132. What's Next For Iran?

22:53Gordon:But, you know, it's hard to say. What do you think, Gordon?

22:58David:No, no. From our earlier point about the disruption of Iranian command and control, you go, there is no supreme leader. Or the rest, you know, we're expecting a new one. But to make some of those decisions, your chief of staff of, you know, the army's been taken out, you know, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's taken out. So you have got that question is, have they got the capacity to make decisions? I mean, we know that they put plans in place in case there were decapitation strikes at the regime. But you're right. Do those plans include not just people, but how to act in different eventualities?

23:29David:Or are they scrambling to respond? I just think we don't know. So I think, should we move on to our second question so we don't run out too much time? I think we could deal with this one a bit more briefly, which is the, how did we get here?

23:41Gordon:Well, it is going to be hard to do that quickly because, you know, Donald Trump started in 1979, Gordon. So we should probably start there, right?

23:48David:Yeah, I know. I was thinking that when he did his video statements right after the attack started. He did start in 1979 and with the start of hostilities. And I was like, wow. But I think actually what he was trying to do by saying that was like, this is all part of a long running sense of Iran being an implacable enemy of the United States. And this is all just the latest thing about it. Let's not go back to 1979. I mean, I think you're right. Let's go back a bit more recently. You know, the 12 day war last summer, Iran and Israel. America's Operation Midnight Hammer. bomber. And that was at the end of that 12-day war when it sent those B-2 bombers to hit the Iranian nuclear program with targeted strikes.

24:26David:Those amazing pictures from satellite imagery of those holes, very precise holes, tunneled down into the nuclear program. Now Donald Trump at the time said the nuclear program had been obliterated, completely obliterated, which then I think led people to go, well, why then are there still negotiations going on over a nuclear program and why are you still worried about a nuclear program? Why are you negotiating with them over something that's been obliterated?

24:52Gordon:Yeah. Well, the actual intelligence assessments, the findings that have leaked out since, basically said that it was something like significantly degraded or something like that, right? I mean, so not actually obliterated. um but then but then i guess in january gordon we get popular uprising against the regime which we we talked about in a couple eps on the pod um you know hundreds of thousands if not more people out on the streets and then what looks to have been an absolutely savage crackdown in which you know i mean upwards of 30 000 people were killed although we don't know still don't exactly know

25:36David:Tens of thousands, yeah. And of course, at that time, Donald Trump made that statement, basically encouraging people, saying help is on its way. But it wasn't, because US forces were not in place to do the kind of operation that we've seen in the last day or two, which allowed then the regime to crush those protesters and kill tens of thousands. So that was, if you like, the next phase. And then since then, we've seen these, and I think it's the confusion or the complication between these two different aspects. You've got the negotiations about the nuclear and the ballistic missile program which have been going on, and you've got negotiations going on about that.

26:15David:And accompanying that, you've had a military buildup by the United States, and you've had this question about regime change and popular uprising. It's been very, very unclear, and I think we'll get to that, what the US priority was or what the strategy was or what they were trying to head for. Because we've seen these talks and the talks have been going on. I mean, some of the talks just finished. We're still going on on Thursday. On Thursday.

26:40Gordon:On Thursday. Yeah.

26:42David:Meeting to have talks. But I think what's interesting about the talks is the US, and certainly backed by Israel, had a very maximalist set of demands, which is end the nuclear program, end enrichment. Although maybe there might have been some way of allowing some token enrichment but also give up your ballistic missile program um uh as well uh and you can see for the iranians i think they're looking at that and going that basically means disarming you know that means giving up our nuclear program which is our one bit of leverage and our ballistic missile program which is our bit of military deterrence you know which they're using now to try and you know have some impact and you can see why iran is thinking uh is the us bluffing um but also So even if it's not bluffing, do we want to just give up these things and open ourselves up to attack, having given them up?

27:36David:So you could see why negotiations were not really going anywhere. Right.

27:43Gordon:And at the same time, you had, which I think is why it was somewhat or could be somewhat confusing to have sort of watched the US and its Iran policy over the last couple of months, because you had these indirect talks going on. And then at the same time, you had the largest military buildup that the U.S. has conducted in the region since 2003, prior to invading Iraq, that was happening sort of in real time, kind of slowly, but very much publicly. I mean, it was, I think, by late January, the U.S. had moved the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf in the South China Sea.

