Stephen Carroll

So we have several fronts opening up.

A number of Gulf Arab countries have also found themselves in the firing line being struck.

by Iranian missiles and drones, and not just US bases on their turf, but also hotels and the like.

This is imposing a good deal of economic pain on the region, and it would appear that what the Iranian regime is trying to do, even though it's massively outgunned by its enemies, is to wait out

this campaign in the hope that the pain and indeed the patience of the American public that apparently disapproves of this by quite a margin already will wear thin and some members of the Iranian regime might be able to survive.

It's very hard to know.

The Supreme Leader was killed over the weekend in one of those opening salvos, and almost by the minute we've received updates about other members who have been killed, sometimes the successors of those who were recently killed.

However, to judge by the cycle of fire being maintained by Iran...

Certainly in Israel, where we've been experiencing every half hour or a couple hours sirens and calls to take shelter in the face of missiles or drones coming in, it would appear that there is still a vestigial state functioning, managing to keep up the fight, and presumably domestically managing to deter members of the opposition from trying to

to take control of the country.

That is, of course, the vision enunciated both by Israel and the United States at the outset, a situation whereby the Iranian regime is sufficiently degraded, sufficiently destroyed to enable the Iranian opposition, which many in the West would see as the bulk of the Iranian population, certainly the young population, to take to the streets again as it did only a few weeks ago, but this time not facing the guns of the state and being able to assume control.

The news doesn't stop on the weekends.

Hi, I'm David Gurra.

Join us every Saturday and Sunday for the new Bloomberg This Weekend.

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Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll.

I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made.

And I'm Caroline Hepke in London.

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