Hello and welcome to a new live episode of Real Politics. I am your host, Viras Madad. As usual, this is another live episode. Please step in with any questions, comments that you might have and I will read them at the end as I normally do. Today, we are going to be talking about the preparations for war with Iran and why is this happening?

What does it all mean? And how does it look like ending up?

Because striking Iran is a pretty complex task.

Now, as you can see from the map that Samson is showing you here, this is Iran and the wider Persian Gulf region.

Geographically, Iran looks like a fortress.

It is not really invadable except for the southern part of the country, the southwestern part of the country, to be precise,

where you would need to build up a ground force in Iraq. And the reason that I say that is that as you look at

this map, you see that there are these endless mountain chains sort of protecting the Persian heartland.

And then there is this kind of salty desert here in the middle.

And the logistics of just sending ground troops into a country like that are incredibly difficult.

That's why the Iraqis struggled so much during the

1980 to 1988-Iran-Iraq War, which was really focused on this area, the flat area by

Ahvaz that has a lot of Iran's energy resources actually,

and that is, in fact, relatively invadable,

whereas beyond that you hit these mountain chains

and then for any ground force, it becomes incredibly difficult.

So what we're looking at realistically is a series of airstrikes.

And the Americans have been building up their capabilities all over the region.

CNN has a decent summary of the buildup here.

What you see first is a huge number of American basis and presence all over

the region. You also see the movement of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group. You see a lot of

new aircraft that are there for surveillance. You see a lot of new aircraft that are there for surveillance. You see a significant

...