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| Back at our table this morning, Steve Clemens, he's the editor-at-large at the National Interest here to talk about the Israel-Iran conflict. | ||
| Let's begin with this breaking news. | ||
| New York Times is reporting that the Iranian president on X posted these comments. | ||
| We have always sought peace and tranquility, but in the current circumstances, the only way to end the imposed war is to unconditionally stop the enemy's aggression and to definitively guarantee the end of the adventures of the Zionist terrorists forever. | ||
| Otherwise, our responses to the enemy will be harsher and more regrettable, New York Times saying, giving no indication that they are prepared to stop the conflict with Israel. | ||
|
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Well, there's a lot of use of the word unconditional by all parties, by President Trump, by the leaders in Iran. | |
| And right now, we have a real mess. | ||
| We have a situation in which Iran was clearly not just in the peace game. | ||
| Iran was basically building its centrifuge capacity, its refinement capacity of nuclear materials and the potential to create a nuclear bomb, even though the U.S. intelligence community, it's very important, said that they believe that Iran had not moved towards a bomb. | ||
| The dimensions of it, in many ways, the capacity was there. | ||
| And we saw this same potential conflict in the crosshairs when President Obama was in office. | ||
| And that was one of the reasons why the joint, the JCPOA, the Joint Committee for Plan of Action, I forget exactly what the initials are. | ||
| It's become JCPOA. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, JCPOA. | |
| Their joint comprehensive plan of action was initiated because President Obama came out and said, we have a choice essentially between negotiating a deal that will restrain and keep Iran from a nuclear weapons course, or we will have conflict. | ||
| And I think that JCPOA got written up, you know, torn up. | ||
| President Trump has come in and tried to renegotiate a separate deal. | ||
| And by all accounts, I think we were pretty close, but maybe not fully. | ||
| And in that, the moment there was a sense of failure or stall, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel took action and began to bomb those nuclear facilities because I think in some ways Israel would not have been satisfied with any deal between Iran. | ||
| So we have a real situation and this is the kind of hot conflict that many have been warning against for decades. | ||
| How consequential is the president's decision here? | ||
| He has now said Iran has two more weeks. | ||
| How consequential is this decision for his presidency? | ||
|
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I think it's defining for his presidency. | |
| In the next two weeks, if he's lucky and if we're all lucky, and if the pressure of Israel's attacks have indeed mattered and created any wobbliness on the Iran side, and we do see European negotiators and even Steve Witcoff, the president's negotiator, connecting with the Iranians, if this opens up the possibility of creating a new diplomatic track, then this will have been a moment that worked and that came together. | ||
| If it doesn't and the president engages directly, dropping a major bunker buster bomb on the Fordo nuclear facility, engaging U.S. military forces directly against Iran, it opens up the potential for a cataclysm of the sort. | ||
| Iran's 92 million people. | ||
| It is a major, major force in the world. | ||
| And of course, we have had horrible experiences with Iran where we tried to engage in the conditions of what appeared to be regime change. | ||
| And we have to admit, the Republican Party right now, which is in control, is divided over that. | ||
| Some want regime change. | ||
| John Bolton, not a great fan of President Trump, but nonetheless very much a fan of the direction that the Prime Minister of Israel is going and that President Trump himself may be going. | ||
| President Trump has been actually pretty much implicitly threatening Supreme Leader Khomeini, saying, hey, we know where you are and we can basically take you out whenever we want. | ||
| That's a huge statement from the President of the United States. | ||
| But there are a lot of others. | ||
| And we've seen a lot of attention to Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, and her own concerns about a kind of war machine. | ||
| But beyond her, Steve Bannon, many other voices around Tucker Carlson particularly, but many other, even side the administration, a real reticence of not wanting to trigger something that will get us back into a set of new forever wars. | ||
| And that is what really led to President Trump's victory in many senses is that he was telling Americans they matter more than these other wars and conflicts abroad. | ||
| So if there is a flip and President Trump has opened up that possibility, it could be dangerous for him politically and very complicated for the United States from a national security perspective for a very long time. | ||
| Let's listen to the President over this past week and what he has said Iran, starting on Iran, starting with Monday, ending with the White House statement from the podium yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
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What have you heard? | |
| What have you heard from the Iranians? | ||
