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 at Spectator USA, and this is our Friday edition of Washington Shots.

I'm here with Tom Rogan, who is commentary writer at the Washington Examiner here in D.C., and he's also the host of the resuscitated McLaughlin group, which I have been

lucky enough to be on. Tom and I are talking about what else, Iran today, and the administration's

pose in light of a series of escalations in the Gulf, but most specifically the purported attack

on the oil tanker in the

Gulf of Oman. Tom, what is your quick read on the whole situation? Well, I think, and good to be

with you, Kurt, but I think the first point here is that Iran seems to be through the revolutionary

guards as their own sort of subset of the hardliner faction.

And I don't buy into the idea that it's just that some of the sort of more hawkish people,

which you probably put me in that category,

but who suggests that the Iranian regime should be treated as a unitary block.

I think what we're seeing here is the revolutionary guards, through approval from

Humane, the Supreme Leader, taking action that they think can alter the American calculation,

but taking action that doesn't come under the immediate auspices of something that would

spark an American retaliation.

And so that's why I think we see this veiled action against tankers rather than an action,

say, in the vein of, you know, carrying out a attack on, you know, a U.S. diplomatic compound or at the high end attempting to shut down the strait of Hormuz.

It's an action that they know that we know is them,

but that it is not causing major casualties.

It's disrupting.

It's causing oil price spikes so that the Europeans freak out about it

and say to Trump, okay, you need to back off from this.

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