But that was the perception that we were in a niche field.

Exactly, exactly.

And so, you know, literally in the nine days after September 11th, you have President Bush go to Congress and And he uses this phrase that we've heard consistently since that time was the, you're with us or against us.

And that became a polarizing phrase.

But we look back at that moment, he was very clear about, this is a time when if you either support terrorists or you don't.

And he was trying to mobilize people to come on side in what was perceived to be this like new, you know, new focus for America.

And it was a new focus for American foreign policy.

What was it like to be on the ground and to start thinking about what am I doing here and where are we taking this country?

Did, did you and other observers of the region and energy analysts not anticipate how quickly that could happen? Were those countries able to adjust in ways that just didn't seem imaginable, uh, when we were contemplating this ahead of time?

No, I wouldn't say that that didn't seem imaginable.

I mean, those pipelines were built in the nineteen eighties for this very purpose, so you know, people were aware that they were there.

I think the big question was how much oil were they gonna be able to move through those pipelines? You know, those pipelines already were carrying some oil to those alternative ports.

And then the Saudis and the Emiratis, you know, were able to, I don't know if, if the right word is juice the pipelines, but really get them to carry absolute maximum capacity.

So I mean, that's significant.

Let's say it's seven million barrels of oil a day.

How do you understand those regional dynamics and as they intersect with, with the energy dimensions of this, especially when it comes to OPEC? How do you imagine that shaping both energy politics in the Middle East, but also the Middle East more broadly?

So what does that tell you?

you?Well, I don't think that this report in itself is entirely surprising.

If, uh, and we, uh, can now assume because there are multiple sources here, the Supreme Leader is still alive, he is obviously not gonna be communicating by phone or pager or other electronic device.

So it is feasible that he is receiving people in person and that he is getting information by courier.

But to your question of what this means for the negotiations, it means that it is going to be very hard to, um, to hold to very strict and tight timelines.

We saw this, of course, around the ceasefire that was negotiated in Gaza.

Again, a lot of Hamas leaders only accepting guidance in person.

To what extent are the Iranians paying attention to that?

The point being that, you know, when you add in the fact that the dollar is stronger and people in the global south are generally poorer, less able to ride an energy price shock, is there anything that countries, policymakers should be thinking about to protect themselves from an era where more countries deploy the energy weapon, as you've put it? And we could be entering an era where there are more shocks that disproportionately tend to impact smaller countries and poorer countries.

Can I take that in two parts, Ravi? Just like first the point about the U.S.

and then what other countries might do.

The point about the U.S.

I think is very well taken.

That, of course, the suffering that is happening in the American economy is is relatively mild compared to other parts of the world.

And it also, it's affecting the US economy in a very different way than an oil shock in the 1970s did.

Has this abundance led to a reckless foreign policy?

Uh, Meghan, you just heard David's assessment there, so i- if the war ends in two to three weeks and Iran still has all those things left, albeit a diminished level from where it started, but h- how would the Gulf States, their US allies in the region, how would they feel about that outcome?

Well, this new intelligence about how much missile launching capability Iran still has, and this conversation I think points to the fact that this conflict is likely to last longer, two to three weeks perhaps, but maybe even longer.

Because Iran doesn't need to have any kind of dominance militarily to continue to eke out the conflict.

It just has to have enough to create uncertainty.

And having even a greatly diminished missile capacity will actually have two big strategic effects.

One, it will allow Iran to continue to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage.

People need to simply, uh, wonder if in fact there's going to be a, a difficulty in crossing the strait.

Again, if the war ends in two to three weeks or longer, which it might, you said, and the uranium is still there, w- would that be a mistake for the United States?

And yet At a time like this, it does make me wonder, well, what is this all for? Is the US actually shielded from this type of an oil crisis? And also, if you might too, does this have any impact on sort of the longstanding goal of multiple American presidents to pivot away from the Middle East to other priorities like China or this administration's desire to focus on the Western hemisphere?

A whole great set of questions, Eddie.

I'll try to take them each and do it succinctly.

So first your question about like, what is this energy independence all about if we find ourselves here? And I think this is a question that many Americans are probably asking themselves.

They've been hearing about America's energy prowess and how America is energy independent for quite some time.

And then at this particular moment, it probably doesn't feel that way as the price of gasoline goes up close to almost a dollar in the last two weeks.

And here, I think the answer is known to many on this panel, but it's worth reiterating that energy independence isn't the same thing as what we might call energy like we don't, energy independence never meant that America was meeting all of its energy needs independently and was disconnected from global markets.

And that does, at the margin, take some of the heat out of the market.

I loved your thoughts on that matter.

Thank you, Kelly.

Well, I think there are some obvious parallels that I think have captured people's imagination.

And we're back at what appears, at least until this morning, to be a game of regime change in the Middle East.

But I would say that Iraq and Iran differ in some very significant ways.

One, of course, is that there are no troops on the ground, no boots on the ground.

That was very much the opposite in Iraq, where there were 150,000 troops in the early days of the intervention and the decapitation.

But will he work with us, kind of like Delcy Rodriguez is thought to in Venezuela?