In this episode, recorded live in London, Richard Pater speaks with Andrea Stricker and Behnam Ben Taleblu from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) about Iran’s nuclear, missile, and regional threat landscape five months after the Twelve-Day War and the snapback sanctions.
Together, they discuss the whereabouts and condition of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stock, as well as Iran’s use of proxies across the region. Andrea Stricker is Deputy Director of FDD’s Non-proliferation and Biodefense Program, and Behnam Ben Taleblu is Senior Director of FDD’s Iran Program.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
00:00:06:24 – 00:00:25:21
Hello and welcome to this BICOM’s podcast briefing. I’m Richard Pater, the chief executive of BICOM, and I’m delighted to be in London today. And we have a room full of experts and journalists here for this briefing. And I’m delighted to get to welcome our guests from Washington, from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
00:00:26:02 – 00:00:55:00
Two speakers, Andrea Stricker and Behnam Ben Taleblu, who are here, both here visiting from Washington, both Iranian experts. And we are here reflecting on five months since the Twelve-Day War between Israel and Iran and the US involvement as well. And really to understand the latest assessments of where Iran is, both in terms of their nuclear proliferation and then more broadly on the security and political dynamics within Iran.
00:00:55:00 – 00:01:20:10
So, I’ll hand over to both of the speakers to do a presentation, and then we’ll open it up for questions. Great. Thank you for having us. I’m Andrea Stricker. I am the deputy director of FDA’s non-proliferation and biodefense program. And it’s great to be here to assess where we go after the June strikes and the snapback of U.N. sanctions against Iran.
00:01:20:12 – 00:01:46:09
Clearly, there’s a lot of outstanding questions about how far the program has been set back since the strikes. And on the sanctions side, whether all countries around the world intend to enforce, the renewed sanctions or if we’re going to continue to have problems on that side. As you may know, the International Atomic Energy Agency just released a new report, a safeguards report on Iran.
00:01:46:11 – 00:02:19:18
Yesterday, assessing that they have now not, reported the whereabouts of their highly enriched uranium stock, their HQ, which is likely buried under the rubble at two sites, likely at the S-400 tunnel complex, which the U.S. had bombed with Tomahawk missiles and collapsed the entrances. And, also, I understand at the Fordow facility, which is deeply buried under a mountain, and so it’s going to take them time to get to that.
00:02:19:24 – 00:02:47:12
We’ve seen some limited activity to sort of excavate the entrances, to fortify the security perimeter. But they’re going to have difficulty getting to it, obviously below ground or deep in tunnels. And we don’t know yet how bad the damage is, particularly in the tunnels at the S-400 complex. There’s also questions about a facility at the Natanz, complex.
00:02:47:12 – 00:03:14:22
It’s called Pickax Mountain. They the Iranians were building a possible new enrichment facility more than 100m below ground. They hadn’t yet finished. And the US and Israel chose not to target that site. There they were planning to build a centrifuge assembly facility that we know, but there’s concern that it could also have the floor space for an enrichment plant.
00:03:14:24 – 00:03:44:04
So, I think those three facilities are of concern. And they have to be careful, though the Iranians, because they are under close watch with satellites. I was told personally that, the Israelis are watching to see what comes out of those sites. If there’s HQ stocks, that would be in and highly movable canisters. They have enough for about 11 nuclear weapons.
00:03:44:06 – 00:04:08:10
They could use that which is enriched to 60%, in nuclear weapons directly. That would be very heavy, large explosives, but likely they’d seek to go to 90%. And to do that, they’d need a small enrichment plant. So that’s going to be key to see if they try to make a covert plant or use, some facility that they have already.
00:04:08:12 – 00:04:32:24
And also at that foreign complex, they were building a new enrichment facility. The IAEA was scheduled to go there, but obviously had to cancel, because the bombing happened. So, the IAEA wants to know the whereabouts of this. Aigoo, clearly, it’s a proliferation threat. It’s a breakout threat. And I think Iran is holding that card very closely.
