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And I think what we're seeing now, if you look at the targeting of the U.S. in Iran,
the hitting of kind of civilian targets, i.e. energy infrastructure, that to me shows
that they've run out of military targets.
And if you run out of military targets and you start hitting oil depots and your enemy
still hasn't buckled, it feels like there is a swing there and that swing is not necessarily
in your favor.
And the question that comes up in my mind at the moment is, where do they go?
And I think that's why they've had these rumors about the CIA working with the Kurds.
Because the Americans don't want to commit drug ground troops, but if they can get away
with committing other people's ground troops, then perhaps that might do the thing they
want to do.
Hello, and welcome to another special Iran-focused edition of Behind the Lines with me Arthur
Snell.
Last week I spoke to Iran expert former diplomat and historian Charlie Gamal about what was then
a war that had been going for just a couple of days.
And a response to that podcast has been amazing.
I've had so many positive responses.
People really got a lot from Charlie's experience, knowledge, and insight.
And so I thought, well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So Charlie is back by popular demand.
We're speaking on late on the evening of Monday the 9th of March, Charlie.
Welcome.
Good to see you.
Good to be with you Arthur.
Well, good to have you.
I know you're a very busy man at the moment, but thank you for joining us again.
No, it's a pleasure.
And we've got a little bit to, we've got quite a lot to cover since, since what happened
last week.
Yes.
I mean, last time we spoke, I think Ayatollah Khamenei was still alive, just for example.
So yeah, a lot has happened.
I thought we, let's start with Iran and its leadership.
So we're speaking just as it's been confirmed that Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has
been confirmed as the new supreme leader.
Now we've talked about him a little in the past, but it's worth noting that he is by
no means a major Islamic scholar, he's not somebody who would traditionally hold the
title Ayatollah.
So can we say a little bit about who this guy is and what does his appointment tell us?
So Mojtaba Khamenei, one of Annie Khamenei's sons, born in Mashad and the Khamenei family
is a very sort of a family steeped in clerical traditions.
His father, Ali Khamenei, as we've talked about in the past, was a revolutionary.
He was imprisoned by the Shah on many occasions and was prime minister during the President
rather during the Iran-eraq war and then became supreme leader when Khomeini died in
89.
And so he comes from a family that is absolutely steeped in the values of the revolution,
the values of resistance, the values of hatred of America and Israel.
And Mojtaba Khamenei's career towards the end of the Iran-eraq war, he sort of cut
his teeth in this battalion called the Habib battalion, which was one of the most ideologically
zealous bits of the IRGC towards the tail end of that kind of very bloody conflict with
Iraq.
And if you look at some of the people who were also in that battalion, they've gone on
to do some quite interesting things in the Islamic Republic.
These are figures that might not, whose names might not mean a lot to your listeners,
but men like Hossein Tayyab.
And these are really sort of the practitioners of the dark arts behind the power in the
Islamic Republic.
They're often referred to as the gatekeepers or they were referred to as the gatekeepers
to Khomeini.
And they've, some of these people have emerged alongside this organization called IRGC,
IRGC Intelligence Organization, which has been around for about, so there's 12, 12
years now, maybe a bit more.
And these figures are these kind of very sort of shadowy pro-regime figures, Mojtaba
himself, despite, you know, he's really not got a lot of theological clout, but he was
instrumental in the post-2009 when Ahmadinejad's second term, his election was contested,
when Iranians came out into the street to protest against that stolen election, Mojtaba
was key in shaping the Islamic Republic's response to that.
And you see those footprints on the response to the protesters in January.
It's a kind of an escalatory cycle of violence that you could say really begun or really
intensified in 2009.
So he's got credentials that go to the heart of the Islamic Republic's intelligence apparatus,
not ministry of intelligence and security, but the IRGCIO, which shows its loyalty completely
to the Supreme Leader's office.
And I think something that is important for now to remember is that Mojtaba Khamenei
was very, has, was always very good friends with Khasem Salamani, the IRGCQF commander,
who was killed in 2019.
