The Ben Shapiro Show - BOOTS on the GROUND in Iran
Aired: 2026-03-05
Duration: 57:10


=== Regime Change Realities (08:33) ===

[00:00:00]  There will be boots on the ground, but not the way that the liars are telling you there will be boots on the ground.
[00:00:05]  The worst case scenario for leadership in Iran, still better than the Ayatollah.
[00:00:09]  And of course, the Europeans remain gigantic cowards.
[00:00:13]  Now, let's begin with this.
[00:00:14]  A lot of people are asking questions about what happens after the Ayatollahs are gone in Iran, right?
[00:00:18]  Great question.
[00:00:19]  And here is the answer.
[00:00:20]  From America's perspective, America first.
[00:00:23]  Almost certainly something better than what was.
[00:00:26]  In reality, the only way America would be worse off thanks to the current action is if the regime in Tehran is replaced with a worse regime run by even worse Ayatollahs with even faster access to nuclear materials, ballistic missile development, and terror funding.
[00:00:41]  Right?
[00:00:41]  That's it.
[00:00:42]  If you have somebody who's worse with more resources speeding toward an even worse thing, that's it.
[00:00:48]  President Trump said as much the other day.
[00:00:50]  I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right?
[00:00:57]  That could happen.
[00:00:59]  We don't want that to happen.
[00:01:00]  It would probably be the worst.
[00:01:01]  You go through this and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who is no better.
[00:01:07]  So we'd like to see somebody in there that's going to bring it back for the people.
[00:01:14]  The president is correct.
[00:01:15]  And you can see from his rather dismissive smile, he does not think that that worst thing is going to happen.
[00:01:19]  Now, there are a ton of people out there on the left, a lot of the left, and of course, on the horseshoe online click right who are ignoring that simple fact that the Ayatollah are the worst possible regime at this point, barring some sort of cataclysmic and unforeseeable failure.
[00:01:34]  These people yell about the evils of regime change, about the dangers of long-standing occupation with boots on the ground and all the rest.
[00:01:40]  So let's talk about all of that right now.
[00:01:43]  Let's start with regime change.
[00:01:45]  We keep hearing about how regime change is dangerous, a failure, all the rest.
[00:01:49]  Here's Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader and Pathological Liar, doing that yesterday.
[00:01:55]  Americans spent the last two decades fighting and dying in the Middle East.
[00:02:00]  Parents watched their kids shipped off to foreign lands.
[00:02:05]  So many lives lost, so many billions wasted.
[00:02:09]  So much suffering and anguish that scarred an entire generation.
[00:02:15]  Why is Donald Trump hell-bent on making history repeat itself?
[00:02:23]  Why is he plunging America headfirst into a war that Americans do not want and which he cannot even explain?
[00:02:33]  Schumer is such a ridiculous person.
[00:02:36]  He's ridiculous.
[00:02:37]  He is a wildly dishonest player.
[00:02:38]  He's been yelling about the Ayatollah for years and then apparently quietly supporting the JCPOA, which was the Obama attempt to ship pallets of cash to the Ayatollah's and give them a 10-year runway to Obama.
[00:02:49]  But the truth is he only cares enough to yell a little bit and then he turns around and he yells at anyone who actually wants to do something about the Ayatollahs.
[00:02:58]  But let's talk about that term for a second, regime change.
[00:03:01]  Regime change implies a long-standing commitment in which the United States engages in serious nation-building efforts.
[00:03:07]  Sometimes that works.
[00:03:08]  Germany and Japan are obviously the prime examples.
[00:03:10]  South Korea is another great example.
[00:03:13]  Sometimes it doesn't.
[00:03:14]  Afghanistan would be the prime example here.
[00:03:17]  Iraq is actually a checkered example.
[00:03:19]  I know we sort of forgot about Iraq and what happened afterward, but Iraq is indeed a functioning but fragile quasi-democracy with nominal GDP roughly 10 to 15 times larger than it was under Saddam Hussein.
[00:03:31]  The current regime has real problems and is associated with a wide variety of sectarian groups, but it is certainly better than Saddam's was, even if most Americans believed that the cost wasn't worth it.
[00:03:41]  That's a fair argument against the war in Iraq, but not against the principle of regime change overall.
[00:03:46]  In Iran, we're not actually really talking about regime change in this technical sense, because again, regime change refers generally to a U.S. overseeing process of government building, where we put hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, and then we ensure every step of the governmental transition.
[00:04:03]  What we're talking about here is regime destruction or replacement, where we knock over a regime and let it fall, and then we don't actually participate in long-term nation building.
[00:04:12]  Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't, because it turns out that history is a complicated place.
[00:04:17]  I'm going to get to some examples of that in a minute.
[00:04:19]  First, a reminder, you need to go subscribe over at Daily Wire right now for all of our awesome content, particularly because we do have live content on the war pretty much continuously wired in live with Cabot Phillips, for example, today at 4 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire.
[00:04:33]  Plus, it means you're getting your updates all throughout the day.
[00:04:35]  That only happens when you are a Daily Wire member.
[00:04:37]  So head on over to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.
[00:04:40]  We really appreciate you joining us.
[00:04:42]  So there are a lot of examples of regime replacement or regime destruction.
[00:04:48]  Some of those are failures.
[00:04:49]  For example, in Libya, we provided air support to rebels to take out Muammar Gaddafi, which was a huge mistake that I opposed.
[00:04:55]  And then we let the country sort of take its own course.
[00:04:57]  And that led to a massive migration crisis and an all-out civil war that continues until this day.
[00:05:02]  Why was that a mistake?
[00:05:03]  Well, because Gaddafi was actually contained, and the people rebelling against him were a checkered group of sundry terrorists and others.
[00:05:12]  And then there's Iran itself, where the Qatar regime essentially withdrew support from the Shah of Iran in 78, 79.
[00:05:18]  And we have been suffering with the consequences ever since.
[00:05:21]  But there are more positive examples.
[00:05:23]  So for example, in Chile, we created the pressure that led to the coup against Marxist Salvador Allende, who was replaced with General Augusto Pinochet, who is an anti-communist and human rights abuser, but who began instituting capitalist mechanisms that eventually led to prosperity and under American pressure, democratization.
[00:05:41]  In fact, we are the ones who pressured Pinochet to give up power.
[00:05:44]  He thought about another military coup when he lost an election.
[00:05:47]  We said, we will not support anything remotely like that.
[00:05:49]  You're giving up power.
[00:05:50]  Or for example, Panama, where we deposed Manuel Noriega.
[00:05:54]  We then installed the winner of the prior election and things worked out pretty well.
[00:05:57]  And of course, that's pretty much what we just did in Venezuela, where we destroyed the top of the regime, and then we left a second person in place.
[00:06:04]  And now that person, Del Cedar Rodriguez, is basically being squeezed until she squeaks.
[00:06:09]  She put out a statement yesterday via Twitter.
[00:06:12]  Quote, I thank President Trump for the kind willingness of his government to work together on an agenda that strengthens binational cooperation for the benefit of the peoples of the United States and Venezuela.
[00:06:22]  So, in other words, not all quote-unquote regime change is alike.
[00:06:26]  It's not all Iraq.
[00:06:27]  And pretending that it is is ignorant.
[00:06:30]  There's a reason why Venezuela was handled one way and why Iran is being handled in another way.
[00:06:34]  And it's not necessarily because Venezuela is in the Western hemisphere.
[00:06:38]  It's because Iran is run by a fundamentalist Islamist death cult.
[00:06:42]  I mean, in order to truly understand how evil the current Ayatollahs are, Patrick Betavid, who has some experience in this area, yesterday on his show, he sort of explained Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.
[00:06:55]  You guys want to know what Khomeini once said about what to do to women in prison?
[00:06:59]  Have you ever heard him?
[00:07:00]  Nope.
[00:07:00]  You want to verify this, Rob?
[00:07:01]  He once said female prisoners who are virgins must be raped before execution to prevent them from entering heaven.
[00:07:08]  Isn't he an amazing guy to say something like that?
[00:07:10]  That's the guy that died.
[00:07:11]  When he died, I was in Iran, June 3rd, 89.
[00:07:14]  I was there when the guy died.
[00:07:15]  They didn't kill him.
[00:07:16]  He died.
[00:07:17]  This guy who was supposed to be a hero for them, female prisoners who are virgins must be raped before execution.
[00:07:24]  If you go pull up the craziest thing he said in one of the books that he wrote, you would sit there and say, no human being, you would never write that.
[00:07:31]  You would never subscribe to that.
[00:07:34]  Okay, that is the regime.
[00:07:35]  And he was Khomeini was then followed by Khomeini.
[00:07:39]  And that is the nature of the regime.
[00:07:41]  Now, again, regime change is not all the same.
[00:07:44]  When Marco Rubio, for example, says we'd like to see regime change in Cuba, that doesn't mean that we're about to launch hundreds of thousands of troops or even tens of thousands or even thousands in another Bay of Pigs incident.
[00:07:55]  We would love to watch that regime turn over.
[00:08:00]  Will you make a public commitment today to rule out U.S. regime change in Cuba?
[00:08:05]  Regime change?
[00:08:06]  Yes.
[00:08:06]  Oh, no.
[00:08:07]  I think we would love to see the regime change.
[00:08:09]  We would like to, that doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see a change.
[00:08:12]  There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.
[00:08:19]  But you know what we mean by regime change?
[00:08:21]  We don't mean I wish someone else were in charge.
[00:08:24]  When we talk about regime change, we're talking about using the power of the United States, usually kinetic power, but often other kinds of coercion.

