This is John Batstra, conversation with my colleague Benham-Talibou Senior Fellow Foundation for

Defense of democracies, about Iran, the bad actor, the predator, Iran with its many fingers,

the surrogates, the his, the Khaty Hezbollah, the Hezbollah

Beirut, Hamas, certainly the bad actors across the region, but at the center is the question of the nuclear

weapons program that's been driving world diplomacy for years, decades now.

Bantam assesses what it is that Iran wants us to make of its nuclear weapons program,

its threat that it will step into oblivion if pushed. Here's Benham to explain why it is that the mullahs

Tehran wants us to know they have a weapon, they weapons, if they assemble them, they will defend themselves.

Here's Benham, he puts it very carefully in a Persian fashion about a Persian cat.

Benne Bente, the Foundation for the Defense of democracies.

Well really there has been a string of announcements over the years, particularly one by a former intelligence minister,

Ahavi, I believe, was his name, that talked about Iran being akin to a Persian cat that doesn't like to be cornered and if it is

cornered it would move to take action that would be otherwise incongruous with its

behavior. I'm being quite fancy with words here but the Iranians are trying to

create an image in the open source public discourse of them having a capability and trying to benefit from that capability while ultimately being able to avoid direct blame without capability.

And what you see the Iranians doing here is amassing a capability in plain sight,

just like you hear with their nuclear program that they say they have

everything but it's you know dispersed and disassembled the Iranians are

implicitly dangling the sword of Damocles over the world here and the sword that they're dangling is essentially hinder,

dangling above the prospect of

if you push us, we will connect the dots.

If you push us, we will weaponize this program. We will

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