What comes next if Iran agreement finalized?

Andrew Borene joins us now. He's a senior fellow at the National Security Institute and a former senior intelligence official. Thanks for being here. So let's assume this agreement is finalized. What still needs to be done to reach an actual deal? Well, I think we're looking at an extension of 60 days of kind of this ceasefire that is somewhere betwixt an overt, all-out war and an enforceable peace. And I think that basically during that 60 days is when we would see a finalization of some red lines that the US has set all along-- no nuclear weapons for Iran, no further enrichment, and a pathway for Iran to offload the hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium that would enable them to create or weaponize those missiles that they already have. How confident are you that this is a significant step forward? Well, I mean, I think we've seen this approach a precipice many times in the past several months. And I think all analysts watching this would prefer to not see a massive war. And we're dealing with a very hostile Iranian regime that does not adhere to the same norms that Western democracies do. They murdered 30,000 of their own people. They still hunt down people that have a Starlink terminal that is trying to communicate free-world information in or ground truth out of Iranian territory. And so I think that whatever happens-- say the best case, this 60-day MOU goes into effect. Verification and protection of commercial and civilian shipping is going to be of the utmost importance, and, hopefully, an international coalition is then enabled to come in and help with the defensive work to protect that truly free trade. I want to ask you about President Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton. He's US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Came into that role without experience in criminal law. Prior to that, he had been an attorney specializing in capital raising and mergers and acquisitions. Unclear how much national security experience he has. US law says, "Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise." So how critical is this role, and can it be filled by someone with a mostly legal background? Well, first off, I'll just start that Mr. Clayton has actually already been Senate confirmed in the past, with a number of Democrats supporting and about 2/3 of the Senate fully supporting when he became a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Modern war fighting, modern hybrid warfare, and exactly the types of things that we see with metastasized terror from Iran as a state sponsor, Russian proxy warfare in Europe, Chinese influence operations in the Pacific, all of those things have massive financial and criminal connectivity underpinnings. So I think that having an SEC chairman with that expertise may be extremely valuable in the director of national intelligence role. Add to that the fact that he has been a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. He's worked national security cases. I would argue that is an individual that would probably bring some stability not only to the Office of Director of National Intelligence but perhaps also bring a framework of expertise with really the legal expertise, the financial markets, illicit-finance understanding. And, frankly, we're going to see a lot of things like criminal organizations and terrorists trying to transfer wealth or move resources using crypto or nontraditional assets. I think that that type of experience might be extremely valuable for what we're going to face in the next 5 to 10 years in national security.

All right, Andrew Borene, thank you.