The Iranians hold all the cards in this conflict. There is no clear off ramp and no immediate exit, no matter what Donald Trump tries to say.

As John Meersheimer points out, Iran's objective is pretty simple. Survive and remain an independent pole of power in the region, not some pawn of Washington or Tel Aviv.

They're not going to just pack up their missiles and drones and call it a day without some ironclad assurance that they're

either not going to be attacked again or meaningful relief from sanctions. And that kind of grand

bargain is nowhere to be found right now, at least. So we're dug in for the foreseeable future,

whether Trump declares the war over as quickly and unilaterally as he launched it or not.

Now, it could be weeks, it could be months.

And if he commits to boots on the ground,

if he lets mission creep do what it always does, it could be years.

Not a soul on this planet knows what comes next in the war

theater, because that's war. But we can anticipate what comes next for the U.S. and global economy,

or at least game out certain scenarios, because this isn't just another discretionary police

action on the other side of the world.

This isn't Venezuela. It's not even Iraq. This one is wired directly into the global energy,

food, and financial systems. But a proper analysis has to acknowledge how the circumstances of

the U.S. economy and our monetary and fiscal policies have changed over the years.

And there's no direct antecedent into the situation that we find ourselves in, which makes the

folly of this war all the more absurd. So we didn't just launch a war in Iran. We may have

pulled the fire alarm on the entire global economy.

Let's start with time horizons. At this point, I think it's safe to say that weeks is off

the table. Iran has already shown that it can sustain missile and drone strikes, harassment

at sea, proxy attacks on U.S. economic and military assets throughout the

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