Episode 99: Are we winning?

>> Hi, everybody. Welcome to Aschavev Anything. It's day 18 of the war with Iran, and the war has reached a pivot. A new direction, everything is changing.

We've had the war up until now that we have basically managed to grasp and understand

“certain successes, certain remarkable achievements, where do the Iranian people stand?”

What did the regime remains? These are things that we have a fairly good grasp of. And now the battlefield is changing in fundamental ways. Something is shifted in the strategy of the Israelis, of the Americans, and of the Iranians, or will be shifting soon, we expect.

The balance of power is changing, and the fundamental question is no longer just what happens next, what's the next target, who's the next assassination? It goes deeper than that. Now that we're seeing this shift, we're beginning to understand what the actual military planners had in mind when they went to this war, from the Israeli and American sides.

And just as importantly, we can now seriously tackle the questions, can the U.S.

Israel coalition win this? Can the Iranian regime survive this, are those mutually exclusive? What's going on? Before we get into it, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by a sponsor who asked to remain anonymous, and dedicated the episode to honoring the memory of all

of those we lost in the massacres of October 7, and all those we have lost in war. And in terror attacks that followed and continue to this day, including especially the brave American servicemen and women who have given their lives in the current war with Iran. We remember them and made their memory be a blessing. I would like to also invite you to join our Patreon community.

“It helps us keep the lights on, and if you want to ask the questions that guide the topics”

we choose to talk about, that's where we have that conversation. There are also great discussion forums where I and listeners discuss the episodes and general news and resources that we all share throughout the day. And you get to be part of our monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. You can join us at www.patreon.com/askovieve, anything the link is in the show notes.

Let's get into it. Our two fundamental questions that if we don't answer it, at least we will better understand. And the alliance win this and can the Iranian regime survive this.

At first glance, the answer to these questions might seem obvious.

The Iranian leadership is decimated. It's military is completely degraded. Its economy is collapsing. Its population is restless and angry at the regime more than at the attacks. As far as we can tell, there's no obvious polling, 98% of the Iranian population is thrown

off the internet by the regime.

“It's hard to know, but what signals we get suggest.”

There's no love lost for this regime among the vast majority of the population. If you've been following this conflict closely, however, you know that despite all of those things, it's not exactly so simple to just say, well, obviously this regime is completely destroyed and decimated and weakened and its core central figures of authority are gone. It's collapsing, right?

This is not a conventional war. This is not a conventional regime. Let's begin with the facts on the ground. Iran's leadership structure has taken an extraordinary blow. Probably, maybe the most severe in modern military history.

This wasn't a slow erosion of its power. This is a sudden violent clearing of the deck. The entire authorization pyramid, top to bottom, at least in the upper echelons, that once governed Iran, that two weeks ago governed Iran, is shattered. Ali Haminahi, the Supreme Leader, is dead.

In the assembly of experts, that itself is a sign of weakness, because he won that vote by 59 votes, the lowest possible vote in the assembly for actually winning the two-thirds required to become Supreme Leader. He only got in, he only squeaked in by that narrow vote, because the IRGC was according to reports from within Iran, pressuring the assembly of experts to put him in power.

He doesn't have the religious authority of his father. He rules from an undisclosed, hardened bunker somewhere. He barely made the cut off. The reason that this was such a difficult process for the clerics and the assembly of experts to actually do is that the clerics oppose hereditary rule.

Hereditary rule was seen by them for decades discussed by them. Part of the ethos and story of this regime is that hereditary rule was part of the corruption of the Shah that they were rebelling against, that the rule of the jurist system was meant to replace. And now they did it.

There's the death yesterday of Ali Leriy Jani. Ali Leriy Jani may be a more significant death for the future of this regime than any other

Ali Leriy Jani was the wartime coordinator.

“He was the power behind the throne for much about since the death of Ali Haminahi.”

Who else was killed? Ali Shamphani, a major security figure, central to the regime is Maitatib, the minister of intelligence, Muhammad Bagheri, the chief of staff that was in June, whole saint Salamu, the IRGC commander, the head of the IRGC ground forces, Aziz Nasir Zadeh, the defense minister, Musavi, a major army commander, a gonablezah Soleimani, the besiege commander.

And that's just the top layer, and it's not all of them in the top layer. Further down, you have command and control people, the major structures, the authority figures, who have all been systematically killed and dismantled, the heads of the intelligence director at the operational planners, emergency command, leadership, police intelligence, a lot of the people in charge of the besiege, a lot of the people in charge of the

oppressive apparatus that keeps the population down, they're gone.

