Going post-nuclear: Kylie Moore-Gilbert on the future of Iran
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Stop the world!

Welcome to Stop the World. I'm David Rowe. Our topic today is the future of Iran in light of Israel's week-long attack, which has significantly degraded Iranian military and political leadership, and just this morning prompted Donald Trump to give Tehran a new two-week window to negotiate an end to its nuclear program. And to share her views on all this, we have our guest, Kylie Moore Gilbert.

Kylie is a political scientist with deep expertise in Iran and the broader Middle East. In 2018, she was wrongfully arrested and detained by the Iranian regime in an ordeal that lasted more than two years. Today, alongside her academic work, she campaigns for democracy and human rights in Iran and advocates for other victims of state hostage-taking via the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance. Kylie, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, David.

So I want to start by getting straight to what is really the big question for somebody like you with Iranian and Middle Eastern expertise, which is regardless of whether the next fortnight, and noting Trump has just announced a two-week window this morning as we're recording, regardless of whether that next fortnight brings an end to the Iranian nuclear program via a US strike operation,

on the key enrichment facility or a desperate Tehran negotiates from a weak position, we are presumably going to see some sort of change to the Iranian government. To what extent do you think that these sort of dramatic events will precipitate a significant change?

To be honest, they already have. I mean, a number of extremely prominent guys at the top are now gone. So the regime internally is going to have to shift and change no matter what. Even if everything was to freeze as it is right now, I don't see any scenario in which the Islamic Republic regime is not going to have seismic and considerable shifts

within its internal structures. And that includes various competing factions that exist within this very broad thing that we call a regime, but actually has so many stakeholders and so many actors encompassed.

In that, obviously, there's also the question of the supreme leader. He's the dictator of Iran. He's the guy at the top. There's been various differing statements coming out of both Iran and sorry, coming out of both the US and Israel as to his fate and whether they'd like to sort of see him remain in place or not.

And what happens to him? I mean, he's 86 years old. He's elderly anyway, right? The potential issue of succession to him will also be crucial. It's interesting what you say about the many stakeholders and the many different factions within the regime. It's not a monolithic thing. Can you just, I mean, as simply as you can for a lay listener like myself, talk us through a little bit about that. What are the sort of, you know, who are the main sort of parties and the main actors?

So I guess an important distinction within the regime is you have the so-called Iranian government and then you have the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a kind of a state within a state in Iran. They're not just a militarized force. And we've all heard about their kind of rival military capacity to the formal Iranian military known as Arkesh.

you know, and their sponsorship of proxies throughout the region and this kind of thing. They're also a massive economic stakeholder in Iran. They've profited hugely off the sanctions. In fact, the Rev Guards have a stake in seeing the sanctions on Iran maintained, actually, because they've just made so much money out of them.

Um, they're doing everything from, from oil industry to pharmaceuticals, to import export, um, smuggling operations, obviously selling oil and, and, and other gas and other commodities on the black market figures there as well. Um, so they're, they're an economic powerhouse. They're also very politically influential, um,

You have a number of members of parliament in the Majlis and also people in the inner circle around the Supreme Leader Khamenei that are Revolutionary Guard members or affiliates.

So, you know, you've got this kind of superstructure of the guards superimposed upon the rest of the state. And there are a number of other entities there. I mean, I mentioned the Majlis, the parliament. It's, I would say, more of a fig leaf, you know, than a real governing body of Iran. But you have...

considerable differences within the regime there. You've got this so-called reformist faction, which has been weakened a lot, probably ever since Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal initially in 2018.

And then you've got more hardline factions as well. Obviously, the regime is also a religious entity. It's got significant clerical backing, particularly from various religious authorities in the holy city of Qom. And the Supreme Leader himself is considered to be a religious authority. So there's a religious dimension there as well. And, you know, I could go on. There's a huge coercive apparatus there.

you know, with various actors and players which have arms, which have, you know, monopoly on violence within the state more broadly. And sometimes the interests of all of these different factions don't necessarily align with one another. Yeah, no, that's a really, really helpful outline. Thanks. So to what extent do you think that the Iranian regime, that the leadership as a whole across all of those different elements, to what extent do you think it's

fundamentally lost credibility in its failure to really deal with this Israeli attack and to sort of fend off this operation by Israel. And for that matter, I mean, really, it's fared badly in every exchange, every confrontation it's had pretty much since October 7, 2023. Has it been gradually losing credibility and authority at home?

