Ben Rhodes

And we don't need to be here.

I really can't see it, Rachel, because, look, this isn't like in Venezuela where you took out the leader and essentially left the regime in place.

And Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president, becomes president.

They are targeting not just the supreme leader.

They seem to be targeting all manner of regime targets.

So it's not even decapitation.

They seem to be trying to to kind of destroy some of the key edifice of the regime itself.

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.