And I think why that's important, just reading sort of IRGC press outlets today, you've
got members of Salamani's family coming out and saying, you know, we think this is a
great thing.
And Mojtaba and Khasem were always good pals.
And you might think, well, they would say that.
But to me, looking sort of reading through the lines of that, the significance there is
that Iran's use of proxies in the region and Iran's ability to play spoiler in the region.
These are the kind of things that Mojtaba learned directly from Salamani.
And I think it's those kind of editorials in those IRGC papers aren't accidental.
And that may be a signal of the policy that he's looking to take the Islamic Republic
in, particularly in the context of this war at the moment.
Yeah.
So would it be fair to say that what we can read from this is that whether or not they're
able to do this, and of course, you know, Iran is under severe attack from two exceptionally
powerful militaries, but the intention illustrated by this appointment is a continuous
continuation of this kind of defiance, a continuation of attacks on targets across the
region, effectively, the hardliners remain in control.
Absolutely.
I think that's absolutely it.
And it's also, it's a domestic play to say we are still in charge.
And there's a lot of, to appoint your son as the next supreme leader in your son who
lacks the theological credentials to become the Rahpah, as per the theology or the sort
of the political theology that Hameini set down in his original treatise before the
revolution.
You know, that just shows that they are the IRGC are in control.
The Islamic Republic will continue in the name of Hameini.
And I remember one very perceptive advisor, or sorry, analyst of the Islamic Republic,
said to me when I was asking about, you know, who's going to be the next supreme leader.
He said to me, look, it doesn't actually matter because the show will go on.
And whoever it is, the show will go on.
And I think that to a degree, that's true.
But I also think there's a risk here, right?
Because it just leaves the door open to further protests.
Those people in the Islamic Republic who've had families killed in the protests in January,
they will be looking at this and thinking, that's a slap in the face for any desire for
change that they've had.
So, so there are big challenges that, that most of the face is now, he's, can he unite
a fractured country, but also, can he unite the government behind him?
And when I say the government, I mean those splits that we are seeing emerge between
the politicians, people like President Pezish Guyan and the hardliners, people like Ahmad
for the head of the IRGC.
So, he has a huge job ahead of him.
And the question will be, does he have his father's ruthlessness and his father's ability
to take people with him?
Yeah.
And when you say, can he unite the country, I suppose it's a question as, when we, if we
talk about a sort of democratic politician who unites a country, we, we normally assume
that they reach across the divide and they, you know, perhaps they appoint someone from
the other party to own an important position or something like that, but we're talking
here that he unites the country with an iron grip by terrifying people into feeling
that they have no option but to support him.
Yeah.
And I think it's, it's worth reflecting on the fact that the, the role of the Supreme
Leader, it's a sort of a, in, in many ways, it's like a monarch in the sense that, in
a constitutional monarchy, so it sits above the messy day to day of politics and, and what
that allows it to do is it is that it's not tainted by the ups and downs of government.
And I think that was always a harmony, seniors, genius, that he, he simultaneously controlled
everything and gave the impression of just being a cleric.
So what, what should we have to exercise a lot of day-to-day control to make sure that
the splits, these, some of these splits don't emerge and, and that coherence is, is maintained.
Well, at the same time, if he's to be a successor to his father and, and, and, and Homani, he
will have to adopt that sort of slightly above the fray position that shows a degree of omniscience
that shows that he's almost too senior to get involved in the messy intricacies of policy.
And his father in 2009, that was almost his father's only misstep from a kind of power
perspective, was when he was seen to be getting too personally involved in the day-to-day running
of Iran through interfering in the election and putting much to the, er, sorry, putting
Aham Dilejard as, as, as president.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you, you mentioned this division in the leadership and, and that takes us back, you
know, so much has been happening in a short space of time, but a couple of days ago, the
president of Iran, who of course, in, in most normal countries, president sounds like
the person who's in charge, obviously, in Iran, it's a bit different, but the president
of Iran gave what sounded like a sort of attempt at a de-escalation speech.