00:04:32:24 – 00:05:02:00
They’re not planning to give up the HQ. They have made some progress on restoring IAEA access. Five months on, but it’s really low level. So, they’re not really allowing access to facilities that would come into play in a breakout. It’s mostly like research reactors. I believe they’re also letting them into some foreign facilities that weren’t destroyed, that would come into play for making fuel for reactors likely.
00:05:02:02 – 00:05:28:05
And it’s unclear if they will restore access anytime soon. I don’t think it’s in their interest from their perspective. They probably want to see what they can excavate from, from under the sites, whether they can move anything. And then I also think we don’t want to rule out that the potential that they could shelter in place and try to cobble something together at some of these deeply buried sites.
00:05:28:07 – 00:05:55:11
So obviously it’s, it’s a Western priority for us UK to restore the IAEA monitoring. But if we cannot then we have to be very creative about, how we start to deal with that problem because it could be years, in which Iran is essentially not withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty, but they’re also not complying. And that’s a huge problem that the West needs to take seriously.
00:05:55:11 – 00:06:22:11
I bet all, frankly, all countries need to take seriously, because I think since North Korea, we haven’t had that issue where a country is just flat out not complying but doesn’t withdraw for a while. I think we will heavily rely on Intel, Israeli and US Intel to sort of provide the monitoring that the AI would normally provide.
00:06:22:13 – 00:06:49:14
And again, that’s, that’s IAEA monitoring on the nuclear material. They didn’t really get to whether Iran was constructing nuclear weapons known as weaponization. Iran obviously kept that very hidden and refused to give many answers on their past nuclear weapons work. Trump says that he got involved because he thought that Iran was about two months from nuclear weapons.
00:06:49:16 – 00:07:16:04
My assessment as well as my outside, outside technical colleagues at the time had estimated about six months to be able to explode a rudimentary nuclear device. So, and Israel also saw increasing weaponization work, and they were not about to wait until they dashed for the bomb and potentially were unstoppable. So, it’s an important question to know how far they were set back.
00:07:16:06 – 00:07:45:13
My estimate is more on the Israeli side, I would say probably two years or more. And that certainly depends on whether they can reconstitute quickly, whether they decide to wait and, are deterred for now from reconstituting or whether they can actually mount a quick breakout campaign and put together a nuclear weapon. And a lot of that will depend on whether they have foreign assistance.
00:07:45:13 – 00:08:14:07
So, they will likely seek to procure goods and materials from abroad, sort of a nuts-and-bolts problem, where they have to reestablish a lot of the equipment and the material that they were lost if they were to make a dash for nuclear weapons. So, it’s a big question on whether it will be a slow or fast effort, but I think most of us would expect that they probably will eventually try to restore an enrichment capability, and then possibly weaponize.
00:08:14:09 – 00:08:47:16
So, I would say we want to be looking at what they’re doing at the sites, what their decision making is and how quickly they intend to, to surmount all the obstacles facing them now and what we can do policy wise. You know, Ftdi has been very strong, speaking out against allowing or as a matter of policy, any enrichment, because simply, if you have enriched uranium fuel, then you have the ability to fuel a nuclear weapon.
00:08:47:18 – 00:09:11:13
And Iran has violated its safeguards obligations for more than 30 years, since the 90s, maybe even the 80s. Trying to put together a secret nuclear weapons program. So, if we have a new deal, we’re trying to make that point, especially in the UK, that we don’t we don’t want to offer them enrichment, especially after they’ve just lost all of that capability.
00:09:11:13 – 00:09:40:16
It’s the first time that they’re not enriching uranium since 2006. And so, it’s important as a matter of policy to maintain that restriction. And we also want to see, as I said, all countries pushing for them to comply with their comprehensive safeguards agreement, which is it’s a legal requirement as a member of the NPT that you implement IAEA safeguards, you allow access, you allow accounting for your nuclear material.
00:09:40:18 – 00:10:06:05
And so, we can’t allow a state to remain in limbo of this sort. But then again, it’s very difficult to pressure them to relent on this. And they’re certainly holding out to see what concessions they can get. And then on the sanction’s enforcement side, the US has the most it has the most leverage here because of the oil sanctions, which are not being enforced.
