Hi everyone, I'm joined today by Alexander McCurris and Sayyad Mohammed Marandi, who is well known to be an advisor to the Iranian nuclear negotiation team and overall, a huge expert on Iran and its relations with the West and the wider world.

So this is all lies on Iran at the moment, I guess,

as the world is anxiously looking toward the Middle East,

as a possible direct Israel-Iran war could be imminent with unpredictable consequences.

So, of course, it's been building up for some time, but Israel now seemingly assassinated

this Hamas leader, Hanye, who was also a chief Palestinian negotiator to end the war.

Making matters even worse, he was killed in Iran as he participated in the inauguration

ceremony of the new Iranian president. So this is a provocation on a multitude of levels.

And it seems to have put Iran in a bit of a dilemma because on one hand, this attack on Iranian soil under these circumstances

makes it almost impossible not to retaliate. And I assume at least that there's some

growing consensus in Iran that retaliation is required to assert deterrence. So I was, well,

I'm still expecting a somewhat hard response. On the other hand, I guess it's no big secret that Israel is also aiming to provoke

Iranian response to the extent that they can pull the Americans into a wider Middle Eastern

war.

So to, yeah, to dig them out of the hole, which they've created.

So I guess, yeah, my first question would be to Sae Muhammad,

is this, am I reading the situation correctly?

And if so, what do you expect Iran to do now?

I think you're absolutely correct.

On the one hand, the Iranians know they must respond and it must be robust.

Because obviously, the Iranian response in April was not enough. When the Israelis bombed the Iranian consulate, Iran took their complaint to the UN Security Council and the British, the French, the Americans, and I think the Germans were in the council too. I'm not quite sure, but they all opposed Iran's complaint. They refused to condemn the Israelis. So the only thing left was for Iran to strike at Israel.

Now, we've gone over this, all of us before.

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