Absolutely. I mean, one could argue that the regime lost most of its credibility at home with the general populace well before October 7. But certainly, I think now in retrospect, looking back, we can say that October 7 was a disaster for the Iranian regime. I mean, they lost so many of their proxies. They lost their client state in the Assad regime in Syria. And in those 2024

salvos or exchange of fire between Israel and Iran, they came off looking much weaker out of those as well. And obviously this past week or so of military campaign by Israel has really exposed them to be more of a paper tiger than was assumed in a military sense. So I think that the militarized wings of the regime have lost considerable credibility and deterrence. I mean, deterrence amongst their enemies in the region, their adversaries,

the way that they're able to telegraph and broadcast

and influence to neighbouring states, friend or foe, that's been severely damaged. And of course, obviously internally with their own populace as well. I think the majority of the population we know has been against this regime well before this military campaign began. But there is that sizeable bulk of sort of, I don't know, 10 to 20% of the population who are kind of ardent, hardcore supporters of this regime. And the credibility of the regime with them would have been damaged as well.

I mean, I suppose the distinction is that previously they were disliked but feared, whereas maybe now they're still disliked but not really feared so much. Is that a fair way to look at it? They're definitely still feared by their own people. Even throughout these military strikes, they have been arresting hundreds, interrogating people,

The coercive apparatus of the state has continued its work. They've even been sending text messages to women who've been spotted on the streets with incorrect hijab, can you imagine, despite being bombed and everything else going on. The people, the Iranians that I'm speaking to are extremely fearful that when the dust settles and when the military campaign comes to an end,

it will be the Iranian people that pay the price and that there will be reprisals and score settling and obviously great paranoia as to, you know, who all of these spies and informers are within the country and within the regime, including at very high levels within the regime, it seems, who've been feeding information to Iran's enemies. So there is a lot of fear that that coercive apparatus will actually kind of be rekindled.

re-ramped up further when this comes to an end internally. But of course, externally, yes, they've suffered a huge blow and I don't know if it's possible for Iran to recover its credibility under this regime in that sense. Fascinating. So,

So obviously the nuclear program is very much at the center of the negotiations and the strategy that is going on between Iran, Israel and the United States. Just first of all, how central to the regimes

to perceptions of its strength is the nuclear program, how is the nuclear program viewed by ordinary Iranians? And I suppose, therefore, how detrimental, how perhaps fatally wounding to the regime and its stature would it be if it, say, gave up the nuclear program entirely through negotiations?

I think the nuclear program was always a signal to Iran's adversaries abroad rather than necessarily to its own population. It's a very powerful deterrent, obviously. There are fears of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and you saw some Sunni Arab competitor states of Iran's considering nuclear programs of their own at certain stages. You know, it's a deterrent to Israel and the US obviously should, what

what is happening now had have eventuated if they had nuclear weapons probably would not have happened as but when it comes to the domestic population within Iran I think it's far less consequential for them there it is not a source of national pride in Iran no matter what the regime might try and spin it as most people think it's a colossal waste of money you know it's it's

It's another example of the corruption and the economic mismanagement that this regime is charged with by its people. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on this over decades.

And Iran has, you know, the second largest oil reserves in the world. It doesn't have a need for nuclear power. I think it provided 1% of Iran's electricity generation or something since its inception. The price tag on that is just astronomical. In a situation where you've got more than $50

of the population now living below the poverty line. So the general populace, and I would suspect even those within the pro-regime camp, many of them would also think this nuclear program is probably not worth all of the hassle that it's taken to get there and that money would be better spent elsewhere.

I saw a statistic in one of the, well, I've seen it a couple of times in the various news stories I've been reading, that Iran's GDP has actually fallen by 45% since 2012. I mean, that is just a staggering, I mean, a country of what, 90 plus million people for its national wealth and its national productivity to fall that rapidly and by that extent is staggering.

And its currency is also, the rial is also essentially worthless. Like it's fallen catastrophically. And I've heard that Iranians have largely, many of them are taking their savings out of banks and actually buying gold in the bazaar and stashing bricks of gold under their beds or putting them wherever because that's a safer way to maintain their wealth than having gold.

cash in their own local currency in the bank. It's just, you know, it's been devalued to the point of being meaningless at this point. So, yeah, it's catastrophic what they've, the mismanagement of the economy and the corruption is probably cited by the people on the street as an even bigger issue than the civil rights and human rights, you know, issues with this regime. Right, right.