00:10:06:07 – 00:10:35:10
I believe it’s 2.2 million barrels a day. Was the estimate given by you and me yesterday or the day before? So that that point of leverage is not being used. And that could clearly make a big difference if we started to crack down on the exports to China in particular. And then I would also say just around it out, that we should support additional strikes, if necessary, if we see them moving the EU.
00:10:35:12 – 00:11:01:03
Reconstituting or if they’re, allowing any kind of foreign assistance into the country. I think we need to look closely at what Russia could provide. They’ve traditionally limited themselves to dual use nuclear assistance. So, it would have a plausible civilian and military purpose so that they have some deniability if they’re caught. China typically will do dual use helps.
00:11:01:05 – 00:11:23:04
And then North Korea is kind of the wild card. They provided a full nuclear reactor to Syria. And certainly, Israel bombed that. So, we could see something like that happen again. So, we can’t rule that out. We need to really have all intelligence eyes on what’s going on in Iran at this point in time. Thank you very much.
00:11:23:06 – 00:11:42:13
That’s a hand over to you. And then we can leave those questions. Sure. Let’s kind of diversify the kaleidoscope of threats that the Islamic Republic faces and what’s kind of still left on the docket, after the nuclear question, which I think certainly the president and the US is keen to say is resolved, and he’s quite publicly taking a victory lap.
00:11:42:13 – 00:12:03:07
But there’s a whole host of threats that have made the Islamic Republic really a long-lasting security threat for four plus decades. That exceed, the nuclear challenge. And we’re not saying that the nuclear challenge is squared away, but indeed, what the president and what the Israelis achieved is historic, which is, again, as Andrea said, no enrichment in Iran at declared enrichment sites for the first time since April 2006.
00:12:03:07 – 00:12:37:07
And I say that because that’s really the harbinger of this two decade plus international crisis that we’ve had. But as you know, the Islamic Republic is not a normal state, and the inputs of its foreign and security policy are not necessarily the normal inputs of a state’s foreign and security policy. Certainly, is animated by revolutionary ideology. And you see that with respect to its missile program, with respect to its transnational terrorist apparatus, which unfortunately, has reached not just into the UK but across the European continent, there’s been acts of Iran backed terrorism over the past four decades on actually 3 to 4 continents, depending on how you count.
00:12:37:07 – 00:12:58:05
Those targets have ranged anywhere from foreign officials to, you could say, you know, foreign or, you know, first, second generation Iranian dissidents, on foreign soil. And that continues to be a threat. But I’m going to walk you through 2 or 3 vectors of the foreign policy, the security policy that now should be moving, into the front burner.
00:12:58:05 – 00:13:20:17
And I fear, actually is not only not moving into the front burner, is being relegated to the back burner because everyone now seems to be keen to take this victory lap. The first is if there is going to be a resumed conflict. While all eyes indeed are going to be on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, potentially looking at reconstitution, the thing that is likely going to be the next driver of the foreign conflict, particularly if it’s in Israel.
00:13:20:19 – 00:13:51:05
Iran round is not nuclear but missile. Prior to the 12 Day War, for about a decade, decade and a half, the Islamic Republic was publicly known to have the Middle East’s largest ballistic missile arsenal. They have close range ballistic missiles, short range ballistic missiles, medium range ballistic missiles, and a space launch program that is beginning to help them pave the pathway towards an intermediate range ballistic missile program that could potentially threaten Europe, as well as a potential intercontinental ballistic missile program that could potentially one day threaten the US homeland.
00:13:51:05 – 00:14:17:07
So, this is not a limited regional threat. This is not just a conventional threat. This is asymmetric to potentially, again, nuclear. And in 2024, the Islamic Republic made history with respect to its nuclear program, not once, not twice, but thrice attacking as a non-nuclear country or at least as a non-declared non-nuclear weapon state. So whatever status of its nuclear program was in 2024, it attacked Pakistan, a nuclear armed country.
