Journalist Mark Halperin says the Iran war is unlikely to end soon and could last weeks, potentially extending past President Trump’s planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

MARK HALPERIN: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Two Way Tonight. I’m Mark Halperin. We’re going to spend the bulk of the hour talking about Iran. Very complicated day in my reporting and in what’s appearing in the public eye. And I would say, you know, you never want to predict Donald Trump. Never want to predict Donald Trump. Donald Trump, I like to say, is this consistent, is so inconsistent, he makes Kim Un Jong look like Rob Portman. That’s not a joke for all of you, but only for some of you. So what I’m about to tell you might not be true, even though it’s based on reporting. This war is not ending soon. It’s not ending today. It’s not ending very soon, despite the president saying today, amongst other things, that there were no more targets left to hit in Iran. Well, there are. So I think we’re talking weeks now, which means it’ll go past the president’s summit, planned summit with Xi. And there’s 100 things I want to show you. We only have time for some of them. But I want to show you two things first. And these two things are, I believe, as good of things as I could show you to demonstrate both the complexities of what the president and the Israelis have unleashed and the reason why this is going to go on for a little bit. First, this is from the New York Times. It’s in a paragraph about, a story about the impact that the conflict, you know, less than a couple weeks old, has already had on the world. And it’s very well done, this paragraph. It subsumes not everything, but a lot of the things… This is from the New York Times. The New York Times has written a lot of stories in the last day that do a good job of putting in perspective where these are. I’ll read it to you. “Mr. Trump’s war, now nearly two weeks old, is already reshaping travel patterns, energy dependencies, living costs, trade routes, and strategic partnerships. Countries typically shielded from regional conflict, like Cyprus and the UAE, have faced retaliatory Iranian fire. The fallout could disrupt midterm elections in the United States, tilt the war calculus in Ukraine, and force China into a major economic pivot.” That’s well done, although you could probably double the length of that paragraph. Now I want to show you something Newt Gingrich said on Fox Business. Put Newt Gingrich on Fox Business with Larry Kudlow, and you’re creating a petri dish of something to get the White House’s attention, the President’s attention. He respects Speaker Gingrich. He respects Larry Kudlow. What Newt Gingrich is saying here is something that our two guests tonight would, I’m sure, agree with. It’s very plainly true. But coming out of Newt Gingrich’s mouth, sitting with Larry Kudlow really captured the attention of a lot of people in this administration. Please roll Speaker Gingrich on Fox News. LARRY KUDLOW: Do we have confidence that American folks, particularly the hardworking folks in the middle class, will they back Mr. Trump? NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I think they’ll back him for a little while, but they’re not going to back him forever. Look, there are three huge challenges that this administration has tackled. The first is that, and they should have frankly moved on this on day one, they have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. I don’t care what it costs. If they can’t keep it open, this war will in fact be an American defeat before very long, because the entire world, including the American people, will react to the price of oil if the Strait stays closed very long. So I lived through this with Reagan, as you did, in the late 80s. HALPERIN: That’s the point. Speaker Gingrich says the war will be lost politically and substantively, militarily, if they don’t get the Strait open. And the Strait is closed. The Strait is currently closed. So a conflict that has already had worldwide implications. Now the president could walk away. Since Vietnam, American presidents have faced this question of the credibility of the United States. When Barack Obama drew the red line and then didn’t live up to it, that was considered a huge credibility crisis. When Joe Biden had to deal with American loss of life on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, that was considered a crisis of credibility. Saw that when the barracks was blown up, the Marine barracks was blown up. Since Vietnam, there’s been this notion, the American president cannot show weakness on the stage when it involves national security. I don’t think Donald Trump cares about that. I really don’t. He always thinks he can talk his way out of things, and he often can. But right now, it does not seem possible, given the goals of this operation, that the Americans and their allies can just walk away and say, okay, the war is over, but Iran has proven that they can control the Strait of Hormuz whenever they feel like it. Now, meeting at the White House today to come up with an idea about how to deal with all of this, the two very heavily related issues, the price of gas in the United States and energy around the world, and Iran’s capacity, even with all the military success that Israel and the United States have had, to basically shut down the Strait. And they’re related, but again, the shutting down of the Strait is now about the credibility of the United States, the capacity of the United States to not let the Iranians call the shots. So at the meeting today that the president led, they talked about how to deal with this. And I can just tell you a few things about it. They agree with Newt Gingrich now. This has to be dealt with. They have to win this fight. And that’s going to take a bit. It’s not going to happen this week. They also have to figure out how to get ships through. And they need to understand from the private ships and the people who make the decision, yes, send that ship through. What do they need? And they need more security and they need insurance. The insurance is relatively easy, but they need more security. So it’s going to be a bit before there’s more security, but it can’t be too long because until that’s opened up and until the markets and the operators, right, related, the people who make the decisions to send the ships through, yes, the crew will go. The captain will take it through. And the world markets that react to all these developments, until they’re comfortable that Trump administration has belatedly, belatedly dealt with this. I believe the war will continue at all likelihood. Again, Donald Trump’s unpredictable. And I believe the United States’ focus will be very much on this. They’re not to exclusion of everything else, but very much on this. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy. How is Iran doing this? I think the United States has some understanding of how Iran’s shutting down the Strait, but they don’t totally understand it and they don’t know how long it’s going to take to fix it. There were smaller steps taken today, the release of the oil reserves by European and other American allies. The United States has to decide if they want to be the only ones to open up the Strait or whether they want to work with other countries on that. That’s an interesting question. China should want it opened back up, even though they’re getting some oil from Iran. Maybe now the Xi summit turns into a discussion about a cooperative effort to reopen the Strait. Should Saudi Arabia be involved? Should Europe be involved? Should Israel be involved? These are symbolic and tactical questions that are going to need to be addressed. The president spoke a lot today. He spoke at an event in Ohio. He spoke at an event in Kentucky. He spoke at a departure from the White House before getting on Marine One. A lot to say about all of this. There’s a lot of concern in the country about a potential terror attack. ABC News had a report that freed people out. CBS News is knocking it down a little bit. We’ll talk about that with our guests. That’s an important thing that happened today. I’m just going through a bunch of stuff here. We’re going to run through a bunch of stuff, a lot of sound from the president and from others. I want to talk a little bit about some of the impressions or ways the people in the media talk about the president that I think just aren’t right, even though I keep trying to correct the record for my colleagues.

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