what Iran has learned about how it can use choke points to its strategic advantage can be replicated in the Arabian Sea in the future or in the Red Sea. And as you and I are talking, it is possible if this war escalates instead of ending up in a diplomatic settlement, that the Red Sea can also come in play, that there could be the closure of the Bab al-Mandab or impact on traffic through the Suez Canal. And also the Saudi oil facilities on its eastern shore on the Red Sea are vulnerable to both Houthi and Iraqi militia attacks, which have been happening. So I think the larger solution is not just that everybody would invest billions and billions of dollars to build alternate energy routes, but actually for the international community and the region to invest in a kind of diplomatic settlement that actually make that unnecessary, that removes the shadow of war over the region. Well, it is, but at the same time, the idea that you're going to spend trillions of dollars building pipelines all over the place because you cannot finish this conflict, that also puts a lot of burden on the global economy and also on all the countries involved. The sense I have from all these different ideas that are being floated within parliaments of all these countries, within the governments, to me it sounds like there's a lot of desperation right now because nobody can see the end. And everybody's trying to find a way to handle this, like you say, in their own way and in whatever method or strategic approach they now think might make sense. But there's so much confusion in the region. I mean, it's really something to be in this moment. And tomorrow we hit six months of this war. I was hoping to run through a fairly meaty discussion with you about where we are with what Trump said he would do when he first set out on February 28th and began all of this. So he said, for instance, to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. He said he would get Hormuz to be reopened. He wanted to destroy Iranian military capabilities, taking out their missiles, their defense industrial base, to kneecap the Iranian proxies, to defend regional allies. I mean, this is a long list of what was on Trump's priorities. And I am very interested in knowing where you think we stand with all of these. Well, we stand largely nowhere, if you would. In other words, the United States has not achieved any of its war aims. You went through the list right now. None of these have been achieved by a superpower that actually was at the height of its self-assurance when it went to this war. President Trump dismissed diplomacy thinking it's not necessary. In the middle of diplomacy, he started the war and then very grandly announced that he was finishing off a job that other presidents should have done 47 years ago. So I'm just going to get rid of the Iran problem. With the Iran problem, it's not only still there, it has become more complicated and more difficult. And it also damaged the United States in some very significant way and also damaged the region in very significant ways. So I think where we are is that, yes, Iran has been greatly damaged by this war. Its economy is teetering on the edge. It has suffered enormous amount of infrastructure and industrial damage. But it's coming out of this war very confident in its own capabilities. It's almost like Vietnam the day after the fall of Saigon. I mean, yes, battered by decades of American bombing. But in the end, the glass is half full for the Iranians and it's half empty for the United States. Now, the key issue, of course, is how does this war end? On what terms and how resilient could a ceasefire be? Are we looking at two or three years or a longer peace like happened in Vietnam, for instance? Then there's a question of what happens to the Middle East itself. The giant sound of US power diminishing in the region, the sound of that vacuum is quite deafening in the region. Whether you're Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, you all are seeing this country that has been the pillar of Middle East security has now been greatly damaged. So the future of the region, the power structure in the region, is open to question. And then there are secondary issues that are coming to the fore. What is the impact of this on Europe, on the Ukraine war? What is the impact of this on Asia, on the US-China relationship? What might be the impact of this on the midterm elections and then the last two years of this term of President Trump's presidency? In other words, this war can have, it is not just US-Iran war. It's not just about the Gulf, about the Strait of Hormuz. It's like an earthquake. It has circles that are ever expanding outward. But as of yet, we don't know exactly what the final verdict is because the war hasn't ended. But where we are, there is literally no way out of this war right now where Trump can actually declare victory. That's the dilemma of Trump. I mean, the Iranians know how to declare victory. They have even been selling it at home that the MOU was a huge diplomatic victory. This is what President Petrosian is saying. If the United States implements the MOU, we end up with the Strait of Hormuz. We get some of our money back. The war ends on all fronts. We protect our proxies. And then in the future, maybe we'll talk about the nuclear issue if we so decide. So they know what victory means. But that kind of a deal is not victory for Trump. The collapse of regime hasn't happened. There is no military victory because the US military does not have a way in which to win this war. And leaving the economic pressure, et cetera, is more hype than policy. In my view, everything that Secretary Bessing said and did and the way he rolled it out was really designed to divert attention in the US from the fact that the United States is no longer going to be fighting a war in the Middle East, that the war is over. And so you have to put a bigger, shinier object on the table to tell the Americans that we're shifting from that strategy to something bigger, more successful. But in reality, that's not a pathway to victory either. And in fact, may open additional fronts with China, Russia, other countries that the United States doesn't want. So how does this war end would also be quite important. We know there's no victory in sight for Trump. But what is the scale of the blowback that he would get from the settlement is going to be quite important. Is there any chance for regime collapse at this point within Iran? I mean, this was also one of his big goals for the war, but it hasn't happened. But is there still some chance