| They'd like to talk, but they should have done that before. | ||
| I had 60 days and they had 60 days and on the 61st day I said, we don't have a deal. | ||
| They have to make a deal. | ||
| And it's painful for both parties, but I'd say Iran is not winning this war. | ||
|
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And they should talk and they should talk immediately before it's too late. | |
| Remember, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| It's very simple. | ||
| Not to go too deep into it. | ||
| They just can't have a nuclear weapon weapon. | ||
|
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What was the thinking on the call for Tehran to evacuate? | |
| Is there a threat or is there an incoming evacuation? | ||
| I want people to be safe. | ||
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What specifically is better than a ceasefire? | |
| What are you looking for here? | ||
| not a ceasefire to have a hostile country have a nuclear weapon that could destroy 25 miles but much more than that could destroy other nations just by the breeze blowing the dust You know, that dust blows to other nations, then they get to estimate it. | ||
| This is just not a threat you can have. | ||
| And we've been threatened by Iran for many years. | ||
| You know, if you go back and look at my history, if you go back 15 years, I was saying we cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon. | ||
| I've been saying it for a long time. | ||
| I mean it more now than I ever meant to. | ||
| I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven't made a final. | ||
| I like to make the final decision one second before it's due, you know, because things change. | ||
| I mean, especially with war. | ||
| Things change with war. | ||
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It can go from one extreme to the other. | |
| War is very bad. | ||
| I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved. | ||
| In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. | ||
| That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today. | ||
| Steve Clemens, what we didn't show there was what he had said on Truth Social throughout the week as well. | ||
| What do you make of those comments and throughout the week where they land now at the White House, which is, okay, we're giving them two more weeks? | ||
|
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Well, it shows that there is no consensus yet on which direction to go with Iran. | |
| And we have to remember a little bit of the history, is President Trump very publicly chided and tried to distance himself from any actions that Israel would unilaterally take on Iran. | ||
| He didn't stop them, but he says he did not want them to take that course, that it was not good. | ||
| And then after the strikes had happened, Donald Trump was basically owning it and almost acting as if he had ordered this action. | ||
| That was a very, very big change, whiplash for many of his own supporters. | ||
| His political base is going, what just happened? | ||
| Steve Bannon is screaming. | ||
| And so when you kind of look at that change, now the president very clearly is in alignment with Israel, in alignment with Prime Minister Netanyahu about what's going on and now beginning to look at, okay, what leverage does that give him with these negotiations? | ||
| Remember that the breakdown, you know, the negotiations broke down over reprocessing. | ||
| The president wants zero reprocessing. | ||
| The Iranians said they will not give that up, that that's a sovereign state right. | ||
| Now they may end up negotiating degrees of that. | ||
| And near the end of the negotiation process, near the end of those 60 days, it had appeared that the White House had signed off on a limited reprocessing arrangement with Iran that somehow came undone. | ||
| And that led to these circumstances where we have now, Israel in a surprise attack did a very effective job. | ||
| And we also have to admit, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been on a bit of a roll from blowing up pagers in Hezbollah, from knocking out major leaders and assassinating leaders of Hamas inside Iran. | ||
| And again, just like we just saw recently with what Ukraine did inside Russia with embedded drones inside, you know, really highly successful intelligence operation, Israel was able to penetrate Iran in much the same way, basically embed capacity and military capacity inside Iran, which must make the Iranian leadership shaking in their boots over this. | ||
| And what is Israel's capacity to move forward or not? | ||
| And so in this situation, when you listen to President Trump on those videos, he sounds just like Joe Biden. | ||
| He sounds just like Barack Obama. | ||
| They're saying the same thing. | ||
| They don't want Iran to have a nuclear bomb. | ||
| And I can go back to President George W. Bush, who said the same thing. | ||
| But what is as true about President George W. Bush's then director of national intelligence as it is with Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump's Director of National Intelligence, all have said that they have no, and they've got much more classified information than we do, saying we have not seen Iran yet take the steps to move towards a bomb. | ||
| So the president in this case is actualizing and sort of metaphorically talking about a bomb in a much more concrete way that Iran might have than some of his predecessors. | ||
