Gordon Carrera

And the truth is, we don't know the death toll.

I think no one knows the death toll.

I mean, you've seen low estimates in the low thousands.

Some estimates, you know, go up to 20,000.

Of course, the reality is, we just don't know.

One of the challenges in understanding what's gone on is that the Iranian authorities have shut down the internet, international phone lines.

They've put a blackout on the country.

It's very interesting in this way.

I mean, at the moment, there's some signs that internet connectivity are being restored a little bit, but pretty much it's still...

shut down.

I think we should come back to this later when we look at where things might go next, because I think this ability to shut down communications has two motives really from the Iranian authorities.

One is it makes it harder for the protesters to organise themselves if you can shut down or control

And the second one is it stops the outside world knowing what's going on and seeing potentially how bad it is and therefore, you know, mobilizing to do something about it.

So I think that has been an important factor in this is the shutdown of Iranian communications and the ability of the regime to at least control some aspects of information getting out.

We do know, even with that, that the crackdown has been, I think, bloodier than those we've seen in the past, because it's not the first set of protests that Iran has seen, but this is certainly the most dramatic, I think.

So that's the situation as far as we do know at this point.

Let's talk a bit now about what might be going on within the CIA, within the analytical arm, the mini McCloskeys, we call them.

Who will be working on it and what will they be doing?

then you're going to have um you've got the other agencies in the us you've got kind of signals intercept communications intercept nsa you're going to have foreign partners aren't you who are going to be feeding stuff in neighboring countries i guess middle east partners the brits you know unlike the americans do have an embassy in tehran but it's been evacuated it's been moved out in the last couple of weeks when things looked bad but the brits do have some understanding of what's going on on the ground but when i spoke to someone about it in the last few days they were saying a lot of what people will be doing will be because of the shutdown

of internet connectivity is talking to people who are coming out over the borders, you know, at some of those border crossing points.