Rory Stewart

Maybe they won't come after us.

What they've actually heard from Netanyahu and Trump is, we will not stop till we've wiped you out.

And if someone says to you, we will not stop till we've wiped you out, what possible incentive is there to restrain yourself in any way at all?

This is slight nuance, because this depends whether you buy into Shia theology.

Certainly true, Ayatollah Khomeini was a really major theological scholar.

In some ways, Shia Islam feels a bit like the Catholic Church, except the Pope-like figures

are these sources of emulation are often profound theologians.

The great example is Sistani, who's basically the big figure running this from Najaf.

Qom, which is the holy city in Iran, is where they all move through.

But don't underestimate the fact that when we say

that Mujtaba Khamenei is not a great theological scholar.

The guy has almost certainly memorized the entire Quran from one end to the other and could certainly spend nine or 10 days lecturing you on detailed surahs and theological implications.

Would we take that as a mini-series?

It's a really, really odd culture because he is a very, very senior learned cleric.

He's just not up at the top level, but you know, it's, I don't know, it's, it's, he's maybe he's a first division football and not a, not a premier league footballer.

Yeah.

Well, we have these weird phrases of grand Ayatollah, sources of emulation.

And one of the things that happened after Khomeini died is that they did two very odd things at the same time.

They broke the connection between the theological religious authority and the political by allowing grand Ayatollah Sistani, who's actually located in Iraq, to be the big theological source, separate

from the political, but they strengthened the notion of the , which is the government of the jurists.