Sohrab Ahmari

How how can you forestall the ISIS types from taking that stuff over?

So there are like really nightmare scenarios.

How many refugees would a collapse of the state feed into not just the neighboring Arab states, but of course, to Europe, a Europe that's already fed up with refugees from Afghanistan and Syria?

and elsewhere.

I mean, these are, you know, I mean, the state collapse scenario is very real and very dangerous.

You could have a scenario where the map of Iran looks like something like Syria did, you know, where it's all these different zones controlled by different foreign powers, different ethnic and sectarian factions.

Do you really want that in the Middle East?

Yeah, I did think about it, and it's a preposterous thing.

Like, why?

First of all, I think a lot of people, including apparently President Trump, are under the impression that all these Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, you know,

officers and the Basij paramilitia, all these groups really don't believe this stuff that they believe about, you know, being servants of God and on a mission to advance, you know, Islam and so on and so forth.

It's all they're all just cynical.

And sometimes I'm tempted to believe that, too.

But over the past, especially over the past 48, 72 hours, I've actually become all the more convinced that no, they like at least some of these people, a substantial number of them really believe this stuff.

They are committed to the project of this regime to the Islamic Republic.

So they're not just going to give up.

And then, too, they've their whole existence is because the regime exists like their whole they draw material benefits as well as spiritual and ideological ones.

So why would they, you know, give up their weapons in return for an uncertain future in which there could either be civil war or they and their families could be targeted by the new regime, whatever that new regime might be?

You know, they're just going to give up their weapons if you think about it is I'm sorry, that's just one of the silliest things said by U.S.

president at a moment that demands absolute seriousness from the commander in chief.