Welcome to the McCarthy Report, the podcast where I, Rich Lowry, discuss with Andy McCarthy, the latest legal and national security issues.

This week, what else the Iran war ceasefire, at least for now?

And for some reason, you're not already following us on a streaming service, by the way.

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And Andy McCarthy, the glowing, indeed gushing, five-star reviews that they deserve wherever you listen to your podcast.

And now, without further ado, I welcome to this very podcast

through the miracle of Riverside, none other than. Rich, how are you? Good, Andy. I know a lot

about this war. I just don't know whether we want or lost. Well, I guess the jury is still

out on that, but I guess the proper answer to that question

is it depends on who you ask.

Yeah. And if you ask anyone at the White House, you get a very definitive answer. It may

not be a right answer, but it's definitive. Yeah, there's a lot of how people see it depends

of where they sit. But I have to say, I had a friend, I'm sure I told you about this on offline as soon as I talked to this guy who's very reliable who told me weeks and weeks ago, basically when the straight was effectively close, we can't reopen the straight. It's like, what? No, we can't do it or we can't do it on any basis we're actually going to do it so we got to rely on our own asymmetries to try to get them out of this including hitting power plants and we actually didn't hit power plants but we threatened to hit power plants and then you're saying all along and they'll have to be some unsatisfactory deal where we basically say yeah we they acknowledge you know you hit us really hard we prefer if you not do that anymore and we have to be some unsatisfactory deal where we basically say, yeah, they acknowledge, you know,

you hit us really hard, and we prefer if you not do that anymore. And we have to acknowledge,

well, you guys control the straight. And we hope you don't do it anymore. Now, the part where we hope

they don't do it anymore is like a little bit back and forth with with Trump. But clearly the

straight was the key thing here where going in,

we did not properly evaluate the risks, how easily it could be closed and how hard it would be

to reopen. And that's why at best we're looking at an inconclusive outcome here.

Well, I think we're looking at a worse than inconclusive outcome when you play the chess game out.

But just to start with underestimating the risks, I don't think the government underestimated the risk.

I've had, like you, Rich, I've had a million of these conversations.

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