David McCloskey

kind of coalescing against the regime, but obviously doing that quietly, not as a massive protest.

So these things take time.

I mean, Syria lasted 13 years, you know, and even in 1979 in the Iran parallel, I mean, it was over a year of sort of escalating unrest and protests before the Shah fled.

So these things are marathons, you know, they're not sprints.

I like how we've spent two episodes talking about how unpredictable these things are.

Now we're going to offer some predictions.

immediately proven wrong.

I don't know.

I'm kind of reliving some of my Syria experience here, obviously, as we've been talking about this, because it was a very... It's a hard conversation to have in some respects because...

There are a lot of people who rightly, I mean, as I do, you look at the regime, the Iranian regime, and you say, ugh, this thing is a brutal system that is predatory, that is extremely... Who wants to live under a system like this?

It's not offering...

The China example of, you know, you don't have any political rights, but, you know, you've got bread on the table and we're managing the system economically fairly well.

They don't do that.

And so this is a despicable regime and you want it to fall, you know, and you want something better for the Iranian people.

My most recent book is on Iran.

I spent a lot of time speaking with Iranians for this and trying to understand the country.

And you want something better for 90 million people who have not gotten a good shake from the Islamic Republic.

And also, this is a regime that has decided to murder...

potentially tens of thousands of its own people in a short period of time to remain in power.

It's despicable and you want it gone.