=== Regime Change Woes (05:04) ===

[00:08:33]  And I'm not even saying that that's always not in our interest.
[00:08:36]  I'm just saying I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different kind of government.
[00:08:42]  I'm asking whether you are trying to precipitate the fall of the current regime.
[00:08:47]  Yeah, but that's statutory.
[00:08:50]  Okay, so again, not all regime change is the same.
[00:08:54]  So what is likely to happen next in Iran?
[00:08:56]  The least likely outcome is the one that we actually fear the most.
[00:08:59]  The Ayatollah is lasting and rebuilding and somehow becoming stronger than they were.
[00:09:04]  Even if just the military damage we've already done is all that happens here, they are significantly weaker than they ever were because their economy is still in tatters.
[00:09:11]  The IRGC bases have been destroyed.
[00:09:12]  Their leadership has been killed.
[00:09:15]  That outcome only happens if the U.S. stops its operation right now, which is, of course, precisely what those who oppose the operation want.
[00:09:23]  All of which should make us question why those who oppose the operation the most are so unconcerned about the continuation of the Iranian regime itself, which is in fact the worst possible outcome.
[00:09:34]  In a second, we'll get to the claim by opponents of the war that boots on the ground.
[00:09:37]  That's going to be a thing.
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[00:10:42]  Okay, so the critics then argue that we're not really worried about regime change per se, worried about open-ended commitments and boots on the ground.
[00:10:50]  Here's Alexander Elcasio-Cortez saying this.
[00:10:54]  The reality that we have here is very clear.
[00:10:56]  The vast majority of Americans are against a war with Iran.
[00:11:01]  Two things can be true at the same time.
[00:11:03]  We can acknowledge the brutal reality of the Iranian regime and their murdering of protesters and targeting of people.
[00:11:10]  And we can also know for sure that a forever war will not resolve that issue.
[00:11:17]  We've seen what's happened in other areas of the Middle East, in Libya, in Syria, and beyond.
[00:11:21]  Of course, the war in Iraq.
[00:11:24]  And we are already at multiple American service members that are dead for an illegal action that the president has pursued with no plan out.
[00:11:35]  They don't know why they got into this war.
[00:11:37]  They're talking about four, five, 100 different reasons, and they don't know how they're getting out.
[00:11:45]  I would just like to point out at this point that by the kinds of logic that AOC uses, the United States would never be able to win a single war ever in human history, ever.
[00:11:54]  Ever.
[00:11:55]  Because the idea of a war with no casualties or costs from the American side is not a reality.
[00:12:00]  Of course, that is sort of what she wants, is an America prone and on its back.
[00:12:04]  But let's be clear.
[00:12:05]  There will be boots on the ground in Iran, and there should be.
[00:12:09]  They just won't be ours.
[00:12:10]  Yes, of course, there are very likely to be special operators on the ground.
[00:12:14]  There probably are right now.
[00:12:15]  And that's not a shock.
[00:12:16]  The United States has special operators literally all over planet Earth.
[00:12:20]  Right now, today, we are in 80 to 90 countries at any given time.
[00:12:25]  Iran, Jordan, Venezuela, Ecuador, from Somalia and Djibouti to the Philippines.
[00:12:30]  But I assume that's not what the critics are talking about when they talk about boots on the ground.
[00:12:34]  They are talking about an Iraq-style invading force with hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground, American boots on the ground.
[00:12:41]  President Trump isn't going to do that.
[00:12:44]  Could you tell us about the president's current thinking about ground troops and whether they could be used if they were to be sent into Iran?
[00:12:51]  What would they be used for?
[00:12:53]  What's the situation on that?
[00:12:54]  Well, they're not part of the plan for this operation at this time, but I certainly will never take away military options on behalf of the president of the United States or the commander-in-chief.
[00:13:03]  And he wisely does not do the same for himself.
[00:13:06]  I know there's many leaders in the past who like to take options off of the table without having a full understanding of how things could develop.
[00:13:12]  So again, it's not part of the current plan, but I'm not going to remove an option for the president that is on the table.
[00:13:20]  So she's just saying she's not going to tell them what the president will do.
[00:13:23]  But let's be clear.
[00:13:24]  If you think that Donald J. Trump, according to Caroline Levitt, is going to put hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground, American boots on the ground, you're out of your mind.
[00:13:32]  Presumably, what we will do is help clear the space for others to put their boots on the ground.

