Ben Rhodes

And how do you have a NATO when the whole basis of the alliance is collective defense and you've got one member just seizing the territory of another?

It doesn't work.

And then to throw Lindsey Graham's arguments back at him, without NATO...

well, then you really do have the likelihood that Putin will go into the Baltics, that Putin will go into Europe proper.

Because NATO is the thing that stops him from doing that.

I think what's clear is that the regime is very weak, weaker than they've been in a very, very long time for a lot of different reasons, right?

Some of it is they took some shots from Israel, obviously.

And I don't just mean the nuclear program.

I mean, like their air defenses got taken out, some of their proxy network got depleted.

But more of it is just, it's an old sclerotic shitty regime.

That's the main problem they have is it's a corrupt sclerotic regime.

ideological regime that has not delivered for its own people for a very long time.

And we've seen protests, you know, for decades in Iran.

And each time it feels like they come back bigger, you know, and they don't have answers to the things that people are protesting over.

I also think it's important to note that the 2022 protests, the Women's Life Freedom protests, succeeded in some respects.

Women are starting to go uncovered in Iran, which is a sign that the regime couldn't reimpose its will, right?

That's a sign of weakness too.

And so I think you have a lot of internal cracks in that regime.

The problem going forward is there's no clear path to what would come next, right?

Because the reality is it's like the Venezuela thing.