And that, from my perspective, entails a qualitatively different threat to the viability of international law as we know it from the erosion that we've seen over the last several decades, which itself, to be clear, was obviously significantly diminishing the viability of that legal framework already.

I think I agree with the empirical description that Tom gave and have just a slightly different analysis of its meaning.

So first, I think the practices over the sort of three decades plus now since the end of the Cold War of the United States in reinterpreting categories of law in a permissive direction that erodes both the prohibition on the use of force and the the protective character of international humanitarian law is just indisputable and is parallel to what we talk about at the domestic level around modern authoritarianism, which is not lawless, but rather uses a kind of legalism to authorize itself and redefine the norms in ways that become more and more permissive of kinds of concentrations of power that authoritarians like.

And actually, I think there's a convergence here, especially around 9-11, where the U.S. preferences domestically to dramatically expand the national security state and concentrate power in the executive were then uploaded in ways that Kim Shepley and her work has ably described to the international system through U.N. Security Council resolutions.

And so you had international law actually reinforcing these authoritarian practices internationally.

demanding that states adjust their own internal jurisdictions to adopt counterterrorism framings and counterterrorism finance framings, etc., that basically eroded core constitutional protections domestically around privacy, around property, around procedural protections in the criminal context, and on and on.

So we've had this kind of like symbiotic relationship between in the international changes introduced by the US largely as a consequence of its own unipolar hegemony at the moment at which the post-Cold War period began, and then its own astonishing over-response to the 9-11 attacks and their aftermath.

And so when it engages in this kind of conduct, it creates a graver threat to the viability of the system as a whole.

So do you think that was the trade-off? You get to sell your oil as opposed to hold the world for ransom with a toll booth on the Straits of Hormuz?

It's really hard to know, honestly.

Look, We have been already in an extended indefinite ceasefire.

So to say that this memorandum of understanding is going to secure a 60 day ceasefire, it's just hard to understand what any of this means.

We are living in a period in which the status quo is part of the instability that this war has produced.

We have a US president who threatens major strikes in the morning and then claims that he's going to seize control over Iranian energy infrastructure.

by midday and then later claims diplomatic progress and cancels planned strikes in the afternoon.

I