| What do you make of European leaders meeting right now in Geneva with Iranian officials? | ||
| There is no U.S. presence and no Israeli presence at these talks. | ||
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Look, I think Europe is at a crossroads on major global events on whether it's going to weigh in and matter or not. | |
| Is it going to be able to create a, you know, pull a rabbit out of the hat with the Iranians and to try to get them to accept some form of deal that might be in line with what President Trump wanted? | ||
| Or is this a kabuki act showing that they're talking, but yet, you know, Israel will continue with its campaign. | ||
| Donald Trump may end up supporting that campaign and dropping a 30,000-pound bomb or a series of bombs on the Ford nuclear facility, which Macron and others don't want to see happen because they see once that happens that the close relationship between the transatlantic relationship, even though it's stressed, it will put Europe in the crosshairs for what Iran is good at. | ||
| Iran turns to be good at asymmetric warfare. | ||
| Iran may not, you know, they're raining missiles down on Israel right now and they're creating damage, but it's terror damage. | ||
| Iran is good at terrorism, and that is, I think, the fear. | ||
| Iran is not going to be able to survive a full frontal assault of military. | ||
| It can shut down oil pathways. | ||
| It can shut down the energy markets in many ways or create huge damage. | ||
| But it's also good at penetrating societies and looking at this. | ||
| I'll mention one thing, Thomas Wright, who was in President Biden's National Security Council, has an article that just came out today in the Atlantic that looks at America's own vulnerability to the kind of intelligence and drone attacks that Israel just deployed against Iran, that the Ukrainians just deployed against Russia. | ||
| That kind of thing could happen in the United States because we have much more porous borders. | ||
| It's a very sobering article that I would recommend to people. | ||
| We'll go to calls. | ||
| Joseph is up first in Silver Spring, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| You're talking to Steve Clemens. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
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Morning. | |
| I want to point out that a lot of IC politicians and media pundits mentioned that Iran has been the center of terrorism since 1979, but they never mentioned the fact that the United States and Great Britain were involved in the coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran that wanted to nationalize the oil industry and installed the Shah, | ||
| inflicting pain and misery on the Iranian people for 26 years until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. | ||
| And since then, the Iranians don't seem to have made it clear they will never again accept the Western powers standing with their foot on the Iranians' neck, forcing them to do whatever they are told to do. | ||
| They are seeking independence on their own, and I appreciate that. | ||
| I mean, the United States is a country that did the same thing, that threw off the foreigners who ran the country or ran the country at the time. | ||
| Now, the United States wants it's not the first time that the United States has imposed its will on other countries: Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba. | ||
| And it goes on, the list goes on and on. | ||
| All right, Joseph, let me jump in and let's take your point about what happened in the 50s. | ||
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unidentified
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1953. | |
| Yep, go ahead. | ||
| Take it. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, 1953, 72 years ago, Kermit Roosevelt, then the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, led a CIA effort to undermine and create a popular revolt against Mohamed Mossedegh was the leader. | |
| I talk about it all the time, in fact. | ||
| And it was, in fact, a very big shock to Iran's sovereignty. | ||
| It helped drive and create conditions that led in part when we helped support the Shah come in. | ||
| There was a lot of unbelievable ill will and toxicity that was in people's minds about that. | ||
| I would say that there are other as important, if not more important, moments in Iranian history that show their resolve less about Mossadegh, but more about their war with Iraq, the gassing of their people. | ||
| You know, basically, Iran sees itself as a great empire of thousands of years that isn't going to be pushed one way or another, and they seem to be willing to sustain significant economic and human costs for their security. | ||
| That doesn't make them right. | ||
| It does mean that they are a formidable opponent and a formidable player in these discussions, whether it be it with Israel or President Trump. | ||
| And what I mentioned when we started this conversation was how quickly each side is jumping to extremist positions, whether it's Trump wanting Iran's unconditional surrender or whether it's the Iranian president demanding an unconditional end to what's going on. | ||
| Both sides are trying to pump themselves up as having all the cards and trying to speed up this process. | ||
| What's probably not going to happen is this is probably not going to be a process that is resolved quickly. | ||
