Mark Mazzetti

Its military is extremely weak.

So, Mark, what are Iran's actual capabilities to fight this war right now?

So first and foremost, it's a question of can it survive internally?

Recall that this is a security service that has been able to brutally put down internal protests just in recent weeks.

So they are quite capable of getting...

keeping order in the country.

Of course, there's this external pressure, right, from the U.S.

and from Israel that presumably will continue these attacks for days.

And that's then the question of, can the regime survive this external pressure?

What do we know about their capabilities?

We know that the regime has 2,000 or so ballistic missiles, and they only used a small part of the arsenal

Responding to the attacks on Saturday.

Are they waiting?

Are they trying to parse them out over time?

Or were their capabilities hit so hard in the first wave of attacks that they're having trouble responding?

So that's another question that will only be answered in the days to come.

And I would add that as the experience in Iraq showed, even if you have the boots on the ground, you don't necessarily have all the control about what happens either.

If regime change is not happening or not happening easily without U.S.

boots on the ground, do you think that there's any circumstance under which we would actually put troops on the ground if the goal is regime change?

Like, do we think, for instance, that the U.S.