Dismantling Iran’s Terror Regime

Dismantling Iran’s Terror Regime

June 18, 2025

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Gregg Roman

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/18/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Wednesday edition of Stand In the Gap Today, and it’s also our bimonthly focus on Israel and the Middle East. Now, if you’re following the news to any degree, it’s obvious that the entire world is speculating that we are on perhaps the precipice of World War iii. The June 13th decision by Israel to attack Iran directly caught most of the world off guard, but this long planned and carefully executed attack has garnered even the largest nations of the world as they contemplate this effort with awe and amazement because of what’s happened so far yet, the questions of what is actually happening, what will the United States do? What can and will Iran do? What will Iran’s allies like Russia, China, North Korea, what will they do? Then there’s the issue of what will the greater Islamic world do? All these questions and more are legitimate, and it’s part of the wide and disparate speculation that’s going on nearly everywhere.

But as we regularly do on this program, we call attention to Israel and the Middle East because we know that this conflict with its many increasing, and I’m saying increasing military engagements have very, very deep historic roots. They’re spiritual at their core and they’re also prophesied in scripture. And while the political and the military rulers around the world might think that they’re creating all the changes we see and doing it for their own advantage, we know that in the end, God is orchestrating the events because of his purposes for which Israel, the Jewish people, and the city of Jerusalem becomes, as we know, an irresistible magnet for all the nations of the world. Now today I’ve asked Gregg Roman, chief operations officer for the Middle East Forum with our website@meforum.org to join me again for a considered review surrounding Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, and that is what they have called the initiative Engaging Iran. And we’ll talk about what we know at this point, Iran’s response, the likely response of allies of Israel, the allies of Iran and so forth. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s program, the emphasis is simply this dismantling Iran’s terror regime. With that, I welcome back Gregg. Thanks being back with me again today. You guys are doing a tremendous job in the covering of these issues.

Gregg Roman:

Thanks for having us,

Sam Rohrer:

Gregg, you and your team, of which I’ve had many on the program in the past there at Middle East Forum, you deal with everything Middle East and Israel, so it’s not just Israel, but everything about all of that. Since the June 13th attack by Israel and Iran, you quickly put together a website, which I encourage our listeners to go to, and it’s simply this Iran war.com, Iran war monitor.com, because it contains the very latest information about what’s happening in that quick circumstance, that being the case, I’d like to get your opinion about this key question. What is or was Israel’s primary objective by this particular operation? And I put this in here because there are two thoughts out there. Some are saying Israel and the Trump administration, we’re hearing that they say the goal was to make sure that Iran does not become nuclear bomb capable. There are others, even conservatives and others who are saying, wait a minute, this is about regime change, just like has been happened in the past when the military establishment and all that justifying the war in Ukraine or Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. So there’s regime change and then there is the nuclear issue. In your opinion, what is Israel’s true motivations and what are their objectives and why

Gregg Roman:

Israel has defined this operation, which started last week by having three key goals. The first is to degrade and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, especially those elements which may be weaponized and militarized. The second is to eliminate their ballistic missile program, especially those that can reach the state of Israel and its territory. And the third is to demand that Iran stop all support for its terror proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi Shiia, militias, and Houthis. This has been defined since day one and Israel got to the point where its intelligence assessments backed up by the way, from the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the Austrian Intelligence Organization akin to the FBI and the United States both said that Iran was one week away from a nuclear weapon. And even more than that, there’s estimates now after seeing the damaged architecture that the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Iran was developing nuclear programs that could have no other purpose other than military applications. So this is not just Israel giving this assessment, it’s also backed up by the Chief Nuclear Supervisory Agency worldwide backed by the UN and also by the United States and Europe.

Sam Rohrer:

I have seen some of those things as well. Alright, so you’ve laid that out very well. Now is it just coincidence then? Donald Trump gave Iran 60 days to make a deal. The attack, I believe, was on day 61. Is that coincidence?

