Gordon Carrera

I think you'd expect there to be a lot of intelligence sharing and a kind of analytic sharing as well.

Yes, that is definitely the case.

You know, when it comes to the Middle East, there's still quite a lot of close cooperation.

So, yeah, let's have a look at how you think the CIA will be assessing the kind of strength and likely survival of the Islamic Republic regime in Iran.

Shall we drill down into those?

I think they're really helpful as a way of kind of analysing the situation.

So I guess the first of those was elite cohesion, which means are the group of people running the country still singing from the same song sheet?

You know, how far are they really aligned with the same objectives and the same genre?

Because I find that one a really interesting one because, you know, this regime came into power in 1979.

And while it's a kind of theocracy,

It's also had free elections, we should say, or semi-free elections.

So you've seen kind of periods of reformists and hardliners in power, you know, based on who's done better in those elections.

You've seen a kind of ebb and flow between those two.

And I mean, I visited Iran a bit in the early 2000s at a time when the reformists had the upper hand, where there was more kind of openness.

I mean, I could get a visa, which said something at the time.

You've seen this kind of ebb and flow between the two sides.

But it feels like something has changed, I think, in the last few weeks because it's felt like it's suddenly kind of spinning out of control.

You've had a reformist, actually a more reformist president at the moment who's in power, but who's ended up instituting an absolutely brutally repressive crackdown.

So there's maybe cohesion, but also a kind of instability there, do you think?

Because I think it's true to say that the current president who is at the more reformist liberal end