David McCloskey

So that's kind of one, I think, significant lesson.

I mean, the other one, the kind of parallel, I find this very interesting, is the calls by the internal opposition for external help, particularly military support.

And what happened in Syria...

was that the oppositionists in Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs, these other places, were looking at what was going on in Libya at the time, where the U.S.

had intervened, NATO had intervened, and essentially acted as the Libyan rebels' air force to help unseat Gaddafi.

And the Syrian opposition began to call for exactly the same thing in Syria.

there was some interesting academic research that some members of our team did back in 2011.

And one of the most significant variables in determining the length of a civil war is the extent of foreign involvement.

And you'd be unsurprised to hear that the more foreign involvement there is, the longer the civil war goes on, right?

And so I think in this case at Iran, I would wager a guess that

that more foreign involvement is going to sort of tip us in that direction of a kind of civil conflict between the regime and the opposition.

I'm not making a statement on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I'm just saying that that's probably the direction it tips us in.

The other dynamic that I think is an interesting parallel is

That political change is kind of usually a long-term game in these situations.

In Syria, the first year of unrest was marked by waves of protest, but then, you know, and they would sort of wax and wane too.

I mean, that's another piece of this.

We're recording this.

on the 18th of January.

And we're in this period where it kind of looks like the regime has suppressed the unrest.