00:00Well let's turn now to our main story, the conflict between Israel and Iran, and we can talk to Afzal Ashraf, who's a visiting fellow in international relations and security at Loughborough University.
00:10Welcome to the programme, good to see you.
00:12So lots of different regional dynamics at play here, but I want to start with Iran and the idea of the Ayatollah's leadership potentially coming to an end, or his power being weakened.
00:23And what might that mean for Iran's standing in the region and also within the country itself?
00:28Well, first of all, I would caution against believing a lot of the information that's out there about his leadership coming to an end.
00:41I can't verify it. This war, like most wars, contains a lot of propaganda.
00:49There is a great deal of effort by all of the players on all sides to have narrative domination.
00:57But if it should come to an end, then the concerns of many people in the region, including the Gulf states, is instability.
01:08And we can predict that with reasonable confidence because there was a great deal of excitement and intent on the part of the Western governments to topple regimes such as Saddam's regime, such as Gaddafi's regime in Libya.
01:24And in all of those cases and many others, it has resulted in a huge amount of instability, it's resulted in insecurity, it's resulted in an outflow of refugees and asylum seekers, which has caused domestic problems in Europe.
01:44So there are potentially huge implications if the Ayatollah is assassinated and the regime falls, particularly given that there are separatist movements operating in Iran, the Kurdish movements in the West and the Baloch movements in the South East.
02:09Well, you talk about the certainty of instability, if you like, and lots of different countries, different dynamics.
02:16How are those countries positioning themselves as these tensions continue to rise?
02:22Well, I think most of them, Turkey, for example, Saudi Arabia, UAE, are trying very hard to try and achieve de-escalation.
02:34I think we will have a great deal of certainty of position from tomorrow onwards when Turkey hosts the organization of Islamic states in Turkey.
02:49And I'm sure that they will come up with some form of communique.
02:54The big problem in the countries involved, the Gulf states, Turkey and other regional players, is that there is not a huge amount of unity.
03:06They have divergent interests in many areas, but they do, I think, have major concerns collectively about insecurity.
03:17And I think they would much rather preserve the existing regime.
03:23They would rather it changed through evolution rather than revolution, because they do want to see a change.
03:30I think most people in Iran also want to see a change, but none of them really want to see a dramatic fall with nothing to fill the vacuum,
03:39except what has been described unkindly as the puppet regime with the previous Shah of Iran's son taking over,
03:51as what will be perceived very largely as a puppet regime, and I think that isn't palatable to anybody except possibly these backers in the United States.
