Michael Weiss

It has a defense policy, right?

And that's pretty much persisted, I think, for many decades.

For them, all that would matter would be Iran no longer poses a threat to Israel's existence or to its security, whether through missiles, a nuclear weapon in the future, or again, these proxies and militias that have been assembled.

This is sort of the long tail of the post-October 7th era in the region.

For them, this is still, you know, this is perhaps the last and final conflict to settle all accounts.

And for them, the window of opportunity is, again, it's narrowing.

Donald Trump is the only guy who would go to war alongside Israel in Iran, full stop.

So by hook or by crook, they need to get this done.

That's how they see it.

That sounds like the sort of hubris of a sclerotic regime that realizes that it's not long for this world, come what may.

The protest movement that was suppressed rather brutally by this regime really demonstrated the extent to which

there is just utter contempt for, you know, the Mullahs.

There is utter contempt for the IRGC, for the Besiege at the popular level in Iran.

So there's a lot of human capital.

And, you know, it's true, we have done things like we smuggled in Starlink communication devices so that the protesters could record what was happening.

Again, there's a war and a covert side of things that we simply don't know because it is covert, right?

And will only come to light later on.

Maybe people have been recruited.

Maybe people inside the regime are making discreet outreach to the West and to the Israelis or whomever.

The other thing I would just caution is