For a perspective now on the situation with Iran, we get two views.

Alan Eyre is now at the Middle East Institute after serving in the U.S. government for four decades.

He was part of the Obama administration's negotiating team for the Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump pulled out of in 2018.

And Niyadh-Maliki was born and raised in Iran, and until last year, he was Associate Director for Sanction Targeting with a focus on Iran in the U.S. Treasury Department. He's now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Welcome to you both. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Mead, I'll begin with you. Will this U.S. naval blockade, will it force the Iranians to change course? I think so. I think

it's really, you know, with the blockade, the regime now has two options, come to his term,

you know, come to the back to the negotiations table and accept some kind of a, if not a full deal,

but some agreement to continue to negotiate by some time.

Or just accept the fact that the economy is going to collapse.

I think domestically, the Iranian regime knows that they're more vulnerable than they are in the battlefield.

I mean, as a matter of fact, they shot down the Internet for over 40 days.

That's about $50 million a day in economic

damages that they're taking on only because they worry about uprising in country. So they're

taking that hit just to avoid any kind of domestic pressure. They're going to face that domestic

pressure soon if the blockade is effective. Alan, what do you make of that? You think the U.S.

blockade will have that impact on the regime?

Unfortunately, I'm a little less optimistic than Miod is.

I think even if the blockade is perfectly done and effective,

it will take too long to have the requisite effect on Iran

because there's two dynamics here.

One is the global economy suffering because the strait is closed.

And the other is whatever pain we can inflict on Iran by a fully effective blockade.

But they have land borders.

...