He talked about apologizing to Gulf neighbors, of course, Iran has been trying to improve
its relations with countries like Saudi Arabia and, and the UAE, and, and he talked about
how Iran would not attack those countries, countries where, of course, we've seen constant
Iranian attacks on Saudi, on Dubai, famously on, you know, on Bahrain and so on.
Now those attacks don't appear to have stopped.
So what's going on there?
For those of us who are not, er, the Iranian equivalent of Kremlinologists, what, what, what,
what, what are we not seeing?
So I think it, it, it's really important to know that the, the Islamic Republic is a,
is a, is a democratic system in some ways, but, but ultimately, all in that sort of
organogram of power, everything goes back to the Supreme Leader.
And, and, and the way of thinking at it is that you have the Supreme Leader, you have
the Supreme Leader's office, and then you have IRGC Intelligence Organization, IRGC,
QF, Basage, and that's kind of one, that's probably the big pillar of power in the Islamic
Republic.
Yeah.
Then you have this kind of parallel and sometimes competing, but, but not necessarily
on a level playing field, column, which is elected politicians, er, to a degree, it's
the judiciary, and then it's also the ministries and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security,
the Army, the Navy, right up to the president with his cabinet.
And that's just to be very clear, the IRGC, which is, it has a major military function,
is not the same as the Army and the Navy and the military of intelligence.
So, totally, and, and the IRGC started life as, as these things called commentaries, they
were revolutionary commentaries, and one of their first big jobs was to go and put down
uprisings in Kurdish parts of Iran, where separatists were trying to sort of break away
from Iran and trying to cause problem for this new revolutionary state.
So, the IRGC really is the, the, the, the sort of the genistries or whatever, whatever
you want to call it, the Praetorian Guard writ large, it's the, it's the thing that protects
the revolution, and the Army, the sort of normal Army, as you would call it, sits alongside
it, and there's always been a hope in it, every time there's a, there's a sort of round
of protest, or for example, when Assad fell, the question is, would the Army turn against
the IRGC?
Would the Army say, right, you know, we're not, we're not going to fight for this, this
Islamic Republic thing anymore, we're going to, we're going to fight for Iran, and we're
going to side with the people.
And I think the comments that Pezashgian made the other day, I mean, it was, it was almost
immediate that the IRGC started launching drones at Dubai, and that was a, that was a
rebuke in public, and in private, from Vahidi Ahmad Vahidi, who's the head of the IRGC,
to Pezashgian say, look, we, we run this now.
So, and, and in, and I think that, that balance that exists in the Islamic Republic has always
been when you had Kharmenei there, it was a source of strength, because he could play
those two parties off against each other, and he could manage that, that kind of constructive
tension in a positive way, and you'd see it as a, you know, in negotiations with Iranians,
these elected officials had no decision-making authority, they couldn't make it in a negotiation,
they couldn't take a particular conversation in a, in a particular direction, if it was
off script, they would have to go out the room and sort of call, call the guys back in
Tehran. So, you have these elected officials, but they're very constrained, and ultimately
that, those constraints are becoming intensified as the conflict takes hold, and really that
favours the more hard-line elements of the government. So, when Pezashgian calls for
de-escalation in a kind of a roundabout way, you know, the, the IRGC remind him, who,
who really, you know, calls the, calls the shots.
Yeah. Talking about Iran as a country, you mentioned earlier there that the role in,
in the early days of the IRGC in putting down supposed uprisings of, of Kurds or threatened
uprisings, we might say. Now, in Iran, if I'm not mistaken, the Kurds represent about
10% of the population, so that's probably coming up to 10 million people, but clearly,
you know, many of them will have no intention of being involved in an armed uprising.
There's been some speculation that the CIA might be arming the Kurds or the Israelis
or both, but it doesn't look very likely or plausible that that's really going to sort
of get legs. But to what extent is there a sort of energy that is ripping Iran apart
from within, distinct from what's happening in terms of this kind of external assault
from the US and Israel?
