David Frum

There are a lot of dense human targets.

If you were seeking to maximize the infliction of loss of life, I assume you

The Iranians, even in their depleted state, could do more than they're doing.

Do you have a sense that this is an inability on their part or are they still fighting this war in some ways with one hand tied behind their back?

I think the latter.

They also presumably have a lot of their money in Dubai banks.

A decade ago, you wrote this remarkable article that became an acclaimed book, Getting Inside the Mind of ISIS.

You've been doing some of that similar work with the Iranian regime, trying to get inside their brains.

Anything that has happened since in the past month of conflict to change any of your perspectives or enrich your thinking as compared to where you were a month ago?

I think going into this war, a lot of people in the United States and in the United States government assumed that the Iranian state had become a very rickety state, that the ideology didn't move anybody anymore, the extraordinary sacrifices of the regime that occurred during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, that those days were over.

and one hard blow, the whole structure would collapse.

That's turned out to be obviously not true.

Do you have any opinion on the prevalence of this kind of ideology of martyrdom or other aspects of regime ideology?

So there are people in your estimation, and again, it's a very dark box, and it's been a while since you had access to the country, but it does seem that people would bear arms to defend the regime if Americans landed on Iranian soil.

Yes, yes, no doubt.

The United States has been studying the Iran problem very intensely for a long time.

Even before the Iranian revolution of 1979, people worried or Americans worried about the aggressive intentions that the Shah of Iran might have.

I think some of the war gaming to defend Kuwait began with the idea that the Shah might be the aggressor, not the Iraqis and not yet the Iranian regime.

Since the hostage crisis of 1979-80, again, the United States has intensely war gamed it.

You assume there was a lot of deep knowledge of the Iranian system inside the United States government, yet the past month has not been very reassuring that the taxpayer is getting the Iran knowledge the taxpayer may have thought the taxpayer was paying for.