28:27Gordon:And then in mid-February, you had the Gerald Ford, which is the largest carrier in the world, departed the Caribbean because it had been involved in the operation against Nicolas Maduro. I mean, and by the time the strikes occurred yesterday, there was a massive, massive U.S. military force in the region. And, you know, I guess the question is, which still I'm kind of wrestling with, is were the negotiations ever serious, you know, or was this just a smokescreen to confuse the Iranians? I don't know.

29:08David:No, it's a good question. I mean, because I think one of the arguments was it was coercive diplomacy. You build up the military to show you're serious in order to get the Iranians to, you know, relent and do basically give up their program and do the deal that they want, that the US particularly wants. But there is another view, which is, you know, that was never likely to happen. And I think, I mean, in a way that does actually kind of bring us on to our third question, which is, you know, why is this happening? You know, what is the strategy? You know, what's behind what the US is trying to do?

29:44I mean, I think, you know, and I think again here, it goes back to that kind of complication, confusion,

29:51David:how much of this is about the narrow issues of nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile programs, which could be dealt with a negotiation. And how far is it really and has it always been and is it increasingly about regime change and something completely different? I think that gets the nub of it, really, doesn't it?

30:13Gordon:It does. I think it is interesting to go and actually listen to Trump's statement that he put out yesterday on Truth Social. Because he does, we joked about it at the beginning of this question, but he does start with this kind of laundry list of Iranian aggression against the US. Some of which is very real, right? And, and historically accurate to the other bits of it are kind of out there, you know, and not not historically accurate. But he does paint, he basically paints this, you know, this combat operation, almost as a kind of defensive measure against a regime that has, you know, I mean, he basically, I mean, he basically paints the Islamic Republic as having, you know, he goes back to the embassy crisis gordon i mean it goes back to sort of the inception of the islamic republic was was itself you know it's sort of the birth of it um was this kind of you know it was already attacking america back then and it's been attacking america and its friends ever since and therefore you know we are we are going to and this is where i think it's interesting though because a lot of the analysis of the of his statement yesterday said okay trump's calling for you know, this is regime change.

31:35And it's like, not really.

31:37Gordon:I think if you read what he, if you read the statement, you listen to the statement, it seems to me like he's almost saying we're going to batter these guys for a while. And you, the Iranian people should rise up and, you know, what does he say? Kind of claim your government, take power. If you don't do it, you'll miss this sort of once in a generation opportunity that i'm creating for you but he kind of stopped short of saying the policy is regime change well i agree i think i think that's a really

32:11David:important distinction he's kind of we want regime change and we might create the conditions for regime change to take place but we are not necessarily going to go all in to do that and it's interesting because you also see there have been other justifications for the attack I mean, some of which, you know, I'm not convinced stand up. There's been language about imminent threats that the Iranians were about to either develop some kind of missile capacity or strike the US first. There's been talk about, you know, Steve Kopp had some stuff about, you know, them being able to develop nuclear enrichment material really fast.

32:46David:All of that to me felt very flimsy. It certainly had echoes of Iraq, WMD in 2003, where legally and morally you are trying to justify a preemptive attack by saying, the legal basis for it is they are about to attack us, so we need to attack them first. And it felt like there were echoes of famously in Britain, Iraq in that case, being able to fire missiles in 45 minutes, which was the source of much controversy in the UK. And so there was a bit of that talk going on, which was, I think, to build a kind of legal justification. But fundamentally, it was always pretty flimsy. And the regime change part of it was also there.

33:33David:But I think your point is right, is that what's really going on is they saw a weakened Iran at this moment. And there is a window of opportunity to do more damage to Iran and perhaps to create the conditions for regime change.

33:51Gordon:Yeah, I think that's the point. It's the conditions for regime change. I mean, it also just to go back to one point you raised on kind of the Iraq example, what has absolutely not been done in this case is a public, the administration making the public case for war. Yeah, really. I mean, Donald Trump, we had the State of the Union address, you know, last week, like Iran was sort of barely mentioned. I mean, he did make this claim about Iran, you know, trying to develop the capability kind of imminently to hit the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile, which I think which we should say clearly, the actual intelligence that has at least, you know, the sort of high level analytic assessments that have come out on that are pretty much in contradiction to what the president said.