Gregg Roman:

I think that Israel respected President Trump’s wishes to have a 60 day timeframe to be able to achieve a diplomatic solution, did an attack on day 59, did an attack on day one, and in fact, Israeli ministers and the head of Israel Intelligence Organization, Mossad, were present at every diplomatic engagement that special Envoy Witkoff had with his Iranian counterparts. There was a meeting between the minister, the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer and the head of Mossad, David Barnea in Rome, and the day before the first round of diplomatic negotiations took place and then they flew to Washington to be able to follow up to see what the results were. So the US and Israel in this entire process on deciding whether or not to use a kinetic solution, a military solution to remove Iran’s nuclear capabilities, have been from day one of those negotiations coordinated.

And it even went so far as that Israel updated the United States prior to launching an attack so that US assets in the region would not be as threatened should they have been caught off guard. So it’s my understanding that the US knew about this beforehand. It’s been supporting Israel since the first hour of the first airstrikes taking place. And now that the Iranians have again spurred a diplomatic solution, it’s considering whether or not itself to be offensively involved. But right now, just like the president said yesterday, the US and Israel have control of Iranian airspace. And even more than that, the US is resupplying re-arming and providing logistical and intelligence support to Israeli Air Force Jets that are conducting operations over Iran Skies. This has been as again, reiterate from day one, something that the US has been fully briefed on and is supporting Israel and its right to defend itself by removing the Iranian nuclear threat.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, that’s very, very clear. Thanks for that, for being so precise. So ladies and gentlemen, hopefully you’re listening to that because that answers some of the key questions that are out there and have been floating around, partly disinformation, some of them and others people just didn’t know. But there you go. Now when we come back and begin going down through the process, next segment, I want to talk to Gregg Ruman, COO of Middle East Forum about this, what will the US response B, now the world is waiting, is the US going to fully engage? Fully engage is the question. If you’re just joining us today on the program, thanks for being with us. Our theme and our focus is this dismantling Iran’s terror regime and my special guest is Gregg Roman. He functions as the chief operations officer for the Middle East Forum and they have a website@meforum.org and have just in the last couple of days, established a new site that is entitled War.

Let me see. Iran war monitor.com. Iran war monitor.com. Alright, Gregg, let’s go back into this. You laid out Israel’s strategy, not strategy so much as well. Yeah, you define the strategy and the fact that what they have done by going into Iran was with the full US support knowledge at least anyway, and that is obviously working itself out as we speak, I hear are some of the questions. How are those involved? Going to respond on your Iran monitor.com. We’ll get it right. Iran war monitor.com site. You have an introductory paragraph where you say this quote, this report, and that’s a report of a couple days ago. I think you’re updating it perhaps even as we speak, but you say this, this report documents Israel’s intensified military operations against Iran on June 16th, 2025, the fourth day of an escalating conflict. The strikes targeted critical infrastructure in military assets across Iran, disrupting key facilities, destabilizing markets, and sparking social unrest. The evidence compiled demonstrates Israel’s clear strategy to dismantle the regime’s pillars of power, its propaganda apparatus, military, industrial, complex, and control over the population. Now, the way you wrote that, Gregg is pretty comprehensive, but in and on your site, you take and you lay out, I think in very, very clear fashion how exactly they’re going about dismantling. Take just a few moments if you don’t mind and identify at least some of the strategies being employed by Israel to carefully and strategically dismantle the Iranian terrorist regime.

Gregg Roman:

So you have to first think about the three objectives that we identified in the first segment. Nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and proxy support. And each one requires a degradation, disruption, and destruction strategy, which is meant to fine tune not just the ability to do damage to those levers of power, military power that the Iranians have, but to make it as permanent as possible. So if you think about the nuclear program, you’re not just going after the enrichment facilities. You have to go after the subcontractors, if you will, or the factories that produce the materials and the machinery that allows them to enrich uranium. So it’s not just the uranium enrichment plants in Ishan, in Naans, in Fordo, it’s also the factories that create the centrifuges. It’s the uranium mines that provide the raw uranium to enrich. It’s the heavy water reactor in Iraq, which provides key parts to be able to have a complete enrichment cycle.

