Rory Stewart

And those people have hated the regime for 40 years.

Are you talking to someone in the kind of villages that I was walking through,

which are poor, conservative, nationalistic, propagandized, who traditionally have been the base of the regime?

Are you talking to ethnic groups?

One of the things we need to

think about is that there's these persistent rumors that Trump and the CIA have been flirting with the idea of arming the Kurds.

The Kurds are less than 10% of the population of Iran.

This is predominantly a Persian country located up in the northwest, on the western edges of the country.

That would be a terrifying thing to do.

I mean, the Kurds have been very badly treated by the Iranians, terribly oppressed, but the idea that arming a ethnic group and starting a civil war... I think he's backing off that.

And everyone brings a sigh of relief.

So I was listening to Today program this morning, and oil prices down because Trump has said – it was extraordinary Trump communication –

I think it's going to end very soon.

When?

Well, you know.

We haven't won enough yet.

We've won, but we haven't won enough yet.

Which means I think at some point we should get onto a very interesting question, which is that even if the war ended tomorrow, my reckoning is the consequences of this are going to be with us for a very long time.

This is a shattered region now.

Just to finish up with Lorkhan on what's happening on the ground in Iran, you talked about the different leadership candidates.