34:46Gordon:like there's a long I don't think Iran had even decided to do that and there's a very long development window yeah to build a ballistic missile absolutely

34:57David:right there was yeah there was none of the kind of build-up the kind of long kind of thought how do we manage public opinion that you saw in the lead up to Iraq this feels much more fast and opportunistic doesn't it it does it does

35:11Gordon:and I guess it you know the other thing to note I think on just Trump's mindset on Iran is that if you look at the way he's dealt with it, going back to his first presidency, it's been zero, it's been all upside for him, really, right? I mean, so he withdrew from the Obama, you know, Iran nuke deal, right? And we pulled out of that, I think, in 2018, or something like that. He assassinated Gossam Soleimani, former head of the Quds Force, the you know revolutionary guards could force in 2020 uh he bombed as we talked about he bombed iran's nuclear program in operation midnight hammer last summer um i don't think trump has there's been no domestic consequence for any of this stuff nor very little retaliation yeah no retaliation in iran right exactly so so you have this kind of like there's no doubt i think trump looks at Iran and says, we've messed with these guys consistently and aggressively, and they haven't done anything.

36:15Gordon:And then the other piece to this, which I think is really important for Trump's mindset, is that Iran's weak right now. I mean, when we did our conversation back in January on this, and you look at kind of the pillars of the Iranian regime, it's not good, right? To be the socioeconomic contract between the regime and its population is in absolute tatters its legitimacy narrative is basically gone um there's opposition obviously that is still present even after the crackdown i mean there have been protests again that popped up in the last week or so um you know so i think that there's a sense here that he might have the you know he might have the regime on on the ropes at least that's how he would be thinking about it

36:59David:and it doesn't feel like a um part of a strategic master plan i think it is a moment of opportunity a moment of weakness he sees in Iran, and a tactical moment where you see the supreme leader where he is. And you think, I'm going to take advantage of that. And I'm going to do it. I'm going to go for it and see where it takes the US and Israel. So I think, I mean, we're starting to get some interesting questions in. So please do keep sending them in. There's one here from Argentin. Do you feel that there's enough of an organized resistance in Iran for regime change? I think we can get to that next because if we hit our last question, which is what is going to happen next, there's a few different areas to look at, aren't there?

37:44David:I guess one of the points is, going back to what we were saying earlier, what is the US going to do? What's its goal? Well, one of the things it's not done, this isn't like Iraq in 2003 in terms of regime change, there is no ground force for an invasion, is there? That is not.

38:01Gordon:That's actually an important point that we should just clearly state, which is when you look at the U.S. forces that are in the region, I mean, I think before Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, there were 250 ,000 plus American soldiers who were in the Persian Gulf before Desert Storm. It was even more than that, I believe. This is not the case right now. So there is not going to be a ground invasion of Iran as part of this, which is kind of, we should just, that's an important point just to mention. Like, that's not coming.

38:35David:But again, there is this slight confusion. Then what are the goals? I think they're multiple goals. I mean, some of them have, you know, damaged the nuclear program, more damaged the missile program, destroyed the Navy. He's mentioned that, which I think is interesting. and then this issue of hoping to overthrow the regime or create the conditions for overthrowing the regime. But I think one of the questions is, it's very hard to see how that plays out, isn't it? It's not straightforward.

39:02Gordon:No, no, it's not. I think one thought, and again, I mean, there's a recency bias at play here, but I think there might be a recency bias at play in our president's mind as well. is what about a kind of Venezuela type, you know, operation, or obviously Iran is more complicated and bigger and all of that, but maybe the fundamental premise here is we hit the Iranians hard for a few days. We kill a lot of their top leaders, including the Supreme Leader. And then we hope that the regime from within sort of, not that it changes its fundamental nature, like and becomes a much, you know, a more open sort of democratic thing that's not suppressing or repressing its people, but that it fundamentally deals with the U.S.

39:55Gordon:on some of these, you know, whether it's ballistic missiles, whether it's the nuclear program, what have you, deals with us in a different way. I think that might be the hope here is that there would be someone or some group of people in Iran who then say they take power and decide to sort of bargain with the u.s from a position of weakness so that trump gets what he wants i think that could be a viable outcome for him and and would allow you to say yeah no there's a there's a lot of a lot of hope yeah a lot of hope at play here i mean because the other the other thing to state i think just you know when you look back at the historical kind of uh you know the use of air power in an attempt to change a regime the track record is not great right it's just it doesn't I actually am not sure there is an example of it no I mean yeah yeah recent recent recent counter examples would be um Yemen like I think there were there's some something on the order of seven billion dollars spent on an air war in Yemen that did not fundamentally change the Houthi regime so you know you just you gotta think here that it I think it's gonna be you you're not gonna like depose an entire deeply embedded network of financial and political and military elites with air power just not gonna do it right no I

41:24David:think the only parallel but I don't think it works is is you had Libya where you had the US UK France you know use air power against Gaddafi but the but But there you had the conditions already of effectively a civil war and of organized armed groups on the ground. And the US and UK air power supported them and eventually deposed Gaddafi. Although you can see the chaos that there's been in the years afterwards is not necessarily a model of what you want. And this goes back to the question we had from Argentum. Do you feel that there's enough of an organized resistance in Iran for regime change?