“Many rounds nuclear program leaders, SP&D chiefs, they've been hit, and most importantly”

perhaps all of this happened at once. In other words, there was no replacement period, there was no time for anyone to get used to any of this. Most of the leadership was eliminated in this concentrated wave between 28 February and today, which is March 18.

It's not a trision, it's decapitation, there's nothing the regime could have done to maintain 47 years of institutional memory, Alayla Rijani in that sense, the man who really was the central go between the, um, technology that runs the country, and the old guard of revolutionaries and clerics takes with him in his death, all of that institutional memory, and the military consequences have been almost as dramatic, up to 2/3 of Iran's ballistic missile launchers

are out of operation one way or another. Missile inventories, production line storage facilities, all of them smashed, degraded,

“launch rates have dropped by as much as 90% and may be even more important, missile crews”

have started to refuse orders according to multiple reports in mainstream serious media. Why? Because launching a missile has become a death sentence. Crews emerge from hiding, they fire the missile, they're immediately targeted by Israeli and American air power that's hovering around Iran in air space, especially in the areas

where these missiles are expected to be, few of these crews actually survive. That's not just the technical degradation, it's a psychological collapse at the operational level.

And Iran now faces diplomatic isolation like never before in its history.

It's actually quite striking, the UN, which has very rarely been unified on anything involving Iran, past a condemnation resolution, co-sponsored by 135 countries, nothing like it has been seen since the revolution. Even Russia and China abstained. They buy things from Iran, they trade with Iran, they see Iran as part of an access

that they want to lead, and they abstain, no one is willing to back, but looks to them like a sure failure in this regime. And even the regime's strategy of frightening its neighbors into demanding it into the war from the Americans, seems to have backfired, Iran launched and continues to launch a coordinated campaign of missiles and drones against Israel against American positions,

okay? But also against Gulf Arab states, against Azerbaijan, even Turkey. The Azari president had paid his respects to the memorial for Alechaminay at the Iranian embassy, shortly before Iran targeted Azari territory with a missile launch. Iran was hoping to fracture the region, it did the opposite.

Gulf states have lined up openly against Iran, there's open talk of Israel being a better ally, the UAE, which still was an economic lifeline for Iran, at least it's financial institutions, is now considering restrictions on Iranian assets and cuts are after being directly targeted by Iran, is signaling more alignment with the coalition than it has ever signal before. There was an Al-Jazeera op-ed recently that argued in its headline that

the U.S. Israel war was actually succeeding, and more importantly was what had argued in the actual peace, which was that there was now no real alternative but regime change, because if this regime can survive this, while also stopping oil in the in the state of Hormuz, it will have a de facto veto over Gulf energy exports. Iran's state-run outlet, Al-Jazeera, which is understood in the region as its projector

of soft power, now analyzes the war it wouldn't do this without regime approval, and

basically Israeli terms. It's a deliberate signal to Iran. Iran didn't split the region,

near. At this point, it's tempting to say that. The leadership is decapitated, the military

“is degraded, the economy is collapsing, diplomacy is shattered. Surely this is the beginning”

of the end. But the answer is no, this is not the beginning of the end. Three days before

the war started, we put out a podcast episode that explained that this is not a regime that falls easily, not even when it's lost everything. This is not going to be a war of quick victories. This is something else completely. And to understand that, we need to revisit a concept we discussed earlier. Now, a lot of you haven't heard that episode, that's okay. It's a two-hour lecture. There was just, you know,

you got to understand the depth of it because it is deep and powerful and world ordering. It is an idea called the mukawama. The mukawama literally translates an Arabic into the word resistance, but it's much more than just what resistance means in English. It's a way

“of understanding history. It's a way of understanding religion. It boils down to a military”

strategy that has proven itself in multiple arenas over the course of the past hundred years. And it's a strategy that basically, I urge people to go to that episode. I'm not going to get into it now, but the strategy is basically built on a simple asymmetry. The weak or the humble can endure enormous pain. Whereas the stronger party, the rich, the comfortable, the imperialist powers and some iterations can't endure pain. And therefore,

the weak have a huge advantage when it comes to inflicting pain because the threshold

for causing a change in behavior is much lower among the powerful and wealthy. The weak,

therefore, don't actually have to win. All they have to do is persist. Keep fighting. Keep inflicting pain. And be able to absorb, perhaps greater levels of pain, but nevertheless any level of pain imposed by the strong. The willingness to absorb, the willingness to martyr oneself, is the great force multiplier closes the gap between the power of the weak and humble and the power of the strong and powerful. This idea comes directly from