So you've touched on, and very helpfully give us an overview of the various factions. Obviously, in the Western commentary, they tend to get divided between the reformists and the hardliners often. But just give us your sense of, I mean, if the regime were to sort of, you know, in

internally crumble under, I suppose, the weight of potentially just having to make unenviable decisions under pressure from Israel and the United States. What are the relative strengths, do you think, across those various factions of, I suppose, people who we might regard as allies?

more liberal, reformist, progressive, etc. And those hardliners, either religious hardliners or nationalistic, sort of militaristic hardliners. What do you think the dynamics are and the relative strengths are? I probably wouldn't use the term liberal or progressive for any faction within the regime. I mean, you're right. It's a spectrum, but the spectrum is very narrow because the actors who are allowed to participate in the political space are everyone's

everybody, reformers to the most hardline possible, they're all ideologically committed to this regime, to its principles, to the supreme leader. And even the more moderate, we would call so-called reformers, are still rather hardline by Western standards. Let's say they're still on board with the enforced hijab, for example, and all of the human rights violations and everything else the regime's been doing.

That also should be said, it should be said that the reform movement within Iran is basically dead. I don't see it necessarily coming back unless as a tactic by the Supreme Leader to try and telegraph, you know, a friendlier face to the world. But in terms of any real support on the streets,

any broad popular base. I don't think it's possible to resuscitate the reform movement. I think it had its day. It showed itself to not be sufficient in meeting the people's concerns and it was a failure and it flopped. You do, as you mentioned, you know, you do have a kind of vast spectrum of different ideologies within the hardline faction as well. You have sort of

messianic religious types who are you know see everything in sort of

Yeah, through a highly religious lens and this kind of cult of martyrdom that certain aspects of the IRGC have cultivated and others might subscribe to, which saw them all going off to volunteer to fight in Syria, for example, and they're willing to die for the cause. And this kind of thinking is one aspect there. And then you have the more pragmatic, still religious, but more pragmatic types who have a better understanding of realpolitik, I guess.

And you have different factions, some IRGC, some non-IRGC. Also, you have the clerics in Qom, or not just in Qom, but that's the kind of base there, which I guess were the traditional clerical elites of this regime. But I think in the event of...

significant change, I would expect the clerical establishment to be marginalized vis-a-vis the military or IRGC power base just because of the nature of the threat and the fact that there is no obvious religious successor to Khamenei. So there's no one that could potentially have that legitimacy from a religious perspective and from a political perspective to be positioned as a successor. So

But I don't think we're talking about the regime crumbling anytime soon. I think we're talking about shifts and changes within the regime. But at the end of the day, they have the monopoly on violence. They have the guns. And as long as a rival force doesn't emerge or as long as the regime doesn't splinter into factions that fight amongst itself,

itself and and that's very possible um but you know it doesn't weaken itself from within through infighting and turf war and and different factional um squabbles then i just don't see a likelihood even if it's weakened externally and internally by this war i don't see it going away um right now right okay i mean um

I may have misunderstood it, but I think around day two, Khamenei announced that he was giving major decision-making power directly to the IRGC. It was a very quick announcement after the first Israeli attacks. And certainly indicative of what you're saying there, that ultimately the power would probably naturally flow towards the military. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think that was over military decision making. It wouldn't have been over every aspect of governance and all decision making of the regime. He still calls the shots and he's been very vocal on X. Maybe you've seen in the last few days, he's also made his first video address to the nation recently.

Hiding in a bunker somewhere, you know, this is Iranian people are angry about the fact that these guys have scurried off into their bunkers when when the rest of the population doesn't even have a single bunker to hide in. Sure. But he is still calling the shots. He's still in charge. And in terms of any decision making around whether to enter into negotiations with the Americans.

over a new kind of deal that might bring this to an end, I think it's still very firmly Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who make that call. So you've described a slightly depressing scenario, I suppose, in which the political leadership is you've got the least worst options and then the bad options. There are no perhaps great options from a point of view of somebody who, you know, a liberal Democrat,

Who do you think is being strengthened at the moment on the current trajectory of the outside pressure? I mean, obviously we don't know quite what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks and we don't know what's going to happen beyond that, but just on the way things are currently tracking, do you have a sense of, you know, is the more sort of hardline militaristic side of the leadership being strengthened, do you think?

