I'm John Batchel. I welcome Bill Rajo, Senior Fellow Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and we're joined by Bill's colleague, Akhmajahiri, watching very carefully the Gulf and the war that so far has unrolled in the Gulf, looking to the possibility of the war starting again in these next hours or days, depending on

the ceasefire, and who were the targets? The first round are likely to be the targets for the

second round of Iranian retaliation. Bill and Ahmed, a very good evening to you. First, a warning.

We're talking about fog of war here, meaning that we don't

have any reason to believe that the future is going to be like the past. Surprises happen. We don't

get to predict. We're trying to call balls and strikes on the basis of what's happened already.

Bill, I want to

check with you because you're my veteran on these matters. Is that a fair way to present this?

This isn't about the future. It's about what's happened. Yes, I concur, John. That is a fair way

to put it. We're not making predictions, but, Akhmat, a very good evening to you. You have a very helpful article on the

FDD.org site and on Long War Journal about where Iran struck in the first phase of the war,

the first 40 days, where it struck its neighborhood, accepting Israel that was the subject of attacks overnight,

spectacular attacks, where else in the Gulf did they strike? What did they favor? Was it on the

basis of what's in their arsenal or did there seem to be a pattern that was emerging? Good evening

to you. Grieving, John. So let me start off by saying that Iran and its proxies attacked nine

Arab states during the first phase of the conflict. First of all, the Arab Gulf states,

but also Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. But the focus was on the Gulf, mainly because of proximity, but also because Iran's strategy

was to punish these Gulf states and also add an extra burden to the United States'

war efforts by making the war about economy and energy.

And that's why we've seen multiple targets or multiple attacks towards energy infrastructure,

be it oil fields, gas fields.

Of course, this was happening when Iran also closed the Strait of Hormuz.

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