And it might even include going after Iran’s nuclear plant Boucher, which is in the south of the country so that they don’t have an alternate mean to create a nuclear weapon. So if you think of the two ways to go about it, both uranium and plutonium enrichment, Israel is striking every single part of the fuel cycle and the enrichment cycle to make sure the Iranians cannot rebuild, but it’s also about delivery mechanisms. So they’re going after the launchers that are responsible for long range ballistic missiles. They’re going after the fuel factories which mix the solid and liquid fuel, which they use for propellant. They’re going after the ammunition factories which create the explosives to put on warheads, and they’re also going after the command and control functions which allow the Iranians to target where they want to send their missiles to radar installations, manpower, those who would be able to create the, it’s called a tell launcher, TEL. So the factories that are responsible for that. And then in terms of their proxy support, we haven’t seen many Israeli strikes outside of Iranian territory on the Houthis, on Iraqi militias, but that might be in their target bank in the next 10 to 12 days, which is what we expect for Israel to be able to achieve not just aerial superiority, but the objectives that they’ve laid out in this campaign.

Sam Rohrer:

From Israel’s perspective, it seems to me that the attitude now probably always been that way, but it seems to me that they have taken a, we are tired of partial victories walking away in the past and letting some Hamas on the ground or Hezbollah or whatever because they always come back to haunt them. This seems to be one rooted out and finish it off completely. Am I interpreting that correctly?

Gregg Roman:

Right. Israel’s strategic doctrine, you can call it the resurrection if you will. Maybe that’s not a good word to use. The renewal of the bacon doctrine from 1981 is to not allow problems, national security problems to fester anymore. And this is what happened on October 7th, 2023, Israel for the better part of 14 years, let Hamas build up its military capabilities and then over a thousand Israelis were massacred in a short period the morning of October 7th on October 8th. It wasn’t just the Israeli response to Hamas in Gaza in the West Bank, and then its subsequent response to Hezbollah and Lebanon that changed. It’s the way that Israeli policymakers think about deterrence as something which isn’t just about degrading enemy’s capability, but decapitating their ability to be able to pose any threat to Israel. And what you’re really seeing here is the collapse of the Iranian network and Israel’s new strategic doctrine really coming to a culmination point. It started with Gaza, then went to Lebanon, Assad fell in Syria, the Iraqis quieted their guns. The Houthis are still problem to deal with, but the Iran now is the last front in terms of what Israel has to do to not just restore security in the Middle East, but to be able to reestablish its deterrence that it’s had for decades and that collapsed after October 7th.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, so in the past we know that Israel, they put viruses into the system with nuclear, they set them back a couple of points. This is what you’re saying is they’re done trying to delay and set back, finish it off and be done with it. What I can say, what a strategy for actually winning rather than what we’ve seen happen in most wars, at least the US has been involved in. We’ve walked away and not only done partial wins. So that is in some respects to me, a refreshing thing. Finish it and be done with it. Now that brings it to this question here of what will be done in this process. The United States is obviously the greatest ally in this effort of Israel. Now you’ve had, I think you’ve had the UK, you’ve had France, you’ve had Germany, which are all over the board on a lot of things have somewhat indicated a support for Israel. But who would comprise the allies of Israel of any consequence right now that you would identify? And then secondly go into what do you think the United States will actually do officially engage, which is what some are saying may happen, the president is saying it doesn’t really want to, but anyways, how may that go?

Gregg Roman:

Well, I think you have those allies that are, let’s call them frontline allies of Israel. These are the countries and even in some cases non-state actors that are providing support for Israel’s campaign both in the air and on the ground. So you have the United States, which is providing intelligence. They’re providing a refuel capacity. They are providing defensive support in so far as it relates to shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles out of the sky. And you also have non-state allies, Israel’s Iranian friends that are in the Kurdish provinces, the Azari provinces and Stan in the azi areas that are providing on the ground support. Because if you remember in the first few hours of the campaign, it wasn’t just airstrikes that were launched against Iran, it was also on the ground assets that Israel has had in place since 2007. So this is a culmination of an 18 year planning operation, not just something that happened overnight, but in that second circle countries that are giving Israel support through either weaponry, resupply, or intelligence.