From Khamenei's response so far, which has been quite defiant, belligerent, not backing down, not telegraphing any kind of will or desire to concede anything, despite the fact that we know that they have sent word out via various intermediaries that they want to negotiate and that people like Arachi, the foreign minister, have been talking about wanting to go and sit down with the US and bring this to an end.

What we're hearing out of the Supreme Leader's public statements is very much the opposite to that. And that, to me, indicates that the more hardline militaristic factions are ascendant still within the regime. But, you know, Khamenei is very wily. He has played this game many times before where he's played each camp off against the other to try and signal different things to different constituencies, etc.

and then picks one in the end. And he might be waiting it out to see what's in his interest. You know, I've heard some analysts say that he, you know, he's 86 years old. He's an old man. He's set in his ways. He's very difficult to turn. His views are all kind of concreted in and, you know, you're not going to change him when he's 86 years old and he's been in power for three decades. So, you know, as long as he's in power, his instinct and impulse is

to dig in, you know, to not give in, to not negotiate. He'll negotiate, but maybe he'll try and kick the can down the road and avoid making a final decision. He plays a very smart game. He likes to have multiple factions there to sort of blame different things on and play off against each other. Whether he'll make a firm decision, even if he enters negotiations, it still remains to be seen.

It doesn't sound like you have a lot of hope of something like a crumbling of the regime and a popular uprising of some kind. Some of the commentary has raised concerns, I suppose, about complete chaos, a power vacuum and maybe different factions, rivalries emerging that turn into some sort of civil conflict or strife.

But am I right in thinking you think that a popular uprising is less likely at this point that the regime will hang on between the various elements of it? And there might be some internal change within the regime, but your bigger concern by the sound of things is that

the regime will find ways to hang on, dig in, and then there will be repercussions for the general population, for moderates as well. I mean, perhaps the witch hunt for potential spies, given how much the intelligence the Israelis have clearly been able to gather, including about the whereabouts of leaders and so forth. I mean, is that a fair assessment of your thinking?

I think that's very possible. I wouldn't rule out a popular uprising altogether. I think that is a possibility, especially given the weakness of the regime right now. And we don't know how much weaker they'll get before all of this comes to an end. You know, the people aren't going to rise up under fire. So this has to come to an end first.

Whether an uprising could succeed is a different question. Whether it will occur at all, I mean, I think it's very plausible that it will. We saw it very recently in 2022, 2023 with the Women, Life, Freedom movement, which was unprecedented, not since the revolution had we seen that many people on the streets for such a protracted period of time as well, calling for regime change and, you know, all polling, which, you know,

necessarily must be conducted outside the country into Iran, has shown that roughly 80% of the population want this regime gone. So I do think there's certainly a prospect there for an uprising. But again, the regime, they have the monopoly on power and they've shown in the past they're willing to brutally suppress any civilian dissent.

So I guess the question remains, really, in order for it to succeed, you need elite defections. You need the regime to splinter and certain aspects of the regime to go to the other side, to throw in the towel and believe that it's, you know, better in their interest to align themselves with the people.

And that's what we've seen in most successful revolutions in history. And it hasn't happened in Iran thus far. I mean, we didn't see it in any of the mass movements in 2009, 2019, 2022. We didn't see any real meaningful elite defections.

But the regime is weak. It has these factions. There'll be a lot of infighting and score settling. So you never know. I wouldn't rule it out altogether, but I don't think that this regime is going to just magically disappear once the fighting comes to an end. I think it's going to be a struggle for the Iranian people to remove them from power. Yeah. Okay. Really interesting. Can you see anything that...

Let's say the US, for instance. I mean, are there things that you think the US could do? Well, I suppose, perhaps neighbors in the region could do to try and encourage... I mean, I want to be careful about sort of suggesting things like regime change from the outside, which are obviously dangerous, but...

to encourage that splintering in the favor of the more reformist factions who might be able to defect in the way that you're describing and align themselves more with the wishes of the people? I mean, can you see anything that would encourage that more? Or I suppose, alternatively, are there any actions that the US and Israel should avoid to avoid sort of discouraging that? I think there's a real danger right now that

they will get the Iranian people offside in this military campaign. I mean, you don't want to have any mass civilian casualties or anything like that. You don't want to have the kind of language that certain idiotic Israeli ministers have been putting on the public record that they're going to make the residents of Tehran pay the price for the missile barrages on Israel. This kind of thing is very ill-advised in my view.

