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June 16, 2025 11:43-12:01 - CSPAN
17:58
Washington Journal Michael Rubin
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john mcardle
cspan 02:59
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unidentified
and online at c-span.org.
In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity.
This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins in a town where partisan fighting prevails.
One table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground.
This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
And we welcome American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Michael Rubin back to our program.
He specializes in Middle East studies.
And Mr. Rubin, what is your biggest concern as we sit here today and watch the latest out of Iran and Israel?
unidentified
Well, certainly when it comes to the fighting between Iran and Israel, I worry about the fighting spreading.
I worry about Israel not being able to complete its objectives.
Look, John, when you have a hornet's nest, you have two good options.
One is to get rid of it.
The other is to leave it alone.
But the last thing you want to do is sit underneath it, lightly tapping it with a stick.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
You wrote last week about potential opportunities that the U.S. should be prepared for here as we try to find out what happens.
What are those opportunities that may arise?
unidentified
Well, first of all, John, consistently I criticize U.S. foreign policy across both administrations for not being proactive enough.
When I look at opportunities that might exist, I'm not trying to cheerlead the military action.
They certainly represent a failure of diplomacy on some level.
But what I'm suggesting is, just as with the liberation of Kuwait, that opened new diplomatic doors.
For example, in 1991, we had the Washington Conference, which I'm sorry, the Madrid Conference, which was the first time that Israelis, the Syrians, the Palestinians sat together.
What I'm asking now is, what's being put in place once the guns fall silent in order to see whether we can break new diplomatic ground?
Perhaps something that's even unthinkable right now or a few weeks ago, such as getting Israel and Iran to have diplomatic relations.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
How do we go about doing that and who's in a position to lead that?
unidentified
Well, certainly when it comes to the Iranian people, we should be asking who is actually representing that government right now.
We see that the government, aside from Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini, has been largely decapitated.
The question we need to ask is, are we going to recognize the Islamic Republic as the legitimate representative of the Iranian people?
We've been through this before, for example, back in the 1990s when we withdrew recognition from the Afghan government because it wasn't clear who was in charge.
We've seen this similarly with Venezuela as well.
What I would suggest is that we simply suggest that we no longer recognize the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Iran, and we sit on the sidelines and see who else is emerging that can take charge.
Would it be the head of a labor union in Iran?
Would it be the head of the retirees union, the women's movement?
Are there parliamentarians in place?
There's a lot that we should actually be discussing, even if there's not clear answers at this moment in time.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Who are some of those potential players here?
And what do we know about what's happening inside Iran right now?
unidentified
Well, one of my biggest regrets, John, when I used to work in the Bush administration between 2002 and 2004, is for the first time during that period, Iranian bus drivers went on strike.
And that might not seem important, but the Middle East is a country that is a region that doesn't really have independent labor unions.
The two exceptions were Israel and after the bus drivers successfully defied the Islamic Republic, the bus drivers themselves.
Now, once you start, it was a lequilence moment referring to solidarity in Poland back in 1981, but the Bush administration missed it.
If you have organized labor, which is able to act independently, that itself suggests much more legitimate leadership from inside the government, at least an institutionalization of leadership that could help within a transition.
So the first thing I would suggest we do is reach out to the labor unions, which have now expanded tremendously.
What I don't know about, for example, some of the AFL-CIO and other international labor unions in Europe and so forth, is why they're willing to help organize labor everywhere in the world, except for Iran.
Likewise, in Iran, the environmentalist movement is also important and it scares the regime to death because the Islamic Republic has been scared of any sort of movement that can unite people across socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, and geography.
Now, why is it that the Greens, for example, in Europe, won't support the Greens inside the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Those sort of natural grassroots organizations are those with whom I think we could be working in the future.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
In the past, grassroots uprisings run directly into the teeth of the military and the security apparatus in Iran.
What do we know about, is there any sort of daylight between the Ayatollah and the security apparatus or the military?
Is there any indication that their commitment there has been shaken in the wake of these attacks?
unidentified
Well, you're absolutely right, John.
One of the reasons why the reform movement in Iran never worked is because the Islamic Revolutionary Guard is charged not just with territorial defense, like the Iranian army is, but charged with defense of the revolution, which means that enemies can be ideological, they can be internal.
