The Best Iran War Breakdown on the Internet with Aimen Dean & Richard Miniter

Hello, everybody, and a very warm welcome to our very special live update on the situation in Iran. We are super excited, if it's an appropriate word, to bring this to you because we have literally two of the very best guests in the world to discuss this. We have the amazing American investigative journalist, repeated former guest of Trigonometry, of course, Richard Mineta,

who's written a number of bestsellers, including about terrorism, losing Bin Laden, mastermind and leading from behind. And in addition to that, he's based in Washington, DC, from which he can bring us all the inside scoops. And in addition to that, we of course have Eamon Dean,

another former guest of the show, who is a former Al-qaeda member became an mi6 double agent And he is now the co-host of the conflicted podcast with Thomas small another of our former guests Which covers the various conflicts in the Middle East and he's coming to us live from Dubai where he's literally got fighter jets Zooming past him behind him. So welcome to you both gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us We really first and foremost just want to find out, Richard, tell us first of all,

what has happened in the last two days?

Well, it is the largest series of air sorties that Israel has ever conducted and one of the largest in US history as well. So we're looking at, in the last 48 hours, something approaching 2,000 separate sorties, looking at Israel and the United States combined. This air operation is one of the largest in human history. The number of targets on the ground destroyed, they're still doing battle damage assessments, but it is immense. It is interesting what they're not striking.

They're not striking water, power, and other things for the most part, except where those power facilities enable launching of long-range missiles. The most interesting thing to have happened, which suggests that this will be a much longer conflict than necessary, than might be strictly necessary if you think about it in terms of the 12-day war that was waged earlier this, late last year, or you look at the Gulf War, for example, the shock and awe campaign of the Gulf War, is that the Ayatollah Khamenei, before he died, apparently issued standing

orders to individual military units, allowing them to act on their own. Iran's foreign minister, in complaining on state-run broadcasts about the attack on Oman, said we have no control over those units. They're functioning on standing orders. They didn't mean to attack Oman, but which has served as a vital intermediary between the Europeans and the Americans on the one

hand and Iran on the other, long seen as a kind of Switzerland of the Gulf region. For them to be attacked indicates that there's no longer centralized command and control over the military. They're deciding on their own targets and they're in a use it or lose it situation. In other words, if they do not use their rockets and missiles now, their drones now, they may not exist 24, 48 hours from now.

So there is – they're doing their own target selection. What does all that mean strategically? It means that getting control, getting someone to negotiate with who could actually stop the Iranian attacks will be very difficult. The Iranians are very intelligent, very sophisticated, 3D chess playing kind of people and have been for centuries.

And the fact that the Ayatollah figured this out in advance, knew his life may well be taken, and that of his top leadership dispersed authority down precisely to lengthen the war. So this person who has directed attacks against Israelis, Americans and Europeans for more than four decades, even in death, set up an autopilot to allow for the continuing carnage.

This is a bloodstained legacy. They will not be mourned by many outside of the inner circle.

And Richard, before we bring Eamon in, just very quickly, you mentioned that they've got use it or lose it situation. If you don't launch the missiles, they're gonna get destroyed. How many do they have? Have they launched most of them?

Have they launched a tiny fraction of them? How long is this going to carry on?

It's hard to know. I mean, there are almost certainly people at the Ministry of Defense in Israel or at the Pentagon here in the United States who have very accurate counts based on satellite data and on-the the ground intelligence. We don't know what capacity of theirs is functioning.

And it's not just the functioning of the rocket or the missile or the drone itself, but it's the ability to gather targeting information. As we see these missiles go or drones or what have you, these attacks go wider. It indicates that their targeting capability is declining. And of course, those things are being actively found and bombed. But also bear in mind that they have units in caves and underground bunkers that can emerge under the sky, launch,

and then automatically retract back into those underground bunker situations. The Israelis have a limitation. They cannot generally drop bombs of more than 5,000 pounds. So those will require US strikes. And there are, frankly, more targets than there are planes to take them all out. So how many do they have left?

People give all sorts of numbers. I don't think any of those are reliable. And for the people who would be in a position to know, they're not telling us for obvious operational security reasons.

Eamon, give us your perspective, particularly given that you are in Dubai and know the region very well. What is your take on everything that's been going on? What has happened in the Middle East?

Well, I mean, it was coming. I mean, basically it was inevitable that this clash will take place and there was no going back. At the end of the day, the Ayatollah's regime, you know, of the Islamic Republic of Iran, were for decades building a terror network within and outside of Iran in order to challenge the status quo within the region, to challenge both the American, Israeli, Saudi, Egyptian, Turkish power in the region. I mean, first of all, we have to understand that their ambition for a nuclear weapon was

born out of the lessons gained from North Korea and how North Korea was able to withstand or at least, I mean, have this immunity from invasion due to the fact that they developed a nuclear device. And so from 2005 onward, so 20 years, they accelerated their nuclear weapon program. But then of course they were under far more scrutiny than North Korea for all the obvious reasons because of the fact that they have proxies across the region, including Hezbollah, and then they built the Iraqi militias after the US invasion of Iraq, and then they built the

Houthi militia, starting from, some people say, like from 2009, but I do believe it started really as early as 1994 in Yemen. In addition to that, of course, they supported Hamas since 2009 onwards. In my opinion, all of these activities put so much scrutiny on their nuclear program and the fear that if they become a nuclear-armed state, and since they are the largest terror sponsor state in the region and across the world,

then that would make it extremely difficult to counter their expansionist ambitions. I mean, after all, the dear leader of North Korea, whether Kim Jong-un or his father or grandfather, never had any proxy militias or any expansionist ambitions, you know, taking over Japan or establishing a militias in the Philippines. I mean, basically, like, you know, taking over Japan or establishing a militias in the Philippines. I mean, basically, like, you know, they were contained.

The problem with Iran, given the fact that it's 1.7 million square kilometers, it is a 92 million population, and they have an ideological flavor to their constitution that makes it imperative that they export the revolution to other states under the ideology of the Shia Muslim faith which believe in eschatology and the return of a savior, a Messiah, a figure, a Mahdi.

All of these meant that they will use the Shia minorities of the region as a Trojan horse in order to undermine other governments. And so, one way or another, a clash was inevitable, especially with Israel and of course with Israel's most important ally, the United States.

