David McCloskey

And I'd imagine very similar questions are being asked right now of the Iran mini McCloskeys.

Gordon, before we do that, I don't normally like to indulge your desire to talk about the United Kingdom and its security services, which you frequently do on this program, and I've discouraged you from in the past, but

I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm going to ask you a question about the Brits, which is, you know, we just talked about what the CIA is up to and what's going on in kind of the US intelligence community.

But what's the answer in the UK?

My guess is most of the analytic products that the US is producing are also being cleared in some way, shape or form for the UK.

The way that we did this at the agency was to look at a regime like Iran's or Syria's, which I was working on, through a lens of pillars of stability.

The things that support it, that give it power and authority, and that keep it in power.

And there's different ways you can...

describe these things, but there's essentially six.

There's elite cohesion.

There's loyal and effective military and security services.

A fragmented, divided, weak, whatever you want to call it, opposition.

There's a socioeconomic contract of some sort with the people.

There's a legit, I guess we'd call it a legitimacy narrative.

There's something that gives the regime the ability to claim that it's the rightful sort of power structure or governing system of a country.

And then the last one is kind of the foreign environment, foreign backers,

How hostile or non-hostile is the environment around you regionally and internationally?

Does it support your state or is it working against it?

And those are the things that the analysts are looking at right now to understand, are these things weakening or are they working for the regime?

Having a mental model for what the Islamic Republic of Iran actually is, I've always found to be a bit challenging because it does have these kind of weirdly pseudo-democratic structures inside the government.