| Leo Sands in the New York Times, the U.S., or excuse me, Washington Post, the U.S. helped oust Iran's government in 1953. | ||
| Here's what happened. | ||
| And he writes this, quoting an Iranian official, said the coup, the 1953 coup, remains a, quote, a touchstone of modern Iranian nationalism. | ||
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Well, I think that is true, and I think that many still remember it, even though it is a lifetime away for many people. | |
| That intervention in Iranian leadership created the conditions in a way that both resented foreign intervention in the country, but it also created the conditions for the rise of an Islamic autocracy that had come in, because they did have, in fact, a democratically elected leader who was not the head, who was not an Islamic leader of that sort. | ||
| And I think like Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini is today, or the Ayatollah Khomeini was. | ||
| So in that particular case, you had a very different form of government. | ||
| People look back and lament the loss of that moment, what the costs were, not because of just of U.S. and also British intervention, I should say, but it was also the issue that now would have created conditions is where the Iranian people themselves are essentially victims of their own government. | ||
| We'll go to Billy in Claremont, California, Independent. | ||
| Morning. | ||
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unidentified
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You doing? | |
| Morning, Billy. | ||
| Question or comment. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, this is my question. | |
| Why can't blame be placed where it really needs to be blamed? | ||
| And what I mean by that is blamed on Israel's leader, Netanyahu. | ||
| He is the problem. | ||
| This guy should never have been in any leadership position. | ||
| He's a thug and he's a killer. | ||
| So we need to remove this guy. | ||
| This guy is going to be responsible for America entering World War III. | ||
| Take my word for it. | ||
| So look, I'm not a politician, but I'm a guy who is sent from the heavens of God. | ||
| And I'm letting you know what I'm saying is true. | ||
| This is nothing more than a smokescreen for America and the colonial white man to go into the Middle East and steal all the oil and control all of the natural resources of Iran. | ||
| Iran is innocent. | ||
| All right, Billy, we'll pick up on your point. | ||
|
unidentified
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So in this case, it is interesting. | |
| I am not a great fan of Prime Minister Netanyahu. | ||
| I find his pugnaciousness in global affairs is something that is changing speedily. | ||
| But let's give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment. | ||
| When you look at Israeli security and you look at the threats, Iran's and Iran's leadership has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the map. | ||
| When you look at various attacks that they've had in the past and the concern that an ongoing advancing nuclear program represents a potential existential threat to Israel, even though, and we need to put on the table, Israel itself is a regional nuclear superpower. | ||
| It's not discussed, you know, it's classified, but there have been government officials that have, in fact, acknowledged Israel's nuclear weapons. | ||
| So Israel has an incredible deterrence capability in its own nuclear weapons. | ||
| But that said, say what you will, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been succeeding in removing and neutralizing many of the major threats in the region to it. | ||
| His actions with Hezbollah and with Hamas and also U.S. intervention with the Houthis have created conditions that have rolled back many of Iran's proxy forces. | ||
| And you also had assassinations of leaders inside Iran. | ||
| So the impression of Iran's power in the world are that it is much, much weaker than it has been. | ||
| It has been much more compliant. | ||
| The strikes back and forth between Israel and Iran in the past, I would call them polite strikes. | ||
| They were not designed to create massive damage or terror, and both sides were able to quickly get on with the relationship. | ||
| We're not in that situation now. | ||
| Both sides are trying to deeply harm each other. | ||
| We've had leading military leaders and nuclear scientists killed in the Israeli strikes. | ||
| And we've had hospitals bombed and hit by Iran inside Israel and others, also in addition to military targets. | ||
| So this is now a campaign where both sides are trying to inflict trauma, fear, damage, and to create a sense of the public of real vulnerability that both sides have. | ||
| So that situation is one. | ||
| Now, is to the caller's point: is Bibi Netanyahu trying to create a strategic choice for the United States? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| People know that the United States and Israel are tied together. | ||
| Donald Trump tried to put a distance between that. | ||
| You have to remember, Donald Trump's first real internet, besides the Pope's funeral, was to the Middle East. | ||
| He went to the UAE, to Qatar, to Saudi Arabia, and skipped going to Israel. | ||
| And many people were very critical of that. | ||
| How could you go to the Middle East without Israel? | ||
| Donald Trump was trying to basically decompart, you know, compartmentalize America's relationship with the region. | ||