So what happened on February 28th was the inevitable outcome of decades that was of policies, accumulated policies and accumulated strategic milestones that led to that moment.

And Ayman, that being the case, what role did October the 7th play in this?

Was it a catalyst or did it make the inevitable even more inevitable? It did really make the inevitable more inevitable, because if this is what one of the smallest, least supported proxies of Iran could do, and that's from a space of 340 square kilometers, which is the Gaza Strip, if Iran was so reckless that they would send Hamas and the entirety of the population of Gaza on a suicide mission, what would they do with Hezbollah and Lebanon later? What would they do? And of course, remember that during October 7th, the Assad regime was still there in power,

and they could have also stormed from the Golan Heights. So at the end of the day, they realized that, you know what, we have tolerated a state sponsor of terror and the existence of the cancerous phenomenon of the heavily armed and numerous non-state actors who could threaten nation states across the region and wreak havoc across the region. And so there was that moment, that realization that we can no longer, no longer whatsoever, tolerate the presence of non-state actors supported by this ideologically driven, eschatological, you know, high on es eschatology I would say, high on prophecies

of a savior's regime in order to undermine the nation states across the region. Not only Israel, but also Saudi Arabia, it suffered a lot at the hands of the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Bahrain, which suffered instability, and the civil war in Syria and Yemen which combined killed two million people and displaced 25 million others. Many people don't understand that the legacy of Iran in the region is extremely bloody, unlike the unfortunately leftist, rosy vision of Iran,

which present them as freedom fighters or oppressed minority and therefore, I mean, we need to treat them with velvet gloves.

And Ayman, before we move over to Richard, has there been broadly support from the Arab nations for this war?

I mean, when the news of Ayatollah Khamenei being killed were broadcasted across the region. There were celebrations, but only in Iran itself, where people went out and started playing music and dancing on the streets. That's in Iran. Can you imagine the scenes in Syria, where people were distributing sweets and celebrating the fall of the tyrant that fueled their 14 years bloody civil war. And in Yemen, where people are still suffering from the outcome of the

civil war that was fueled by him. And so you can imagine, the people of Saudi Arabia, the people of Bahrain, the people of Kuwait, the people of the UAE. These are people who did not have any favorable view of the Islamic regime in Iran. So there is a broader support under the basis that this is a kind of a chemotherapy that the region needs in order to get rid of a cancerous tumor, which is the institution and the ideals of the Islamic revolution in Iran and its IRGC, the spearhead when it comes to funding and equipping and training terror organizations in the region.

And Richard, I imagine that all of us here are happy to see scenes of people in Iran celebrating this person and this regime, no longer being there to brutalize them, to kill them in the thousands. We see people, of course, all over the world celebrating. But I also think those of us who grew up in the era of the war in Iraq in particular, whenever people utter the words regime change, I sort

of get a bit of a shiver going down my spine and I don't necessarily get that excited about it. You know, and you see, one of the things I'd like for us to discuss as well is where this is going, because I was just looking while you guys were talking at the cal she odds for Reza Pahlavi being the next leader of Iran. It's like 25%. So it doesn't look like that is going to be the direction of travel. So is this a regime change war?

And if it is, what is the next regime actually going to look like?

Well, is it a regime change? Uh, we have to look at, first of all, that Israel and the United States have very different desired end states In Israel, they would love to see Reza Pahlavi or someone like him have a constitutional monarchy that focuses Iran on rebuilding its civil infrastructure, I mean there are massive water shortages. 70% of its provinces are without 24-hour electricity or without ready access to water. Five of the reservoirs that feed

Tehran, which is a city of about 10 million with the surrounding area of about 18 million, five of those reservoirs are at 10% or less capacity. So there's a profound humanitarian catastrophe that was underway before this bombing began, which this bombing will only accelerate. So the Israelis would like to see a peaceful transition with a monarchy that supervises elections and a more modest Iranian state that focuses on solving the problems of its own people.

That does not appear to be the desired end state of the Trump administration. They just simply want an Iran that leaves its neighbors alone. If there can be some rebuilding projects that benefit American and European companies, fine. But the most important element here, which has not been reported, is the CIA has given a no-kill list to the Israelis. A group, we don't know who's on that list,

but five to 10 names, maybe more, of people that are not allowed to target. That indicates to me, and this is just my private interpretation, that the CIA already has someone in mind from the power structure that would take over. That is not a regime change.

That is a pruning and a moderation of the current regime. Now, events on the street may make that CIA change impossible, but the CIA tends to like continuations based on variations rather than wholesale change, because wholesale change is impossible to predict the outcome. So let's look at Iran for a moment, right? So you have, depending on which census numbers you believe,

91, 93 million people. A majority, a large majority report that they are Shia Muslims, but of very different persuasions. Outside of that, who are native Persians, you have a lot of minorities, Azeris, Azerbaijanis, a lot of Kurds,

other ethnic groups as well, a growing number of Christians, a growing number of Zoroastrians. We don't have good numbers on any of this because to report religious conversion is to invite punishment and death under the old regime. But these people have very different ideas

about what they'd like to see take over. Regarding Palavi, who I've met, but it's been a few years, who is a very urbane, educated, liberal-minded man. The Israelis are entirely

enamored of him. The Trump White House appears to actively dislike him as treacherous, double-sided, not understanding that he has to unite factions and make lots of side deals, which means that at different times and different places, he will say different things. This is something that they feel is not businesslike, and they find him as frustrating to deal with

as Zelensky, maybe more so. The Arabs have also, the Arab governments of the Gulf have been alienated by Apollo V when he demanded large sums of money, including payments to his Swiss bank accounts, without a lot of accountability or a plan. So there are. And then the Europeans, aside from the French, also seem a little bit cool to Palavi. So I think the prediction market of 25 percent may be generous.

He doesn't have an outside supporter who seems to like him. On the other hand, the younger people, those under 25, which is a majority of the population in Iran, do seem to like him. They have a, remember these people were not alive when the last Shah was ruling their country.

