It's Friday, March 6, 2026, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining history, economics, and geopolitics.

I'm Bill Whelan. I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow. I'll be your moderator today. It's my great honor to be joined by three very distinguished gentlemen here at the Hoover Institution, our Goodfellows, as we like to call them. I'm referring to the historian, Sir Neil Fulguson, John, Cochran, and Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, former presidential national security advisor. Neil John and HR are Hoover Senior Fellows. Gentlemen, this is the Domino's version of Good Fellows today.

We're going to try to deliver a show in 30 minutes, so here goes. I want our listeners and viewers to know that Neil has written a tremendous piece in the free press. It's title as could this be the start of World War III? And in it, Neil details 10 questions related to the situation in Iran. I'm not going to read them all, but HR, I want to go to you.

And I want you to answer a question six and five. Neil details 10 questions related to the situation in Iran. I'm not going to read them all,

but HR, I want to go to you. And I want you to answer questions six and five, which are how

widespread will the war get? And at what point does the Iranian regime alteration happen? Keeping

in mind that the president today, President Trump moved the goalpost and called for Iran's

unconditional surrender. Go ahead. I think it's reached his peak in terms

of how wide it's gotten. I think now the capacity of Iran to wind the war to continue to attack

new countries or to even sustain the attacks on the 10 or so countries is attacked with

ballistic missiles and drones is going to be greatly diminished. I think also their ability to

affect shipping in the Straits of Formuz and the Persian Gulf is also going to be greatly diminished.

But what else can they try? What else are they going to try to get going? Well, trying to expand

to other the use of their proxies. We see that with Hezbollah already. And Hezbollah now

promising yesterday, hey, we're going to try to attack U.S. assets in the region

with kind of the franchises that Hezbollah has in the region.

So we'll see a continued terrorist threat.

You see countries in the Gulf and in Europe acting preemptively against these cells associated with the IRGC and the MOIS, the Intel

arm of the Iranians. But I think in terms of the scope of this war, the geographic scope of this

war, it's waning. And what you're going to see are the capacity for them to continue to strike.

It's just going to drop off a cliff here with the sustained air campaign.

And now the ability to have as what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs call,

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