41:58David:I mean, one of the things we saw in January was, you know, there is not the resistance is just people. It's just ordinary people turned out on the streets. Often students, young people, some of them were chanting the name of the son of the former Shah. But there's no sense in which there is an organized armed resistance which is capable of taking on the regime. And the regime is not just one person, the supreme leader, is it? I think that's the point about Iran. It is a pretty deeply embedded power structure.

42:31Gordon:Yeah.

42:31David:which even if you take out the top leadership, it's not clear, is it, that that is going to be enough for it all to crumble if some people just come out on the streets? I'm just not sure about that.

42:45Gordon:I think it is important that we not confuse the spectacle of power with the longer-term sort of, I guess, energy required to actually reshape political outcomes in Iran, right? Those two things can be connected. But the first day or two of a conflict like this, it kind of, especially if the US and the Israelis are doing it, it's always going to look pretty good, right? I mean, because of this mastery that we have developed in being able to kind of target individuals to sustain this kind of camp, like to marshal this number of resources in the region and do this to a sovereign state requires real power.

43:33Gordon:But the question, and it's an unanswerable question right now, is like, how resilient is this regime really? Right? I mean, that is a big question. I think we are trying to fracture the regime's coherence, as I said earlier, with the strikes. I think that is part of the design. But you won't really figure out how tough, flexible a kind of network is until you start to attack it. And we're going to figure that out here in the coming weeks and months. But it's not something we actually, it's an unknowable question. Unanswerable question right now.

44:15David:Yeah. And you were talking, you know, in terms of how the public in Iran reacts. Clearly, a lot of people hate the regime. Not everyone, though. Right. But you also had, I mean, it's interesting. We talk about the mastery of US and Israel firepower, but there's also been these reports, for instance, of a strike on a girls' school in Manab, which killed a large number of civilians. Now, I don't know the exact details of that. It was supposedly proximate to a military base, and whether it was a mistake, whether it's not, who knows? But you could also imagine that as things develop on the ground, if there are those kind of incidents, you could also see some people within Iran turning against the attack.

44:53David:So I think it's very hard to judge. And clearly what the US and Israel want is for them not to have to do the hard work of regime change, but for the Iranian people to do it. And they're basically now saying, now you go do it. But that's a big call to hope that the repressive capability of the regime has been degraded enough for them to not do it. And if you're a protester, to not end up like the tens of thousands of others a few months ago dead in a morgue. I mean, that's, as you said, it's very hard to judge how that will play out.

45:27Gordon:yeah I mean the other wild card here uh is that I I think that Trump's motivations for this or his sort of designs are that's also a moving a moving target I mean even yesterday right I mean after the strike start Trump said you know I can go long and take over the whole thing or end it in two or three days until the Iranians see you in a few years if you start rebuilding so I think he's even creating an off-ramp right about whether he's going to see it through yeah right right

46:00David:well that's the question see what through yeah yeah you know i mean is there a strategy yeah

46:07Gordon:what's what's the goal because i think when you look at again let's just take venezuela because it's recent obviously there wasn't really a like coherent strategy for what came next right it was it was about yeah delcie rodriguez but it was kind of like ah well it's someone else inside the regime will take power and we'll be able to deal with them that was kind of the extent of it and you might say hey that's enough but um i don't think there's much beyond that here and i mean going back to that initial question of whether there will actually be more significant unrest as a result of this, if the goal really is, and I think this is a bit contradictory, because I actually don't, I don't, the impulses, Trump's impulses here are contradictory.

