Really? So over Israel, where you've got 4,000 years, 5,000 years of Judaic history?

Yeah.

Well, of course, but not as a statecraft.

I was thinking in terms of statecraft, and of course, now chess was not invented by the Iranian Persians, but you could easily argue that it was perfected by them, and some of the terminology we use, and I think is applicable here, and I'll be writing a piece about this for my substack, so those of you who are kind enough to subscribe, The term checkmate comes from Shahmat, which is the king, literally in Persian means the king is indefensible or is now helpless.

And I think there would be plenty of people, objective views of the war to say that the Iranians are moving in towards checkmate.

because Trump has no real way to turn, which is actually what happens in the end stages of a chess match as you close in on the king.

So that's my argument on the societal side, but I think it's important that the Iranians are superior on the military side, and the question is why? And my proposed answer is that they have a military fit for purpose.

And because they understood that, they are effectively in a stronger position now versus the United States.

And the answer that I come

up with is that we in the West just have never learned to take Iran seriously as a society, as a country, as a country with divisions, with factions, with competing interests, whether they're religious or economic or political.

And so we underestimate Iran.

And clearly, the Americans underestimated Iran militarily in terms of their staying power, their defensive plans, their offensive plans.

So that would be my first observation about the question itself, which is, why shouldn't there be divisions? Secondly, for historical purposes, I would remind your audience that Khamenei's father took a very similar line to the Obama nuclear deal.

He was not very enthusiastic, as I recall, and in fact, And I think his son is doing the same.

He created space for failure to be someone else's problem.

I mean, are you prepared to talk about the position of Israel at the moment as you see it, or is that too current for you?