Welcome to Words Matter with Katie Barlow and Joe Lockhart.

Welcome to Words Matter, I'm Katie Barlow.

Our goal is to promote objective reality.

As a wise man once said, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts.

Have power and words have consequences.

Our guest today is president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is a diplomat and the author or editor of more than a dozen books including the forthcoming,

The World, A Brief Introduction. Richard Haas, welcome to Words Matter.

It's great to be with you guys.

So a year ago in January of 2019, you made a prediction for the year and I want to read what you

said. Here's what you said. If I were going to place a bet on 2019 where there could well be a

serious new war in the world, it wouldn't be North Korea, it wouldn't be the South China Sea.

You never know what Mr. Putin will do in Ukraine, but I would bet on Iran.

And turns out you were right about that. That would have been a pretty good bet.

So what did you see in January of 2019 that led you to make that pressure prediction?

My first reaction to that as I ought to be raising my consulting fees. Look, this was baked into the

cake. Once the United States got out of the 2015 nuclear deal, which essentially placed temporary

limits on some of the critical components of Iran's nuclear program. Once we unilaterally got out

of it, I think it was in 2018. And we slapped on these really draconian sanctions on the Iranian

economy. Essentially, we said to the Iranians, we are going to commit and practice economic warfare

unless you change your ways fundamentally. And I thought there was no chance the Iranians would

change their ways fundamentally. And I thought they would sooner or later push back, but they

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