And so they don't have a nostalgic view, they have an idealistic view. And he may be able to summon them. And if he has a large swell of popular support, it may not matter what dreams the CIA is concocted in its quiet cubicles. If on the so this is very much a jump ball. The Trump people are also looking at political reality in the United States. Somewhere

between a quarter and a third of the of Americans surveyed are in favor of this bombing campaign. The calculation of the Trump people is if this turns into a quick victory that support will jump to 60%. Americans love victory the way the Romans did. And for similar reasons. And a quick victory means the bombing stops.

There is not a prolonged civil war or even much of a civil war at all. And Iran seems to be going on with the business of tending to its own affairs and stopping the financing of proxies to terror attacks. The quickest path there is a Maduro-like solution, but that might be the reality on the ground.

Venezuela, as Francis knows, is a much different country than Iran. Iran has many centers of power. The geography is important here, dividing the country with mountain ranges which form cultural pockets. It has very different numbers of minority, ethnic minorities, and religious minorities that have different views as well. And there are outside groups, such as the Baluch in Pakistan,

who they have cousins, Baluch cousins, across the border in southwest Iran or southeast Iran, rather, who would like to start taking out coastal batteries and elements of the Iranian navy that are laying sea mines to block the Strait of Hormuz and drive up oil and gas prices to extract pain on the West, of course, but they would want some guarantees and some smaller subsidiary sovereignty for the Baluch people inside Iran,

which is not in the CIA's plans. So it's a jump ball. Who knows what's going to happen? But one thing we do know what's going to happen is that the Iranian vision, sorry, the Iranian vision, the Israeli vision and the US vision, three different visions will separate over time.

And they have very different short-term political needs. Israel is probably a longer term view because they're scheduled elections or not for several years. But the US has scheduled elections in November. Early voting begins in mid-September. So the desire for something quick that can be reported as a victory is intense.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are also very short term thinking because they're starved of electricity, of water and increasingly of food. So, there may not be philosopher kings who can design the ideal outcome and we don't know what it'll be.

Well, one vision that wasn't mentioned there, Eamon, is what is the vision of the Gulf Arab nations, which have, as you were describing earlier, I mean everyone bangs on about Israel being behind this but like they ignore the fact that the Saudis were literally on the phone to Trump in the week before going do it now do it now from what we are told there was a an article in the Washington Post. What about the Gulf countries,

what do they want? Well look at the end of the day, the Saudis in particular, who are along with the Emiratis, are the drivers of the overall Sunni Arab states' policy towards Iran. And the policy was always trying to do containment up until 2015. But then after 2015, the containment policy turns out to be completely counterproductive because Iran, after feeling emboldened, the Islamic regime, after being emboldened by the successes they had in building their proxies in Iraq, saving Assad in Syria from, you know, the, from falling during the civil war, and of course by emboldening

Hezbollah. They built up that capability of the Houthis, which then was at the southwestern flank of Saudi Arabia. And suddenly the Saudis found themselves surrounded from three sides. It was always like in the north, which is Iraq, the east, which is Iran, and now suddenly the south, which is Yemen. They always

felt that only one strait was vulnerable, which is the Hormuz strait, and now they have Bab al-Mandab strait to worry about. And suddenly they felt that their energy export security was threatened. They felt that their, in particular also, food security was threatened because they were dependent on overseas imports into Saudi Arabia. But then it's a water security too. I mean, many people don't understand that Saudi Arabia is 95 percent dependent on water desalination.

During the war between Iraq and Iran and the introduction of the ballistic missile, you know, tit for tat fight between Saddam's Iraq and Khomeini's Iran, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at that time realized that, okay, they are attacking each other's oil rigs. What if one of these missiles find their way into one of the three major water desalination plants in the eastern province of the Gulf? We will have a total collapse of society because Saudi Arabia wasn't designed to hold

38 million people. In fact, it's not even designed to have 3 million people based on the water shortage that they have. And that's why King Fahd decided to build 17 more water desalination plants of smaller sizes in the Red Sea, only for the Houthis then to appear on the Saudis' Red Sea flank, threatening the water desalination there. So the Saudis felt since then that only confrontation is the real policy, and this is when the temperature started to rise.

But then, while the Saudis felt that they were frustrated, of course, because of the fact that air campaigns never succeed in dislodging groups like the Houthis. I mean, just look at America with the Taliban in Afghanistan. But nonetheless, they felt that when there was a change of administration from President Trump in the first administration to President Biden, or shall I call it Obama's third term, when that happened, and of course, there was a rather pathetic, rather like basically unbecoming of the United States' desire of restoring the nuclear program agreement, the nuclear agreement, the JCPOA with Iran.

And because of certain figures within the Biden administration, whether it is the former Obama administration figures like Valerie Jarrett or a new figure like Robert Malley in the Biden administration, in order to carry favor with Iran and the Iranian regime at that time, to actually put pressure on the Saudi side to end the war with the Houthis. By then, the Houthis, over eight years' period, had launched more than 1,000 ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones against Saudi Arabia. And all of them were Iranian-made, by the way, and Iranian-smuggled to them. So how do you then pressure the Saudis to stop the war?

The Saudis are saying, we are going to stop the war only when the Houthis give up the access to the sea so they don't threaten international maritime traffic. And just keep this in mind, please. And then if they give up any long range offensive weapons, more than 150 kilometer range, if they do that, we will end the war

and they can form a power sharing agreement with the other Yemeni parties and we will end the war. The Biden administration said that, no, the Houthis will not accept that, but because we have far greater priority is that in a pathetic nuclear agreement that we need with the Iranians, so we're going to stop giving you the munitions that we agreed to supply

you and that you purchased and paid for in good faith. We will not give it to you. So you can't carry out your work. And the Saudis said, you know, by all means, we'll make our own. But then the Biden administration went further, and that was a raft between November and December of 2021,

when they said to the Saudis, well, we're going to stop supplying you with the Patriot missile systems that are necessary to intercept the Houthi ballistic missiles. So you become sitting ducks. And so, and when the Saudis are saying, well, we have enough supply for about six months, seven months, we'll continue the fight.