=== Kurdish Alignments and Armies (09:23) ===

[00:13:37]  And this brings us to the news about the Kurds.
[00:13:41]  Here is a map of ethnicities in Iran.
[00:13:44]  I know that a lot of people think that Iran is entirely Persian.
[00:13:47]  It is not, in fact, entirely Persian.
[00:13:49]  Now, people don't know this, but Iran is actually quite diverse.
[00:13:53]  Iran, of course, spans an enormous area from Turkmenistan in the north to Iraq in the west or to Afghanistan in the east and Pakistan.
[00:14:01]  Persians actually represent only about 60 to 65% of the country.
[00:14:05]  Azerbaijanis are somewhere between 15 and 20%.
[00:14:08]  The Kurds are somewhere between 7 and 10%.
[00:14:10]  Lurs from 5% to 7%.
[00:14:12]  And then there are a bunch of even smaller groups that are in the country.
[00:14:15]  America, believe it or not, is technically whiter than Iran is Persian.
[00:14:20]  And religiously, while 85% of the population is technically Shia, the polls show that roughly 30 to 40% of the adults in Iran identify as atheist or agnostic or a religious.
[00:14:31]  Only 40% identify as Muslim and 32% as religiously Shia, which means that there may be more secularists in Iran than there are religious Shia members of the population, which is not in line with the Ayatollahs.
[00:14:44]  Okay, so that means that there's not tremendous wide and deep support for the regime.
[00:14:47]  Obviously, obviously.
[00:14:48]  Now, back to the Kurds.
[00:14:49]  So if you look at that map again, what you see is the area to the west, that is Kurdish area.
[00:14:55]  That is where the Kurds are most concentrated.
[00:14:59]  That light green area that borders Iraq and then somewhat into Turkey.
[00:15:04]  That area is largely Kurd.
[00:15:07]  Okay, so back to the Kurds.
[00:15:08]  They are religiously Sunni, but their religious observance is kind of all over the map.
[00:15:11]  There are Kurdish separatist groups that are radical Islamists, radical Marxists.
[00:15:15]  There are Kurdish groups that are secularists.
[00:15:17]  One thing is consistent.
[00:15:18]  The Kurds have, over the past several decades, aligned with the United States and its allies repeatedly, including during the First Gulf War.
[00:15:25]  That is when President George H.W. Bush ignominiously, famously, abandoned them to their fate and betrayed them after encouraging them to rise up against Saddam Hussein.
[00:15:35]  And of course, they aligned with the United States in the war against ISIS from 2014 to 2019.
[00:15:39]  And then, of course, the United States tended to abandon them to the forces of the new Syrian regime with the help of the Turks.
[00:15:46]  So the Kurds have been pretty solidly aligned with the United States on repeated instances, and they've been kind of betrayed by the United States on repeated instances.
[00:15:55]  Now, we are hearing a lot of reports that Iranian Kurds are arming up and crossing the border from Iraq back into Iran.
[00:16:02]  That makes some sense.
[00:16:04]  So this is a map of military strikes in Iran.
[00:16:08]  You can see when you sort of close in, those red dots are allied strikes, meaning U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran.
[00:16:15]  And you can see there's a lot of strikes right around Tehran, right around the capital.
[00:16:18]  That's kind of IRGC bases.
[00:16:20]  The area apparently that the IAF, that would be the Israeli Air Force, is really focusing on is in the West, in those areas, in the IRGC border-patrolled areas that prevent Iranian Kurds who historically were sort of exiled into Iraq from coming back across the border with weapons.
[00:16:38]  That is not a mistake.
[00:16:39]  That is a strategy.
[00:16:41]  Presumably, the ground is being cleared for an actual battle between Iranian Kurds who wish to reclaim historic Kurdish territory and the Iranian IRGC.
[00:16:56]  The Kurds themselves, they have a long and fascinating history.
[00:16:59]  They are the largest stateless population in the world.
[00:17:01]  They're 25 to 35 million people.
[00:17:03]  They span all the way from Turkey through Syria and Iraq and into Iran.
[00:17:08]  It's a gigantic area, obviously.
[00:17:12]  And Kurdish tribes have a long semi-autonomous history in Iran.
[00:17:15]  Under the Safavid dynasty and subsequent dynasties, the Iranian government consistently tried to break down the desire for Kurdish independence.
[00:17:22]  The deepest blow to that cause was struck by the gradual solidification of borders along what was then known, this is in the 19th century, as the Ottoman-Kahar frontier, meaning the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey began to be separated and began to evolve sort of separate movements.
[00:17:37]  There was a brief moment in time where Iranian Kurds actually had their own state in Iran.
[00:17:41]  In 1946, the Soviet Union made a push down into the Middle East, and the Soviets vowed their protection of what they called the Republic of Mahabad, which was supposed to be a Soviet-aligned republic.
[00:17:51]  The West forced the Soviet withdrawal from that area under Harry Truman in late 46.
[00:17:56]  And at that point, the Iranian government came in and crushed the autonomous institutions and killed all the leaders.
[00:18:01]  And from then on, Tehran is focused, again, on hemming in the area.
[00:18:04]  That policy spanned various governments.
[00:18:06]  It happened under the Shah.
[00:18:08]  It happened under the Islamic Republic.
[00:18:10]  In fact, the Revolutionary Guard under Ayatollah Khomeini declared jihad against Kurdish insurgents.
[00:18:17]  While Kurdish populations were forced in the 1980s to move between Iran and Iraq back across the border many times, many Kurds were driven from Iran into Iraq.
[00:18:25]  And those are the Kurds who are now considering the possibility of re-entering and re-establishing some form of autonomy with armed force.
[00:18:32]  So that brings us to today.
[00:18:34]  Two weeks ago, five Kurdish groups formed a coalition to cross the border and take on the Iranian government.
[00:18:40]  According to Jinsa reporting, quote, the formation of the coalition of political forces of Iranian Kurdistan on February 22nd, uniting five Iranian Kurdish opposition parties after eight months of negotiations, is among the more significant organizational developments in the Iranian opposition space in recent years.
[00:18:55]  Iranian Kurds have been an active part of recent pushback against the Islamic Republic, including the 2022 Women Life Freedom Movement and, most recently, the major protests that shook Iran in late 25 and early 26.
[00:19:07]  They've also borne the brunt of the regime's brutal response.
[00:19:10]  All righty, so a couple of days ago, CNN reported that the White House is now authorizing the CIA to work with these groups.
[00:19:16]  Here's what CNN reported, quote, Iranian Kurdish armed groups have thousands of forces operating along the Iraq-Iran border, primarily in Iraq's Kurdistan region.
[00:19:25]  So if you go over to Iraq, you look at the map of Iraq, the northern parts of Iraq are a semi-autonomous area that is kind of known as the Kurdistan region.
[00:19:34]  And it kind of runs separately from the Iraqi government.
[00:19:38]  Several of the groups have released public statements, according to CNN, since the beginning of the war, hinting at imminent action and urging Iranian military forces to defect.
[00:19:46]  Iran's IRGC has been striking Kurdish groups and said on Tuesday it targeted Kurdish forces with dozens of drones.
[00:19:52]  The CIA support for Iranian Kurdish groups, according to CNN, began several months before the war, one of the sources and a senior Kurdistan regional government official said.
[00:20:01]  And then also on Tuesday, President Trump spoke with the president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, the KDPI.
[00:20:08]  That man's name is Mustafa Hijri, according to a senior Iranian Kurdish official.
[00:20:12]  KDPI was one of the groups targeted by the IRGC.
[00:20:15]  Iranian Kurdish opposition forces are expected to take part in a ground operation in western Iran in the coming days, that senior Iranian Kurdish official told CNN.
[00:20:25]  It is on that basis, I would assume, that it was reported late yesterday that the IRGC was firing missiles into Iraqi Kurdistan to try and get the Iraqi Kurds to stop the Iranian Kurds from crossing the border back into Iran and taking on the IRGC.
[00:20:39]  Current reporting suggests the U.S. and the Israelis are considering arming up Kurdish insurgents to move across that border and tie down the IRGC.
[00:20:46]  According to Arash Azizi in the Atlantic, quote, according to the opposition leader who spoke with me, as well as the leader of one of the Kurdish groups aware of but not included in the plan, the U.S. and Israel have set aside significant funds for arms and logistical support to the five Iranian Kurdish groups.
[00:21:01]  Now, the White House sort of denied arming the Kurds yesterday.
[00:21:04]  Here is Caroline Levitt.
[00:21:06]  The president has held many calls with partners, allies, and leaders in the region, in the Middle East.
[00:21:13]  He did speak to Kurdish leaders with respect to our base that we have in northern Iraq.
[00:21:19]  But as for any report suggesting that the president has agreed to any such plan is completely false and should not be written.
[00:21:28]  So, what does all of this mean?
[00:21:31]  Well, it could mean a sectarian war.
[00:21:33]  That is what Azizi is predicting.
[00:21:34]  He says, quote, the fear among many Iranians and other observers is that the agendas of the ethnic militias are territorial and separatist and could lead Iran to disintegration or civil war.
[00:21:43]  Here is a person named Karim Sajadpoor of Carnegie Endowment explaining this idea to CNN.
[00:21:50]  And there's a real danger here, Aaron, that if Iranians feel that it's a U.S. strategy to essentially try to factionalize and splinter the country, that's something that they're very sensitive about.
[00:22:05]  And I think that the vast majority of Iranians will be opposed to any outside attempts to try to threaten the territorial integrity of the country.
[00:22:17]  Now, what he's saying here isn't totally crazy.
[00:22:19]  There are, of course, as I mentioned, better and worse Kurdish groups.
[00:22:23]  Some are allied with the United States and secular leaning.
[00:22:25]  Others are full-on Islamists.
[00:22:26]  Some are Marxist.
[00:22:28]  It depends a lot on where the arms are going on how this is going to go and also what the end goal here is.
[00:22:33]  Some of these Kurdish groups are saying, listen, we just want a semi-autonomous region like we have in Iraq in Iran.
[00:22:38]  We don't actually want to break apart Iran and have a full-scale Kurdistan that is no longer part of Iran.
[00:22:44]  Some are saying we want a full-on separatist agenda here.
[00:22:48]  And the coalition that's been formed, it's sort of unclear what the final goal here is.
[00:22:51]  The thing they definitely want to do is push the IRGC out of this region.
[00:22:56]  There are a bunch of groups here.
[00:22:57]  PJAK is a secularist group with ties to the PKK.