00:14:17:07 – 00:14:41:10
Once in January 2024 with ballistic missiles. And twice you may remember the exchanges in April and in October called Operation True Promise one Operation True Promise to wear nuclear capable ballistic missiles were fired at Israel. And yes, there were vastly successful intercepts both by the US and the West, the US, the West and the Israelis with respect to Iran’s drones and ballistic missiles.
00:14:41:12 – 00:15:08:19
The fact that you had anywhere from 4 to 7 land and then somewhat more in the October operation, and then about 14 to 15%, depending on how you count of the 570 plus medium range ballistic missiles they fired back in the June 12th day War. In 2025. This is historic because you don’t have a single Cold War example of this, of a non-nuclear state firing the delivery vehicle for a nuclear weapon at a declared nuclear weapon state and then surviving to tell the tale.
00:15:08:21 – 00:15:38:03
And despite conventionally the Islamic Republic losing every round psychologically and politically, the fact that they define success as, hey, we’re still in power, hey, we’re still here. Much like Lebanese Hezbollah post 2006, conventionally losing a conflict and saying, hey, actually, we’re still here, tells you that there is this harbinger of a potential conflict to come. It kind of hardens courses, what’s left of that national security elite in Iran, and actually pushes them to reinvest in the same metrics that have made the threats so big.
00:15:38:03 – 00:16:01:02
So, I would say the Israelis are not just looking at the potential reconstitution of the nuclear program. They’re actually looking at the vectors that go into building up the missile threat. Because if Iran, prior to the 12 Day War, had a very creative, you could say, deterrence posture where it didn’t have a nuclear weapon, but it had the net result of having a nuclear weapon, which was deterrence.
00:16:01:04 – 00:16:42:05
And specifically, how did it achieve this deterrence without having a nuclear weapon? Well, on the nuclear side, it had a combination of a, you could say a technical latency strategy, plus a political hedging strategy that brought them really close to the threshold. Plus the again, as we mentioned, the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, plus this transnational terrorist apparatus, which consists of these foreign, you could say, mafias, gangs and guns for hire, that engage in transnational repression as one prong and as the second prong, particularly in the Middle East, a series of armed militias and terror groups, some that they’ve created, like Badr and Iraq or the Shia militias in Iraq
00:16:42:05 – 00:17:22:02
or Lebanese Hezbollah, and some that they’ve co-opted, like Hamas in Gaza or the Houthis in Yemen, that ultimately allow them a measure of military command and control that formed what they themselves in 2011, 2012, at the height of the Arab Spring, something that they called the Islamic awakening. By the way, is the axis of resistance, or in Persian, the myth that I’m more of a math, which was really at the frontlines of the multiple cycles of violence we saw, begin to engulf Israel after the October 7th terror attack and the military successes of Israel against this transnational terror network after October 7th have actually now eroded the Islamic Republic’s deterrence to the point where
00:17:22:07 – 00:17:54:15
the one major security achievements of the regime post Iran-Iraq War, which was the last time that you had a conventional conflict, actually come on to or touch Iranian territory, have now eroded and what you are beginning to see publicly discussed. And also, I almost sure privately discussed as well, both in Washington as well as in Israel, is the theory of limited war with respect to the Islamic Republic, because you’ve just had three rounds of a limited war, one in April 2024, one in October 2024, and then one in June 2025.
00:17:54:17 – 00:18:16:02
And this theory is making itself more apparent. The less effective this deterrent posture, is actually going. So many of these proxies are beaten, I would say, with respect to the acts of resistance, the theme there or the flavour there is down but not out. Hamas and Hezbollah, certainly the one sole state ally down the Assad regime in Syria.
00:18:16:04 – 00:18:36:05
But you have absolutely lingered Hezbollah threat when it comes to potential rearmament, including through war torn Syria. And then, most importantly, what they do with respect to the Houthis and pay attention to the Houthis, because despite all the emphasis on Hezbollah and even the term Hezbollah ization of the Middle East, the Houthis are the ones with actually the most destabilizing weapons systems.
