Greg Myrie

And if this were normal times, Iran has an assembly of experts, a little bit like the Catholic Church.

When the Pope dies, the College of Cardinals selects a new one.

Well, Iran has an assembly of experts, 88 Islamic jurists.

If the supreme leader, the Ayatollah, dies, then they select another one.

Well, obviously not a normal time.

That's only happened once before anyway, 37 years ago.

Only been to supreme leaders.

Exactly.

But that would be the normal process.

We're in the middle of a conflict now.

It may fall quickly to the security forces and the Revolutionary Guards.

That's what we're hearing.

In fact, Reuters had a report that the CIA did a recent assessment.

and wasn't really sure what was going to happen, but their best guess or their best thinking was the Revolutionary Guards or some elements of it would take over.

That's true because the U.S.

does have a small number of ground troops that are permanently at bases in the region, but they have not all clustered together.

They're not near the Iranian border.

And even if you add them all up, it's not nearly the size of a force you would need.

In fact, doing the math, some of the previous wars, it's maybe 10 or 20 percent of the ground troops the U.S.

had in Iraq previously, those wars.