46:58Gordon:It's like, on the one hand, you want to be, you want to decapitate, you know, kill Khamenei, kill a bunch of the top leadership, get someone new that you could kind of deal with. But my sense is that if you get that and you accomplish that in three or four or five six days whatever that runs contradictory to the impulse then to have sort of people rise up against the actual regime itself i agree because you could end up with a situation where you have the exact same repressive app and which by the way my hot take early days so i will identify this as a hot take as such. My hot take is that is exactly what you get, which is a significantly beaten and degraded Iranian sort of military and security apparatus that is still in control and that is saying some of the right things about what it intends to do vis-a-vis the U.S., whether that's ballistic missiles or nuclear program or what have you um and absolutely uh no change in that kind of regime's ability and willingness to use its military and security forces against its population i think that's that's a pretty that's my hot take of where we're where we're headed you know and i think it

48:15David:was a lot of chaos along the way yeah last few things we should just briefly touch on is about some of the wild cards in this which is about what could happen more wide widely yeah in the region particularly. I mean, Iran has already talked about the Straits of Hormuz, which is, of course, this very important shipping lane through which the world's oil and other supplies goes. If they shut that down, who knows what could happen there? I mean, it's a little bit unclear from the language what they're going to do with that. And it would also annoy some of the countries which are loosely allied to Iran, like China and others who will use that, who will see the impact on the global economy that's a wild card isn't it um it is but one one point on that though is it's not

48:58Gordon:just about the sort of can someone is someone biting it or are there you know opera is have there been any sort of operations against shipping it's it's the risk premiums on the on the insurance for the ships that would actually transit the the straight right and those have already started to increase very significantly, unsurprisingly. So I think it's a question of what's going on in the Gulf. It's also a question of what does Lloyd's of London think about this and are they attaching higher premiums to ensure those hauls, right? So there's one other point to that.

49:37David:And then I guess another wild card is what happens as a result of these other countries we talked about earlier on being hit in the region, the UAE, the Saudis, the Qataris. The fact that they're being hit, does that lead them to put pressure on the US to stop this? Do they, because they've not been that keen on this conflict for precisely that reason? What if there is a big hit on a US military base or on a shopping center in Dubai or something like that? That is certainly a wild card which could change things, couldn't it?

50:11Gordon:Yeah, I know it absolutely could. And honestly, I think one of the kind of surprising things, I think, for many observers has been just how broad Iran's retaliation has been. I mean, I think, Gordon, there were reports that the Iranians had actually lobbed ballistic missiles at maybe UK assets on Cyprus. I mean, it was like, is that right?

50:37David:Well, towards in the direction of Cyprus is what I'd say, which could be that they were just in that direction, or it could be they were targeting Cyprus. But either way, I mean, there's a question here from the Apollo. It seems a French naval base in Abu Dhabi was just struck, with Iran also targeting Cyprus. Do you two reckon UK and France will get involved with offensive strikes? Now, I mean, my view is the UK is saying we've got air power in the region being used defensively, effectively to shoot down Iranian missiles and things like that. I don't think they will want to get into offensive strikes on Iran itself.

51:18David:The legality of that, I think, is we haven't got into that and let's not get into it. But I think in the UK, the view is it's not legal. You know, there isn't a kind of justification for it. So, but once you get into self-defense, because, and this gets back to that wildcard point, if bases do get hit or things do get hit, then suddenly that could change the equation, couldn't it? So that is, that's one of the other kind of wildcards in terms of how far Iran does want to push this and what it does with its missiles. And I guess, sorry, a third one is, is, is how else could Iran retaliate? I mean, could it retaliate in Europe?

51:51David:Could it retaliate in different ways through proxies? Yeah.

51:54Gordon:Yeah. And I think, Gordon, we were talking about this a little bit yesterday as we were getting our minds around this. It obviously does bear mention that there's the possibility for asymmetric retaliation at some point down the line in Europe. Terrorist attacks, effectively,

52:11David:or assassination. Yeah.

52:12Gordon:Tax on US embassies, Israeli embassies, things like that in Europe. Right. This gets mentioned, I think, every time one of these conflicts pops up. And And maybe these attacks have been, maybe they're being suppressed. Maybe they're being stopped. Maybe the Iranians are intending to do them and they're just not able to carry them out. But I don't know. This one seems to me a bit of, I mean, yes, it's possible, but it didn't happen after Midnight Hammer or the 12-day war last year, did it? As far as I know. I mean, so if the Iranians are attempting to do this kind of stuff, it's taking them longer than perhaps.

52:53Gordon:Perhaps I would think it should.

