Hebrew → English transcript

We’re navigating Syria with this knowledge,

this is really our field of expertise on the matter,

Former head of the Iran desk in Military Intelligence, Danny Citrinowicz.

Hi Danny, how are you? - Good evening,

Raviv.- Sketching the character of Mojtaba Khamenei.

Well, if we had known that Mojtaba would be chosen,

maybe we should have thought carefully about whether to assassinate his father.

Mojtaba is fifty- six, the second son of Ali Khamenei, An ideologue,

a conservative, much more extreme than his father.

He has never held any official position in Iran,

and the trouble is the way he took on this role,

that he is driven not only by motivation,

but also by a thirst for revenge for the killing of his family by Israel and

the United States. At the end of the day,

maybe it would have been better to stay with Ali and not get Mojtaba.

We found online, in some podcast,

a defector from the Revolutionary Guards who claims he knows the son very well,

and this is what he says about him.

Khamenei goes and takes orders from the Awaited Mahdi in Qom and comes back.

Mojtaba Khamenei, first of all, he says the Persians are the true owners

of the Imam of the Age, of the Awaited Mahdi. Once he told me Adam,

peace be upon him, came, and once he said Noah came, And once he said, I mean…

this guy is living…

- He has visions in his sleep?- Yes. Mojtaba from the beginning is a strict Shia,

superiority is Persian… He sounds completely deranged.

There is no doubt he is an ideologue, a conservative. We have to remember that we,

apart from the clips running around online, we really do not know much,

in the sense that he has never given any official speech,

he has never held any official position. And therefore we do not know

much beyond the

very disturbing fact that he may be messianic, and beyond that,

that he is backed by the Revolutionary Guards,

and therefore he is going to lead Iran into a situation where we will see a

military dictatorship controlled by an ideological leader,

and it is not clear to what extent, ultimately,

he truly understands where extremism can take Iran. We have to assume and take

into account that at the end of the war, assuming he stays alive,

he will do two main things:

he will rebuild Iran’s conventional power,

and will probably also consider Is it true that, unlike his father,

he is moving toward a nuclear bomb,

apropos the campaign we are currently seeing in Iran.

What is even more troubling is that they

chose him after Trump said,“ I will not accept him as the next leader of Iran.”

We see Mojtaba being chosen solely because we eliminated Khamenei,

and solely because Trump said he would not accept his selection.

Meaning, in my view, we ourselves, with our own hands, shaped the choice of Mojtaba.

I want to assume that if

Ali Khamenei had died of natural causes,

we would not have seen Mojtaba chosen. Iran is not a monarchy,

there were many elements that opposed this.

But the moment we eliminated Ali, the father,

in the end the system had no choice but to signal continuity and also a kind of

testament to his father. And therefore, at the end of the day,

what we feared has come,

but it came mainly because we led the Iranian system to

this choice. Let me ask you

a question that is a bit unfair because it deals with predicting the future.

Do you see a scenario where the Americans and Israel unilaterally stop,

and Iran does not stop? First of all, it must be said that such a possibility

definitely exists.

We must remember first of all what we will not see:

we will not see Iranian surrender, we will not see giving up the missiles,

There does not seem to be any giving up of the nuclear program.

In other words, in the end we have to take into account that if this regime stays,

it will not surrender, contrary to what Trump says.

And therefore a unilateral halt It is really not binding on Iran.

I do not know what the Iranians will decide, because it could be that Mojtaba will

reach the conclusion that despite the desire for revenge,

in the end what is needed is calm, tranquility, to rebuild his country.

But we must take into account that this option is possible, and moreover,

even more serious than that, there could be a situation

where even if Mojtaba receives an instruction or a decision in this regard to stop,

it is possible that the proxies,

whether the Shiite militias in Iraq or Hezbollah, will continue to fight.

Therefore, we must take into account

that even a unilateral decision by Trump or by Israel to stop,

does not necessarily mean a full halt to the war. - Danny Citrinowicz,

thank you.- Thank you very much.