And what I wanted to ask first was something I also recently put to Ascandar Sadegi Borejedi,

that being what your take is on the argument that's been sketched out most forcefully,

I suppose, by Anasar Faruqi, according to which Iran will emerge from the conflict,

not merely surviving US and Israeli bombardment, but as a new regional hegemon.

So yeah, so what's your take on Faruqi's argument? Is Iran about to become the hegemon of

the Gulf, in your opinion? He's a smart guy. He's right about the fundamentals of this,

but I think he's overstretching on that particular judgment. I mean, there's a couple of empirical

problems here. First of all,

Israel. Second, the economic damage that Iran will have undergone, even in the most favorable

circumstances, say, if the war was stopped tomorrow and a settlement was negotiated, which we know

isn't going to happen. And then there's a kind of theoretical issue. What do you mean by a regional

Hegemon? How does that work?

So I think to answer that, we should start by clarifying the issue conceptually, because I think Faruque is probably following a traditional realist conception of regional hegemony, which emphasizes coercive capacity above all else.

So it goes along the lines of John Meersheimer's

offensive realism, which is essentially, in a situation of global anarchy, and for the realists,

it's always global anarchy, the state's desire for survival and their uncertainty about

the intentions of rivals, they can never know what's going to happen, they are impelled

to try to pursue hegemony. And this they can do by what's going to happen, they are impelled to try to pursue

hegemony. And this they can do by building overwhelming material coercive capacity and a kind

of economic strength to underwrite that capacity and the political ability to disrupt rival

coalitions. And so that conception of hegemony that you described there that emerges from within

the international relations sort of realist tradition, that's quite different then to how

...