This is CBSI on the World. I'm John Batchel with Jonathan Shanzer, my colleague at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

He's a senior vice president for research. The brain, the driver, the bad actor, putting out all of these rockets from the south, the north, the west, and driving,

as far as we can tell, terrorism in the whole region is Iran. It's not Iran. It's a regime.

And it's not a regime. It's the leadership of the IRGC and the Mullahs.'s the Ayatola. And what card the Ayatola, the

IRGC, has to play these many years, is the suspect nuclear weapons program. Jonathan, end it.

Yes? End the program and you end the Iatollah. Is that too simple a formula?

It may be a little simple in the sense that there are multiple levers of power that this regime has,

but I think that the ultimate insurance policy for this regime is that nuclear program.

They believe, and perhaps rightly so, that if they cross that

threshold, they gain nuclear weapons capabilities, then other countries will not trifle with

them. Other countries will not bomb them. It is interesting that, you know, the regime itself

has kind of just proven that with their own actions.

They've attacked two nuclear powers on their own territory in the last year, namely Pakistan and Israel.

And that didn't stop them.

That did not put fear in their hearts to carry out these attacks. So why other countries would be

fearful of striking Iran once it goes nuclear? I suppose, you know, that's for the regime to

explain. But I do think that there is some logic to it. Of course, you've got internal structures

in the regime that hold it together. You've got the intimidation

that they are known for against their own people. And they, of course, have the proxies that they

use to destabilize other countries around the region and to export their revolution as far as it

will go.

These are the sorts of things that keep the regime in power.

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