00:00Well, let's speak to Ketavan Gurdjastani about all of this.
00:03Ketavan, your thoughts, first of all, on this latest killing of a top Iranian official by Israel.
00:10Well, really, the sign that Israel, as we heard in that soundbite from the Israeli Defense Minister,
00:17Israel is continuing that strategy of taking out all of the top Iranian officials.
00:23Esmail Khatib, the latest one.
00:25In the past 24 hours, you also had, as you said, Ali Largujani, who is the Supreme National Security Council
00:31secretary,
00:32as well as the commander of the Basij, General Ghalem Reza Soleimani.
00:38But that is just the latest three.
00:41If you look at this list, a lot of them were killed, of course, on the first day of these
00:47U.S. and Israeli strikes.
00:50Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of course, the supreme leader, was the biggest figure that was killed on February 28th.
00:58But you also had the defense minister, for example, as well as several security military defense officials
01:08that were key to the sort of security and military apparatus of the Iranian regime, including General Mohammad Pakpour.
01:18He was the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC that we speak of so many times.
01:25So this is really a sort of a very clear strategy by the Israelis, which is we go after the
01:33heads of all of these big elements of the Iranian regime,
01:38the religious leadership, the military leadership, the security leadership, the intelligence leadership,
01:44because right here you have a list of some of the top names.
01:48But they are just some of the dozens of high-ranking officials who have been killed in the past days
01:56or weeks of this war.
01:59And what the Israelis are trying to do is basically create a lack of sort of command and control structure
02:08within the Iranian regime
02:10by going after pretty much everyone because they know what the Iranians had prepared for,
02:16which is we know that these top officials are targets and we have people who will replace them.
02:23They have a number two, a number three, a number four.
02:26The question is how many ranks do they have down the line already prepared to take the place of those
02:32people killed?
02:34And I suppose, Ketivan, the question then is, as we look at that really significant list of Iranians
02:39that have been killed by Israel, is that what is Israel's end strategy here and are they making progress towards
02:45that?
02:46They're clearly making progress because they are indeed killing all of the top commanders
02:55and the top officials of the Iranian regime.
02:58They are dismantling one by one the regime's political security architecture.
03:04They are creating chaos.
03:06They are forcing those who are still alive to gather in different places.
03:10Because let's not forget, they're not just killing individual people.
03:14They're also going after the buildings in which they usually gather, forcing them to go into hideouts,
03:21forcing them to go into places that maybe are less secure and making them possibly easier targets.
03:28And as I was saying, that there were dozens and dozens of other people who had been killed.
03:33That's the whole strategy there, which is you don't just cut the head.
03:37You cut the whole sort of power structure.
03:40And as we heard from the Israelis, they don't seem like they're ready to stop.
03:45They are going to sort of go until when.
03:49We don't know.
03:50But that is the ultimate goal.
03:51The question right now is what is left of the Iranian regime.
03:57Just moments ago, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence of the United States,
04:02said during a hearing that the Iranian government was, quote, intact but largely degraded.
04:08A little bit contradictory to say that something is intact but also very much degraded.
04:14But the question is probably not answered even for American intelligence,
04:20which is how much general control is still in the hands of the IRGC, for example.
04:27Who really, in the end, after we've taken out the Supreme Leader and Ali Lairijani,
04:33who many believed was de facto in control since the death of the Supreme Leader,
04:38who now is in charge and will this person next—be next in line to be the target?
04:44The other issue, once you've determined whether or not this regime is holding or not holding,
04:51is down the road, if this war ends at some point, who is left to talk to if you want
04:58to negotiate?
04:58And we've had Donald Trump in the past few days several times talking about just that,
05:04saying they're all dead.
05:05We don't know who we're dealing with.
05:07They want to talk, but we don't really know who's left there to talk because we've killed them all.
05:12That is going to be an issue, too, looking ahead, is are they going to try to keep some people
05:20that they see as potentially people that they could work with?
05:24Or are they indeed going to really try to kill off pretty much everyone?
05:28That probably is not technically feasible, because, yes, you can take out the officials,
05:33but you still have dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of people who are ideologically supportive
05:40of the Islamic Republic and who may not be ultimate targets because they're not that high-ranking,
05:47but they are going to be still there.
05:49And how do you kill off all those people is another question.
05:54So the strategy right now seems to be paying off, at least in the eyes of the Israelis and the
05:59Americans.
06:00How long that works and where does it take us, that's a question that we can't really answer right now.
06:07All right. Thank you very much, Ketavan Gorjastani, for us there.
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