Lise Doucette

of the security forces who keep this system in place.

That is the absolutely red line for this regime.

And we've seen that whether there have, for example, been presidents who are regarded more as more reformists or hardline, no matter who they are, they all fall in line when it comes to the survival of this clerical regime.

Will these attacks concentrate their minds about a possible shift in direction?

Of course, after what happened in Venezuela, where you had the removal of a president and a new president stepping into place and working with the United States of America.

Could that happen in Iran?

It will be much more difficult.

But these are really extraordinary times.

Iran's ambition, of course, as it reacts in what it calls self-defense, is to use every weapon in its arsenal as it faces up against the most powerful military in the world, as well as the military might of Israel.

And in that armory, it has the ability to close one of the world's most strategic waterways.

And if the Strait of Hormuz, this choke point, is shut off for any length of time, this will have wide-ranging repercussions for the world over because so much maritime traffic, including oil tankers, go through these waters.

Iran knows that, but of course, Iran also benefits from that waterway, so it won't want to pinch it too much, too long.

But that certainly is one of the weapons that it has always made clear that it's willing to use to inflict as much pain as possible in order to end this aggression as it sees it as soon as possible.

Lise Doucette.

Well, to use his expression, this is really uncharted territory, no matter how much...

Iranian leaders have thought about this moment, prepared for this moment.

A war has been unleashed and even with at its very start in one day of strikes, so much already is changing with the death of the Supreme Leader and many other senior political and security officials in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And of course, it comes at a moment where Iran has been facing not just an unprecedented external threat, but internal upheaval.

When we were in Iran earlier this month, I have to say that it felt like a different country and the anger and the pain over the

The use of lethal force, which caused the greatest loss of life in the thousands in Iran's history, it was still raw.