=== Kurdish Ambitions (06:29) ===

[00:23:01]  The PKK is a pro-Soviet, Marxist-Leninist group.
[00:23:04]  The U.S. labeled that, the PKK, a terrorist group in 2009 under Barack Obama, because the PKK, again, the Kurds, if you look back at that Kurdish map, go all the way from Iran into Turkey.
[00:23:16]  The PKK has been committing terror attacks against Turks for a very long time.
[00:23:20]  There's sort of an open battle between the Kurds and the Turks along these lines.
[00:23:24]  But PJAK, which is sort of an offshoot of the PKK, is apparently open to working with the United States and Israel.
[00:23:31]  So in a weird way, it's sort of a mirror image of the United States working with HTS.
[00:23:35]  That was the al-Qaeda original offshoot that is now running the Syrian government in the Middle East, a very messy place.
[00:23:43]  In a second, we'll get into what likely comes next, but I'll tell you what comes next for you if you do not have a Helix Sleep mattress.
[00:23:48]  That is, you're not going to get good sleep because the reality is that you need a mattress made just for you.
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[00:24:00]  And then you spend the next 10 years tossing and turning.
[00:24:02]  You didn't have to do that.
[00:24:03]  You could have just gone over to Helix Sleep and taken that Helix Sleep quiz.
[00:24:08]  It changed my sleep quality.
[00:24:09]  That sleep quiz uses your preferred sleep position, firmness, and other factors to match you with the right mattress, which is a far more rational system than again, just wandering around in that showroom and lying down on random beds.
[00:24:19]  It's incredibly comfortable.
[00:24:20]  It keeps me cool at night.
[00:24:21]  I've noticed deeper, more consistent sleep makes it a lot easier to tackle my busy schedule.
[00:24:26]  Again, when I'm on the road, I just don't sleep as well, largely because I don't have my Helix Sleep mattress.
[00:24:30]  We even got it for the kids.
[00:24:31]  Helix is an award-winning mattress brand reviewed by outlets like Forbes and Wired.
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[00:24:56]  So, what comes next?
[00:24:58]  So, let's be clear about this from America's point of view, because obviously, there are people who I'm rooting for to take over the Iranian government, and those would be presumably the secular people of Iran who would like to overthrow the Ayatollahs.
[00:25:11]  That's what I'm rooting for.
[00:25:13]  But, but to be as clear-eyed as possible, if the Iranian regime is forced to mobilize heavy troops to the northwest to quell a Kurdish insurgency, that is, in fact, a positive in weakening the Iranian regime.
[00:25:26]  A soldier can't be in two places at once.
[00:25:28]  And right now, the IRGC has been tremendously weakened by the airstrikes, which are continuing today.
[00:25:33]  If troops have to be mobilized in Iran's west against a Kurdish uprising, that could theoretically open the opportunity for secular Iranians to move out into the streets in other parts of the country.
[00:25:43]  I would assume that that is part of the strategy here.
[00:25:46]  But here's the even more basic point: even chaos.
[00:25:49]  Okay, this is the American point of view.
[00:25:51]  And the American point of view does not have to cross paths entirely with the Kurdish point of view or even the Iranian secularist point of view.
[00:25:58]  Chaos, in which we are still waiting to see what happens in Iran, is preferable to the current Iranian regime.
[00:26:06]  We are all hoping and praying and rooting for the Iranian people to rise up and win, to take over the reins of government and install, again, a non-Islamist regime friendly to the United States and the rest of the region.
[00:26:16]  But if that is not what happens right away, that is not a Trump failure.
[00:26:19]  The only failure would be a complete restoration of the Ayatollah's enshrined even further in power.
[00:26:26]  And let's be clear about this.
[00:26:27]  The reason why the United States and Israel are apparently thinking of arming up the Kurds is because they have access to get them arms.
[00:26:34]  Biggest problem that the U.S. and Israel are having right now in Iran, reportedly, is lack of internet connection.
[00:26:39]  Apparently, they can't get good information into the Iranian people at scale.
[00:26:43]  Not just that, the number of small arms in the hands of the Iranian people are really low.
[00:26:48]  This is another reason to be a Second Amendment supporter, gang.
[00:26:51]  The Iranian people have not had the power, like the actual gunpower, to show up and overwhelm the IRGC.
[00:26:57]  If they had, then this would have happened back in December and they wouldn't have needed outside American help.
[00:27:02]  The fact is that reports are from Iran that IRGC and Basij forces are stationed on basically every street corner in major cities waiting for people to come out on the street so they can shoot them.
[00:27:13]  And so the question becomes: how do you get those people arms, or do you take advantage of the armed groups that are actually there on the border with Iran, capable of fighting?
[00:27:23]  And if you look at the history of regime replacement or regime destruction or revolution for that matter, the armed groups are always the ones with the advantage, period.
[00:27:33]  That is true for good and it's true for ill.
[00:27:36]  It is true for good in the sense that it took, you know, armed American revolutionaries to fight off the red coats.
[00:27:41]  It is good for it is it is true for ill in the sense that if you look back at sort of the splinter faction that was the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, they're pretty heavily armed and able to obtain more arms.
[00:27:52]  And that allowed them to win the Russian Revolution over the whites who are actually significantly more populous.
[00:27:58]  Okay, but the worst thing here is not chaos.
[00:28:01]  It's not.
[00:28:02]  The worst thing here is a re-enshrinement of the Ayatollah's.
[00:28:05]  It is also the most unlikely thing here.
[00:28:07]  Now, it's very rare that I will quote Elbridge Colby, a quasi-isolationist in the Defense Department, but he happens to be correct here.
[00:28:15]  Operation Epic Fury is consistent with that approach, which is that the president has directed the United States Armed Forces to conduct a military campaign with a focus on degrading and destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran's ability to project military power in the region and potentially beyond.
[00:28:33]  And that is specifically focused in particular on the missile and one-way attack drone capabilities and production of the Islamic Republic and the Navy, the naval forces.
[00:28:43]  Obviously, the Israelis, our close ally, are operating farther north with a somewhat kind of overlapping set of objectives and goals.
[00:28:53]  But at the end of this, this is, I think, a reasonable and attainable scoped set of objectives that will leave the United States better off under a range of outcomes.
[00:29:02]  The president has indicated, or more than indicated, he's stated a fact that this is a historic opportunity for the Iranian people to change this oppressive and opprobrious Islamic Republic.
[00:29:13]  But that's ultimately, a lot of that's going to rest on the shoulders of the Iranian people.
[00:29:18]  But I think the military campaign is designed, and I think we have reason to believe, will leave us better off with respect to this very serious threat of the Islamic Republic.

