Ex-US special envoy: Iranian leadership on the ropes

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00:00Yeah, I want to read a little bit more of the article that I was just referring to

00:04and pick up on a couple of the points there, because you go on to say that in the past,

00:07it was Iran and its proxies that too often set the pace and the agenda of peace and war in the

00:15Middle East. It was Iran's threats and American weakness that compelled Arab states to hedge

00:21their policies and avoid provoking the beast. You go on to say that things have changed. I mean,

00:27what are the main changes? Just outline them for us. Well, the Iranians' basic requirement of any

00:34state, sovereign state, is to deter attacks and defend their people. And they proved incapable of,

00:40not only incapable of doing both, but they actually brought on the very thing that they said they were

00:45trying to avoid, which was a military campaign that no one really wanted against Iran because of the

00:49behavior of its proxies. Now they no longer have even an air defense system that's meaningfully,

00:55you know, capable of defending their skies. So Israel, the United States, anybody else can wander

01:00with will across their airspace. So this is a devastating situation for an autocracy that's

01:05already not very popular. And the pillars of the regime at this point really were the IRGC.

01:12And they have been, their command and control has been decimated by Iranian, excuse me, by Israeli

01:17actions and humiliated by the United States' ability to conduct this operation against their nuclear sites.

01:23So, you know, there's no organized opposition in Iran, and I'm not predicting regime change overnight.

01:28But this is a regime that is in terrible, I mean, they're on the ropes. They're in a terrible situation.