Welcome to the best.

Expect the worst.

Some drink can make, some die of birds, no way of knowing which way it's going,

hope for the best, expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Thursday, April 23rd, 2026. I am John Pott Hortz, the editor of Commentary Magazine. With me as always, Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe. Hi, John. Senior editor Seth Mandwald. Hi, Abe. Hi, Abe. Hi, John. Senior editor Seth

Mandel. Hi, Seth. Hi, John. And now in his regular Thursday slot, our old friend, our continuing

contributor, free expression, Wall Street Journal columnist and AEI Big Cheese Matthew Contenetti. Hi, Matt. Hi, John. I said Big Cheese because I can't

remember what your title is. I'll take that. Okay. I'm going to have that printed on my business card.

Okay, there we go. So Donald Trump this morning tweeted basically what we know, but is a rare thing for a president to say, not that it's unusual

for Trump to say things that presidents have never said before in public, that we really

have no idea who's in charge in Iran and that there are moderates whom he says, he uses the

word, he puts quotes around moderates and says

they're not really moderate. And then there are the hardliners who are hardliners. These,

you know, line up relatively precisely to the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

as the hardliners and the two politicians, the Speaker of the Parliament and the Prime Minister, who are the

Moderates and nobody is in charge.

And according to this really remarkable story in the New York Times this morning by the

pretty remarkable reporter Farnas Fasizi, basically the Ayatollah is surrounded by doctors who are

holding guns at his head and access to the Ayatollah, who is of course the supreme leader,

very limited, very limited access, surrounded mostly by a team of doctors and medical

staff who are treating the injuries he sustained in the airstrikes.

If this sounds to you like the plot of the movie Dave without the double, it seems to be

kind of like that.

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