=== China's AI Stagnation (02:04) ===

[00:29:30]  And of course, Kolby is redmouths.
[00:29:32]  Now, Colby has historically been somebody who's very much interested in shifting resources away from the Middle East and theoretically toward the Far East, toward China.
[00:29:40]  But let's be real, the world is interconnected.
[00:29:43]  Colby, I think, is in favor of the military action here because, let's face it, China hardest hit.
[00:29:48]  China is deeply reliant on Iran.
[00:29:51]  China is indirectly getting shellacked right here.
[00:29:53]  Iran was shipping the vast majority of its oils directly to China.
[00:29:57]  And China was getting a not insignificant portion of its oil from Iran.
[00:30:01]  In 2025, according to Kapler data, 13% of China's seaborne crude came from Iran, which is a lot of oil.
[00:30:08]  And China's already got some serious problems.
[00:30:10]  They're beginning to stagnate economically.
[00:30:12]  According to the Wall Street Journal today, quote, China signaled the world's second largest economy is entering an era of slower expansion, setting a target for gross domestic product growth of between 4.5 and 5% this year.
[00:30:23]  It is the lowest growth target set since at least the 1990s and follows three years in which officials called for growth of around 5%.
[00:30:30]  If China's economy were to expand at a pace below 5% this year, it would be the slowest growth reported by the country in more than two decades, other than during the COVID pandemic years.
[00:30:39]  China said its GDP grew 5% in real terms last year, meeting its official target despite a renewed trade war with the United States.
[00:30:47]  And by the way, things are likely to get worse for China because let's face it, all of the major AI companies, all of the leading AI companies are located in the United States.
[00:30:55]  They're United States based.
[00:30:56]  Whether you're talking about Anthropic or OpenAI or Google, it doesn't matter.
[00:31:02]  They are all located in the United States.
[00:31:05]  China is, in fact, losing the AI race.
[00:31:09]  I know there's been a lot of talk about China winning the AI race because they can build energy at scale and because they can kind of rip off American products and all the rest.
[00:31:16]  But let's be real about this.
[00:31:18]  The innovation that happens in the United States is significantly more powerful than whatever China has to offer.
[00:31:22]  China has a demographic crisis.
[00:31:23]  They're demographically upside down.
[00:31:25]  It's a very old country.
[00:31:26]  They have a serious debt crisis on their hands.
[00:31:29]  And now they're being deprived of energy, or at least their energy supplies are being held.

=== Why Spaniards Matter (06:32) ===

[00:31:34]  The reins of those will soon be held by the West and not by an Iranian regime that is directed at the destruction of the West.
[00:31:43]  None of this should be surprising.
[00:31:44]  A stronger America in the world generally leads to weaker opponents.
[00:31:49]  And that is precisely what is happening here.
[00:31:52]  But of course, leave it to the Europeans to whine.
[00:31:55]  So a couple of days ago, the Iranians fired a missile at Turkey.
[00:31:58]  The goal, presumably, was to put pressure on Turkey to put pressure on the United States.
[00:32:02]  This has been Iran's strategy the whole time.
[00:32:04]  They can't fight the United States in the air.
[00:32:06]  They can't.
[00:32:07]  They don't have airplanes capable of that.
[00:32:09]  Actually, kind of hilarious story.
[00:32:11]  An Israeli F-35 shot down an Iranian plane.
[00:32:14]  So it was the first actual combat kill for the F-35, and it was flown by an Israeli pilot.
[00:32:19]  That pilot's dad was the first pilot to use an F-16 to make an enemy kill back in 1981 or something, which just shows you how things tend to work in the Middle East.
[00:32:28]  The wars are perennial.
[00:32:29]  In any case, the goal for Iran, because they cannot win militarily, is to try to pressure a bunch of surrounding states to put pressure on the United States.
[00:32:38]  It's why they have fired more missiles, more ordnance at UAE in Dubai than they have at the Israelis, which is kind of weird because it's not the UAE that is launching the attack.
[00:32:46]  They just know that attacking Israel isn't going to actually accomplish anything.
[00:32:49]  Most of those things will get shot down, even if they kill a few Jews.
[00:32:52]  What are they going to do?
[00:32:53]  Piss off the Jews more?
[00:32:54]  There's nothing that's actually going to dissuade the Israelis from doing what the Israelis are doing.
[00:32:58]  So instead, they're trying to fire at Qatar or fire at Oman or fire at Turkey.
[00:33:04]  So the goal was to get the Turks, who are already predisposed to be anti-Western, to put pressure on the United States.
[00:33:09]  And if that doesn't work, then maybe get NATO allies, because Turkey is a member of NATO, to put pressure on the United States.
[00:33:19]  Well, I mean, good luck with that.
[00:33:21]  Good luck with that.
[00:33:21]  If the Europeans couldn't even pressure the United States with regard to Ukraine by using NATO as a lever, do the Iranians really think that the United States is going to be dissuaded by quote-unquote breaking a NATO?
[00:33:35]  I mean, from President Trump's perspective, I think that the response to that would be, don't threaten me with a good time.
[00:33:40]  The Europeans, however, are still the biggest complainers on planet Earth.
[00:33:44]  According to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian strikes across the Mideast are risking drawing in a raft of America's NATO allies.
[00:33:50]  Oh, no.
[00:33:51]  Oh, no.
[00:33:51]  You mean the UK and France might actually have to do something instead of just whining about things all the time?
[00:33:56]  You mean the UK, you mean the French might have to actually go and defend military bases instead of pretending moral superiority while importing half of the Islamist world into their country?
[00:34:07]  You mean that Kira Sarmer might have to do more than speak words about the Ayatollah while similarly importing half of the world's Islamists into his country?
[00:34:16]  Well, apparently, according to the journal, the UK and France have in recent days both said they would send additional warships to the region after an Iranian drone targeted a British military base in Cyprus.
[00:34:27]  Oh no, how terrible.
[00:34:29]  Now, the reality is the Europeans should be thanking the U.S. and the Israelis for what's going on in Iran, thanking them, because the Russians require Iranian help.
[00:34:39]  It is Iranian Shahed drones that have been shipped from Iran to Russia for use against Ukraine, which presumably is why the Russians are so sad about all of this.
[00:34:48]  And they are.
[00:34:49]  It's hilarious.
[00:34:50]  There have been reports that the Iranians called on the Russians for help and the Russians were like, we're with you.
[00:34:55]  So much sympathy.
[00:34:57]  Have fun storming the castle, boys.
[00:35:00]  Which was, by the way, precisely the same response that they gave during the 12-day war just last year.
[00:35:05]  Alexander Dugan, known as Putin's brain, and also a confidante, apparently, he's been a repeat guest on places like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon.
[00:35:14]  And there are some suspicious associations, shall we say, between many of the horseshoe right influencers and Russian thinkers.
[00:35:21]  Alexander Dugan was out there defending Iran, of course.
[00:35:27]  Trump is an example of much more normal figure that tries to save his country, nation, his sincere patriot, but he's taken as a hostage by globalists.
[00:35:41]  He is not free, and maybe he doesn't know how to get out from this trap where he is spooked.
[00:35:52]  But I think that at least Iran fights for its dignity, its sovereignty.
[00:35:59]  Iran defends its own nation, its own state, its own tradition.
[00:36:05]  And that is a very noble, noble fight.
[00:36:10]  It's a noble fight, you see, what Iran is engaging in.
[00:36:13]  The Russians, of course, promoting, again, the same sort of lies that you're seeing from the left and the woke right, that actually the president is just being manipulated by the nefarious Jews, of course.
[00:36:22]  And of course, then there are the Spaniards.
[00:36:24]  The Spaniards are still pretending we care what they have to say, which is kind of funny.
[00:36:28]  We haven't really cared what the Spaniards have had to say since we took Florida from them, which, you know, honestly, the global importance of Spain kind of ended around the year 1588 when they failed to take England.
[00:36:40]  They've been in a state of losing ever since, and that has not changed.
[00:36:44]  The Spanish prime minister lashed out at President Trump and, oh no, oh no, Spain is mad at Trump.
[00:36:51]  What's Trump going to do?
[00:36:53]  Oh no.
[00:36:54]  Here he was just yesterday.
[00:37:01]  He cannot play Russian relations and face the millions.
[00:37:04]  We will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world and that is also contrary to our values and interests.
[00:37:12]  Just because we might fear reprisals from some, because we have absolute confidence in the economic, institutional, and I would also say moral strength of our country.
[00:37:23]  And because at times like this, we feel prouder than ever to be Spanish.
[00:37:29]  The powers involved in this conflict must immediately cease hostilities, says the Spanish prime minister, and commit to dialogue and diplomacy.
[00:37:36]  And the rest of us must act consistently.
[00:37:40]  So it is at this point that I should remind everybody that no one cares what Spain has to say about anything, that Spanish GDP per capita remains completely stagnant.
[00:37:51]  That actually Spain is not, in fact, a global power that the United States ought to worry about.
[00:37:58]  Who cares?
[00:37:59]  Who cares?
[00:38:00]  And the whining from Kier Starmer and the whining from Emmanuel Macron, who cares?