Khomeini's world view. The world view of Hohna Khomeini, the founder of this regime in 1979. It's rooted in some Marxist anti-imperialist strategies of the 20th century, Mao Tsung, and Franz Fanon, and many others. And that's discussed in that episode. But it's based in these two categories that Khomeini takes all of these ideas and he brings them distills them out of all this discourse. And in the 70s, developed two categories that he draws

from the Koran, one category is the Mustazafin, the oppressed, the weak, the humble, who will inherit the earth by God's will in the Koran, and the Mustazafin, the arrogant, the powerful, who will lose despite their power, because their power and wealth is corrupting. There's weakening. This is the basic spiritual and political theological vocabulary of this regime. Weakness makes you spiritually superior. It is easier to get divine help,

because you are spiritually healthier, cleaner in the words of Khomeini. And therefore, the weak must triumph, and the suffering you incur in facing down the powerful and the

arrogant, as Khomeini always framed it. That suffering is purifying. So the willingness

“to endure and to die is the weapon, is what closes the gap. That's why foreign minister Arrakchi”

in a letter to the leaders of Pakistan, just this past week, talked about this as a spiritual moment, a divine moment. Something good is happening. He explained literally in the first sentence of the letter. "Martyrdom is not a cost. It is the thing that you strive for. It is the closeness to God that the humble hope for, and through that connection to the divine, receive the aid promised to the humble believer against which no power on this earth could possibly stand."

That's the vision that is this strategy. That is why Hezbollah always thought it would eventually defeat Israel. That is why Iran genuinely believes that all it has to do is survive. The coalition defines victory in a much more simple straightforward sense. Can Iran project power? Well, not if it doesn't have missiles by the end of this. Not if it doesn't have a navy by the end of this, which is pretty much getting close to being that situation. Can it launch

those missiles? Can it operate the military as before? Can it fund its proxies in different places from Yemen to Lebanon? By these measures Iran is clearly losing, and yet the war is not over.

going on, understand what's at stake, and know how to finally bring this regime to its needs.

“And that's the case I'm going to make now after laying out why Iran has a chance of surviving.”

Here's how the Israelis and the Americans are trying to solve that. Based on the best reporting we have on what I've seen on the ground, I hope this is right. It might not be right. There's a lot of fog of war and there are a lot of decisions that still have to be made, competence issues, supply issues, a lot of domestic politics, especially in the United States that could limit what the United States can do. Let's get into it.

Iran is much more vulnerable in ways that in general discussion in the Western press seems to be an Iranian strength. What am I talking about? The Strait of Hormos. The Strait of Hormos is Iran's great doomsday weapon, as I said. So why is it actually Iran's great vulnerability? If you close the Strait, you choke the global oil supply. 20% of global oil goes through there. You trigger an economic shock, massive spike in oil prices. Very large spikes

in energy prices that are sustained over some time are recession inducing in Western economies. That is a huge cost for Western government for the Trump administration for every Western government to incur to take on itself for the purposes of this war. And Iran did it. It closed the Strait of Hormos and ships, hundreds of ships, tens of thousands of sailors, vast amounts of oil and gas can't get through. But what actually happened in the Strait of Hormos? The closure

we are learning over the last two weeks is turning out to be a greater vulnerability for Iran than for the globally economy. There's the simple fact, the astonishing fact that Iranian ships

“are getting through the Strait to China. Iran is still selling, I think it's a million barrels”

a day, something like that, to China. And that sale of Iranian oil to China is itself helping to stabilize the global market because any supply is the supply that's less oil the China's buying elsewhere that's more supply in the market. Now why is Iran continuing to sell oil to China when that actually hurts the entire purpose, the price shock vulnerability of the American government,

for example? It actually hurts the whole strategy of closing her moves. And the answer is because

it has no choice. Iran is desperately vulnerable when it comes to its oil. It desperately needs to sell this oil. Unlike the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia, we have recently learned those days two weeks, the extent to which they have alternatives. They have other pipelines, pipelines to the Red Sea, for example. But 90% of Iran's oil exports all flow through a single point, hard island. If the coalition hits the hard peers, Iran's revenue vanishes instantly,

regardless of the state's actual status, whether it's open or closed. Iran relies on an aging, uninsured shadow fleet, the ghost fleet, so called to bypass sanctions. These ships have almost no defenses, a few surgical strikes on a few tankers would cause the entire fleet to anchor and not move. No cruise is going to risk a fiery death from a single allies missile

“for a regime that can't protect its own assets. Now why can't it afford to close our moves?”

