This is John Batchelor, conversation with my good friend and colleague Gregory Coppley of Defense and Foreign Affairs about Turkey and its ambitions against the Kurds in northern Iraq and northern Syria.

At the same time, there is the question of Turkey dealing with Northern Iraq and Northern Syria.

At the same time, there is the question of Turkey dealing with Tehran, Ankara and Tehran.

And Gregory describes a complete breakdown between the Mullahs and Erdogan. The Mulas and

and Erdogan.

Erdogan is a neo-autamanist restoring the Ottoman Empire.

Tehran, the mullahs are apocalyptic. Empire. efforts now clash directly. Is Gregory Coppley to describe to Iran has a new

adversary in the neighborhood? Yes it is because Iran has firmly, the clerics in Iran have firmly placed themselves

under the protection of Moscow and Moscow is rewarding the Iranian clerics by building this new rail and road link from the

Caspian Sea and the Azerbaijan border down through to Bandar Abbas in the Arabian Sea just

outside the Strait of Pomos. So this is an enormous economic boom for Iran and it helps to protect the clerics in power.

So yeah, they are now firmly divorced from Turkey.

They've always been, had a fractious relationship with Turkey,

even back to the days when the Cento Alliance,

Central Treaty Organization or the Baghdad Pact was formed in the 50s.

You saw that there was a very difficult relationship between Turkey and even the Shah of Iran at that stage, even though they were nominal allies,

that did not carry over to any really meaningful trust between Ankara and Tehran.

So it's now broken down dramatically from there.

More of this later, thank you.