52:57David:MI5 have said they fall 20 Iranian plots against individuals in the UK, which tends to be often Iranian dissidents in the UK, of harassment, kidnapping, assassination. So there's been activity, but not that kind of large-scale attack that we're talking about. Whether they have the reliability or not, it's hard to know. But that is, again, if they really do feel, on the Iranian side, this is regime change that the US is going for. We need to do everything we can to deter them and stop them. Then maybe you press that button. So it goes back a little bit to this bigger question, which is, you know, is the US really going to go all out for regime change?

53:36David:Or are they trying to put enough pressure and then maybe do a deal with a kind of new type of regime? In which case, if you're the Iranians, you don't want to be unleashing all your proxies everywhere, in Europe or to do things which could be escalated, could draw Europe into it in a different way. So there is still that question about how far both sides are calibrating or whether they're all in. And I guess I should have said, I mean, after Trump killed Gassam Soleimani back in 2020,

54:06Gordon:there was credible intelligence that the Iranians were attempting to kill senior US officials, Right. And there were there were significant security precautions taken by many of the officials involved in that in that decision afterwards. So I shouldn't have been I think I was maybe a little quick to to downplay that. It is it is definitely something the Iranians could do down the line if they if they felt it was it was wise. But I mean, I guess, Gordon, maybe maybe it's worth ending on the ultimate hot take question, which was not part of our four exam questions, which was, do you think I'll start I'll pose it to you.

54:41Gordon:Do you think that this was a good idea?

54:44David:I think the risks to this are enormous. I think the risks are, although we said that before with things like taking out Soleimani and your point and Midnight Hammer, and a lot of the consequences didn't happen. This does feel different. I think there are risks for the Iranian people. And I think there's risks for the Gulf, which are on a different magnitude to what we've seen before. and I can't quite see the strategy to bring about a benefit given those risks. That's not much of a hot take, but it's all I've got.

55:21Gordon:That's a cold take, Gordon. It's a cold take. It's a cold take. And I will say, I do think, well, I'll answer the question here. I was just going to say in general that there are some really, really big questions that are obviously, they're at this point unanswerable. And I would just beseech our listeners that anyone coming to you with simple answers on what's Donald Trump thinking? Is there going to be unrest? How resilient is the regime? How long, you know, sort of how long can the Iranians kind of, you know, sustain this back and forth? What will happen in oil markets? I mean, all these kind of really big questions like anyone with really simple answers to those is is conning you and they don't like just you should not pay attention if anyone has really simple kind of you know certain answers to those questions at this point um i think my my hot take is i think the return on investment here is likely to be low uh i i think that um i think that we will not based on the the forces that we have positioned in the region.

56:31Gordon:I don't think that this is intended as a regime change operation. I think this is intended as an operation to substantially reduce the regime's internal coherence, roll the dice on spurring protests. And I think it's probably a pretty low chance of that happening, but I'd love to be proven otherwise, and get a different type of regime out of the existing soup of the one that we have now that will do a deal with us or be seen to do a deal with us on some of the bigger ticket items that I think Trump actually cares about, which is the new program and maybe ballistic missiles. And I think that that, so I think this is a lot of input for maybe not a ton of output and is much more performative than anything else.

57:30Gordon:That's my hot take at this point.

57:31David:And I think that is a good place to leave it. Thank you very much for all your questions. We hope we've answered quite a few of them in the discussion, but thank you very much for sending them in. Later today, we should say we'll be sending out a newsletter roundup with perspectives from across all the different Goldhanger shows about Iran. I think I'll do some comments. Alistair Campbell, Rory Stewart from the rest is politics, Caddy Kaye and Anthony Scaramucci as well from the rest is politics, US. Becky, our producer, our intrepid producer is there on the line. She's currently in Jordan. Frontline producer.

58:00Gordon:She's our frontline producer. We're sitting at home.

58:03David:She's the one out in the field. Well done, Becky. Stay safe, but we're very proud of you. But we'll be sharing all our perspectives and you can receive those updates by signing up for the newsletter via the link in YouTube and in the podcast description. but thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for your comments. We may do more of these, mightn't we, David, depending on what happens because who knows?

58:24Gordon:I think we will almost certainly be doing more of these. And yes, Echo Gordons, thanks to everyone for joining this. As we always say at the end of our episodes, we would strongly encourage you to go and join the Declassified Club. Also at therestisclassified.com if you have enjoyed this. But in any case, we hope it's been helpful and we will undoubtedly see you next time. See you next time.

59:15Gordon:description to be the first to read the latest classified insider or head to the rest is classified.com to find out more.