Gordon Carrera

And when we come back, we'll look at maybe the ways in which you can approach trying to answer those questions.

What are the pillars of regime stability?

How might you understand whether they're weakening, whether there might be the potential for collapse?

So we'll see you after the break.

Welcome back.

We've set up what's happened, but let's now look, David, I think, at what will be going on inside the CIA in terms of how they assess the stability of the regime, the kind of techniques, the indicators they'll be using to understand what's going on.

Well, it is slightly different because, of course, MI6 is a collection agency rather than an analytic agency.

That's why the CIA is slightly different.

So the analysis happens in the Joint Intelligence Organization inside the Cabinet Office.

And it's smaller, definitely.

I think...

I guess the one thing they do have is they do have some Iran expertise because we've had this embassy in Tehran.

I mean, I visited it about 20 years ago, but there's been a diplomatic presence.

You do have people who understand the country and have been there on the ground and can probably feed into that.

But the scale is definitely different, I think, from the Americans in terms of the kind of...

analytic firepower they can then suddenly throw at this question.

So I think, yeah, there's a difference there in scale.

Yeah.

Despite some other tensions at the moment, we should come to that at another point around Greenland and things.

I think there is still on something like Iran.