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So I think it's important to even though in this latest round of conflict, there has
been from what you can see, and I know it's difficult because of the internet blackout,
but from what one can see in some of the open source stuff, there has been a rally around
the flag, people saying we don't like the Islamic Republic, but we're going to stand
by them because they're protecting our country against American and Israeli missiles.
And I go along with that two degree, I think also, but at times like this we shouldn't forget
that only two months ago, the Iranians killed 35,000 or 30,000, whatever it was of their own
people imprisoned a lot more or probably about 20,000 and that. And that has left a massive
toll on the collective psyche of the people of Iran. So despite the dead cat bounce that
they might get from appealing, from appearing to be defending the Iranian nation, no one's
in any doubt that these guys aren't. They're not good people. So the forces that drove
the January protest are still there. They definitely haven't gone away. And I was asked
that same question in the 12th day war, people saying, are people going to arrange going
to come out into the streets and try and overthrow the government? And I said, well, one, no,
not now because the bombs are falling and they don't want to, you know, they don't want
that to happen to them. But two, they were probably, as we saw happen, wait until the
conflicts die down. Perhaps the repression has died down because the posture of the Islamic
Republic now is to cease bias everywhere. And almost it's a more repressive environment
than it was three or four months ago. And then I imagine in a couple of months when, if
and when the conflicts die down, that's when some of this popular rage and anger that
still exists in Iran will rise up. And the outlook for the Islamic Republic in the medium
term is not particularly good because economically this hasn't, this war is not going to make
them richer, ecologically, it's not going to make Iran's sort of reservoirs of water
fill up. So the problems that were that were driving the conflict or the driving the
protest were rather in January, they're still there. And this sort of manufactured unity
could wither quite quickly when the, when the sort of common enemy disappears, I, if
it does disappear. Yeah. So let's talk briefly about that,
but how far Iran can continue to fire drones, one or two missiles. Now clearly they've,
they've taken an enormous number of targeted strikes from us in Israel. And of course,
some of those strikes have gone off target. It's increasingly clear that probably a girls
school was killed tragically. Lots of little girls killed in that context. But there seems
to be some evidence of Iran improving the accuracy of some of its strikes, possibly
with the help of Russia, or there was a very important, I think two important US military
radars in Bahrain and Qatar appear to have been hit. So it's a bit hard to tell. The volume
of strikes seems to be going down, but is there a degree to which perhaps the accuracy
is increasing? Or what's your sense of how long Iran can sustain its attacks on the region?
So the drones, I think the drone is the big one. And, and, and they've got a fairly large stockpile
of those drones. And what I don't think we've seen is I don't think we've seen the, the larger of
the Iranian, the Horaam Shahran, those kind of larger missiles. And there is a, there is a sense that,
that they're looking to absorb as much US punishment as they can. And then fireback missiles that,
that deplete the sort of patriots. I think the US has spent two and a half billions, to
shot two and a half billions worth of Patriot missiles. And a Shaheed 136 costs about, I don't know,
50 grand. You can see that asymmetry works in Iran's favor. And there's, there's, you know,
they've been planning for this for a long time. And they know that they can do those maths. And
they also know that if they, if they can wear down this stockpile of interceptors that the US has
spread the conflict as wide as possible so that the US is having to protect, you know, LNG facilities
in Qatar, but also other bits and bombs around the region. Eventually, some of that arithmetic will
start to work in their favor and they can bring out their heavier missiles or they can just keep
launching the drones. So I think on the other hand, it's possible that, that's, you know, if you look
at the, the, the Saudi response, they're not that rattled at the moment. Yes, there has been
attacks on desalination. Yeah. And there have been some strikes on energy facilities, but the broad
Saudi picture is that we're okay with this. But what we really want is that the Americans finish
the job. And that seems to me to be the, the sort of turning point of a lot of the Gulf thinking
is, is putting pressure on the Americans not to stop the war, but to, to finish the job.