The Iranian people are the greatest asset that Israel and America might have to overthrowing this regime, and they need to keep them broadly, you know, stop alienating them and keep them on side. I think that's an important first step. Make it very clear that even though this has been going on for more than a week now, make it very clear that they still distinguish between the regime and the people and they're not attacking the people.

I do think, you know, a lot in the past, a lot more should have been done to support the Iranian people, to strengthen them so that if this eventuality emerged, they were in a stronger position against their regime. Particularly, you know, the Biden administration made a lot of errors in this respect. I mean, it gave the Iranian regime hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, essentially turning a blind eye to the black market situation.

oil transfers to India and China and unfreezing Iranian funds in foreign banks. Really, I think they were trying to entice them back to the negotiating table, but through carrots, not sticks. And unfortunately, a regime like Iran, they don't respect that kind of maneuver.

And so the Iranian people, particularly in 2022, when this uprising happened, the Women, Life, Freedom movement was saying, you know, you need to help us, support us, strangle the regime's finances, you know, crack down on its corruption and on its corrupt interests abroad, reduce its ability to export oil to zero, you know, do more. And we've seen with the Russia sanctions that that's possible.

and that can be done to Iran as well. And so there is a lot that can be done to support the Iranian people. But, you know, given we don't know what the wash up is going to be, I suspect it will be a little bit easier to go down that track this time than it was perhaps in 2018 when Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal. That's a really interesting insight. And I think, I mean, it's a sort of lesson that is globally relevant that

You know, that trying to give incentives to demonstrably implacable regimes like the one in Iran to try and change its behavior rather than keep the pressure on it and try and empower, you know, in relative terms, empower the people as the alternative course of action is a really, I mean, it's just a...

perhaps a lesson here for future governments in ways not to deal with authoritarian regimes. It's a really interesting insight that you make there. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that there was a lot of weakness telegraphed to the Iranian regime, particularly in the response to this

2022, 2023 uprising where you had kind of symbolic fig leaf sanctions, a few Magnitsky sanctions here and there on the morality police or whatever, but nothing meaningful or really impactful. And I was part of a campaign calling on the Australian government to list the IRGC as a terror organization in Australia. The Canadians did it. The US had done it back in 2019.

You know, we'd listed Hezbollah in its entirety as a terror organization. That was at the time part of the Lebanese government. So the argument was that we couldn't hear in Australia because the IRGC is part of the Iranian government. But there were certainly ways around that that would have been pretty easy to undertake. And recognizing, you know, the...

role of the IRGC in the region in spreading instability, promoting terrorism, and also all of these illicit economic activities of the IRGC, including in Australia. I mean, it's not that they have no links to Australia at all.

You know, I think it would have been important and had Western countries gathered together in unison and all prescribed the IRGC and gone after some of the oligarchy as they had the Russian oligarchs in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, gone after some of these Iranians who live in the West, who funneled.

millions and millions of illicit funds into Western countries and, you know, sending some of that, washing it and sending it back to Iran, you know, it could have actually been quite impactful. That's interesting. So the distinction for Australia was that we have diplomatic relations and an embassy or was there, what was the rationale to your memory? I mean, Canada also has diplomatic relations. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah.

Canada closed its embassy, but the Canadians have different relations. I mean, the EU Parliament, the UK, a lot of other actors were looking into this as well. So I think Australia is not a leader. It's a follower when it comes to Iran. I mean, it's not in our backyard. It's not a strategic priority for Australia. If Biden, for example, had a

been fully on board with this. And I know he was considering delisting the IRGC when he first came into office, but was persuaded otherwise. You know, if the Biden administration had words with Australia and said, hey, we want to be all on the same page on this, perhaps they would have done it. But my understanding was that the US was lukewarm because they were trying to signal to Iran that they want to rapprochement and they want to sort of ease up on the sanctions and everything. And for that reason, maybe Australia decided it wasn't the

the right timing. But I do hope that if the regime does survive, and it probably will, I hope that Australia and other countries will revisit the issue of the IRGC because we need to help the Iranian people by strangling all of these financial interests and terror funding and ballistic missile development and everything that the regime is undertaking. And I think that would be an easy first step.