Because Iran's economy is collapsing. For years now, inflation averaged about 40% annually. It's a cumulative erosion of purchasing power over just I think the last five years that's above 400%. In early 2022, food inflation already hit 110% year over year. Some categories are in hyperinflation. Wages are not rising with the costs. And so the regime's response over the last month has been in attempt to just flood the market with food vouchers. They increase the minimum wage by

60% which of course just feeds the inflation. They issued a 1 million real bill and that 1 million

real bill, a brand new bill, so people could actually hold money is worth less than a dollar when it was issued. Currency, in other words, the nation's currency is effectively stopped functioning. Iran is now in a voucher-barter economy and that voucher-barter economy is controlled by the IRGC and structurally nothing can fix it. Because the IRGC's control over the economy is unbelievably huge. Iran's economy is not normal. It's not an economy the way you think of

an economy in the West. It has this weird hybrid system that revolutionary guards and these religious

more. Major infrastructure oil exports telecom banking networks, the IRGC is less a military and

“more a giant conglomerate. And its biggest entity Hata Malambia controls 800 companies.”

The Supreme Leaders Foundations, the biggest Bunyads, Sittad, must as a fund, control hundreds of billions in assets. This is the double-digit percentage of Iran's entire GDP. And all of it is outside oversight, it's without taxation, it's with zero transparency. When Mojdaba Hamanai inherited power as the Supreme Leader, he inherited this system, this vast economy, whose main task is to fund the revolution to turn the entire country into

one immense patronage system that secures the regime. He can't let it go. He can't let it go because

it binds the regime together. It is the source of all loyalty that this regime can command

“among the rank and file among the besiege among the IRGC troops. And here's the trap.”

To survive politically, the regime must strangle and totally control the economy at a vast scale. And by doing that, it's destroying the economy. The economy doesn't have the the ability to respond to serious shocks like this war. And because oil exports are a huge source of income to this collapsing state run part of the economy, something like 35 to 50% of the state budget is this oil export. Iran can't possibly disrupt its own oil flow through Hormuz.

China might actually do that before Israel or the US get a chance. Right now, China seems to have

basically given up on Iran. It no longer treats Iran as we saw the UN and we saw it in public

“statements as some kind of great ally, it's giving supersonic missiles to and new intelligence”

infrastructures and technologies to. It basically just buys Iranian oil at this point because it's cheap because it's pretty much the sole buyer, not because it's some kind of useful or reliable ally. Now, if the costs of that oil rise, I mean, just transport costs risk costs insurance costs, China just switches suppliers. Russia would love to Saudi Arabia, would love to undermine Iran by doing that. Iran's oil becomes unselable. And the regime loses its last reliable

income stream, which is not in the real. And now we turn inward, the regime's greatest fear is not a foreign attack, not even a foreign attack at this scale. The regime's greatest fear even now is its own people. And here, something genuinely remarkable is happening. Something that I don't think anybody expected. Maybe hope for, but I don't know if we expected. Iranians are part of the war on the ground on mass crowdsourced. I'm not talking about spies working with CIA or Mossad on the

ground. I'm not talking about defectors. I'm not talking about uniformed officers. Ordinary civilians are sending on mass locations of regime troops, besieged checkpoints for cave videos, photos. They're sending it through Persian language channels on social media, linked to Israeli intelligence, telegram. There's literally a contact us section of the Mossad's website where you consent tips. And it's a new day. Now a lot of Iran is offline. Most of the vast majority of Iran is offline.

But there's been a huge effort by the Israelis, by the Americans, to smuggle tens of thousands of terminals for starlink. Elon Musk made Starlink free in Iran for this period. And so Iranians in peacemeal here and there are tracking regime leaders, are tracking military units, are tracking besieged enforcers. And they're sending this information to the Israelis. Real time, distributed, and apparently a massive scale and relentlessly. Analysts are starting to talk

about the besieged hunt. There's a video that's gone viral on Iranian social media on Persian language social media in which Iranians play drone sounds on a boom box from a recording. And they watch and from their window from their apartment window on the street as besieged men at a checkpoint suddenly scatter in fright. The shoe is suddenly on the other foot. Iranians on the ground and

them a sad tip after tip, and that apparently is how Ali Larry Johnny the most powerful man in Iran.

“Lost his life yesterday. And yesterday we're recording on March 18, yesterday March 17.”