You also have Saudi Arabia, you have the UAE, you have Egypt, Jordan, Syria, even to a certain extent isn’t necessarily an ally of Israel, but they’re the one Arab country that hasn’t publicly condemned Iran, excuse me, hasn’t publicly condemned Israel for a strike. Syria is sitting this one out and that’s worth its weight in strategic gold. And then you have a third circle which is also providing assistance to Israel in securing its overseas assets. You have increase in security for Jewish community operations in Europe, in South America, and even diplomatic support where we saw Germany yesterday, an interview that the German chancellor gave with German state television where he said Israel is doing the west dirty work. And all of these are very important not just for the military campaign, but for justifying Israel’s operations and making sure that its goals are achieved.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, that is superb. In the final 30 45 seconds we have here, will the US officially engage or do you think they have already officially engaged but the world just hasn’t interpreted as officially?

Gregg Roman:

I think that they’re officially engaged without dropping any bombs. I think that if there are American assets which are used to bomb Iran, that will only come if the Iranians do not take President Trump’s last offer of giving a memorandum of surrender of its nuclear program in the White House in the next 48 hours. If the Iranians do not capitulate and a ace to the US’ demands to end its nuclear enrichment program and I think the US will get involved.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, stay with us because we’re going to continue to walk through this next segment. Gregg Roman from the Middle East Forum and I are going to have this discussion. Alright, I Iran is greatly diminished. They’re not done. When I ask him what are their options at this point, obviously unconditional surrender is one, however, what will it be? And then their allies, Russia, China, North Korea, the other Islamic countries frankly that are not in agreement. We’ll talk about them in the last segment, but these things we’ll deal with next. Stay with it. We’ll get right back. Alright, welcome back. We’re right in the middle of the program here today and my special guest is Gregg Roman from Middle East Forum and they have a couple of websites. The general one is me, middle East, me forum.org. And one dealing with our theme today talking about what’s happening here in the Middle East is Iran war monitor.com.

Now, if we just talked about Israel, their strategy, United States involvement and so forth in the last segment, I’m not going to go back and repeat, if you’re just joining us, go back and get the program from the beginning because each segment builds one on top of another. But Gregg, in just past few hours at least what I’m looking at, appears that both Russia and China allies of Iran have warned the United States not to engage with Israel in an official way. Although as you just said, it is official short of perhaps an American plane dropping a bomb on Iran. So there’s a little bit of nuancing going on in that. I think that the world knows that we are with Iran, but it appears that anyways, Russia and China have said something, the Houthis in Yemen, if what I’m seeing is appropriate inaccurate seem to be engaging to some degree firing some missiles into Israel.

So the question is, what will the allies of Iran do next, regardless of what America does, whether it officially drops a bomb or just remains in the supportive role with Israel as it is right now. So let’s start with Iran. Let’s start there first. Iran’s already been significantly weakened. You talked about that last segment. Each day that goes along, their infrastructure is being further destroyed. Trump is demanding an unconditional surrender, which you mentioned in the last segment and you put on there a 48 hour deadline. That’ll be interesting. Here’s the question. Do you see Iran accepting this unconditional surrender, or I’m going to put this way, I think the larger consideration, Iran’s allies of Russia, a China, North Korea, those who have been working with him, do you think they will allow Iran to take an unconditional surrender position?

Gregg Roman:

So I think that Iran is starting to face secondary consequences that are the result of them not getting back to the diplomatic table. The first is, is that there was a report out this morning that Iran’s main cryptocurrency exchange had received a hack overnight and lost 2 billion in Iranian private citizens assets because of an Israeli hacking attempt against it. And then news came out yesterday that every ATM in Iran was no longer working from Sapa Bank, which is connected to the IRGC also because of a cyber attack. And a report on the financial front this morning says that every Iranian bank has been closed. The second that your people stop having access to capital and then it can’t even make a run on the bank means that your economy’s not going to be able to operate. And we even saw some consequences in the Bucci area, which is in the west of, excuse me, the east of the country, and Kurdish forces on the Iranian Iraqi border, which are starting to mobilize.