00:18:36:09 – 00:18:55:23
The Houthis are the only proxy of Iran, for example, to have medium range ballistic missiles. The Houthis are the only force in the world, in a period of war time to have used anti-ship ballistic missiles. This is brought to you 100% by the Islamic Republic of Iran. So, these are game changing state level capabilities in the hands of a non-state actors.
00:18:55:23 – 00:19:14:09
So, while the US has had its kind of you could say Tiff, an overt military conflict and now kind of cold peace and ceasefire with the Houthis. And there was a very diverse Houthi aerial drone missile threat against shipping and against Israel against the backdrop off the wars of the post. October 7th Middle East. This is an area to watch.
00:19:14:09 – 00:19:35:24
So, with respect to the Islamic Republic and its axis of resistance, down but not out is the theme and expect them to try to build back better. Not as quickly as possible, but as safely as possible. And the theme with the axis of resistance is they are looking to first achieve political wins in the capitals that they operate in and pay attention to the parliamentary elections in Iraq.
00:19:35:24 – 00:20:05:09
First, pay them. Pay attention to any kind of political dispute or political settlement. When it comes to the territory that the Houthis control in Yemen and pay attention to both central authority and the reach of central authority in Beirut when it comes to trying to potentially disarm Hezbollah post October 7th. Conflicts in the Middle East. So first, they’re trying to cement or regain back a political win, and then once they regain back that political win, certainly expect that building back better effort when it comes to their, you know, rocket, drone, missile and whatnot arsenals.
00:20:05:09 – 00:20:32:06
That’s the kind of the transnational terror apparatus when it comes to the missile program and will end here, expect any kind of public attempt by Iran to rearm or get the components to rearm, to be the potential things for a trigger for another Israeli Iranian war. No one knows what would be the status of U.S. involvement in that conflict, particularly when the US entered late in the 12 Day War and limited, its military response to things only on the nuclear front.
00:20:32:06 – 00:21:01:23
So, zero on the, you know, offensive missile operations against Iran’s tells, against Iran’s missile bases, against Iran’s missile production facilities, all the stuff that had damaged and basically taken off half of Iran’s medium range ballistic missiles and half of Iran’s transporter erector launchers. That was all during the war, 100% Israeli. So, we assume in a potential future conflict situation, if the regime rebuilds that, you could see a largely, if not exclusively Israeli led operation to probably not.
00:21:02:00 – 00:21:30:11
I don’t think you would call it a regime change operation, but I would call it a defanged operation to remove the most lethal elements of what’s left of the Iranian threat. And in the world that we’re going in, I don’t endorse this, but analytically I see it. And it’s that analogy I began to see during the end part of the Twelve-Day War and have spent time working on it, and we had an event on in Washington with actually two former CIA veterans, one Republican, one Democrat, who were involved in much of the Iraq debate.
00:21:30:11 – 00:22:10:24
And as a first generation Iranian American, I’m always in the business of saying Iran socially, politically, historiography is not Iraq, but the structural situation that the Iranian government faces today is fast becoming the structural situation that Iraq faced, not after 2003, but after 1991, which makes the heart of Western policy, whether that’s UK, US, Israel or anyone else, how are you going to solidify the military wins of the 12 day war, and how are you going to do what was supposed to follow 1991, which, if you remember, that was containment and not the kind of, you know, laissez faire containment, but the kind of aggressive containment where there is red lines, where you demand inspectors
00:22:10:24 – 00:22:46:04
because you compare 1991 Iraq to 2025 Iran, you had an anti-American dictator, oil rich, anti-Israel, not in control of his own airspace, subject to UN sanctions, exporting terror, trying to pursue a WMD program, covertly losing a war abroad, coming home to crack skulls of his own population. So, the parallels are all there. And the question for Western policy will be, how do you contain, how do you defang how do you prevent the Islamic Republic from building back better?
00:22:46:10 – 00:23:02:16
And with respect to what Andrea said, just to kind of put a nice cherry on this Sunday, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was not a technical endeavour. It was not a science fair project. For the sake of a science fair project. It was the quest for the ultimate weapon, which in many ways in the security world, is the ultimate deterrence.
