Franco Ordonez

Iran invested billions and used these groups to project power in the region.

Suddenly, they're all gone or badly weakened.

And then Israel and the U.S.

teamed up and bombed Iran last June.

They hit the nuclear facilities, but they also exposed the weakness of Iran's defenses.

And now we're seeing these mass protests challenging the regime.

Well, they're limited and they're not good ones.

The traditional playbook is to unleash the Revolutionary Guards to crush the protests.

That worked previously.

It may work again.

But it doesn't address the fundamental grievances on living standards, and that will keep eroding any support the regime might have left.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah al-Khamenei, is 86.

He's been in power 37 years.

He's been good at holding power, but he's failed to meet the day-to-day needs of Iranians.

Right now they seem to be an ally, and I think it'll continue to be an ally, and we don't want to have Russia there, we don't want to have China there.

Trump says that the U.S.

is going to get very strongly involved.

He says companies are going to be investing millions and billions of dollars.

Of course, Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world.

And U.S.