Professor David Gibbs starts from Trump's own words.
The president openly fears becoming the next Herbert Hoover, the man who presided over a crash, and Gibbs thinks that fear is the whole game.
Reignite the war, drain the last of the oil reserves, and economic catastrophe is what waits.
So the likeliest path, in his telling, is bluster and pinprick strikes followed by a quiet retreat into some version of the MOU.
Where he gets pointed is on who's actually aggressive here.
Iran's moves, the Houthis, Hezbollah, the tollbooth on Hormuz, he reads as defensive, a country bracing against powerful enemies and funding its own recovery.
The expansionist talk, he argues, runs the other way: it's Washington and its allies openly musing about breaking Iran apart the way the Soviet Union came undone, even floating the same for Russia.
His forecast for the region carries an uncomfortable twist.
Less American power, he believes, means less violence overall, not more.
The quieter the US footprint, the less reason Iran has to squeeze the Bab el-Mandeb, and the less reason Saudi Arabia has to arm the Houthis' enemies.
The catch sits in one man's temperament.
All of it holds, he says, unless Trump decides he simply cannot let Iran be seen to win.
