Ali Vaez

It's great to see you, Rachel.

Look, for sure, Iran is significantly weaker than the United States and Israel in terms of conventional military capabilities.

It can only engage in an asymmetric kind of warfare.

It can spread the pain.

It can try to

affect the global energy prices by closing the Strait of Hormuz, by putting pressure on energy exports out of the region.

It can spread the pain by targeting the Gulf countries as it has already done in the hope that they would then in turn put pressure on President Trump

to back off and basically signal that if they don't have security, nobody else in the region has security.

And they can target Israel and U.S.

bases in the region as they have already done.

But all of this, one has to remember, a huge part of Iranian strategy is not to win necessarily, Rachel, it is to survive.

And so for them, this is a game of endurance.

Several points.

One is that this is a deeply entrenched regime, just like in the case of Venezuela.

And there the Trump administration decided to decapitate the regime, but work with the rest of the structure.

This is also a very deeply benched regime.

In the 12 day war last year, Israel managed to eliminate a few dozen senior Iranian commanders in the opening hours of that conflict.

And yet most of those commanders were quickly replaced and Iran managed to get back on its feet and start punching back.

In order to get the kind of regime change that President Trump wants, so that the running people can come to the streets and finish the job from below, you would have to completely dismantle the repressive capacities of this regime.

And there we're talking about 200,000 strong revolutionary guards, which has a million strong militia, in addition to hundreds of thousands of security forces and police.