As part of all of that was a catastrophic day for the besieged. The regime's main enforcer and a suppressor of protest and of the demand for reform and revolution. Three hundred besieged commanders and field officers were killed in a single wave of overnight strikes. The big names were published Brigadier General Goroblesa Soleimanians. I mentioned the overall commander of the besieged his deputy, Said Karishi. They were killed in a makeshift

tent headquarters in Tehran, which was apparently an attempt to hide from satellite tracking.

But they couldn't hide from Iranians tracking them. And it's possible intelligence assessments

of Osint and some others have suggested that 5,000 members of Iran's military and security forces IRGC besieged the intelligence police have been killed since the war began.

“Mostly, by the way, the besieged. That's mostly where the focus has been. We saw”

a Hermes drone attack on a besieged checkpoint into Iran recently. It's growing. Iran has actually responded by arresting hundreds of people who have been accused of sharing locations or footage with Israel. But it's done nothing to stem this tide. So control is collapsing. The infrastructure of authority is collapsing. With central command

degraded, the IRGC has activated something called mosaic defense. Not as in Moses, but as in

the mosaic, the art form. 31 provincial commanders now operate mostly independently. They can make life or death decisions. Their job is to keep their areas safe and secure and the local regime. Run by the IRGC. Safe and secure from overthrow. Folks Iran is no longer a centralized state. It's now a patchwork of local power centers. Some of them are going to brutally suppress any protest. Some of them are going to reach some kind of

agreement with protestors. It depends a lot on local conditions on the ethnic makeup on the economic situation on the desperation of different local groups. Iran is a very diverse place. Some of them are in very strategic areas along the Gulf Coast for example. Some of them up in mountains and distant borders that don't really matter strategically. And some of these commanders are going to do anything to survive, even if it means making deals. We're reaching a

point where we're beginning to see how this regime could unravel. And that brings us to the last phase, the next phase. This is what the war is becoming now. It's now becoming an economic attrition war. It's not just about destroying Iran's the regime's oil exports. You don't want to destroy the oil exports. I would destabilize global markets. The Americans have clarified that to these rallies and the Israelis are played ball. But by targeting something more precise,

you can cut off the regime's access to internal fuel, internal refineries, the internal energy grid, which is a big way it has been paying fighters and has been paying the ranks. The money is worthless, the currency is worthless, but it can literally pay with fuel. And it can provide services and it can provide energy. If you begin to target refineries and fuel distribution, okay. So for example, crude oil, crude oil is a kind of raw soup. You can't run tanks or trucks

“or a military on crude oil. You need to refine it. You need to refine it into various levels of”

refining gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, whichever version, carousine, whichever version you need of the fuel. And the key component for refining it are what are called fractionation columns. They're these tall towers that separate the crude into usable fuels. These exist in every refinery. If you destroy those, not from fuel that was headed to China, but from fuel that was destined for the internal market, then the oil becomes useless. It remains crude. There's also distribution.

The ray junction at the center of Iran's internal fuel network, it's this huge hub near Tehran. The media has called it the grand central station of fuel. These immense pipelines come in from the south and it then distributes it into pipelines headed north and it feeds the Tehran energy grid. At this very moment, a great deal of the leadership surviving leadership of the regime is hiding in an underground bunker system beneath civilian infrastructure in Tehran.

You lose that fuel. You lose the generators. You lose the electricity to run that bunker system

having to find them. And now, literally today, began the escalation in the energy war.

“The strike on south parts. South parts is not just a gas field. It's the largest gas field in the”

world that produces about 75% of Iran's natural gas. This is in every press report about this

Israeli strike. The electricity powering Tehran is basically from the south part's field.

And by hitting south parts, the coalition is now targeting the power grid itself. No electricity means no regime control. It means no surveillance. It means no internet control. It means none of the repression infrastructure. It means no coordination. Iran closed our moves. Iran couldn't fully close our moves because Iran needs our moves more than any nation on Earth needs our moves. And now, the response of the coalition

is that if you close global energy, we will dismantle your energy. And without electricity, without fuel, the regime has nothing to maintain. It's the loyalty of its foot soldiers.

“And finally, there's the internet, the information war. Iran is shut down. It's internet”

almost completely connectivity is between one to four percent depending on time and place.