You even had a jailbreak that took place in Teran two nights ago. And the second, as civil unrest gets to the point where the Iranians can no longer control what’s happening on their domestic front, they’ll have to decide between not the US directed regime change, but a consequence of them not even being able to manage their territory anymore. So the Ayatollahs are going to have to decide are we going to abandon our nuclear program or do we want to risk a civil war? And that’s even before Russia and China get involved, 90% of Iran’s oil exports now go to China and the Israelis have not yet targeted Iran’s oil export facilities at Car Island, which is on the Persian Gulf. If they do that, then the Chinese will be choked off from the Iranian oil supplies. And I think that the Iranians might respond by trying to stop the export of Gulf Arab Oil to the rest of the world by cutting off the straits of Horus, which is that narrow choke point between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, which the Iranians share a sea border with.

And in terms of Russia, Russia has already gotten what they need from Iran. The drones that the Russians use against the Ukrainians, the Shah 1 36 s and the Shah one oh sevens are no longer being manufactured in Iran for the Russians. In fact, the Iranians set up a drone manufacturing plant in Russia to be able to do it domestically on Russian territory. But there is a larger question here, because the Russians had a eastern and western anchor in their Middle East policy. Their western anchor Syria is no longer Philo Rousseau, but now their Eastern anchor in terms of being able to have Russian influence in the area, Iran portends to potentially also remove its ability to be part of the Russian regional strategy. So I’m not sure how the Russians and the Chinese will respond, but I don’t think it will be militarily. They won’t go that far to defend Iran by getting their forces involved, but they may increase their resupply, their provision of intelligence, their provision of other kinds of aid just like the US is helping Israel right now.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. Boy, so many directions I could go on that because at least what it appears to be the case, even with China’s comment this morning and Russia, both of them are not talking Connecticut at this point, actual war activity like is what you just saying, you don’t suspect that they may go that way. They’re both wanting to be the peacemaker in this process. So there’s an image war between west and east and all of that. But at the same time, because China for instance, and the entire east is getting most of their oil from the Middle East, we’re not, but they are. If Iran were to close the straits of Horus, who does that hurt? Not us so much secondarily, but it hurts their ally China. So that would seem to me that that’s a motivation for China to actually perhaps get involved because they’re dependent upon Iranian oil. Just a few thoughts relative to that.

Gregg Roman:

Right. And also this is another secondary consequence of that is that an increase in the price of oil globally will help the Russians because of their

Speaker 3:

Energy

Gregg Roman:

Exports. So there’s a secondary result for that. Also, to be fair, it’ll help American oil producers, but it will definitely hurt American consumers at the pump. The biggest loser in that will be the Chinese. So there’s been this idea that Middle East forum has been putting forth for the better part of the last nine years in terms of the way in which you would have a controlled regime transfer of power from the Islamic Republic to an Iranian republic without the Islamist elements to it. And it does not call for destroying all of Iran’s national infrastructure as much as you have sanctions now. Now he’s moved into the kinetic military element of trying to weaken the regime and its ability to project power and cause state violence outside of its borders. I think those involved in this campaign have to be cognizant of the fact that you must remove the individuals behind the mechanisms of power in the country, but you can’t go so far as to try to take out the infrastructure that allows the country to function. Otherwise you might have state collapse and that won’t be good for anyone in the region at all. Imagine as Shia ISIS emerging from the Islamic Republic.

Sam Rohrer:

Yeah, perfect sense. So are you saying that’s been Middle East forums position, and I have read that on your site as well for a number of years you’ve said that. Do you believe that Israel is embracing what you just said and limited impacts in Iran?

Gregg Roman:

Based on my conversation with Israeli policymakers in the last few days, but also having had worked in the Israeli defense establishment 15 years ago, they are very aware that there must be responsible strikes against Iran only targeting the regime and making sure as much as possible to not target the people or that which allows the people to survive and thrive. Because right now you have a fracture in Iranian society, they see symbols of the regime. Like a few days ago you saw IRIB, Islamic Republic, excuse me, Islamic Republic of Iran broadcasting being targeted, but they’re not going after the ability for the people to prosper. So as much as you have the ability to degrade the Islamic Republic’s symbols of power, you also have to have an Iranian prosperity initiative which will allow there to be a day after if the regime falls.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, that makes perfect sense. Okay, we’ve got about a minute or so left here. I got to ask you this question last night. Iran warned that they were going to do something, they’ve got something up their sleeve, they say that would happen, that the world would remember for centuries, caused a lot of speculation, nothing happened last night. Do they even have such a thing and tie in with it? What other options does Iran still have? Sleeper cells are one sleeper cells perhaps even here in the United States. What do you think about those things?