| And to a certain degree, this action by Netanyahu, which originally Donald Trump did not want to own, has rejoined America deeply into the hip of Israel's actions in the region. | ||
| And by Netanyahu doing something that the President of the United States asked him not to do publicly, maybe privately, it was something else, but other presidents keeping Israel from doing this, it is creating a strategic vector for the United States that it may be hard for the U.S. to extract itself from. | ||
| Front page of the Wall Street Journal: Iran's allied militias choose to lie low in the Israel conflict. | ||
| They point out Lebanon's Hezbollah, one seen as the most powerful in Iran's access of resistance, hasn't fired a single missile since Israel attacked Iran. | ||
| Its military capabilities and leadership have been decimated by Israeli forces during the past year. | ||
| Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is a shadow of itself after 20 months of war. | ||
| In Iraq, the Iranian-backed Shiite militias haven't targeted U.S. military bases as they have in the past. | ||
| And Yemen's Houthi militia fired several missiles at Israel on Sunday, but have remained silent since. | ||
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So the axis of resistance, as they call themselves, has become kind of, you know, gone to sleep. | |
| I mean, this was a coalition of the willing, you know, supported by Iran to essentially fight and keep pressure on Israel from different corners. | ||
| They've been decimated. | ||
| They've been hit hard. | ||
| And what was really interesting, and I've done a lot of reporting on this myself, when Hezbollah was knocked out, when Hamas's leaders were killed, many people were expecting Iran to ride to the rescue of them in various ways. | ||
| Iran stayed complacent, stayed back, and did not come back to them. | ||
| There's not great mutual love and good feeling between some of the leadership of Hezbollah, Hamas, and others with Iran. | ||
| And so now when Iran is having its dark days and moments, they are not ratcheting up their pressure in support of Iran. | ||
| We'll go to Tiny in Brookshire, Texas, Republican. | ||
| You know, supported by Iran to essentially Brookshire, Texas, Republican caller, it's your turn. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I don't want the president to get involved in the war, but I do want them to constantly supply Israel with the weapons and everything that they need. | ||
|
unidentified
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If they need that bomb to go over there to blow up that mountain, I want my president to give it to them. | |
| And Iran wants to annihilate Israel. | ||
| I don't understand how people can say that Netanyahu is wrong for what he is doing. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, caller. | ||
| Steve Clemens, she's talking about the big business. | ||
|
unidentified
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About the big bomb, the problem is that's not possible. | |
| I mean, there's no possibility of giving Israel both access to that bunker buster. | ||
| They don't have the delivery mechanisms. | ||
| We have to understand that the Fordo nuclear facility is the equivalent of about 22 stories of a New York skyscraper beneath the ground. | ||
| It's very specialized weaponry. | ||
| And what we have, when you're going to be able to penetrate the ground, it depends upon the concrete formations that are around it, the defensive mechanisms that are around it, of which there must be some. | ||
| And so, you know, the efficacy of that bomb is going to be in question. | ||
| But bottom line is Israel cannot deliver that. | ||
| And I think secondly, any leaders, there are a lot of leaders around the world, and I don't want to give Iran a break on this because Iran's leadership in the past has done this. | ||
| They do see Israel as the antithesis of threat there. | ||
| But we also have to realize that Iran is a rational power, superpower in its region, and it has dialed up and dialed down its pressures on Israel in the past. | ||
| And so that, you know, I used to think that when Richard Nixon went to China, you know, biggest anti-communist in American politics, went to China, normalized relationship with China, that Donald Trump really wanted to be the Nixon went to China guy with Iran. | ||
| He wanted to normalize with Iran. | ||
| He wanted a deal with Iran. | ||
| And there was likely to be a deal with Iran if Iran had been able to come around. | ||
| And that is the world that Donald Trump wanted. | ||
| I think he saw it as a pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize. | ||
| We have to understand that this is not just a binary world of black hats and white hats. | ||
| Donald Trump wanted to bring Iran around, wanted to negotiate this deal, and by all accounts got pretty close. | ||
| That may still happen down the road despite the hell everyone is in right now. | ||
| But it just shows that even President Trump is not working in any way in a binary world on whether Iran is a good player with Israel or a bad player. | ||
| And Donald Trump would also, if he were on the show, be the first to say, it's not all about Israel. | ||
| It's about America's interests one way or the other. | ||
| And he's been reading those interests differently. | ||
| When he says, or when the White House press secretary says yesterday from the podium, giving them two weeks before he makes a decision about going, what does going mean, the go? | ||