And so the reformists could never really have their muddle through reform because it was always stopped by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
One of my other criticisms of U.S. policy is we talk a lot about, we talk about what we do know, about hardliners and reformers and politics and so forth, but we don't talk about what we don't know.
Intelligence analysts don't like talking about what they don't know.
But one of the things we don't know, for example, is with regard to the factional divisions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In 2007, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reorganized itself so they put one unit in every province to keep control.
We don't know whether the people staffing those units are native to the provinces in which they serve.
The answer to that would show whether ideology trumps kinship if given the order to fire in the crowds in the street.
But what we've been seeing over the last 24 hours militarily is hugely important.
The Israelis have been going after the apparatus of repression.
For example, Radan, who was the head of the law enforcement forces, this was the person who was responsible for the murder of Masa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death sparked the woman life freedom movement.
They've been going after other elements of the interior ministry and the secret police.
What it seems is happening is that Israel has shifted from not only targeting the military and the nuclear programs, but also targeting the mechanisms of state repression, hoping that the Iranian people will now rise up if they don't need to fear the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the Ministry of Intelligence.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Michael Rubin is our guest this morning.
He's with the American Enterprise Institute, a senior fellow there, also director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum.
And happy to take your phone calls with us until 10 a.m. Eastern.
It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
It was John Bolton writing in today's Wall Street Journal about some of these issues that you were just discussing.
Mr. Rubin, of course, former White House National Security Advisor back in 2018.
He writes, in the current crisis, further divisions within the Iranian regime's leadership should be fostered and supported, especially among military officers who could emulate Egypt's military during the 2011 protest, refusing to attack civilian protesters.
If significant elements of the regular forces and the Revolutionary Guard make clear that they won't fire on their own people, the regime could fall very quickly.
Offering amnesty to regime officials to switch sides could also be a useful tool for more consolidated opposition.
Are those things that the United States would have to do?
Is that something that would be an international effort?
What are your thoughts on his proposals?
unidentified
The short answer is yes.
The United States should be making this clear.
The international community should be making this clear.
The idea is to give an off-ramp for regime officials so that they don't fight to the death.
Now, what we do know, and as you know, I used to live in the Islamic Republic of Iran when I was doing my PhD.
I've met Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps people.
And what's very, very clear is that they are not a homogeneous bunch.
Many people join the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for different reasons.
Some are true ideologs.
Some join IRGC-related after-school programs when they're eight years old.
You can think of them as the equivalent of evil Boy Scouts.
And then the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps runs clubs through secondary school.
They run their own universities.
So if you're caught in this bubble, you may be ideologically indoctrinated.
But Iran is a conscript society.
Every male needs to join the military, but you get greater privileges if you join the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
So some people just join the IRGC for the money, and they should be the ones that are easier to peel away.
But, you know, we've got to peel them away.
One of the issues which I saw when I lived in Iran is that many veterans of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were very, very bitter at veteran services inside the Islamic Republic of Iran.
No moral equivalence to what happens in the United States.
It's an order of magnitude, a greater problem inside Iran.
What are we doing, for example, to offer free medical care for war-wounded Islamic Revolutionary Guards corpsmen?
That's the type of thing that if they join us, it's an intelligence coup.
It also shows momentum.
If they're prevented from joining us, it increases dissension.
I don't see any sort of problem, and it's a non-military, non-kinetic sort of strategy on our part.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Let me switch from what's happening inside Iran to what could happen inside Israel.
I started by asking you your biggest concerns right now in the region.
You'd written a piece for the National Security Journal within the past day or so about the concerns about a dirty bomb attack in Israel.
unidentified
Yes, that's absolutely my concern.
First of all, too often when we look at U.S. intelligence analysts, our intelligence analysts allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
So for example, we define a nuclear weapon or what it takes to build a nuclear weapon as 20 kilograms of 90% enriched uranium.
Now, the important thing to remember there is that, number one, that the bomb that we dropped on Hiroshim during World War II had an average enrichment level of 80%.
So the Iranians have already surpassed that level.
Then the question is, why are we assuming that the Iranians would only wait until they were able to achieve a U.S.-style nuclear bomb, the most high-tech of all options?
Why wouldn't they try something else?
Now, this is what worries me, and this is also probably what contributed to Israel's decision to attack Iran when it did.