Gregg Roman:

I think that if the Iranians are trying to project that there is a unconventional nonconventional weapon that they have that that would invite an Israeli unconventional response, maybe a dirty bomb or ideological device, putting on some of that enrich uranium on top of a missile and launching it at Tel Aviv, but that would invite the end of Iran as a country. It’s really strategic to do so. If you have a biological chemical or nuclear attack against Israel or an attempt, that’s it, game over for the Iranians. But the second option that you spoke about, something which might be an asymmetrical attack using Iranian proxies not in the Middle East, but against an Israeli embassy, maybe God forbid, a Jewish community center, another target of the west. That is something that is very much on the Iranian table and they may very much well activate that. But I think that the FBI, the CIA monitoring what’s going on overseas and also Western security agencies and Israeli intelligence agencies have as good of a group as possible, but it’s not hermetically sealing our ability to be safe here at home and we have to be vigilant.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay, Gregg, you’re getting a lot of information in. Thank you so very, very much for that. Ladies and gentlemen, we come back, there’s one area of response I want to talk to Gregg about next as we conclude the program and that is this the greater Islamic world response because at the end of the day, the Quran and Islamists generally don’t believe that Israel has a right to survive. That’s fundamental. And also you got this nation up to the north called Turkey, want to ask him about Turkey? Alright Gregg, we’ve gone through a lot of territory today and again on your site that I’ve called people’s attention to, I ran war monitor.com, you are adding their updates and I think you said you’re going to be adding or perhaps in a process already added some things to what’s been on that site. So if you want, you may want to comment on that, if there’s anything to comment about.

But in the meantime, I want to go here before we went into the break. One of the countries, in my opinion, biblically and prophetically and geopolitically right now is the nation of Turkey. They’ve already made their position clear relative to Israel, very much like Iran. They have said that they were the defenders of Hamas, they have significant influence in Syria. And the president of Turkey, Erdogan has made it very, very clear that he wants to lead a revived Ottoman empire, which goes to the heart of the whole concept of the Islamic thought. Now saving that for the next question. Back to Turkey and Erdogan, to me it’s been a little interesting. Turkey’s been fairly quiet, it seems to me, unless you’ve been seeing some things here in the last few days. But it’s almost like to me, he wouldn’t be overly disappointed if Iran was continually weakened further that would make him and Turkey perhaps the leader of the very aggressive Islamist that hate Israel to the core. Your thoughts about Turkey and what we may see come from him

Gregg Roman:

From, I think that we have a situation in which there are two blocks, even three blocks of power in the Muslim world and more specifically in the Middle East. The Shia block led by Iran over the past 18 months has seen all of their elements of power reduced month after month. So you have Syria falling, Hezbollah falling, Iraq going silent, and now Iran is directly under attack. But in the vacuum that the Shia Crescent and its removal has switch with is now the Sunni arc of power led by Turkey, Qatar, and Pakistan. Because you really have to differentiate. It’s not, Islam is able to be viewed holistically as the same thing. Yes, many display Israel, but at the same time they compete with each other. So the downfall of Iran may lead to the rise of Turkey creating a new entity that has to be dealt with in terms of the threat not just to Israel, but to American allies in the region.

