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Music Hello, and welcome back to the David Frum show.

I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

I had a slightly different plan for the podcast this week, but the startling news of the Israeli

airstrike on Iran beginning on the night of Friday the 13th, upended plans.

And so I've had to improvise something.

I want to thank our friends here at the Royal Hotel in Picton, Ontario for making

their boardroom space available to me.

I will be speaking today to Karim Saadipur, a scholar at the Carnegie Institute, the Carnegie Endowment

for International Peace, and the author of the closest study we have on the thought of the

supreme leader of Iran. But before I speak to him, I want to offer some preliminary thoughts of my

own about the situation unfolding. These are not thoughts in the military situation. I am no

kind of military expert. In any way, we're recording 36 hours in advance. So the situation may

well be changed. We know a lot about the internal politics of Israel because it's such an open

society. We know a little bit less about the politics of the society on the receiving end

of the Israeli exchange,

the Islamic Republic of Iran. And that's what I'm going to talk about with Kareem. How is all this

affecting the Iranians? What can we expect? What can we hope for? And before we get to that

dialogue, I'm going to offer some preliminary thoughts. Now, I am in no way any kind of Iran expert or

even amateur. Don't speak the language. I've never been to the

country. I once had an opportunity to go. I was invited by an international businessman who was

...