So by March of 2022, Biden administration gave the biggest stab in the back to the Saudis by saying we're not going to update the software. So you're truly going to be sitting ducks now. Your water, your oil facilities, you know, you're already like in 2019, the Saudis, you know, Saudi Aramco was struck and almost 5.7 million barrels of oil every day for 22 days were lost to the global production. The Biden administration gave the Saudis the trauma of their lives, that you cannot rely on America because America was slavishly seeking the satisfaction of rabid fanatical mullahs in Tehran, favoring them over an ally that has been steadfast

beside them for 75 years. That changed the equation and that's why the Saudis decided that if Iran is so powerful that even America is like kissing the ring and literally asking for forgiveness for what Trump did before in terms of tearing apart that awful nuclear deal, then you might as well do a deal with them. And that's why the Saudis went to China. And by March of 2023, the Chinese brokered a deal between the Saudis and the Iranians

for a detente, for a non-aggression pact. And that was born out of the fact that the Saudis cannot trust any American administration after that of betraying them, just in order to seek a deal with the Iranians over the national security interests of the Saudis. What happened? What changed?

Trump came back. And what changed everything was the B-2s in 24 June last year smashing the nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. That changed the mindset of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, MBS, that aha, okay, maybe now there has been a significant shift in American policy. We can now trust that there will be a regime, not change necessarily, where they were looking

at an actual regime containment that could actually, like, you know, finally push them back into their own borders in a way that would deter them from interfering in their neighbors' affairs. And that's why the UAE and Saudi Arabia, despite their differences in Yemen and Sudan and elsewhere, they were united in the fact that it's now or never. And so when the Saudis saw the two aircraft carriers and the biggest buildup in the Middle East since 2003, they realized that it's now or never.

And they agreed with the Israelis on this.

But that being the case, Ayman, you outlined what was happening beautifully in Saudi and the other countries. It's still one hell of a gamble, isn't it?

It is. I mean, one of the things I've been talking to people, of course, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE and other diplomats and ambassadors and security services, intelligence services, and they tell you, we are worried about refugees coming across the water, like what happened after the Iranian revolution in 1979, and we could have a destabilizing civil war, we have ethnic makeup. But I disagreed with them in a sense that, look, civil wars generally in the Middle East

happen because of external pressures are actually pulling the country in question apart. But in this case, there is almost a consensus among Iran's neighbors, Pakistan, Turkey, and the Gulf states, that Iran post-revolution or post-regime collapse should remain united. They wanted to be united, that's the first thing, because a divided one will be a catastrophe for the region because of ethnic and sectarian strife will tear the rest of the region apart

because of it. Just look what happened in Syria. We don't want a Syria ten times over. However, it was inevitable because of the fact that the regime built itself over the bureaucracy of the Shah. So it built itself layer after layer, but then these layers were really rotten and they're going to collapse at any time. The reality is the fact that the Iranian society, if you want to really

get simplified, I'm simplifying it here. If you want to simplify the sentiment, 25% of the Iranian population would gladly kill the regime and the Ayatollahs. And 25% of the society would gladly kill for the regime and the Ayatollahs. They are the other end of the spectrum, the zealots, the fundamentalists. And then you have the 50% in the middle who want to live. They don't want to kill or kill for someone or die for someone. So they are the ones who always were looking to live and they are trying to, they are pragmatists. One of the things about the Iranian people, whether Persians or Assyrians or Kurds or

Lurs or Arabs or Baluch, they are amazing. They are actually people who are pragmatists. However, they want to live. The problem here is that exactly in this four letters, L-I-V-E, they want to live, is where the regime was hit in an Achilles heel spot. In our podcast, Conflicted, on 21st of October episode, I was talking about the fact that since I was a banker once, yeah I know, basically I was choosing one form of terrorism to another into banking, but I was a banker once, I was the head of the financial intelligence unit in the Middle East for one of the global banks and one of the things I was looking at is stability linked

to currency fluctuation. And so I was looking at the fact that on the eve of the end of the 12 Days War, the Iranian currency was 600,000 rials per dollar. Then of course on 21st October, with my co-host Thomas, we were discussing the fact that the currency broke through the $1 million per dollar. I told him that, Thomas, I'm worried because if it passes, and that's all in that

episode of 21st October, I said, if it passes $1.3 million per dollar, that's a mass protest territory. And then, of course, 28 January, sorry, 28 December of 2025, it passed 1.35 and this is when the bazaaries, you know, the trading classes, the business classes, I mean they called for the stripes and the protests because that's it, this is now incompetence of the regime. And because of the perceived incompetence of the regime, not even perceived, it's real, they are a bunch of incompetent people when it comes to managing the economy, they actually invited that on themselves by not only degrading the living standards

of the people, but also without giving the people some light at the end of the tunnel that we know what we are doing and we know how to negotiate with the US to lift the sanctions or to ease them in order to improve the living standards. No, they were just arrogant in their belief that the people will follow them no matter what, even in the darkness of a tunnel that has no light at the end of it. And that's where things went too bad. Now, I said in that episode also, I said if it reaches 1.6 million, that's a civil war territory.

Now it is at the moment standing at 1.6, 1.65, possibly 1.7 even. It means that they have mishandled the economy completely. And that's why we need to understand that the fact of the matter is that the Iranian people after the 12 Days War ended, they woke up on a reality here, is the fact of the matter is that the Iranian people, after the 12 days war ended, they woke up on a reality here, is the fact that the regime, since 2005 until 2025, these 20 years, they wasted roughly $2 trillion of lost GDP, accumulated GDP losses every year,

30 billion, 40 billion, 60 billion, 80 billion, every year they were losing these figures due to sanctions over a nuclear program that hardly cost about 20 or 30 billion dollars. And in addition, they spent during this period 300 billion dollars on Hamas, on Hezbollah, on the Houthis, on the propane acid regime, on the Syrian civil war. $2.3 trillion to money-savvy Iranians is so much to take. But they were always told it's for the pride of the nation. We're going to be a nuclear power. We're going

to have this beautiful, kind of like in a mushroom cloud in a test of nuclear strength in front of everyone. We flex our muscles. But then it all went up in dust when, you know, President Trump authorized the use of the GBU-57 bunker busters. And these bunker busters, like, you know, basically did not only just penetrate deep into the mountain and collapse it over there in rich uranium, it collapsed it over their hopes and ambitions and they realized

we are led by donkeys and idiots. And as a result, I mean, we lost everything. So it's like the children who saw their compulsive, drunken gambling in a father in a Vegas casino, wasting the entire family silver on a hope and a prayer and a prophecy that one day they will win the jackpot, only to become jackass, unfortunately. So that's why they were angry and they went out into the streets.

