Two former U.S. national security advisors agree that American military strikes on Iran are more likely than not. They disagree on the odds - and neither can explain what the strikes would achieve.

H.R. McMaster put the probability at 80 percent. Jake Sullivan set it at 60. Both spoke on the World Class podcast at Stanford University, where host Colin Kahl observed that Trump is deploying what the president calls an "armada" to the Middle East. As "Hvylya" reports, McMaster outlined a scenario of strikes targeting the IRGC, nuclear sites, and drone factories, while Sullivan raised a sharper question: to what end?

Sullivan traced the chain of events that led to this moment. Trump went on social media and told Iranian protesters "help is on the way." Millions took to the streets. The regime then killed 30,000 people in 48 hours. "The whole impetus behind military action was about supporting the protesters, and it has now shifted to being coercive towards trying to get a nuclear deal," Sullivan said. He called the situation "a bit mushy" and pointed to last year's Operation Midnight Hammer as evidence of the problem: "President Trump said the nuclear program was 'totally obliterated.' Now we are talking about the nuclear program again six months later."

McMaster took a harder line. He said the Trump administration "will not accept anything short of no enrichment" and that any deal would also have to cover missiles and support for proxy organizations. He argued the 2015 nuclear deal "allowed the IRGC to fill its coffers" and helped build "that ring of fire around Israel so they could light it on October 7th." Beyond strikes, McMaster called for diplomatic isolation: "Kick out every Iranian embassy in the world."

Sullivan countered that without a deal, the United States faces an indefinite cycle. "We could hit them again, yes. We could degrade them. It is unlikely we are going to cause regime change through the air," he said. "If you got a deal, you put the program in a box, you get verification, and you are not constantly in this position where you have to be lining up to take out enriched material or centrifuges or missiles." The core problem, Sullivan said, is that the administration "has not resolved internally" what the objective of strikes would be - whether to degrade Iran's programs, destabilize the regime, or simply punish it for the massacres.

Earlier, we reported: Zeihan Explains Why the US Will Likely Bomb Iran Within Weeks.