00:23:02:21 – 00:23:30:14
It’s the quest to secure the survival of the regime. So, the technical fact of having a nuclear program is supposed to buy you the political fact of a secure regime. My fear is that if the US has this really high red line of only preventing nuclear reconstitution at only these sites, while the Islamic Republic would leave everything there and thus earn itself the same deterrent dividend, of a nuclear weapon by preventing the U.S. from getting involved in any conflict, by simply not touching the material.
00:23:30:16 – 00:23:48:20
And what it does instead of touching that material, is to grow and build back better on the missile front and on the terror front, which again, underscores for us and underscores for the Israelis, underscores for any of America’s transatlantic partners. What are you going to do on the regional threat? What are you going to do on the missile threat and on the Q and A?
00:23:48:24 – 00:24:26:02
I will be happy to go into what’s going on inside Iran economically and environmentally, because I think despite all the talk about nuclear, despite all the talk about missile, despite all the talk about, you know, its transnational terrorist apparatus, I would say still post 12 day war, post U.N. snapback, the phenomenon that the regime and particularly the regime leads for most is the marriage of foreign pressure with domestic pressure, and in particularly the environmental and economic nexus, which the only way out of those unlike the political crisis in Iran, or unlike some of the social and cultural issues that exist between the state and the street in Iran, those are structural issues that you cannot
00:24:26:02 – 00:24:43:09
solve with the flick of a switch. And the Islamic Republic of Iran, ideologically and politically, is not going to invest in as it hasn’t been invested in for the past two decades to begin to be able to offset. So, keep your eyes on the internal crisis as some of this stuff cools down and as some of this stuff heats up abroad.
00:24:43:11 – 00:25:05:24
Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you both. I think, if I may, just ask a couple of questions before we open up to the floor. Andrew, if I can start with you, but you talked about the, the monitoring mechanism. Just to give us an idea, how much of it is there independent kind of verification of the monitoring from Israel, the US, IAEA, UK or any other European partners?
00:25:06:02 – 00:25:27:02
Or how much is there a shared intelligence of that monitoring and therefore kind of, the ability to challenge each other within, within the alliance against Iran? That’s a good question. Actually. I wish I knew more on that. I suspect that we may not have a good picture of how much they share, but from what I understand, the sharing is pretty good.
00:25:27:04 – 00:25:53:00
There may be things that Israel keeps to themselves until the right time. Certainly. We’ve seen the CIA director, giving more public assessments as well. We’ve seen a variety of Israeli officials talking about their nuclear, battle damage assessments that term. We’ve all heard now, but certainly to backstop the IAEA monitoring, we really are relying on the national intelligence capabilities.
00:25:53:02 – 00:26:18:18
And, yeah, hopefully they are very homed in on what’s going on and looking at what might be coming out of those sites. And we do have to worry over time that some of those assets, those intelligence capabilities, at least on the ground, could degrade, because Iran is cracking down. We’ve heard of hangings of people in the nuclear field, people being rounded up and tortured, and they’re definitely cracking down.
00:26:18:20 – 00:26:40:22
But, from my understanding, Israel feels fairly confident, in the, the, the amount of time that they’ve sent back, they’ve been saying maybe more than two years could be multiple years as far as their political will and their technical capabilities. So hopefully we’ll know more, in the months to come. But I guess we’ll need to stay tuned.
00:26:41:00 – 00:27:06:23
Okay. Just because we’re in London and we have a UK focus, how much how much of the Brits able to do their own independent verification? Or are they just reliant on the sharing of Intel from their partners? Well, maybe a question for Benham actually. Well, it just it depends a great deal on both the commercial satellite imagery that the UK government buys and is interested in versus I would say the geo wind, kind of capabilities that, some of the other UK intelligence agencies have.
00:27:06:23 – 00:27:30:04
But again, the UK is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance, which has basically the English-speaking countries. Some of them, you know, all of them, I think former Commonwealth countries, US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, so whatever kind of technical capacities that they have, I’m sure that they would be sharing because this is a not just a regional or local security threat.