=== Kurdish Resistance: Choose United (15:26) ===

[00:38:07]  And the fact that now they might theoretically have to do the right thing once in a while, rather than just moaning about the Iranians, the Iranian government, they might actually have to do something about it.
[00:38:16]  Well, what a tragedy.
[00:38:18]  What a sad and terrible tragedy that is.
[00:38:20]  So to summarize where we are right now, the United States has won the air war.
[00:38:26]  There is no air war.
[00:38:26]  The United States and Israel have complete air dominance over Iran.
[00:38:30]  They have devastated the ballistic missile capacity of the Iranians.
[00:38:35]  They've knocked out pretty much all of their ballistic missile launchers.
[00:38:38]  They're even knocking out their underground ballistic missile launchers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
[00:38:41]  Iran may be down to fewer than 100 ballistic missile launchers in the entire country, which is why they've slowed their pace so dramatically because every time they fire a ballistic missile, Israel and the U.S. then immediately knock it out.
[00:38:52]  Their nuclear facilities are being pummeled.
[00:38:55]  The top levels of their government have been killed.
[00:38:58]  The IRGC bases around the region, their police stations, everything else, being pummeled from the air.
[00:39:03]  And now there might be in the offing a ground move by the Iranian Kurds and maybe others.
[00:39:08]  There's been talk about other groups moving from the Pakistani border toward Iran.
[00:39:13]  Now, the danger of sectarian violence is, of course, real.
[00:39:16]  We don't know where all of that is going.
[00:39:17]  What we do know is that weakening the central regime is the most important priority.
[00:39:23]  It is the most important priority.
[00:39:25]  And from the United States's perspective, that is a thing that not only has already happened, but continues to happen each and every day.
[00:39:32]  The only truly terrible outcome here would be a strengthened Ayatollah regime, which seems at this point to be literally the most unlikely actual outcome.
[00:39:42]  Joining me on the line to discuss all of this is Diliman Abdul Qader.
[00:39:46]  He is the founder of American Friends of Kurdistan, an advocacy and education organization established to strengthen, protect, and promote U.S.-Kurdish relations.
[00:39:53]  AFK supports policies that advance the national security and prosperity of Americans, Kurds, and our other allies.
[00:40:00]  Thank you so much for joining the show.
[00:40:01]  Really appreciate the time.
[00:40:03]  Thank you, Ben.
[00:40:06]  So why don't we begin with sort of the latest reports that there is possible CIA or Israeli support for an Iranian-Kurdish intervention on the west of Iran?
[00:40:18]  How probable do you think it's true that that is actually happening?
[00:40:20]  Because we've heard some conflicting reports, some denials, some confirmations.
[00:40:24]  What do you think is actually happening?
[00:40:26]  Right.
[00:40:27]  Well, it makes sense, right?
[00:40:28]  The Kurds are pro-American with Western values.
[00:40:31]  They are battle-hardened.
[00:40:32]  They have a history of fighting the Islamic regime directly for decades.
[00:40:37]  So I think this is very likely that the U.S. and immediately President Trump has directly engaged with the Iranian-Kurdish factions that are based in Iraq.
[00:40:50]  So I think this is very probable.
[00:40:52]  I know that the Kurds have directly engaged and confirmed that this conversation is taking place.
[00:40:58]  But the Kurds are also ready and ready to have the regime collapse as well.
[00:41:05]  They're eager for the downfall of the Islamic regime.
[00:41:08]  So I think this is something that they've been preparing for for decades.
[00:41:13]  And something to keep in mind is that they're the most armed and organized minority group inside Iran, that no one else can take on this regime directly.
[00:41:23]  So, Diliman, one of the questions that's been asked a lot, and I'm seeing it asked by people, some on the right and some on the left, and it's actually, I think, an interesting question, is whether this is going to be a Kurdish move inside Iran, whether that's going to be seen by other Iranians as a sort of move towards sectarianism in the country.
[00:41:37]  Will this devolve into some sort of chaotic civil war, or whether this move is directed specifically and only at the Iranian regime, and then there would be a move toward a more transitional power structure in Iran that would retain the current borders of Iran.
[00:41:50]  Whether it's a separatist movement, in other words, or whether this is a movement to sort of overthrow the regime and then retain a unified Iran.
[00:41:57]  Right.
[00:41:57]  I mean, the Kurds have no interest in taking over Iran.
[00:42:00]  They have no interest in marching to Tehran.
[00:42:02]  So Iranians themselves don't have to worry about that.
[00:42:06]  The Kurds are not land grabbers.
[00:42:08]  They're not going to expand their territory.
[00:42:10]  What the Kurds will do is liberate their areas in northwest Iran and what they call Roch Hollat, East Kurdistan.
[00:42:18]  So that will hopefully inspire the rest of the country and the rest of the minorities inside the country to rise against the regime.
[00:42:25]  The Kurds are all, as I said, they're already engaged in direct combat with the IRGC for decades.
[00:42:33]  But with the U.S. airstrike, the U.S. air support, and the Israeli air support, they have dismantled the IRGC assets and military bases and military infrastructures and intelligence infrastructures in northwest Iran.
[00:42:46]  The heavy strikes inside Iran have been in the northwest Iran where the Kurds reside.
[00:42:52]  So I think this is a sign that the Kurds will get that support eventually as far as the complete U.S. air support once they do go in fully and engage against the IRGC.
[00:43:03]  But as far as whether the argument of separatism and the argument of the Kurds inspiring other minorities inside the country to split the country, I think that's just fearmongering.
[00:43:15]  The Kurds are not trying to, they have an immediate threat, and that's the IRGC.
[00:43:22]  And I think that should be the focus.
[00:43:25]  So one of the questions that has arisen is the relationship between the Iranian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds.
[00:43:30]  So obviously, Iraqi Kurdistan is semi-autonomous already.
[00:43:33]  The Iranian government has been threatening the Iraqi Kurds by saying that if Iranian Kurds cross that border from Iraq back into Iran, or if there's an Iranian Kurdish uprising, then there will be an attempt by the IRGC to directly attack Iraqi Kurdistan, trying to put pressure, presumably, on Iraqi Kurdistan to stop the Iranian Kurds from actually pursuing this.
[00:43:52]  What's the status on that?
[00:43:54]  Yeah, I mean, that's very much true.
[00:43:56]  The Kurds in Iraq continue to be threatened by the IRGC.
[00:44:00]  They continue to bully the Kurdish faction, the autonomous Kurdistan region directly through phone calls.
[00:44:06]  And we've seen signals of threats.
[00:44:10]  The Kurdistan region has received hundreds, over 100 drone attacks and missile strikes since the war has started.
[00:44:18]  So yes, this direct threat is very much true.
[00:44:21]  But the Kurds are in a complicated position, right?
[00:44:25]  They're in the heart of the Middle East, surrounded by all these adversaries that are not pro-American, that are not pro-Western, and see the Kurds as, for example, Israeli agents, that the Kurds are doing the work of Israel or the Kurds are doing the work of the United States.
[00:44:40]  But the reality is the Kurds are trying to survive.
[00:44:43]  They are stateless.
[00:44:43]  They don't have an air force to defend themselves from these threats.
[00:44:47]  So I think the United States can play a huge role right now as a huge opportunity to defend the Kurds against these threats.
[00:44:54]  We just saw a report supposedly that the Kurds were given an ultimatum by President Trump that either you have to choose Iran or choose the United States.
[00:45:04]  And I think that's an easy answer for the Kurds.
[00:45:07]  But with that comes an immediate response by the Kurds.
[00:45:11]  Of course, we're going to choose the United States.
[00:45:13]  We have a historical, we have historical ties, but also we share the same values.
[00:45:18]  But we require guarantees.
[00:45:20]  We require long-term guarantees that we don't want to be used and then tossed to the side if something shiny comes along in Tehran the next day, for example.
[00:45:32]  We want no fly zones.
[00:45:34]  We want advanced arms on the ground.
[00:45:37]  We want international recognition.
