JACK FOWLER: Well, you mentioned the war, Victor. So the Straits of Hormuz are—the Iranians say they’re in control. This is from two days ago, where clearly Donald Trump’s saying we are now in control. Anyway, what’s your take on the latest headlines, Victor?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Nothing that the Iranians say can be taken at face value because there is no Iranian government. The first and second echelon of that apparatus is gone. So you have the people in the military, that’s one clique. You’ve got the theocracy, the Khamenei, you know, surrogates. That’s another. You’ve got the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It’s probably the most dominant. Then you’ve got these elected politicians. And they have two driving concerns.
One, they are terrified that one of the other three groups will think they’re weak and are negotiating with the Americans and either kill ’em or marginalize ’em or cut off their revenues, such as it is. So they always want to outdo each other. At the same time, they want to outdo each other by saying, you know, we’re winning and all this crazy stuff.
They are also afraid of an uprising. Because if there’s an uprising, any of their hardline stuff that protects them from each other is gonna put a noose around their neck, in a Nuremberg-like trial, given they’ve killed 30,000 to 40,000 people.
So you got the schizophrenia that on one day they want to be moderate and signal the Iranian people that maybe we might transition someday, with me as a figure. On the other day, it’s hardliner, or please don’t kill me if you’re in the Guard Corps. So it’s almost impossible.
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