Karim Sadjadpour

as someone who represents where they want to go as a nation.

The pessimistic view about him is that he's trying to be either an Ahmad Chalabi-type figure or... Ahmad Chalabi being the figure in Iraq who the Bush administration put its chips on to kind of...

Indeed.

And so...

So there's that perception of him, and there's also the perception that he is trying to hijack a democratic movement for his own autocratic ends.

Now, as someone who's known him for a couple of decades, I actually think that exactly the opposite is probably not true, which is that I actually think that

He himself does have democratic ends.

But what's happened inside Iran is that the regime is so brutal that the movement, the opposition against the regime has become very radicalized.

And I worry that the tendencies of this opposition movement are not entirely democratic.

It's out for... It's authoritarian.

And it's out for retribution.

And that is something which is difficult for him to control.

You know, I always quote Kissinger, in which he said that a lot of the major decisions you have to make in government are 51-49.

And for me, this isn't a no-brainer either way whatsoever.

We haven't really talked about the potential risks.

I mean, there are risks that Iran unleashes missiles against U.S.

bases in the Persian Gulf, that they go after our allies in the Gulf, and that this requires the United States to then intervene more forcefully.

And even though we didn't intend to, we've triggered a regional war which very few Americans support.

Those are risks that we need to take very seriously.

At the same time, I go back to these red lines that the president drew, that on nine occasions he said, if you kill protesters, there's going to be consequences.