Okay. So that's really interesting because I think right at the beginning, there was this slight
shock in, in the GCC countries, probably particularly those that are more dependent on
international visitors and tourism, so notably the UAE. But what, what you're saying now is that
actually it's sort of in for a penny, in for a pound, and, and they need the US and, and Israel
to, to just sort of get, get it done. Yeah. And in many ways, you're answering very clever
because they, they can see this sort of, I think we, you know, I've spoken about it before, this
kind of alliance between America and the Gulf States, which is sort of driven by obviously
Gulf States money, Trump's Averis and a bit of AI thrown in there. And it's no surprise that
the Iranians have attacked, attacked data centers to try and kind of drive a wedge between America
and the Gulf allies. I think the big fear remains from those, from a lot of those Gulf nations is
that what they don't want is Iran to become a second Syria and there to be a sort of flourishing
of sectarian violence that goes from Syria and, you know, touches in Iran and, and you have this
kind of destabilizing effect that can effectively give rise to ISIS 3.3.0. For example, that the guys
in Kurdistan, they're also nervous about Iraq becoming destabilized and, you know, at what point
is that going to blow back onto them? So a lot of these regional countries now thinking,
if you've started something, you have to finish it because a wounded Iran kind of unmoored from
the constraints of, you know, any any kind of geopolitical norm is potentially much more
dangerous than the Iran they had 12 days ago. So I think that's definitely an emerging theme,
but then that does beg the question, you know, can America finish it? Can Israel finish it? And
what does what actually does finishing it look like? Yeah, and I think that's an important
point because it's something we touched on when we spoke a week ago, which is that,
but Israel or certainly Benjamin Netanyahu, and I'm sure many of his supporters and senior commanders
do seem to have an objective of bringing down the Islamic Republic. Now, it's I've not seen anywhere
convincingly articulated what Israel thinks would replace it. Of course, we hear about
Reza Pallavi, the son of the former Shah, there's also the group which is which has come out of the
MEK, which was a sort of revolutionary group that fell out with the Islamic Republic in the early
days. But there doesn't seem to be a realistic sort of government in waiting hanging around,
and nor does there seem to be a plan on Israel's part to install such a government. And as for
America, I mean, I think that the most polite thing you can say about Trump is that his plans and
justifications change, you know, most days and certainly sometimes within minutes.
Yeah, I mean, in many ways that that has been a defining feature of this not just this
conflict, but a lot that's led up to it. You've had these sort of wildly oscillating justifications
and we're going to help protesters, we're going to not help protesters. And I think today he said
yesterday calling for the IGC to surrender. And I think there's almost 2,000, 200,000 IGC troops,
they're just why would they surrender? And to whom would they surrender? I mean, it's
right. And I think actually a lot of the a lot of the hype around Reza Pallavi, I think,
and I said this last week, you know, the guys in Iran are training for Al-Tramathans and he's
running a park run. And I think that even though it was probably a bit flippant, but it that's
feels to me to be the case. He's been a bit left behind when all kind of blood and thunder started.
And the Mujahideen Ikhalka are seen in Iran as traitors for siding with Saddam to degree in the
Iran Iraq war. They are a cult, basically. They don't. And I think positive and inclusive for
the future of Iran. And there really is. It's such a truism at times like this,
for people to say, well, the Americans don't have a plan. But they really don't have a plan.
And his brother doesn't have a plan because it feels like it doesn't need to have a plan
beyond basically destroying everything. And I think what we're seeing now, if you look at the
targeting of the US in Iran, the hitting of kind of civilian targets, i.e. energy infrastructure,
that to me shows that they've run out of military targets. And if you run out of military targets,
you start hitting oil depots and your enemy still hasn't buckled. It feels like there is a
swing there. And that swing is not necessarily in your favor. And the question that comes up in
my mind at the moment is, where do they go? And I think that's why they've had these sort of rumors
about the CIA working with the Kurds because the Americans don't want to commit drug ground troops.