00:27:30:04 – 00:27:53:21
This is a global security threat. But I would add one wrinkle into this equation, which is in a world where you don’t have IAEA monitors on the ground and you’re relying largely, if not exclusively on what they call national technical means of monitoring the debate in your capital about the accuracy and the efficiency of those national technical means is a political question.
00:27:53:21 – 00:28:16:12
Why is it a political question? Because if there is no symbiosis between, you know, information the government puts out and society believing it, kind of like today in the States where there is such a rancorous political debate about anything that is related to the intelligence community and America, after having gotten over the hangover of the 2003 Iraq war with the politicized intelligence there and the crisis in Iraq.
00:28:16:12 – 00:28:54:18
Vis-a-vis, the UN Security Council in the West between 1998 and 2003, where there was overreliance on national tactical means because there wasn’t necessarily the on the ground access. If we don’t work to fight to restore a axis, we may find ourselves in hyper partisan environments in Western Democratic capitals, where the more we fight each other over whose intelligence is right and whose intelligence is wrong, we actually play into the adversary’s hand of not being able to create the space for the IAEA, that one impartial body to go in, and then whatever information will come out will forever be treated as partial partizan biased, and again by time and political space for the adversary to
00:28:54:18 – 00:29:16:13
rebuild. Why we in the liberal democratic West, from the left and the right fight each other and from the transatlantic community fighting each other. And just one more for me. Regarding Syria, I’ve heard recently from Israeli sources concerned that a year since the Israel Lebanon War finished, that there’s been a resumption of smuggling led by the Iranians across the Syrian Lebanese border.
00:29:16:18 – 00:29:37:22
Obviously, that doesn’t quite square with the fact that, the new Syrian regime has broken its alliance, that the assets had been with Iran. But what’s your assessment of the Iranian presence that is still able to operate inside Syria? Well, I’ll be very brief, and I wouldn’t necessarily call it an Iranian presence, but the Islamic Republic is looking to make what it has in Iraq, which is the Swiss cheese model, fast.
00:29:37:22 – 00:30:05:09
The model that I can rebuild or regain with respect to Shiraz, Syria. Some of you know, the joke with respect to Sharia is that he’s the governor or the mayor of Damascus, meaning there’s still is such a fractured, balkanized state. And regardless of whatever U.S. policy in the short to medium term is to either turning a blind eye to the reconstitution of the state or actually helping him, or moving towards more of a unitary or central, say, whatever approach Israel, America, or whoever else takes with respect to that, no doubt.
00:30:05:09 – 00:30:25:22
And what this story you mentioned proves this no doubt in the interim, the Islamic Republic will look to rebuild some of the smuggling networks which used to be, you know, we call this the land bridge. In the pre-COVID days, the land bridge for the three M’s men, money, munitions, which is what allowed the Islamic Republic’s acts of resistance to actually kind of fight to live another day.
00:30:25:24 – 00:30:45:13
Now, I would say they certainly they’re not going to get a permissive environment with respect to Sharia Syria. It’ll be harder with respect to airspace, which is why I think after or during much of the kind of cycles of violence engulfing Lebanon. In post October 7th, Middle East, you saw the Iranian model be less, you know, less is more, so less and then cash and then up to Turkey.
00:30:45:17 – 00:31:10:13
There’s lots of stories there, particularly these really press about cash peace of Turkey coming back into Lebanon. So that look for more creative ways. You know, in normal life, you know, we all live civilian lives. Redundancy is inefficiency in the military world, redundancy is actually insurance. So, think ir think land, think, you know, see, just like with respect to Iran and Russia, for example, they have the Caspian Sea, which is the world’s largest lake.
00:31:10:19 – 00:31:31:03
They have aerial routes. And now recently they built a train route. So just because something is redundant, by normal standards, doesn’t mean for military standards. It’s not it’s not something that the government would not be interested in spending time, money, assets, resources to get because it allows them to reconstitute what they lost. Brilliant. Thank you very much.