A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.

Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating eminent threats from the Iranian regime,

a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.

It's Wednesday, March 11th, 2026, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover

institution broadcast examining history, economics, and geopolitics. I'm Bill Whalen.

I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow, and I'll be your moderator today. Looking forward to

conversation featuring our three regulars, the Good Fellows, as we call them. I'm referring, of course,

to the historians, Sir Neil Ferguson, the economist John Cochran, and former Presidential National

Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Neil John, and H.R. are all Hoover senior fellows. So, gentlemen, be on your best behavior today because we are joined by the boss. I'm referring, of course, to the director of the Hoover Institution, former presidential national security advisor, former U.S. Secretary of State, Condole Lisa Rice. Condi, great to see you. Great to be with you. So you should know that on our last Goodfellows, Condi, it was last Friday at the same time you were in Washington, D.C., and I think about five minutes after he stopped recording, our producer Scott Immigrant forwarded me a tweet, and the tweet was NBC tweeting breathlessly, Condoleezza Rice is at the White House. And about 10 minutes later, NBC tweeting, it's for college sports. But then border erupted yet again after that, exorrupted after that, Connie, because you were seen walking off with the president and his chief of staff, Susie Wiles. So we could either start the show by you telling us what you told the president, but I imagine

that's probably off the record. So let's go in a different direction. On our last show, Condi,

Neil referred to this as Gulf War III. So my question to you is, how do we keep Gulf War III but

becoming World War III or a much bludier regional conflict? Condi, what diplomatic guardrails,

what military guardrails need to be in place? Well, look, we've gone through a very interesting period here that I would go all the way back to

October 7th when I think Israel's conception of its own ability to deter attacks on its population

was really shattered by that awful attack of October

7th. It was very clear that Hamas, and I have to believe, trained and equipped, maybe even

planned in coordination with the Iranians. And then, of course, you had the action in June

between the United States and Israel, which was a coordinated action

to deal with the, largely with the Iranian nuclear program, but also knocked out Iranian

air defenses in large part.

And so then finally, the action that we've seen over the last week plus, which I would

state in the following way, and I think one way to think about guardrails is do you have a clear set of objectives?

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