90 million people are basically thrown off the internet in silence. The region calls this

security, right? Iranians call it something else after Ali Laharijani was interviewed by Becky Anderson on CNN back in January. And she said to him, "How do you justify? How does it not invalidate the regime?" Something like that to take the entire Iranian nation off the internet. He said, "I speak for the Iranians." And that created the hashtag in Persian. He does not speak for me. While that's happening, that tug of war, where the regime throws the entire country off the

internet for weeks at a time, just to prevent protesters from organizing and people from showing videos sent easily telling the world what's happening to them. 10s of thousands of starlink

“terminals have been operating illegally in Iran. And it's a cat and mouse game. There are these Chinese”

supplied vans that can hunt down these terminals, detect these terminals. And they're moving around

to Iran trying to find them and moving around the other big cities trying to find them. But never

the last protest footage is leaking. The blackout is being pierced. The coalition's strategy is no longer to restore Iran's internet, although that might ironically happen with the loss of the energy grid, or the temporary loss of the energy grid, the strategy is to bypass it, with satellite networks, with mesh systems, with smuggle devices. Let Iranians see, let Iranians be seen, let them talk to each other, let them organize. Communication is a pre-condition

for an uprising. So where does all this bring us? We're now in a new phase. Iran is militarily degraded. It's economically collapsing and it's politically fragmented. It is still capable of repression, especially in places where the local commander wants that. It's still capable at this moment of survival. And that's the paradox, because in the Mokawama ideology survival is victory, if the regime survives, it's not going to moderate. It's going to double down.

So are we winning? The honest answer is we don't know yet if we're winning, because this is no longer about battlefield victories. This is about resilience. It's a test of will. It's about fragmenting properly. That regime? It's about the dynamics of collapse once they take hold. Iran is no longer a unified regime. It's becoming something else and the pressure that is turning it into something else is not letting up. And the outcome depends on what happens next.

Do provincial commanders break ranks? The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating piece yesterday in which it reviewed a recording of a Mossad agent calling in Persian a local officer. And telling him you have a choice. We kill you or you begin to support the people of Iran. And the commanders response was something like, do you're worse? I'm already a dead man. Well, that's not a man who thinks he's holding his place. That's a man who thinks that he'll be

killed by one side or killed by the other. Now, if you can promise some kind of safety, if you can have the very fact that Mossad is communicating that way with local commanders, who are now the core of the regime's power structure, basically, in the Mosaic system. That very fact tells us that they're now targeting them. You don't need to find many breaking to begin a domino effect of breaking. Some will hold the line forever, but some will surely be willing to save their lives

and side with the protesters. When does the economy snow now that the energy grid itself

Or does the system barely painfully shattered? But mainly because there's literally nothing to replace

it. For 47 years, this regime achieved basically nothing at all except the removal of any other

power center in Iranian society capable of challenging it. And that's basically what allows it to survive even in this state. What coalesces in Iranian society in an organized systematic way

“to be the political counterweight that can take over. And therefore does the system hold together?”

Here's one hard strategic fact as we pivot from the simpler kinetic war, the decapitation war,

to the energy attrition war. The United States and Israel can sustain this.

Kinetically, tactically, far longer than Iran can. That seems to me fairly clear. I might be wrong, but that seems to me something fairly clear. The great Achilles heel might be the resolve of the administration back in the United States because of the campaign against the war in American politics. But if that can be sustained, there isn't very good reason to think that the

Israelis and the Americans clearly understand the nature of this regime and are clearly driving

at all of its Achilles heels. None of this guarantees victory. But it does change everything

“in a war of endurance. The side that can last longer. That's what's happening now. The side”

that can last longer is the side that decides the outcome. That's by the way the core idea of mukawama. It needs to be the core idea of any war on a mukawama state. The old status quo of steady Iranian expansionism and nobody willing to challenge them. That's dead in gone. And now we're actually deciding whether a stable Middle East can emerge. It depends in large part of whether the Iranian people,

“now that they're empowered by real-time intelligence, by growing numbers of satellite links,”

can push through the final pieces, fragments. Some of them still cohesive and violent and brutal, but nevertheless fragments of a splintering regime. There's some evidence that local commanders are actually giving away the locations of other local commanders who are there, adversaries and people they don't like within the regime. There's some signs of breaking. We don't know if any of that is enough. But if that can be achieved and if the people can rise up through that,

then a whole new day can dawn. And this is where we are now. With a death of Ali Lary Johnny the last great brahman of the old guard who was holding together all the threads. The clerics and the technocracy and all the different pieces of this government regime and the economic power and all the global strategy, there's nobody left with that institutional memory in this regime. And now the Americans and the Israelis are turning to the heart of it, to the energy war, to the last

lifeline the regime actually has to pay its troops. This is where we are now. We're at the pivot. Thank you for listening.