Look, Ayman, I quite agree with you on this, but I think one part of the puzzle that we haven't addressed yet is the Islamic Republican Guard. And because you look at them and you think to them, and you look at that, the number of people that they've got in that army, anywhere from 150 to 200,000 people. You've also got the secret police, the regular police. I mean, this is going to take one hell of an effort to try and defeat these people,

surely.

It's 265,000, you know, if we look at the entirety of their force. Because I remember the IRGC is multiple factions. It's not only one faction, but I always simplify it by the economy faction, the money faction I would call it basically, and the real zealot faction. The reality is that the IRGC controls 40 and up to 45% of the entire economy thanks to

the sanctions and thanks to the way they created these companies. I mean, I used to be a financial investigator, like, you know, I mean, in counterterrorism finance and so I used to see, you know, a lot of their companies in Khatam Al-Anbiya, Al-Shaheed Foundation, looking at their infiltration into, you know, more than 100 sectors from telecommunications, the medical sector, pharmaceuticals, export, import, construction, and of course, above everything else, the energy sector,

gas and petrochemicals and oil. And when you look at everything they do, it was about enriching the IRGC to become a very powerful benefactor of all of the proxies they have across the region under the umbrella of the Quds Force, which is a part of the IRGC responsible for their external armies, the armies as a whole, Hezbollah, Houthis, and the Iraqi militias, and Hamas and all of that. At some point, numbered 700,000 people combined within the

entire Middle East under arms outside of the state control. That was scary. But then also, what is their mission is? If you look at the IRGC, the IRGC doesn't stand for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It stands for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And their entire mission is not only just because they have fanatical allegiance to the Supreme Leader, because remember, by the way, that the Article 5 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, which is weird, by the way, you would be surprised who the head of the state is. The head of the way, you would be surprised who the head of the state is.

The head of the state, you would expect, will be either the president or the supreme leader himself. But the reality is that neither of them are the head of the state, according to the Article 5 of the Iranian constitution. The head of the state is actually a five-year-old boy who went missing 1,200 years ago, which is the figure of the Imam Mahdi. And, you know, and of course for me, and for you and for everyone else, like, you know,

basically listening, like, you know, that's a bit weird, but for them it is faith. It's an article of faith, you know, and, you know, okay, I respect their, you know, faith, but not to the extent where it becomes that a disputed figure, basically, whether real or mythical, becomes the head of a state in a modern nation-state in the 21st century, and that who then becomes the head of the state on his behalf will be the jurist, the grand jurist, the grand cleric who would be the steward on his behalf until his much anticipated return.

And because of that allegiance that the IRGC give to that figure of the supreme leader, the deputy on behalf of that either mythical or religious figure, depending on where you sit, which side of the fence you sit on, you end up with a fanatical zeal,

the readiness to kill 30,000 people of your own people in two days, on the 8th and 9th of January this year, to defend that regime, because you do believe that it's a divinely ordained regime, you know, and that there is a blueprint that if this regime survives, it's the regime that would be there to give the banner and to be the vessel through which the empire of this much-awaited messiah

will be established and to vanquish all the other rivals in the region with his divine powers. I mean, I know it sounds foreign to you, foreign to me, but remember, when people tell me, oh, they are rational at the end of the day, I say no. They are pragmatists sometimes, but they're never rational. And anyone who falls into the illusion that they are rational will hit the wall, just like Trump said, you know, I don't know why they are not surrendering.

I don't know why they are not coming for a deal. Well, because they are not rational. Don't deal with them as rational.

That being the case, Richard, thank you for your patience. It strikes me that France's question was exactly right, but Eamon covered the one side of it. I'd love you to cover the American side of it. Francis said, this is an extraordinary gamble. And given what Eamon has just described about the dedication, the religious dimension, everything else, is President Trump gambling his presidency

and his legacy on this? And is this a big risk to him and to his entire administration?

War is always a big risk, but sometimes not going to war is a bigger risk. I think that Trump chose a time well before the midterms, so he's got off ramps and options, so that this does not dominate the headlines in the critical voting. The view from Washington is that there is a three seat majority in the Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Three elections could turn control of the House. If the House is lost to the Republicans, the next, the last half of the Trump administration will be entirely investigations, impeachments, paranoid claims and justified claims, right? Unfortunately, right? The administration is staffed with human beings and some of those human beings are flawed.

And so nothing will happen. So he, the president needs foreign policy victories, and most importantly, foreign policy quiet so that he can focus on domestic reforms that would win votes. Because ultimately, there's never been a case in American history that I'm aware of,

including the Vietnam War, that foreign policy was the number one issue for American voters. So that's one piece of it. Another is that I think the president is aware, certainly his advisors are, and I've talked to those people, that what's called 12-er Shia Islam, this particular sect of Shia Islam, let's not point paint with such a broad brush

most Shia do not share this perspective, but the Ayatollah how many absolutely did and his followers among the Houthis in Yemen absolutely do and many aspects of Hezbollah many of the factions of the Hezbollah share this. What is important about this?

You've heard men talking about the missing imam. They believe that a kind of messiah, Hamadi, will return in the form of this five-year-old boy who disappeared 1,200 years ago, apparently down a well, and that to bring about his return,

you need the end

of the world. So giving these people atomic weapons means they will want to end the world for deeply religious reasons and see themselves as glorious until that final moment, kind of like beneath the planet of the apes in which the whole world explodes. This, these are the absolute worst people to have atomic bombs, people who actually want to use them. Other more normal countries that have atomic bombs

use them in a different way. They use them by threatening to use them and therefore never using them. That is the real power of an atomic bomb. We could do this. So instead, make a deal with us.