| Is it the B-2 bomber? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Do we want to? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it's very clearly the B-2 bomber because the next element in this conflict that has knocked out so many of Iran's nuclear programs right now. | |
| But you have to remember that not all of Israel's targets have been nuclear programs. | ||
| They've also hit civilian infrastructure. | ||
| They've hit a news station. | ||
| They're hitting other parts that would be classically outside of military targeting. | ||
| And that is what has a lot of people concerned, that when you listen to Netanyahu, what Netanyahu wants is regime change. | ||
| And those are words that are highly consequential. | ||
| Netanyahu sees himself as a deliverer of a whole new order and of trying to ally himself with frustrated Iranian citizens who want a different leadership and want to get rid of this. | ||
| That is not the goal of Donald Trump as best we know it. | ||
| It has not yet been defined that. | ||
| Now, certain people around him, or who used to be around him, like John Bolton, want that. | ||
| But that's been a very, very minute, very small group of people who want that. | ||
| Others are those that want to proceed much more cautiously around American interests, around this, and have not committed themselves to a regime change direction with Iran. | ||
| So going after, and I think the scariest thing, honestly, from Trump, which then puts this out there, is his comments to the Supreme Leader, Ali Khomeini, saying, hey, we know exactly where he is. | ||
| There's no safe house that can save him. | ||
| He's threatening the leader, the religious leader, the supreme leader of Iran very directly with his physical safety. | ||
| And that is an unusual thing we've never seen from a president before. | ||
| Linda and Southgate, Michigan, Democratic Caller, your question or comment on the Israeli-Iran conflict. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, I have for my comment. | |
| First of all, it is absolutely appalling that we are going to let one man and an unstable man at that decide the fate of the United States. | ||
| I think we need a congressional vote, absolutely. | ||
| And even with Iraq, which was a debacle, we had at least a vote. | ||
| It was at least presented to Congress. | ||
| I think that that has to be in play for one man to say, I don't know what I'm going to do. | ||
| I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do whatever I want. | ||
| And it'll probably be a minute before I decide to do it. | ||
| That's a shame. | ||
| All right, Linda. | ||
| Linda, then we've talked about this. | ||
| Tim Kaine, the Democratic senator from Virginia, has a resolution that would require congressional approval. | ||
| There's a similar resolution in the House. | ||
| What's his chances of getting a floor vote? | ||
|
unidentified
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Not high, but I mean, I would say the point that I understand the point the caller is making. | |
| I happened to interview Senator Chris Van Hollen, who's also part of that resolution this week. | ||
| A lot of resolutions. | ||
| And, you know, as I mentioned him, I said, you know, okay, this is about Iran. | ||
| But I remember Senator Kaine's resolution about actions with Iraq, actions elsewhere around the world, the Iraq War resolution that led to the expansion of the global war on terror. | ||
| These are still pending resolutions that have not done anything to curtail decisions by the chief executive and the commander-in-chief to take military action. | ||
| So the legacy of these, so I understand where it's coming from. | ||
| I can even read the Constitution. | ||
| We have a discussion about who has what powers. | ||
| But the Congress thus far has been completely impotent in curtailing the power of the presidency in these moments. | ||
| So in my view, it's a bit of a kabuki act. | ||
| People want to show which side they're on in this conflict. | ||
| None of it will have a constraint that's real on the actions that Donald Trump takes or not, because we live in a system of checks and balances where it's one where it's not a kumbaya sport. | ||
| It's one on checks and balances. | ||
| If the president is taking this power, Congress must either take it back or confront it in a compelling way. | ||
| Right now, they're engaged in sound and fury that's signifying nothing thus far on the process of it. | ||
| So it's just not, in my book, it's not real until you have the votes. | ||
| We'll go to Minneapolis. | ||
| Corey is watching there, Independent. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, I was just calling in because it was a caller that called in earlier and had mentioned a disdain for Israel. | |
| Not a disdain for Israel. | ||
| It's a disdain for fighting war after war after war in the Middle East, showing little results, spending lots of money while people in America struggle. | ||
| We have issues here in this country that we need to solve. | ||
| And these wars in the Middle East, they are not helping us solve our issues here. | ||
| Corey, did you vote for President Trump? | ||
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unidentified
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No. | |
| All right, Corey in Minneapolis. | ||
| One second, Corey. | ||
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unidentified
