Abbas Amanat

Certainly in the case of the Palestinians.

Or for that matter, it's not Palestine.

It's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Lebanon with Hezbollah

It's the Islamic Republic's involvement in Syria with Bashar Assad, its involvement in other parts of the world, perhaps even Yemen, that all of them creates extraterritorial responsibilities or interventions, unnecessary interventions,

that ultimately is not in favor of best interest of the Iranian people or Iran as a country.

Iran has never been involved in this kind of politics before of the Islamic Republic.

So in a sense, the Iranian regime, it seems to me, by going to the extreme, try to create for itself a space

that it did not have or did not deserve to have within the politics of the region.

So in other words, that has become part of the tool, kind of an instrument for, if you like to call it, some kind of an expansionism of the regime.

In parts of the world where it can see there is a possibility

for its presence, for its expansion.

Of course, historically speaking, Iran ever since 15th century, I think that's the earliest example I can see,

in early modern times, has always a tendency of moving in the direction of not only what is today the state of Iraq, but further into the eastern coast of Mediterranean.

So that's a long-term ambition that has been in the cards as far as Iran as a strategic unit is concerned.

But by no means justified and by no means

could be a reasonable, could be a sane policy of a nation state as today's Iran.

But the second point is that also regimes are always victims of their own rhetoric.

So once you keep repeating something, then you become more and more committed to it.

And it cannot remain anymore in the level of a rhetoric.

You have to do something about it.