I'm John Batchel with my colleague Brendan Wykert. His new book is The Shadow War, Ron's Quest for Supremacy.

We come up to date. Having started in the 20th century, we look right now at the JCPOA, again suspended by the Trump administration.

It was in the first term, now is in the second term. In between Mr. Biden is of note because he was looking to reawaken the JCPOA, make it stronger.

The suspect nuclear weapons program, however, is only part of the arsenal that Iran now presents to the world.

They are also manufacturing drones that Russia's buying and missiles

that Russians buying. They've become an armorer for the Middle East. And the policy today

is hostile towards Israel, towards the United States, possibly even towards the whole neighborhood. What is Iran's ambition?

You say supremacy. They have the surrogates of the Houthis operating in Yemen, war with the

Saudis, war with the Israelis. They have Hamas operating in Gaza, war with the Israelis, and they have Hezbollah in Lebanon.

They also have what you'd have to say, representatives throughout Syria, now a failed state with

Assad fled. What is their vision? Where are they going? Well, the idea is to become the great empire of the region to basically

prove to the world that Shia Islam, specifically the 12 version of Shia Islam, which is a very

specific belief set that really a lot of the elites, the religious elite of iran believe in that that is

the superior um religion or ideology and they want to basically dominate the region and from there

they want to be able to use that as a base to dominate the world now i don't think they'll ever be

able to get to that level but but that is the thinking here.

And there's also among some of the elite there, this idea of freeing the Mahdi from the well.

There's a whole religious eschatology involved here. But for the most part, it is truly, basically, subordinate the Sunni Arabs to the righteous rule of the Shiites

and then crush the Israelis who are both unbelievers and agents of the American imperialists

and get the American imperialists out of the Middle East.

You turn this book in before the attack on Israel or during?

Oh, well before.

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