Ayman Mohyeldin

And so what I, as a journalist, learned covering the Iraq war was that for America and American military might, it's probably pretty easy to destroy a regime.

It's probably pretty easy to kill the senior leadership of the Iranian regime.

And in fact, Israel demonstrated that they were able to do that in July relatively easily, I would say, but it did not destroy the regime.

And so any American military involvement to try to top of this regime

cannot just be about killing senior figures who run ministries or run governments or run various security apparatuses or religious organizations and institutions.

You're talking about a regime that has been entrenched in Iranian society for almost 47 years.

You're talking about a country of 90 million people that has a regime structure that probably includes about 20 million people, even if you say 10 million of them or 15 million of them are just

servants of the state or civil servants of the state are not hardcore loyalists.

What happens to the 2 million or 3 million loyalists of the regime once the regime is collapsed and then they are now inside this country and are not allowed to be a part of a political process or not allowed to be a part of any kind of process in which a leader is imposed on them and they now reject that leader?

That's exactly what we saw happen in Iraq.

Now, are you telling me that the Iraqi people... And they're heavily armed.

And they're heavily armed, yeah.

They were heavily armed.

Paul Bremer and the CPA, of course, at the time, dissolved the entire state, dissolved Bathurst.

And so you woke up one day and all the people who were working in the state picked up arms and started fighting the Americans.

So unless you're willing to put American troops on the ground inside of Iran to preserve the integrity of the state, there are a lot of questions as to whether or not the state will fracture...

along ethnic lines, and you'll have separatist movements in various parts of the country.

We're already hearing some troubling language coming out from various parts of the Iranian diaspora that speak to this ethnic division.

And, you know, it's important whoever emerges as a potential leader for the Iranian people,

people to emphasize territorial integrity, to emphasize a cohesive country that incorporates Iran's diversity.