that maybe there's something we don't know from the outside that could possibly lead to that? I mean, is there any hope for Trump on that front? Well, look, a regime collapse could always happen. But if I were to bet money on it, I would say the chances of that now is far less than on February 27, 2026, the day before the United States and Israel attacked Iran. For the reason that a war of this size for Iran has been transformative. Yes, the country has suffered a lot. There is no love lost for its revolutionary guards or for its leaders. But something has also happened to Iranians. They've been under massive bombardment. It has changed them psychologically. It has changed their perception of the United States, Israel, the West, of the rhetoric of we're with you, we're going to support you. The Iranians no longer think that regime change should be a gift to a gift of victory to the United States of America. They want regime change for their own reasons, but not because that's the out for Donald Trump. And then the question is, how would regime change happen? There is no leadership. There is no political party. There's no organization. None of the sort of makings of that is there. The uprising that happened in January is not easily replicable. I mean, at that moment, it's kind of like a tsunami happened. It was many things that came together to create the perfect storm. It doesn't automatically happen. I mean, I know that Secretary Besant is of the hope that somehow maximum pressure will cause another January moment, but that's not necessarily a given. Or it may not happen on the timeline that matters to Trump. But if regime collapse comes a year and a half from now, or two years from now, but that does not address what President Trump needs within the next two weeks, which is to arrive at a way in which the Strait of Hormuz would open. But my sense also is that this regime is now stronger than it was before. It has now wrapped itself in patriotism. It can tell its people that it won a war against the superpower. It could tell them that the outside world is not their friend. It was happy to drop bombs on them and that they're alone. The government's alone, but the people are alone too. And now, over these months of war, they have put in place a much stricter regime of social control, which they're likely to tighten even further. It's now much more militarized leadership over a militarized society in a condition of national security. So I'm not hopeful that that's going to happen imminently. I mean, there are no signs of it imminently, unless something blows up in Iran, where we can actually sink our teeth into or latch our hopes on. But I don't see that right now. Well, as the whole Iran war continues to just be treading water, it feels like in the region, Israel, last week, launched two attacks on Syrian territory and this inflamed tensions with Turkey. Israel said that they were doing this because there was no plan to deploy more Turkish military within Syria's borders. And this upset the Israelis. The Turks, of course, are also very upset by this. And so we think that there are some talks now going between Israel and Turkey to find a way out. The U.S. has made clear they want a deconfliction mechanism. What's the risk here? Could this be another frontline in the Middle East that starts up within Syria because of the Israel-Turkey rivalry? Well, even before the war on Iran, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that, you know, we're finishing off the Shia axis of Hezbollah, Iran. And then after that, we're going to go after the Sunni axis of these countries like Pakistan and Turkey. Or the Prime Ministerial hopeful Naftali Bennett has said that Turkey is the next Iraq. So, you know, Israel may think that it very successfully expelled Iran from the Levant. Hamas was destroyed. Hezbollah was downsized. Syria collapsed. So Iran is no longer sitting on Israel's borders the way it was. Yes, there is still Hezbollah, but it's nothing like what it was before. Israel is, in fact, occupying large territories in South Lebanon. So what is the power that is actually closest to Israel there? It's Turkey. And the one regime change that happened that Israel didn't bring about. Israel did Gaza, Israel did Lebanon, but it was Turkey that Syria. Assad regime fell because of Turkey, not because of Israel. And so the Middle East power that is, you know, right around Israel right now, or might be inhibiting Israel's ability to change borders. I don't mean just territorial borders, but also political borders around it in Lebanon, Syria, and the Gaza territory, West Bank, et cetera. All the area around Israel is actually Turkey. So, no, I don't see right now the possibility or likelihood of an open war, rightly, because neither does Turkey want it, nor does Israel want it. The Iran water is still there. But the Israelis are also trying to sort of mark their presence around Syria, around Lebanon, in the Palestinian territories. And then there's also a dynamic of elections in Israel in October. I mean, my sense is that Prime Minister Netanyahu was damaged by the Iran war, because he told the Israelis for a very long time that Iran is the gravest threat to their security. And the war has proven that to the Israelis. Iranian missiles, drones, et cetera, has proven to Israelis that Iran is indeed a grave threat to Israel. But President, by Prime Minister Netanyahu, has come short in addressing that threat. He's gone to war with Iran twice and failed to topple the Islamic Republic. And now that creates vulnerability in the elections. And so there is a sort of a possibility that he picks fights, either to divert attention from Iran, or to be able to reclaim the position that he had as this sort of a Churchill of Israel, that this tough, you know, security Prime Minister, but he really doesn't want war. So bombing the airbase is great headlines in Israel. And then behind the scenes, you can sit down and deescalate with the terms. So you really don't want war, but you want all the hype of looking like you're taking care of Israeli security problems and pushing back against these sets of countries. But it's always dangerous. It's always, you know, in this kind of a game, there's one attack that goes too far, or invites an unexpected response. So what it tells us is the Persian Gulf, Iran is not the only simmering, you know, volcano in this region. The Levant is not settled yet. And it can blow up again in varieties of ways. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, that's it for today on Iran The Latest. I'm Sophia Yan. See you tomorrow.