Ben Rhodes

And that leads a vacuum in place in Iran.

Now, inside of Iran, the people that are most heavily armed and therefore prepared to seize some vacuum are the more hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps.

If you look at the only potential

play that has been made about some future government.

It was outside of the country with some of the engagement with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran, who has some support outside the country.

But if you talk to analysts inside of Iran, the idea that you're just going to re-import the son of the Shah into a country of 93 million people

with a deeply ideological and entrenched regime, heavily armed factions, and have some transition to democracy.

By the way, with probably no foreign forces on the ground, it doesn't seem like Trump has a lot of appetite for that.

I just don't see the plausible scenario where this leads.

I mean, I could see a situation where Iran is fighting back, their leaders getting taken out.

There's some kind of capitulation.

But even in that scenario, you still have the elements of a broken regime and power vacuums in Iran and the potential for violence and civil conflict.

There's separatists.

regions in Iran with ethnic minorities, the country itself could fracture.

If you talk to people in the region, one of the things that you hear in terms of concerns is what we're seeing is that Iran will create chaos in the region and its responses as they've done.

But you also hear concern about a potential fracturing of Iran that leads to significant refugee flows into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, up into Europe.

So there are lots of things that could go wrong here.

And it's not clear what the best case scenario is that they're even pointing towards.

Thanks, Rachel.

So he was the head of the cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, CJNG.