But if they can get away with committing other people's ground troops, then perhaps that might
do the thing they want to do. But I still, I'm still not convinced that in the wirehouse,
there's a consensus on what success looks like. I think you've got sort of, you know,
Pete Higgseth, who's starting to resemble a cartoon character more than a serious politician.
And then you probably have JD Vance, who's much more, we need to talk to these people because
that's the only way to end this conflict. But much like in the Islamic Republic, the ones at the
moment that are favoring dialogue are increasingly sidelined as the kind of violence ratchets up. So
the people wanting dialogue aren't likely to get a word in edgeways for at least another couple of
weeks. Yeah, I mean, that's an important point to make that in a certain way, there's a kind of
ideological resemblance. Obviously, I'm not trying to suggest that the hardline is running the
Islamic Republic are necessarily the same as the hardline is running America, but you have
a group of people for whom the the action is perhaps more important than the goal. Now in
Shia Islam, that might be bound up with concepts of martyrdom and sort of sacrifice, which is
inherent in in the sort of Shia worldview. And perhaps there's certainly no martyrdom complex
going on with with Trump and his people. But I think what they have is a obsession with spectacle.
And for them, the spectacle of American power and might. And as you say, striking that oil
terminal, and we all saw those apocalyptic shots, you know, literally like a kind of, you know,
the twilight of the gods, a Gertar Demeron, but perhaps for certain people within America's
leadership and their political core supporters, that that is a sort of empowering vision.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I would say that that's a sort of a pXS type thing. In the
absence of a clear policy, if you've got the biggest arm in the world, why not just why not just
use it? And I do think that history is, you know, people absolute power corrupts absolutely. I
think it's, Trump wouldn't be the first person to get seduced by the allure of just deploying
violence on a massive scale. And I suppose the deeper you get into that, the only way out is
through consistent or continuing to employ massive violence. And that's the, that's the, that's
the real danger here is that there's no, there's no off-ramp. I mean, he has just said that the war
will end soon, but then as you know from Ukraine, he's been saying the Ukraine war's going to end
for quite a long time now. Yeah. And it seems that particularly if, if his ally Israel is continuing
to drive forward, I think Trump, Trump is very scared of looking as though somehow he's back down.
So he can, he can declare victory, but of course, if another drone hits a, you know, an airport
in the Gulf, then it doesn't look very victorious. And presumably he's rather scared of that. And
I imagine the Israelis are sort of whispering in his ear, well, you don't want to do that. Do you,
you know, Mr. President, because you'll look silly. And of course, he doesn't like to do that.
So I suppose finally, we, you, you, you touched on the, the analogy of Syria. And of course, Syria
had a 15 year civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, destabilized the region,
refugee flows and so on. But compared to Iran, Syria is a really quite small place with a
fairly small population. Iran, you know, is, is, is a, is a sort of near continental sized country
that stretches from Pakistan all the way to the borders of Europe, from the Caspian sea,
down to the Indian Ocean, with nearly 100 million people in it. It seems to me that people haven't
really taken cognizance of the scale of the risk of a country like Iran collapsing into anarchy.
I mean, yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. And I think that, that question of what will
you do if you don't win? That is a question that has not been adequately addressed in the American
administration because they just can't really count on its situation where they don't win. And I
think the, the danger of Trump saying we've won. And then there's a divergence between American
and Israeli policy. And then the Israeli think, well, we'll, we'll, we'll just keep on striking
because, um, because, because we, we don't think the job's finished. And then the Iranians will
keep on striking the, um, the, the, the Gulf and, and Arab countries in the Middle East to drive
a wedge between America and the Arabs and the Israelis. And I, and I feel like in this kind of
very asymmetric conflict that is emerging, this is almost like the sort of apotheosis of the global
war on terror. Um, and this, this could be it's sort of final, very grisly showdown, maybe not
it's final, but we're treating this like a, like a Venezuela or like a CT problem. And actually,
this is a mature, very rich, um, very powerful country that has capability to do lots of damage
to lots of people when it sets its mind to it. So that question of what, what happens if America
doesn't win? Who's gonna, who's gonna sort of tidy up the pieces afterwards? It, it simply
hasn't been asked. And, and I don't think that the American administration at the moment has the
kind of intellectual bandwidth to answer that kind of question. Yeah. I mean, I'm struck by
people have made analogies to the situation in Gaza before the October the 7th massacre.
