I'm Dan Kurtz-Phelan, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
What I perceive to be happening is Iran is very comfortable engaging in a long war.
So, you know, the U.S.
is trying to put timeframes on this.
This is, you know, a four-week war, a five-week war, now it's an eight-week war.
I think Iran is comfortable dragging this out as long as needed.
The rhetoric of regime change is far outpacing the policy of regime change.
This is an administration that from the get-go, even before the intervention began in early January, this administration was talking on behalf of the Iranian opposition, encouraging them, making promises to them, threatening the regime.
None of that was implemented.
I'm Justin Vogt, executive editor of Foreign Affairs.
Dan is away this week.
Over the weekend, US and Israeli forces struck hundreds of sites across Iran.
and killed the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Large crowds of Iranians took to the streets, some to mourn, others to celebrate.
The Islamic Republic has retaliated and launched strikes of its own across the Middle East.
Much about the joint U.S.-Israeli operation remains unclear.
Was it meant to eliminate Iran's nuclear capabilities in the wake of failed negotiations?
Was it meant to force regime change?
With no path to de-escalation in sight, Washington may end up in a larger conflagration than it bargained for.
In this two-part episode, I spoke with two experts to help us make sense of the situation.