And first and foremost, you have to look at the Jihadi laboratory in Syria that’s taking place right now under the auspices of a neo Ottoman project being led by Erdogan. But there’s more importantly a third block that’s not often spoken about. And these are the countries that entered into the Abraham Accords with Donald Trump and Israel back in 2019 and 2020, which provide a Judeo Islamic block, if you will. We are talking about moderate Muslim countries, those who hate the Muslim Brotherhood, they despise Erdogan’s neo ottoman ambitions. They have been targeted and their citizens have been killed by Iran just like Israel in the United States. So there is the possibility that Israel is not just looking to take Iran down a notch, but also to empower its new allies in the region. And you may even see after all of this is over the addition of Saudi Arabia to that where there may be theological differences, there may be a belief and value-based differences these countries. But in terms of pure interest and power and the way in which they see their being in the region, they’ll be closer to the US and Israel as a result of this war, acting as a hedge against the new threat coming from Turkey.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, that’s well positioned. I’m not going to go any further on that. I think I’m going to let that stand right there because you answered my other question. And that is what may be the response of the greater Islamic world and you really put it together into that part. Let me go back to Israel now and ask us, I read something to this morning that has said that Israeli soldiers Bevere probably has led it, I would assume, but there’s been some movement on the Temple Mount where some of the Islamic individuals have been barred. A lot of them basically, except for a couple have been barred from worshiping at the mosque there. But the Temple Mount is something that’s very, very important to Israel. Anyways, tell us anything that you can about what may or may not be happening there and perhaps something that could be happening in the midst of all of this conflict where the world is centered on Iran, that there may be some, from my perspective, good things happening there relative to control of the Mount.

Gregg Roman:

Do you remember there was an event that you and I attended eight years ago on Capitol Hill, the launch of the Israel Victory Project in Washington dc.

One of the things that we spoke about was that wars end, not when one side declares victory, but when one side acknowledges defeat. And you have had a paradigm as it relates to the Temple Mount in terms of prayer axis, where Jews, for the most part, Jews and Christians are not allowed to ascend to the Temple Mount and openly pray. If there’s even any signs, whether they’re wearing a yarmulke or they’re bringing a prayer book, or even maybe making a murmur of a certain prayer, they’ll be kicked off the temple mountain. Not by the Jordanian police who are there, but actually by Israeli police. So right now, as it relates to equal access to religious sites in Jerusalem, I’m of the opinion that Muslims, Christians and Jews should be able to access their religious sites and to respect the religious tenants of all three monotheistic religions.

But doing it in such a way that an area where God gave his promise to Abraham, where the Ark of the Covenant sat for hundreds of years and where you had a Jewish presence before the inception of Islam, there should be equal access to religious sites there. Because right now Israel, in terms of being able to see the way in which it’s constructed all throughout the last 18 months, that almost two years now since it started, this conflict should take this as an opportunity to say, look, Palestinian intransigence will no longer allow bias and discrimination against equal access for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. It doesn’t mean that Muslims can’t go to the Alah Mosque or the Haram Sharif, but also Jews should be able to go up there and carry out their own religious practices as much as maybe you want to invite Christians up there. So I think that right now there’s not going to be any movement on that because it’s another flashpoint that Israel really doesn’t want to have to deal with as it battles Iran. But it’s something that’s on the table that I think future Israeli governments will take into consideration in terms of how you guarantee equality for all religions rather than discriminating against some just because of political considerations.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, that’s great. I perceive all of that and we talk in this program really about things that are happening. But I just said to a couple guys this morning that in the midst of all that we’re seeing, there are so many pieces on the table. I brought that up as just one of them that’s there and it’s moving. Okay. Anything you want to say about your website here in the last seconds or the Iran War Monitor

Gregg Roman:

Website? Yeah, I think that your listeners will get three great pieces of information from our organization first, that they go to meforum.org and click the button that says Iran War updates, breaking news, it’s all there. Second, if they want a more digestible format, they can go to Iran war monitor.com and see everything that’s going on a daily basis. And if they shows like this, like Spin in the Gap radio and send, I, hopefully you’ll be a guest with us. Perhaps they can go to the MEF Iran War Monitor daily broadcast, 4:00 PM every day, get the link on our website.

Sam Rohrer:

Alright, excellent. Gregg Roman from Middle East, forum me forum.org and Iran war monitor.com, those sites, you can get all the information that we talked about today and more. Thank you all for being with us today. I think what you’ve heard is information concise. You haven’t heard probably anywhere else, and it’s the very latest. God bless you. We’ll see you all back here tomorrow.