[00:45:38]  We want to make sure that Turkey, your NATO ally, will not intervene and will not cut off our airspace and will not threaten our civilians on the ground.
[00:45:48]  Yeah, and I think that this requires some explication for American audiences who may not understand the kind of fraught history between the United States and the Kurds.
[00:45:55]  The United States has routinely asked the Kurds for help.
[00:45:58]  The Kurds have routinely provided help to the United States.
[00:46:00]  And the Kurds have routinely, frankly, been then betrayed by various administrations in the United States and sort of left to the predations of others.
[00:46:06]  That happened during the First Gulf War.
[00:46:08]  It has similarly been happening in the northeastern portions of Syria.
[00:46:11]  Maybe you can explain exactly this sort of bizarre relationship between U.S. administrations and the Kurds.
[00:46:17]  Yeah, I mean, I mean, we can go back for decades.
[00:46:20]  I mean, the Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War.
[00:46:26]  Then the U.S. withdrew, and then the Saddam came back and attacked the Kurds.
[00:46:31]  We can go back as early as just last month, for example.
[00:46:34]  The Kurds have been a decade-long ally of the United States in Syria.
[00:46:40]  And then they had 100,000 plus force.
[00:46:44]  Where the Kurds held their territories in Northeast Syria called Rojava, it was the safest and most stable part of Syria for over a decade, even during the Assad regime, even after the Assad regime.
[00:46:59]  Despite what Jolani did in Damascus and massacring Christians, Jews, Alawites in the country, the Kurdish region was still safe.
[00:47:06]  However, this betrayal came to be a reality again last month when the U.S. decided to withdraw and the U.S. decided to back Jolani when we just had a won it poster and a $10 million bounty on him.
[00:47:23]  Despite that, the Kurds were betrayed.
[00:47:26]  And now, and I warned them that the Kurds in Iran are paying attention, that tomorrow we will need the Kurds in Iran to dismantle the regime in Iran.
[00:47:36]  Now, this is taking place in reality, in full force.
[00:47:39]  And just immediately the Kurds are saying, okay, of course we want to engage the regime.
[00:47:45]  Of course, we want to liberate our territories, but we don't want to face the same betrayals that the Kurds in Syria just faced.
[00:47:52]  You can't just withdraw tomorrow.
[00:47:53]  You can't just choose Tehran tomorrow.
[00:47:55]  You can't choose if you want to keep the regime and engage with them and then leave us hanging and then have our people massacred.
[00:48:03]  So I think that ultimatum that President Trump gave to the Kurds, if true, I think the Kurds would choose the United States.
[00:48:11]  That's a no-brainer, but the United States needs to provide long-term guarantees for the Kurds.
[00:48:18]  Now, meanwhile, one of the other questions that's been asked is about the coalition that's been formed of various Iranian Kurdish parties to band together to fight the IRGC.
[00:48:26]  Some of those parties are friendlier to the United States than others.
[00:48:29]  One of the major most armed parties there is the PJAK.
[00:48:32]  The PJAK is, of course, closely associated with the PKK.
[00:48:36]  The PKK has been a United States-designated terrorist group since 2009 because of their Marxist inspired roots, Stalinist sort of roots, and the fact that they are at war pretty openly with the Turkish government.
[00:48:50]  What do you make of the coalition?
[00:48:52]  Should there be concerns about arms falling into the hands of the wrong parts of the coalition or what comes next?
[00:48:57]  Or is there, you know, is this just the reality of how revolutions actually occur?
[00:49:01]  That typically when you have some sort of uprising or revolution and you have to cobble together groups, sometimes members of those groups, you'll have more extreme members and you'll have more moderate members.
[00:49:10]  Right.
[00:49:10]  Well, just to say it outright, the Kurds are not extreme.
[00:49:13]  Even the PJAC is not extreme.
[00:49:16]  They are fighting and engaging directly against the Iranian regime.
[00:49:20]  The PKK has been fighting against the Turkish government for decades.
[00:49:26]  And the major reason why these groups exist is because of lack of security and basic rights that the central governments that the West has backed for decades has given and leaves the Kurds isolated and forces the Kurds to pick up their weapons.
[00:49:40]  The coalition that you're mentioning, it's called the Coalition of Political Forces of Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan.
[00:49:50]  These groups have united.
[00:49:51]  This is a great step.
[00:49:52]  It's six groups.
[00:49:54]  Many of them have their military bases in the autonomous Kurdistan region.
[00:49:59]  PJAC is the only one that has active basis in the Iranian Kurdistan in northwest Iran.
[00:50:05]  So they have one of the largest forces as well, which is important.
[00:50:10]  That's something we have to keep in mind.
[00:50:11]  And it's a great opportunity for the Kurds.
[00:50:14]  They have a united front.
[00:50:15]  No other group on the ground has a united front.
[00:50:18]  I think the United States should back this group.
[00:50:21]  But again, it comes back to the guarantees that they could provide.
[00:50:24]  The Kurds don't want to be in the same situation as they're in, right?
[00:50:28]  They have no basic rights.
[00:50:30]  They're being hanged publicly.
[00:50:32]  The prisons are filled with Kurdish political prisoners just for speaking their language, for celebrating no rural, their identity, their colors, just for speaking up politically.
[00:50:42]  So I think this is an opportunity for the United States to look beyond that.
[00:50:46]  And also, these groups that are part of this, for example, PJAC, they've never threatened the European Union.
[00:50:51]  They never threatened Israel.
[00:50:53]  They've never threatened the United States.
[00:50:55]  That's something to keep in mind.
[00:50:56]  The only reason why they're a designated terrorist organization is because to please Turkey.
[00:51:02]  That's the only reason.
[00:51:03]  But we've seen the position of Turkey.
[00:51:06]  We've seen how Turkey behaves.
[00:51:07]  But the reality is that Turkey is not a reliable NATO partner.
[00:51:11]  They're pro-Hamas.
[00:51:12]  They're pro-Jihadists.
[00:51:13]  They're pro-Muslim Brotherhood.
[00:51:15]  And they caused havoc across the region.
[00:51:18]  And every position that they've taken has been anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-European.
[00:51:24]  And they even threatened Israel with taking over Jerusalem.
[00:51:27]  They threatened the Europeans with flooding the gates of Europe with refugees.
[00:51:33]  And they held American pastors in prison.
[00:51:36]  They're attacking our reliable Kurdish partners on the ground every chance they get.
[00:51:43]  So I think the United States, this is an easy option for the United States to make.
[00:51:48]  It's an easy choice for them to make is that the Kurds are reliable partners.
[00:51:52]  Turkey is not.
[00:51:53]  If we want to dismantle this regime, we have to set Turkey aside and choose the Kurds.
[00:52:00]  So when we look at the actual activity in the northwest of Iran, when we look at this region that the Kurds are going to try to move into or to rise in, the sort of big question becomes whether this is for the West, for the purposes of the United States, more of a sort of magnet for IRGC, a way to, again, force the regime to expend resources in that area and draw away the Basij and the IRGC from central areas of Iran.
[00:52:29]  And also whether the Kurds, you know, will they feel safe if an Ayatollah-led regime, a subsequent regime, remains in place, even if they've been able to capture certain territory inside the Kurdish areas of Iran.
[00:52:42]  I mean, the worst case scenario from the American perspective here is a renewed Iranian regime that is doubling down on what it was doing before and speeding toward the same exact sort of goals, maybe a little bit slower.
[00:52:53]  That seems to be the worst case scenario.
[00:52:56]  What is the upside for the United States if, say, the Kurds are really more just interested in liberating territory in the Northwest as opposed to the fall of the regime?
[00:53:05]  Right.
[00:53:05]  I mean, look, the Kurds are going to liberate those regions as we discussed.
[00:53:12]  But this has to inspire the rest of the country to rise up against the regime.
[00:53:17]  The regime is being totally dismantled on the ground.
[00:53:21]  As President Trump mentioned early on in the beginning of the war, that this is an opportunity for the people of Iran to rise against the regime.
[00:53:30]  And then he said, let's see what you do with this opportunity.