That is why, for example, the West has not fully backed Ukraine in the Biden years. They were afraid of Russia launching atomic attacks. Also, the Iranians have studied the Libyans, the Ukrainians, and the South Africans. Those are the only three powers that have declared to have and believably had atomic

weapons. Other nations claim to have atomic weapons that didn't. Right. But of those that we absolutely know for certain had atomic weapons and gave them up. How did the rulers of those countries turn out? Well, from the Iranian perspective, the South African, the white South African government

lost power. You could argue that was a good outcome or a bad outcome, but that's the result. The Libyans gave up their weapons that they seemed to have, including chemical and biological weapons as well. And whereas Qaddafi now, he died an ignominious death on the side of the road And his country's been set by civil war And of course, we know what happened in Ukraine after its 1994 treaty to give up the atomic weapons that Soviets had left behind

in that country So they said one we need to have atomic weapons and two we need to never give them up The North Koreans have learned the same lesson about not giving up weapons, and they will not give up easily. But they do not have a religious reason to bring about the end of the world. So if you are looking at this, so what is Trump playing at?

Ending a threat to mankind from a regime that has shown great willingness to kill millions of its own people, if we add the Iran-Iraq war, these various bombings, the starvation that has occurred in many of the more distant provinces, the malnourishment that has accrued in others, and then the massive terrorist attacks.

Also greatly overlooked is another thing, which is Putin's letter following the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. He called it a cynical murder by the US, but read the rest of his remarks. He clearly saw Iran as an ally. Iran wasn't always the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, state sponsor.

The USSR was. Terrorism is not a Muslim invention. It is a Russian invention. It is the Novemberists of the 1830s, the anarchists of the 1860s in Russia. It becomes a tool of the czar in the 1890s using the Armenians against the Turks,

which ultimately led to the genocide carried out by the Turks. But the Turks had a long line of atrocities against themselves to point to in justification. I'm not saying it makes it right. I'm just describing the history.

And then under the Soviets, terrorism becomes a key foreign policy tool. In the Middle East, in Europe, look at the Red Army faction, the Beitermeinhof guys, look at South America, and look at the weathermen in the United States and others, right? They clearly think they can amplify their power through proxy forces. And so the Iranians fully absorbed these Russian lessons.

And don't forget also there were 300, until recently, 300 Russian engineers at Pushehr working on their atomic weapons program. Those are the ones we know about. We also know that the Iranians manufactured drones for the Russians to use in Ukraine and elsewhere. So there was, some of the people who do not want a regime change in Iran are Russia and China,

is this will put them on their back feet. Now this would be, if it is accomplished, something that Trump can point to as a victory. This massively decreases Russia and to a lesser extent, China's influence in the region. If a non sectarian regime takes over, even if it's composed of former military elements and is not a Democratic dream, because also bear in mind, Trump is making a distinction which his critics simply don't understand.

The difference in rebuilding a regime in America's image versus in its interest. Image means it's a copy of, you know, Westminster and Washington. There are elections and by-elections and neutral counting of votes and independent judiciary and property rights and all these wonderful Anglo-Saxon institutions. This is not what they were attempting to do under the Bush years in Iraq, but it is certainly

what the critics charged them with. In fact, when I talked to Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul told me straight up, he said, our best outcome for Iraq in 10, 15 years is Romania in 1995. So they were much more realistic in their planning, the neocons, than we've been told. But the image, regime change, is carbon copy of Britain and America. But that's impossible given the people and the pressures acting on those people.

But that's America's image. Now let's look at its interest. Its interest is much simpler. An Iran that is not at war with its neighbors through proxy terrorist forces or directly, right? In any way.

An Iran that is not a humanitarian catastrophe.

Iran has today one of the highest inflation rates in the world, right? Iran that is not a humanitarian catastrophe.

Iran has today one of the highest inflation rates in the world, right? And as Eamon said, inflation always predicts civil war if it's hyperinflation. So we're not gonna see boots on the ground in any, certainly if it's the Trump administration has its way. But somebody is going to have to stabilize the currency and perhaps dollarize Iran, either

through a currency board, which is unlikely given how rotten its institutions are, probably complete dollarization, replacement of the currency with the US dollar. That's easier in Iran than it sounds because their exports are mostly, they receive dollars for oil and gas and they pay their, they import electricity from Turkey and Azerbaijan and they pay for those in US dollars. So moving and with a, with a nearly worthless currency now, and it may well be that the Israelis have been helping by counterfeiting currency inside

Iraq. Remember a million Iraqis go into Iran every day to go to work and then go home at night. So it's very easy to carry counterfeited currency into that country. So but their own mismanagement of the currency. So stabilizing the currency and enabling people to have electric power, food and water, stability and not a threat to their neighbors.

That's what that those are the two things you need to maintain an American interest in the region. That doesn't mean that there is a democratic utopia. That doesn't mean that all the problems of Iran are solved as if by a magic wand. It means that Iran is no longer a tiger devouring its neighbors.

It's a den of wolves who stay in their den of wolves.

Well, that makes a lot of sense. And you laid that out beautifully. But I think my question remains because I guess what you're describing is, you know, you take out Darth Vader and you install his lieutenant who's not quite as bad, right?

But Eamon's point is, well, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, these are fanatics. And who is it in a country like Iran, where there's 200 something of them with guns that is likely to take over once you take out the top leadership, it's probably not going to be, you know, as you suggest, it's

not going to be some some some liberal minded person. So is it actually realistic, even to have what you're describing, which is a regime that is in America's interest, a la what happened in Venezuela. When you take out the top guy and you replace them with another person of the same ilk, who's just going to be much more compliant and much more friendly, is that actually likely in Iran? That's why I'm asking you if Trump is gambling.

Well, all wars gamble, but he is absolutely gambling because if you leave it up to the Iranian people to decide and different Arab and non-Arab outside groups provide them with arms, you're going to have one of several outcomes. Either the Mujahideen al-Kaq, the MEK, takes over. Those are people that the U.S. can work with, but it would be a mistake to call them liberal-minded humanitarians.

They have a severe creed of their own. There is a smaller chance that the Shah, the son of the Shah, can take over. There are ethnic groups that may want to have control over their own regions. I think the chance of a civil war is very high unless somebody can establish order very quickly and have the loyalty of the military to do it, which is less ideological than the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

And the Israelis are already at the decision that you just have to kill as many of these people as possible. You can't change their minds. You have to stop their minds. The U.S. is not there. And the fact that it's giving a no-kill list, which I don't think is publicly known,

indicates that the U.S. has a very different view. They would like this to be over as soon as possible. A four-week campaign is what the Israelis were able to get out of them, but if there was a shorter campaign option, I'm sure that Trump would take that. The threat needs to be neutralized, not utopia created.

