This is John Batcher, a conversation with my colleague Jonathan Shenzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy,

the Vice President, about the Iranian threat and what comes next.

The bomb is possible, a race for the bomb is possible, also testing Israel

making it weight. Is it going to be Hezbollah? Is it going to be all of the above?

Huthi's Hezbollah, Kaitib Hezbollah in Iraq, what's left of Hamas, Iran too.

Shoygu in Tehran certainly gives pause to the thinking that Iran is stoking up its air

defenses before it moves. However, Jonathan says it perfectly in one

straightforward image. The Middle East, the world is on a knife's edge. More of this tonight.

No, I think the big question, quite frankly, is whether Iran has decided to either A, make a dash for a bomb.

That seems unlikely right now, but one never knows.

I think there seems to be blind spots within our intelligence community and I don't know what the Israelis are seeing.

They've not said much on this.

That's one contingency. The other one is that Iran and Hezbollah decide to wage a multi-front war.

Perhaps they enlist the help of the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.

Israel takes incoming from 360 degrees and, you know, Hezbollah is the tip of the spear.

That is the other contingency that we're looking at.

Now, what we could see come out of this next round could be far less than all of that. But I think we just need to be aware of the fact that, well, yes, there is a chance that, you know, Iran decides to strike one or two or three targets, and they call it quits after that because they don't want to sustain significant damage.

There is a chance that Iran believes that this is the moment to wage a larger war against Israel, a war of attrition,

with much higher intensity, and that would be a scenario for a rather devastating war.

We don't know what the Iranians are thinking right now and you know this pregnant pause that we are in

that we have been in for really the last week.

I think there is a certain amount of psychological warfare going on here.

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