=== Kurds Liberate, Iran Decides (02:55) ===

[00:53:33]  No other president has given you this chance.
[00:53:35]  I think that is the message.
[00:53:37]  That's a clear message.
[00:53:38]  And the Kurds have received that message.
[00:53:40]  The Kurds are taking advantage of this message.
[00:53:43]  And they're seeing an opening to liberate their areas.
[00:53:46]  So I think this will, of course, this poses a lot of risk for the Kurds themselves too when they're doing this.
[00:53:52]  As you said, it will be a magnet for the IRGC to heavily focus on Northwest Iran.
[00:53:58]  That also, with that being said, that also opens a door for the rest of the country to rise against the regime.
[00:54:04]  They have to take advantage of this.
[00:54:06]  Now, there's a couple of scenarios that could happen as far as Tehran in the future and the outcome of this war.
[00:54:14]  It could be a Venezuela-like scenario where we just took out the Ayatollah.
[00:54:19]  There's a more pragmatic, I believe his son was just elected, Mustaba Ayatollah.
[00:54:24]  He was just elected as the supreme leader.
[00:54:28]  Look, I think that's a likely scenario as well if the people don't rise, because most of the civilians on the ground are not armed.
[00:54:39]  So you have to think about how are we going to get arms to these people if we want them to fight the IRGC directly.
[00:54:46]  So that's something to think about.
[00:54:48]  I think the president is open to having somebody more pragmatic.
[00:54:53]  Of course, the goal is always regime change.
[00:54:54]  You don't want to do this heavy military conflict engagement with Iran without having the regime fall.
[00:55:03]  I think it's a lost opportunity.
[00:55:07]  This is not going to come again, and the United States probably won't invest this much heavy weaponry and military presence in the region for a long time.
[00:55:16]  So I think the people should take advantage of this opportunity.
[00:55:19]  If there's somebody more pragmatic that the administration sees that they could just work with, that will say, we're not going to threaten Israel.
[00:55:26]  We're not going to build a nuclear weapon.
[00:55:28]  We're not going to build missiles that could strike our allies.
[00:55:31]  We're not going to destabilize the region and continue to support proxies, jihadi proxies in the region.
[00:55:37]  I think that's also considered a win for the administration.
[00:55:41]  But the ultimate goal should be regime change, and that's up to the people.
[00:55:46]  The president also mentioned that he wants to have somebody from within, not from outside, as many have pushed, many have pushed for in Washington and in Europe.
[00:55:57]  But I think that's something that the people of Iran have to decide, and the people inside Iran have to decide, by the way.
[00:56:04]  But as far as the Kurds, the Kurd are receiving this message.
[00:56:07]  And the only thing that's holding the Kurds back right now from directly engaging in a full-on war with the IRDC is the guarantees that they have not received from the United States yet.
[00:56:19]  Well, that is Diliman Abdul Qadar.
[00:56:21]  He's the founder of American Friends of Kurdistan.
[00:56:23]  Thanks so much for the time and the insight.
[00:56:26]  Thank you, Ben.
[00:56:27]  I appreciate it.

=== Kurdish War Guarantees (00:42) ===

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