professor abbas milani is director of the iranian studies programme at stanford university. he clear that the groups that were directly involved in these attack are very, very close to iran. they would not do anything like this without abbas milani's prior approval. i think there is a direct link. a paper in iran, which is a spokesman for them, in october. he said the way out these demonstrations, that they thought was instigated by the us, is the occupation of the us embassy. and said the same way we got rid of the us by occupying their embassy a0 years ago, the young fighters in iraq should do the same. it is a complicated picture that's led up to this point. we've had a few incidents in the last week or so. but at its core, is this essentially a proxy war that's developing between iran and the us in iraq? or is it still very much at the diplomatic stage? i think it is a proxy war. and i think iran needed this confrontation because the headlines, both in iraq and around the world in the last few weeks have been very much detrimental to iran. in iraq, there were massive demons