‘US can’t politically engineer a new status quo inside Iran, it must be self-sustaining’

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman led a diplomatic effort to dissuade Donald Trump from launching a high-risk military strike on Iran. For in-depth analysis, Genie Godula welcomes Jon Hoffman, Research Fellow at the Cato Institute. Mr. Hoffman describes Iran as “a brutal dictatorship, involved in a host of malign activities across the region,” yet warns that US military intervention would be “incredibly risky”: it could provoke retaliation, entangle the US in a prolonged campaign, and cause irreversible harm to Iran’s nascent grassroots movement.