Hello, I'm Freddie Gray, editor of Spectator USA, and today we're going to be listening to a nascent edition of Washington Shots, which is brought to you by our new Washington editor of Spectator USA.

I'm here with Gil Barndollar, the director of Middle East Studies at the Center for the National Interest.

And this is the Washington Shots podcast, or you can be updated frequently on the goings on

in Washington and abroad.

So Gil, you've recently wrote for us on what else, Iran, and whether or not the Trump administration is going to do this.

What say you?

I think the administration doesn't want a war.

I think that's become very clear in the last couple of weeks if it wasn't beforehand.

I think people

should be concerned about a miscalculation about both countries stumbling into something they don't want

or, you know, the action of the third party in the Gulf as well. But in terms of a conscious

decision to favor military option over others, no, I'm not tremendously worried about that.

So what do you think the next six months look like? You have a national security advisor, Mr. Bolton, Ambassador Bolton,

who seems doctrinally committed to essentially isolating the regime

and putting a lot of American foreign policy capital on that goal. For my own reporting,

I can tell you that Mr. Bolton is far more rigid and ideological than someone he's often

paired with in the media, Secretary Pompeo. Can Bolton be kept at bay?

Well, I guess the question is how much longer he stays on his national security advisor?

Oh, yes. Rampant speculation about that. And how much he continues to get his way in the face of other actors.

I mean, certainly, as we've seen in other issues, Korea being a good one, there seems to be some

clear differences in opinion between him and the President, and yet he remains in place.

Do you think the President can hire someone he both likes and agrees with, right?

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