And there was this idea, it's a slightly unpleasant concept, but of mowing the grass that the
Israelis was periodically, uh, carry out military operations to, to degrade, uh, Hamas. And so
they believed Hamas's ability to threaten Israel, clearly they were completely wrong. But it seems
to me that, you know, the Gaza Strip, as, as we all know, is, is a tiny little bit of land with
a very dense population with complete Israeli domination in terms of, uh, you know, the ability to
sort of seal it off and, and attack it and so on. Uh, the, the idea that you can treat Iran like
it's a sort of Gaza and draw a ring around it and, and sort of say, well, we'll just keep it secure.
That strikes me as, as completely delusional. Yeah. I, I, I think you're right. I think this is,
but I, this is where, you know, I was talking someone the other day and they said, well,
America does have a plan. They, they bomb until Iran either capitulates or comes to the table.
Um, something that is, that is the stated plan, but, but for Iran survival is victory and
it urnses their path to victory. And they know that they just, that, that the longer they kind of,
um, push this conflict out, the more chance they've got of surviving, which in their mind is,
uh, uh, a victory. Yeah. And, and I think it's worth mentioning, of course, that the,
although it's a very kind of self-destructive victory, a victory that includes a whole,
a reshaping of the whole economic model of the GCC, where you have countries that, you know,
lots of people have enjoyed laughing at influences in Dubai, sort of saying, well, we didn't know
there was a geopolitical situation in this region, but whether or not we find that amusing,
the fact is that a business model in the Gulf countries has been established on the basis that
there is quite a high level of security, albeit in a insecure region, and that you can have airports
and great internet connection and, you know, ubers that arrive on time and all the rest of it.
Now if, if that economic model fails, it is not just, uh, troubling for the countries of the GCC,
but actually increasingly a huge amount of kind of world investment and growth expectations
are built on the idea that GCC money is involved. So the ramifications go much wider than just
what's happening inside Iran. Absolutely, absolutely. And you've only got to look at, you know,
Trump's latest, his roadshow to the Gulf last May, I think it was all the money that was promised
to go into the American economy. I mean, America stands the lose from some of that massively.
Yeah, the trillions of anticipated Gulf money. Yeah. Okay, so final question, Charlie. What should we
be looking for if, if we think that Iran is, uh, perhaps willing to deescalate, or we think
that, for example, the Americans believe that they can declare victory and walk away. Would, would
Iran, would there be a pause, you know, are there, are there sort of middle options that aren't
quite the end of the war, aren't quite victory, but I sort of cease fire that, you know, maybe China
stepped in and negotiated or something like that. So I think there was a comment from a senior
regime official today saying, um, we will not negotiate with the Americans whilst the fighting
is ongoing. And to my mind, that is, that is clearly a signal saying, well, if the fighting stops,
we might talk with you. Yeah. And Ali Larajani has long been booted as, as in sort of American
circles, as he's the guy we can do business with, who was until much to bit in that tiny little
interim, Ali Larajani was running the country. He is someone who can sort of cross the divide as
it were, potentially, and talk to the Americans. That's the only really deescalatory path I can see.
It won't come from a peasantian or an Iraqi, from a sort of political camp. It'll come from the
regime inside of. And again, as I've sort of said before, the challenge there is that one that
might not satisfy Israel. And two, it might not lead to a lasting sort of sustainable solution.
But three, also, it's a massive portrayal of the sort of people that were on who've gone out
and protested in, in January. So the path to deescalation is itself fraught with kind of,
you know, baked in risks and challenges that could rear their head later down the line.
Well, with that thought, we will continue to watch this very closely. Charlie, thank you so
much for sharing your insights and knowledge with us this evening. Always good to be with you, Arthur. Take care.
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