00:00I mean, we've been told from early on in this war that Iran has been, militarily speaking, very heavily degraded.
00:07Do you share that assessment? What do you think is left of Iran's military threat?
00:13I'm sorry, it is, I think, the weakness in the whole sort of we're dominated by the age of autocrats
00:18argument.
00:19I think when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin start talking statistics, cross your fingers and reach for the smelling salts.
00:27Donald Trump has said 21 or 20% of air defences, missiles, drone forces left.
00:34How does he know that? Even the most accurate satellite guided ground observation, you can't get to that.
00:43Because after all, well, why do I say that? The 440 kilograms of 60% refined uranium, they have no
00:50idea where it is really in truth.
00:52And you cannot see everything. Nothing is all seeing in this particularly complex kind of terrain, rather, that you have
01:03both in Iran and in Ukraine.
01:08It's a boast. Equally, Putin comes up with, we've taken up 250 square kilometers of ground in the last five,
01:18six weeks,
01:18as you said before, the Petersburg Economic Forum.
01:22No, there's no proof of that at all.
01:25They're whistling in the dark. They're boasting.
01:28So, back to your point.
01:30Iran is a lot more capable than we ever expected it to be.
01:33It's managed to keep going.
01:35It's kept a very high level of mobile launch facilities for short-range ballistic missiles.
01:43The drones are pretty copious, despite taking out drone factories.
01:49You have to count them in the hundreds and thousands that they've got left.
01:52And they still can bring surprises, as we saw by launching on Israel from their allies and proxies, the Houthis,
02:00only the other day.
02:01It's very worrying.
02:02We have no idea, really, of the full capacity of the IRGC forces and the Iranian regular forces now.
02:13We're not really any clearer than we were in February.
02:17And there, there was a terrible underestimate.
