00:00And in terms of what the United States and Israel have achieved so far,
00:03obviously the supreme leader was killed fairly close to the start of this conflict.
00:09I mean, has that brought about any change, do you think, within Iran?
00:12Or do you think perhaps it's arguably made Iran even more hardline?
00:16Well, there's two parts to it.
00:17So there's direct military efforts, the objectives of reducing the ballistic missile capability,
00:23there are missions to get a nuclear weapon,
00:25and their industrial base, of course, to make more ballistic missiles and suicide drones,
00:30and their military writ large, especially their naval force, has been decimated.
00:36So they have less of a capacity to actually destabilize the Middle East and attack their neighbors.
00:42They will never have zero capacity to do that, but they have much less.
00:46So I think that would be a positive.
00:48But to the other part of your question, Tom, we've essentially eliminated the old supreme leader,
00:53leader who had a Fatah that said that they would not acquire a nuclear weapon.
01:00That Fatah died with him.
01:02And now all these IRGC leaders have ascended to power.
01:08And many of them have always been pushing for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
01:13So the intent might have gone up substantially to get to that point.
01:18But, of course, the United States and Israel are going to militarily attempt to see it doesn't happen.
01:23So we might have a more hostile regime that has been defanged somewhat.
01:27So I guess there's two parts to it.
01:31One's positive, one is not.
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