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Speaker 1: Dressing the newsmakers to get the real story. It's Heather

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Speaker 1: Duper Clan Drive with one New Zealand coverage like no

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Speaker 1: one else New sor zib Afternoon.

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Speaker 2: So, the latest on the Iranian air strikes is that

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Speaker 2: the conflict has now widened, Israel and Lebanon are exchanging fire,

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Speaker 2: oil prices are up, and Donald Trump says that he

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Speaker 2: expects the war with Iran, which is dubbed Epic Fury,

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Speaker 2: to last four weeks. Perry Wilton is a New Zealand

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Speaker 2: based journalist who is based in Doha and with US Now.

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Speaker 2: Hi Perry, Hi, Heather, how are you. I'm very well,

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Speaker 2: thank you mate. What's the sentiment in Doha, in the

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Speaker 2: Middle the wider Middle East about this?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think as each day kind of grinds on,

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Speaker 3: this uncertainty deepens, you kind of have this feeling, you know,

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Speaker 3: that that Iran's retaliatory strikes after the US and Israel

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Speaker 3: hit their capital really hard, have been wild. They haven't

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Speaker 3: been particularly focused going into this. Iran had said that

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Speaker 3: they were going to be targeting mostly you know, US bases,

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Speaker 3: US assets in the region, and there are assets in

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Speaker 3: a bunch of these golf countries surrounding Iran, and so

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Speaker 3: people were expecting most of those strikes to be targeting

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Speaker 3: US air bases, maybe US military infrastructure. But what you've

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Speaker 3: what we've actually got is is pretty sporadic waves of

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Speaker 3: strikes from around that we've seen hit pretty much everything

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Speaker 3: from US military bases to residential apartment buildings. Qight Airport

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Speaker 3: has been really badly damaged. So I think people here

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Speaker 3: want this to end, uh and and want this this

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Speaker 3: uncertainty of what's going to happen next, when the next

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Speaker 3: strike is going to hit, to close up. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: as you said, we're seeing this grow in its breadth

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Speaker 3: pretty pretty quickly. I think around has just hit Europe

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Speaker 3: for the first time. They've hit military assets, US military

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Speaker 3: assets in Cyprus. So there was this feeling initially that

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Speaker 3: maybe this would be a quick job, that the US

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Speaker 3: would would go in Venezuela style, try and take out

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Speaker 3: the head and then and then move on. But we've

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Speaker 3: seen essentially as every hour goes by, more people get involved,

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Speaker 3: more Iranian allies. We've seen his Bala now firing into

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Speaker 3: Israel and Israel firing back, as he said, into Lebanon.

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Speaker 3: So I think people here are feeling not particularly optimistic

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Speaker 3: that this is going to wrap up as fast as

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Speaker 3: some people had said it might.

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Speaker 2: I mean, they've obviously tried to take out the head,

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Speaker 2: and they have, and they seem to have taken out

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Speaker 2: about forty of the heads. But how far do they

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Speaker 2: have to go down, Like how many people do they

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Speaker 2: have to nuke at the top in order to have

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Speaker 2: this regime collapse realistically?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think it's fair to say that the Iranian

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Speaker 3: regime has been designed to do one thing, and that's

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Speaker 3: to keep itself in power. And it's done that through

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Speaker 3: creating this sprawling, deeply complex web of committees and councils

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Speaker 3: across around the country has about ninety million people, and

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Speaker 3: to control that, you know, size of a country without

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Speaker 3: its leader, the system has kind of this backup or

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Speaker 3: this kind of temporary leadership council. So, you know, the

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Speaker 3: second that Iatola was taken out, so to speak, we

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Speaker 3: saw this council that's made up of the president that's

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Speaker 3: Posesskian and the head of the judiciary and others kind

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Speaker 3: of take over and handle daily affairs. And there are

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Speaker 3: all sorts of these other councils. There is this one

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Speaker 3: called the Assembly of Experts is it's got like eighty

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Speaker 3: eight members and and that's been appointed the job to

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Speaker 3: name a successor, you know, as soon as possible. And

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Speaker 3: they're in a variety of areas across Iran. It's not

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Speaker 3: all just in one place. And so that's the that's

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Speaker 3: the main question. How far does the US want to go?

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Speaker 3: How far would it consider pushing these strikes to get

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Speaker 3: to whatever it would call a success. One could argue

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Speaker 3: for for you know, a lot of bodies being required

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Speaker 3: to really take out the so called regime, but I

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Speaker 3: can't imagine. I can't imagine what that might look like.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Perry, listen, thank you, I appreciated, and good luck

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Speaker 2: getting out of the country. Perry Wilton, journalists based in Katar,

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Speaker 2: who needs to get back to New Zealand for a

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Speaker 2: wedding this weekend, but of course can't fly out just

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Speaker 2: at the minute.

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