English transcript

What is it that Iran is doing right now and and does it seem like it's confounding the United States at this point?

Yeah, Tom, it's it's a very good question

I think what Iran is doing is taking a strategy that they actually developed over the last

30 or 40 years after the Iran-Iraq war which was fought from 1980 1988

Which was a strategy of diffusing their power across the region and they did that in the in the failed states of Syria

during the Syrian Civil War in Lebanon with Hezbollah with the hash to shabby at PMU's in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen and

They distributed their power through those states and what we're seeing now is they're doing some of that now as well

But they are also moving this sort of guerrilla strategy

defuse what we call diffusion strategy of pushing their power out across the region and

Making themselves a bigger target in a way a harder target to hit

They're taking that same strategy and moving it to the state level and

pushing conflict into where we are sitting here in Doha into Saudi Arabia UAE Bahrain and

And and doing that in order to create a political pressure

They know they can't compete with the United States in terms of kinetic power or military power directly

So what they're doing is rather than dealing directly with us

they're pushing the they're creating pressure on the United States politically by raising the price of oil and then the straight up and then the

Obviously this the the the Hormuz Ray obviously plays into that

Yeah, and it seems to be working at this point in time

Helen how difficult is it for the u.s. To try and combat that strategy as as Ross was talking about this diffusion strategy?

From Iran distributing their power, you know right across a vast vast territory. I

Would put it in different terms

Iran has learned from history. How do you defeat the United States you defeat the United States?

Winning by not losing

The American military won every battle in Vietnam

Who won the war in the second Iraq war the American military won every battle who won the war in?

Afghanistan the Taliban could say you have all the watches we have all the time who won

And so what Iran is doing very cleverly because militarily they are hugely inferior to the United States

Is winning by not losing all they have to do is persist as

Ross says turn up the pressure in terms of gasoline prices and the stock market is not volatile