David McCloskey

Because a smart policymaker wants to understand or have a sense of, well, are there three or four different versions of the world that come out of this and how might I prepare for each of them, right?

And then I think the third one, which is more of a policy question, sort of gets into this, I don't know, this sort of gray area where how does a CIA analyst respond to a question like this is, what can we do to shape these scenarios?

How might we affect the outcome?

of what's going on in Iran.

And these were the exact questions that we got on Syria.

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.