Behnam Ben Taleblu

even a lamppost won't be left standing.

And I was just testing to see like what is their tolerance for conflict after having pasted conflict which was so alien to Iranian territory for so long.

And without missing a beat, the person just cut me off and said, was the lamppost even working though?

Did we even have electricity?

So, I mean, that's how far the fed up to here mentality is.

So,

You know, it usually feels like, oh, you and the diaspora are just sitting there giving orders that people are on the street and they're the ones who are suffering and therefore we have to kind of coddle them.

But it seemed like actually it was me coddling them and then pushing back hard and saying, no, these are the crass realities of life.

And when you have such a nationalistic population being so pro-conflict, that tells you about how many of these other factors

have driven them to this point.

So, I think, you know, you hit the nail right on the head with the environmental one because absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing has been done to address those long-standing qualms and concerns from the 12-day war to the protest and now into this conflict.

And now that the conflict will be done, when again, you zoom out and the fog of war dissipates, the situation has only gotten worse, not better.

This is also something folks in Iran tend to ask us here in DC.

They say, what will happen in the end?

You know, I'm not a prophet.

I'm not a sage.

I even have an archive reading history and how to project that forward.

But I do worry that in the short term, it's going to be bumpy.

In fact, it's going to be very bumpy.

In fact, it'll be costly and risky and dare I even say bloody.