And Eamon, do you think a four week campaign maximum is realistic? Because to my completely untrained eye, I think this could potentially last for years.

Look, there is no way, I mean, absolutely no way of having a more pragmatic leader in Iran without getting rid of the IRGC. Because the IRGC call all the shots, in terms of military ideology. They are the elite fighting corps. It's like saying basically that I'm going to install a Roman emperor against the will of the Praetorian Guard. Good luck with that. Without the help of the Praetorian Guard, without their agreement,

there would be no emperor. Sorry to interrupt you, and you're the expert here, but I think even that does it disservice to what we're actually talking about, because the Praetorian god on many occasions

murdered the emperor and installed the one that they preferred. But what you're talking about is

a religious fanaticism...

And then murdered that one.

And then murdered that one. What you're talking about is also a religious fanaticism on top of that, which I think is much harder still, surely. Exactly. And that's why I'm saying that the reason why we have now four people controlling Iran at the moment, you know, you have the head of the judiciary who is bloodthirsty in a nasty person who handed in a thousands, if not even tens of thousands of death sentences in his entire career. Then you have Ayatollah Arafi, who is an extremely hardline jurist, and he is now the spare,

you know, Ayatollah, if you can call him. Then you have the extremely useless President Pazashkian. And then you have, of course, the, you know, the wily, the, that fox, Ali Larjani, who is a man of all seasons, the Thomas Cromwell of Iran, and these four people are now controlling Iran. First of all, Ali Larjani as the head of the National Security Council, but the other three, the president, Ayatollah Arafi, who is the spare Ayatollah, and the head of the judiciary.

These are forming the three-member interim leadership council until a new Ayatollah is confirmed and the indications at the moment that maybe even they will confirm Ayatollah Arafi as the current leader. Why? As a permanent supreme leader, because he is the IRGC top pick. And the IRGC, as long as they call the shots in Iran, there will be no reformist,

there will be no someone who will act in America's interest, I'm afraid. And so anyone who comes and tries even to act in America's interest, he will be murdered before even they take office. That's why we have to understand that without dismantling, absolutely dismantling, uprooting the IRGC as an institution and as a fighting force from Iran, there is no hope for the future.

It is a state within a state. It is a cancerous tumor inside Iran. And without taking it down, there is no future for that country.

And so how do you...

Richard, you look like you wanted to weigh in. Feel free if you did.

Yeah, a couple of things. One is the regime is humanitarian catastrophe for its own people. But those people are largely, because they're Iranians and they are very Iranian and they're Iranian-ness, riven into factions and hard to unite. And they're unarmed for the most part. So who is on that no-kill list is the question the White House press corps should be asking.

I suspect Laroujani is on that list, that the CIA would like to work with him. That will not lead to, it might lead to a more tempered regime, but it will not lead to the regime that all of the democratic performers are dreaming about. He might weaken the dress requirements for women, which are massively unpopular. There's a great video out of a morality policewoman being forced off a train in Tehran a couple days ago by a crowd of women, some of whom had completely uncovered hair.

So there did the among the educated of which there are a lot in Tehran, a great hatred of these so-called Islamic rules, which are not in the Quran, by the way. These are the interpretations of Ayatollahs over the years. So he may do some things there.

He's certainly going to have to do some economic reforms. And when he's pressed to undo the ties to various terror groups, he's unlikely to comply because that's the only counter-weapon he has. Also accelerating this is two things which have not come up before. One is current experience in America, and the second is American history, quick American history.

In 1979, 52 American diplomats were held for 444 days. When I asked a senior, basically the head of, or the deputy head of the Iran desk in the State Department in the Obama years, whether these two numbers meant anything to him, 52 and 444, he just shook his head like, these are random numbers.

I said, okay, how old are you? And he says, 37. I said, well, for everyone over 45, these numbers are in their brain for the rest of their lives. That is how many hostages were held for how long. And the national dishonor, and there was Ted Koppel on network television, which had a big audience in 1979,

held a special every single night called America Held Hostage. And it had the number of days that this has gone on. And it frequently had video of blindfolded American diplomats and American Marines being beaten. There is an almost Roman sense of American honor

that needs to be slaked. So anybody over 45 or over 50 who's looking at the Iran situation, that is also in their field of vision. They remember that. So the amount of sympathy for this regime

among those who are over 45 in America is a negative number for the most part, right? So unless you're highly ideologically motivated, even then, right, the dislike of this regime is intense. So American history also influences current American experience.

So we had a stabbing and shooting attack on the Washington DC Fault Way, which appears to be linked to an Islamic militant who may have been motivated by Iran, all the facts have not come out. And then we had an attack in Austin, Texas with a guy wearing a shirt that says property of Allah and underneath that shirt,

an Iranian Islamic revolutionary flag. And we have the FBI admitting that there are some 700 Hezbollah, not Iranian, just Hezbollah terrorist cells, sleeper cells that are believed to be in the United States, not very few of which are under direct surveillance.

So as these proxy attacks increase in the United States, the American thirst for war will go up massively. And so this will become a majority. If these attacks continue and Iran is seen as to be behind them, the ability to end the war halfway, the way the CIA would like to do it, in three or four weeks and have their guy, Larajani, whoever their nominee is, run things, that may not be politically possible. If you're killing Americans in America, the political calculus will instantly change.

And since the Iranians have lost centralized control, both of the terror networks and of their military units, this might not be within the Iranians' control either. In other words, say Larijani or one of his ilk is put in power, he may not be able to stop them any longer. This may in fact have been the design of the Ayatollah before his death, the kind of dead man switch to prevent peace after his death. So is it a gamble, Constantine? it is absolutely a gamble on multiple levels

But it might have been a bigger gamble to do nothing

Yes

That being the case and we're talking about American attitudes to war Surely when they start seeing servicemen coming home in coffins, that is going to affect all of America, but particularly the MAGA America First element of Trump's base, which is an incredibly large part of it.

Yes, but this is a very popular misunderstanding even in America. Americans are not turned off by body bags. They're turned off by people dying for no reason. If there's a clear cause that the American people think is just, then the World War II death tolls did not deter people

from supporting the efforts against Germany and Japan, right? It's where these political goals seem hazy and not directly tied to US interest. If there are more terror attacks, if this is what they were, you know, the evidence is still emerging, these could be volunteer efforts by random lone individuals.

