Hidden Forces

In Episode 469 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Hamidreza Azizi — Iranian scholar, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International Security Affairs, nonresident fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, and author of the forthcoming The Axis of Resistance: Iran, Israel, and the Struggle for the Middle East — about how the US and Israeli military campaign against Iran has evolved over its first three weeks, and what the conflict's trajectory reveals about the competing strategic objectives driving it. The conversation opens with an assessment of how the war has unfolded since its start, examining where US and Israeli objectives align, where they diverge, and what those divergences mean for the conflict's direction. Azizi and Kofinas discuss the significance of the targeted killing of Ali Larijani — secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council — as part of a broader campaign to decapitate the Islamic Republic's leadership structure, and what the systematic elimination