I'm just interested in a couple of quick ones and then I will let you go. But first of all, I'm interested in the two competing strains of public opinion that are obvious right now. I mean, there's the dislike of the regime and the 80% figure that you mentioned, the proportion of the population who...

at some level or another, opposes the regime. And then the presumed dislike of Israel's attacks on their country,

I mean, you know, obviously there's animosity, long-standing animosity between Iran and Israel at a sort of national level. I mean, I'm not sure how far that penetrates right through the Iranian population. But I suppose, how do you think that those two strains are aligned?

are competing against each other right now in sort of shaping Iranian public opinion. You know, dislike of the regime versus not loving being attacked by Israel.

I don't think they're competing at all. I think they can exist alongside each other. And I think for most Iranians, they probably do. I mean, the Iranian dissident community and the sort of the people inside the country who very bravely spoken out against the regime and have gone to prison and paid the price for it. You know, people like Narges and Mohammadi and others have spoken out against these strikes and said we are a

against all war and we are against any attack on Iran but at the same time we are against the regime and you know many many Iranians hold the regime responsible ultimately for bringing this calamity down upon their head yeah I think you can hold both truths at once and you know in so far as Iranians

public opinion on Israel goes. It's very mixed. There is no firm anti-Israel sentiment within the Iranian populace. Certainly there is within the pro-regime sector. I've heard all kinds of views expressed from friends inside Iran and in the diaspora. Some are

kind of my enemies, enemies, my friend, you know, that's their mentality. So they're firmly on Israel's side. And even when I was in prison, I heard people express very pro-Israel sentiments to me, which I found quite surprising. But then there are also others that, you know, view what's happening in Gaza, for example, from a human rights and humanitarian lens and fear Israel and don't trust Israel and are worried they would seek to do the same thing in Iran. And

you know, say we don't need an external actor to come to our aid. We'll deal with the regime ourselves. Just stop bombing us, please. You know, so you have a whole gamut of different views. It's definitely not a very obvious fixed position, I'd say, in that constituency that's anti-regime. Right. And just to finish off, I mean, this is a big question as well.

You spent more than two years in horrendous conditions in Iranian prisons on entirely false charges. You were a victim of state hostage taking. What are your personal feelings right now as you watch this unfold? I mean, what are you hoping for? What feelings is it evoking for you?

I was in shock for the first day or so of this. I just could not believe that it had actually happened. I mean, you know, obviously people have been talking about bombing the Iranian nuclear program for the past two decades or so. It always got pulled back from the brink. I just can't believe it happened. And also right now as well and the timing of it. I was initially quite worried, especially about friends of mine in Tehran and in a couple of other cities as well,

As you know, the regime's cut off the internet or severely restricted it, so it's now become really difficult to reach out to certain people. But I did manage to check in with all of my friends and contacts in Iran, mostly, most of them before the internet became heavily restricted. Many of them have evacuated Tehran. Others are staying because they have elderly parents or elderly relatives or others that can't be moved. And that's a bit scary as well.

So, yeah, I certainly was sort of my immediate reaction was just shock and then fear for my friends. But also I do think it's an unprecedented opening now for change in Iran.

Anything can come of this, positive or negative. And that's thrilling in a way too. I mean, I'm certainly not upset to see the demise of some of these nasty evil characters at the top of the regime that have been assassinated, including the head, Mohamed Kazemi, the head of the IRGC intelligence organization, which was responsible for my arrest and illegal detention. So, yeah.

um it's a real mixed bag like I'm happy about some of it but I'm also really scared for for my friends and really concerned and worried that somebody like Trump is is not the best

person to manage this crisis and and concerned that the the ultimate um result of all of this might be more negative for the Iranian people um than it was before so it's a thrilling time to watch and to be an observer of Iran in the Middle East but it's also yeah it's it's quite terrifying at the same time yeah yeah well look I I I wish the best for your friends who are over there I um I hope they uh

They're okay and continue to be okay. And I really hope the best as you do for the Iranian people and that something, as you say, this is an amazing opportunity. And let's just hope that with some deft management from the rest of the world, it'd be good to see a wide range of other countries involved and having their say in it, including Europe, including Australia for that matter.

We'll see what happens, but we hope for the best. Kylie, you do amazing work and I've learned a lot from this conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on. It's been a real honour.