It is possible, right? But it is more likely that it is organized at some level by the Iranians. If these continue, then just like Pearl Harbor, just like 9-11, the American interest in war will go up massively. We are not Europeans. We do not tolerate mayhem caused by foreign actors

against innocent civilians, especially women and children. That is simply not tolerated by a large number of Americans. And so Trump's ability to end the war, his faunted off-ramp, may politically disappear if the terror attacks increase in number or in lethality. That is a much bigger gamble, and it might be political risk in stopping the war before the American people feel that security and safety has been returned. And if these terror attacks are, if they are directed by Iran, and if they are, if they continue, two big ifs,

then nothing less than complete eradication of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard will be the desired outcome. So this is a mouse calculation by the Iranians of an enormous amount.

Well, it sounds like this is going to potentially run and run and really will be a thing that could have a huge impact on geopolitics, on American politics, on the Trump presidency. And we've got five minutes left. And I want to touch on geopolitics before I do. I think our audience would have been enjoying this so far.

And I just want to remind them, AIM and DEAN, the Conflicted podcast, they can go and listen and check that out. And of course, Richard, with you, losing Bin Laden, Mastermind, Leading from Behind, and a whole bunch of other very successful books that you've written about issues that really very closely to do with this.

So I hope people go and check both of your work out after this. But the final issue that I think we should tackle before we wrap up is the geopolitics of it. We recorded an interview with Canadian opposition leader Pierre Polya this morning with Francis. His view was the US is effectively engaging in what you might, he didn't use the term proxy war, but he did feel that dealing with Iran in this way is a direct anti-Chinese dominance move,

anti-Russian dominance move. Eamon, you're shaking your head, Richard, maybe just briefly, very briefly, a minute and a half each on the geopolitics of this. Is this about Russia and China? Is this just about the Middle East? And what is likely to be the geopolitical impact of

all of this? You want me to go first?

Yeah, please.

90 seconds, Eamon.

90 seconds. Okay.

First of all... Imagine you're on the BBC, mate.

You've got 90 seconds and I'll interrupt you seven times. No problem at all. I'm used to it. Well, look here. First of all, we have to understand that the Iranian regime established proxies, established terror cells all across the world, with Hezbollah of course, basically in places from Latin America, West Africa, the United States from Dearborn, Michigan,

all the way to Romania and Eastern Europe, all the way to Mauritius where they have their banking empire. So at the end of the day, it's not about China or Russia, it's about the fact that Iran itself is a gigantic beast of terror networks, money laundering networks worth about 74 billion dollars a year. You are talking about a radicalization movement that is trying to subvert Islam and the Islamic nations. You have a movement that is actually within the IRGC

that's trying to swallow their neighbours, which could upset, you know, especially when their neighbours and with Iran together, they control about 60% of the world's oil reserves, 40% of the world's natural gas reserves. This is a threat to global, you know, energy security and energy safety. When you say America first, America cannot be first at home

unless if it is first in the world. And therefore, you cannot allow a regime like this to threaten the safety and stability of the global energy markets for ideological reasons

that have no place in the realm of rational thinking and logic. And the idea that it's about Russia and China, no. Iran is as big a threat, if even more, than Russia and China combined. And it needs to be dealt with as a problem by itself, not because it is linked to either Russia or China.

Okay, Richard, your final thoughts, particularly on the geopolitics of all of this?

Yeah, so let's just focus on Russia and China. If the regime changes in Iran, the drone production for Russia disappears. That has an enormous impact on the Ukraine war. This may be a piece of a puzzle for Trump to get to peace in Ukraine, and it may force the Russians' hand. That's one. Two, the source of cheap oil, with sanctioned oil, the Chinese are able to buy Iranian oil at below market price. We've now seen in the last month a brand new relationship with India.

The Trump administration has taken the eye out of bricks with India being the eye, and the Indian Navy is boarding, and in some cases sinking, the shadow fleet of Russian and Iranian oil tankers. That will increase and be increasingly coordinated.

The ability of the regime to fuel China will go down, and then with the change of regime, it will cease to exist. What does this mean? This means that China will not have the oil and gas that it needs from Iran to cross the Taiwan Strait or to do other things. And its economy will almost certainly slow down.

So its ability to menace its neighbors will slow down. So for those China hawks at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration, they see that undermining Iran is key to weakening China. If you look at what Rubio, the Secretary of State, has been doing in South America, not just in Venezuela, but the ongoing negotiations with the president of Colombia, who will in the short – the next few months almost certainly step down – his wife has fled to Sweden

and is seeking asylum in that country – you will start to see changes in Nicaragua and in Cuba and eventually Mexico. That also pushes China and Russia out of the Western Hemisphere. Maybe they can hold a toehold in Bolivia and in Brazil, but even those are fragmentary, right? So if you look at it on the world,

if you spread out the world map and you see what they're doing, Iran is the latest move in a continuing of chess moves to fundamentally weaken Russia and China and eventually to turn them against each other. This is a level of almost Nixonian, Kissingerian

complexity being done by eight people, one of whom is Trump, who only talk to themselves, and that includes Rubio, Hegseth, and so on, the so-called Gang of Eight,

Suzy Weiss, and so on. But this is a very complicated chess move. Critics tend to look at these things as isolated episodes and then try to make historical parallels. Oh, this will be another Stalingrad.

This will be another Iraq. There'll be another Afghanistan, and so on. They simply do not. They have not spread out the world map and put pins on the map to see all of the different moves being made, to see the pattern that is obvious only at the highest level.

This is a fundamental recalibration of global geopolitics against Russia and China. Iran is just a piece of it.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and expertise with us. And thank you so much for tuning in and watching it. We had tens of thousands of people watching this live. There'll be hundreds of thousands who watch it in the final analysis,

if not millions, and listen to it. Thank you for being here. Please hit the like button and leave a comment so more people see that this has been here. And thank you for being with us for an hour and a bit. Richard, Eamon, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure to get your knowledge and to help to understand a little bit more of what's going on. With that, we'll be signing off and we'll see you soon.

what's going on. With that, we'll be signing off and we'll see you soon.

Thanks, guys.