While many Americans, many pundits, many analysts cheered when back in April and October 2024, the Israelis managed to shoot down many of the drones and missiles which Iran had fired at them.
For example, in April 2024, seven got through.
If any of those seven had missiles, had chemical, biological, or radiological warheads, dirty bombs, then it would be a whole different conversation whether shooting down seven out of 300 represented a success or not.
The other thing, by the way, which people need to understand to understand why Israel may have acted when it did, is the United States often says, hey, look, if Iran got a nuclear weapon, they're not suicidal.
They're not going to use it.
We can have deterrence.
But that's never been the Israeli concern.
The Israeli concern hasn't been if Iran is suicidal.
Their concern is if Iran is terminally ill.
So if you have the Iranian regime collapsing, and we've had a number of protests over the years, what's to stop the most ideologically pure units of the Revolutionary Guard in that situation from launching a nuclear weapon when they know that their regime only has 24 hours left?
Would anyone really retaliate against a country that had already had regime change?
And the answer would be no.
And so in a situation like that, that's where the deterrence upon which we relied, for example, during the Cold War breaks down.
And that was why the Israelis were becoming increasingly nervous about the possibility of having to live with an Iran with a nuclear weapon.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
A lot there.
Let me pause and bring in several callers waiting for you.
This is Dave in Goose Creek, South Carolina, Independent.
Dave, good morning.
You're on with Michael Rubin.
unidentified
Yeah, good morning, John.
It's been a while since I spoke to you.
Just a couple of comments, if I may.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Go ahead, Dave.
What's your question or comment?
unidentified
The first comment is regime change never ends well.
Okay, never.
Okay.
And the only other comment I have is, if I was the leader of a country whose neighbors had nuclear weapons, there is no law you would pass.
There is no sanction you would put on me that would stop me from obtaining the same weapons for my country.
And that's just, you know, it's reality.
Thank you, John.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
Mr. Rubin.
unidentified
Those are both good points.
First of all, when it comes to regime change, look, regimes changed after World War II.
The Khmer Rouge is no longer a problem in Cambodia.
What I would say is that externally imposed regime change can be problematic.
But we've had any number of, for example, revolutions in Eastern Europe, revolutions in the Caucasus that have brought democracy or brought much better government.
So I would quibble a little bit with the first part of that question.
The second part of that question about having neighbors with nuclear weapons.
Of course, Iran does have a neighbor with nuclear weapon.
It's called Pakistan.
But what has gotten people so worried about Iran having nuclear weapons is that on multiple occasions, the senior Iranian officials have talked about using those nuclear weapons, not in defense, but in offense.
Some of the Friday prayer leaders, for example, that Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini had appointed to give sermons, the former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasanjani, and so forth.
This is why people were becoming so worried.
And I should also note that many within Iran didn't particularly care for their regime's adventurism in this regard, which is why you've had teachers' unions, for example, protest in Iran, forget about Hezbollah, forget about Hamas, think about our salaries.
I mean, Iranians, after 46 years of the Islamic Republic, seem to have lost the populism that perhaps allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to lead the revolution in 1979 and are taking a much more pragmatic, realistic view, and they want to rejoin the international community.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼
A question from James and Alexandria, Virginia, as we've been talking, he sent this in.
What's the difference between the approved Obama treaty with Iran and what was being planned with the Trump treaty?
unidentified
Okay.
With regard to the 2015 Joint Conference of Plan of Action, which was a political agreement legally, it wasn't a treaty, that basically sought to constrain some of Iran's uranium enrichment.
Now, one of the reasons it was so controversial is it didn't address directly the weaponization activity which Iran had engaged in.
Those are listed in something called the possible military dimensions.
So if you Google possible military dimensions, International Atomic Energy Agency, November 2011, there's an unclassified UN report that lists all the issues that Iran had been engaging in, which were so much concerning.
For example, warhead development or mathematical modeling of explosions and so forth.
The other thing it didn't really address, in fact, it purposely bypassed was the issue of delivery systems, the missiles that would deliver the warheads potentially to Israel or the United States or so forth.
Now, what the Trump administration agreement seemed to be doing was saying, no, you will not have any enrichment whatsoever.
But what Secretary of State Marco Rubio has.
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