Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal Foreign Policy's Editor-in-Chief.

This is FP Live.

So I'm recording this on day six of the war in the Middle East.

It's late on Thursday, the 5th of March.

Israel and the United States are stepping up their attacks on military

facilities across Iran. The Iran is continuing to retaliate, although its missile attacks have

sharply reduced in quantity. The first days of this conflict have really been about missile

math. Basically, which of these two things will happen first?

Will the United States and Israel run out of interceptors and leave the region vulnerable?

Or will they first destroy Iran's ability to launch missiles?

At this point, it seems Iran's ability to attack is being degraded, but this is by no means over.

And to be clear, this is not just about missiles.

Certainly they can cause the most damage, but this is also about drones.

Iran's Shahid drones can cost as little as $20,000 a piece, and the United States has

sometimes been using very expensive interceptors like the Patriot system to stop them.

Those interceptors can cost millions of dollars per use.

So the longer this war goes on, the more the costs mount, for the United States, for Israel,

and for all the countries in the region suffering from Iran's attacks.

What's clear now is that regime collapse hasn't happened after the killing of Ali Khamenei, the

supreme leader.

As Vali Nasser was telling us in our previous episode,

there were indeed contingency plans. Iran is still attacking. The striking thing, though,

...