00:00Samuel, welcome back. How much of a stalemate is the Iran war in?
00:06Well, it's pretty much a stalemate because it's neither the state of war nor of peace right now going on.
00:11And even though you don't see the intensity of the fighting with Israel and the U.S. bombing Iran,
00:16or any kind of major Iranian retaliations with drones and missiles against the Gulf states,
00:21aside from sporadic attacks over the past few weeks in Kuwait and Bahrain,
00:24and the Qubis targeting eastern province,
00:27there's still a seat in the east throughout the region,
00:30and the Hormuz issue is no closer to being resolved.
00:33So I think that we're in a very fragile, semi-frozen conflict.
00:37I mean, obviously, journalistically, we talk about Iran,
00:41but diplomatically, I guess we also talk about Iran.
00:44The truth is here, and one of the problems, surely, is there are many Irans, aren't there?
00:50Yeah, I think that there basically are.
00:52I think that there's a disconnect in some ways between how we see the situation militarily
00:58and what's actually happening inside the country.
01:00Because of the communications block, sometimes it was really hard to know what was going on,
01:04but it does seem as if there's an outward display of resilience,
01:07especially as the IRGC gains more power, possibly at the expense of the supreme leader,
01:11but severe economic problems, as your correspondent noted.
01:1688% inflation, 128% food inflation, a million job losses at a minimum during the war alone,
01:23as well as energy shortages for a country that's so energy-rich.
01:26So what we're seeing is a situation where Iran is resilient,
01:30maybe united temporarily around the leadership,
01:32but the core underpinnings that drove the protests towards the end of 2025
01:35and the core socio-economic problems are getting worse and worse.
01:39Is there a danger that this becomes a forever conflict, no war, no peace?
01:46Well, I think that's definitely where things are headed,
01:49unless there is some kind of a major breakthrough.
01:52Obviously, Iran is very at the value of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,
01:58the control that it has,
01:59as well as the value of how low-cost, high-impact drones can be used
02:03to influence Western behavior and U.S. conduct.
02:07And the havoc that was wrecked in the Gulf countries
02:10when it came to damage to the airports and to the transit infrastructure
02:14and their image of safe havens
02:16certainly was something that the Iranians have learned a lot of lessons from.
02:20So that's why I think that we will be seeing different exchanges,
02:23as there's really no way for the U.S., Israel, and Iran to really square the circle.
02:29I come up with something that is workable for all of them.
02:32Our correspondent touched on the economic headlines of the domestic situation.
02:38What do those rather grim figures look like if you live in Iran at these times?
02:45Well, I think, as I noted, I mean, severe food price inflation,
02:50a severe erosion of purchasing power, a collapsing currency,
02:53a hollowing out of the middle class.
02:55It's definitely a significant problem.
02:59And I think that, obviously, economics was what drove the 2025 protests.
03:05Then it spills over into political demands.
03:06So unless the Iranian government can deal with some of these economic challenges,
03:11it's unclear, as tensions are unlikely to be lifted,
03:15and the north-south corridor with Russia, for example,
03:19and other big infrastructure projects are not likely to transpire in a major way.
03:23I don't know how the Iranians get out of the economic traps.
03:26I think the economic situation is going to continue to get worse and worse long before it gets better.
03:31Samuel, good to see you.
03:32Thank you for that.
03:32Samuel Romani, the Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, Think Tank.
03:37Okay.
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