Hi everyone, and welcome today we are joined by Professor John Meersheimer and Alexander

Mercurice to discuss what is happening in Iran.

So it appears that this was a decapitation strike, a surprise attack.

They were able to bring down the Iranian missile defense.

They delivered some real heavy damage to the Iranians, killing many of their military leaders,

destroying much of their military capabilities.

But instead of collapse and regime change, which appears to be the objective, we see that Iran

regrouped.

And I think this could be defined as now a war of attrition.

That is, how many missiles can you send and how much punishment can you absorb?

Where exactly is this going?

Is there a clear strategy here, or has the Israelis now been caught by surprise by the

Iranians' ability to fight back?

I'll take a quick step at it.

I think, first of all, we have to establish what the Israeli goals are, and then we have to ask ourselves whether or not we think they can achieve those goals.

And I think there are three possible goals, and they're somewhat overlapping that the Israelis have in this operation. The first is to eliminate once and for all Iran's ability to enrich uranium and, I would argue, reprocess plutonium as well.

In other words, take away Iran's ability to ever acquire nuclear weapons.

I think that's the first goal.

The second goal is regime change.

And the idea here is that if you get a new regime, you get rid of the Ayatollah and his lieutenants, that the new regime

will be much more accommodating to Israel and the United States.

And then the third goal is surrender.

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