Greg Barton

At the very least, protest, if not use violence against it.

So all of those things, I think, are pretty obvious to anyone paying attention.

So I'm sure that they've been discussed and they're acted on immediately because we can't afford, as you're right, you can't afford to wait to next Hanukkah to act on these things.

You know, there are a series of Jewish holidays and important events.

There are other opportunities and there are just opportunities that arise through circumstances.

We can't afford to take months to get this right.

We've got to put these things into place immediately.

beginning this week, and I'm confident that's the case behind the scenes.

I think the best way to describe it is it's adding energy to the system.

One thing we do know is that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran has a history of state-sponsored terrorism.

In the case of the IRGC, they use elements linked to them to launch attacks, sometimes false flag, but they've got a long history of this.

But we also have other groups that are in no ways under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard core regime, and sometimes are even rivals, but will choose to act.

And even within Iran, we've got the sense that these 31 distinct districts are operating semi-autonomously because they're under stress, and that somebody may issue an order at a lower level to do something which could have terrible consequences.

So that's Iran.

But groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda will also try and step into the opportunity space.

So it's impossible to be confident we know all the vectors, angles from which a threat may arise.

The incident at the White House press corps gala dinner with the president, you know, speaks to how something can catch you left field and how even when you think you've got things secure, you can realize there's a weakness there.

So I think we need to be realistic that we live in a world where the risk has gone up, the energy in the system has gone up, and therefore we need to put more resources into being ready to stop any attempted attacks.

It's been a pleasure.