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What the caller is saying is really, really important, is that there is a fatigue about the forever wars, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan war, sort of low-yield wars that we got involved in and were unable to extract ourselves from. | |
| And there was a sense that I think was out in the world that America's role playing security guarantor in the world somehow benefited the American middle class. | ||
| Now they see, hey, America went and fought the Cold War and somehow China came out on top. | ||
| So in that impulse, in that world, there is a lot of, you know, to what the caller said, views that we've spent over trillions of dollars on these other wars that did not go into schools, infrastructure, other important needs in the United States, and a sense that somehow we become easily hijacked. | ||
| Even in Jeffrey Goldberg's article called The Obama Doctrine with the Atlantic many years ago, in that article, Barack Obama says the biggest threat to America is we have all this sprawling military capacity around the world that's constantly hijacked by others for their use or purpose without us really having a consciousness or decision about it. | ||
| And it was a very important revelation by the commander-in-chief that we don't really control every dimension of American power in the world. | ||
| It's easily hijackable. | ||
| And that's created a ripe moment. | ||
| So I think Democrats that felt what the caller was feeling, Republicans that felt that independence that were feeling that, feeling, what is the payoff to the United States by being involved in this? | ||
| And the answer is, for many of them, not great. | ||
| Now, that is what has fueled Steve Bannon, a lot of the MAGA crowd to say, why, President Trump, are you even flirting with the idea of getting us back into that type of conflict again? | ||
| That is the tension for Republican interparty leadership right now. | ||
| What did you make of Steve Bannon's comments at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast earlier this week where he said what you just said, he disagrees with the president. | ||
| He does not want the president to make a decision to go to war. | ||
| But he said his supporters will follow him, even if he makes that decision to strike. | ||
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unidentified
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So I think that either Steve Bannon is saying he wants to stay on the Christmas card list of the White House, or Steve is saying that the president has become a kind of leader where policy and direction don't matter. | |
| And the truth is that both can be true. | ||
| There are a lot of Americans who I think will be dismayed and deeply upset if the president gets us directly involved in another major conflict, global conflict in the world. | ||
| There are a lot of people that just love Donald Trump. | ||
| They love his muscularity. | ||
| They love his decision-making and impact, and they're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and move with him. | ||
| Both of those impulses exist within the MA base. | ||
| Go. | ||
| We'll go to Goodyear Arizona. | ||
| Susan, welcome to the conversation. | ||
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unidentified
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Republican caller. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| The reason I'm calling is multifold, but I'll try and keep it brief. | ||
| We must remember in America that the press, the major press that's out there, is in the pocket of the Democrats and the Democrats' policies and their past views and definitely are anti-Trump all the way. | ||
| And if there are people who only watch those stations, then they are going to be affected by the information they're getting, even though a lot of it is slanted and false. | ||
| Number two, there were 41 or 47 Americans who were either killed or taken captive by the October 2023 raids in Israel by proxies of Iran and did the horrible torture, murder, and murdering of women, children, infants, and men. | ||
| And so there is blood that has shed, American blood that has been shed, that they need to be held accountable for. | ||
| So, Susan, that justifies U.S. military action against Iran. | ||
| In your opinion. | ||
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unidentified
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Because that leads up to this. | |
| My third point is because the source of all of this terrorism is from Iran. | ||
| And Iran has five or six of these proxy countries that are continuing to do this. | ||
| And there have been about 20 million people led into this country in the last administration that were never vetted. | ||
| So there might be many terrorists here in our country that will directly affect America if we do not completely eliminate the current regime in Iran that is back in the 700s and barbaric. | ||
| And if we do not completely get rid of any capability of them having nuclear pressure, understood. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Steve Clements. | ||
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unidentified
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So look, I respectfully disagree with some of the points that the caller made. | |
| I disagree about the media. | ||
| There's a lot of media that plays on all sides of this. | ||
| And I think, you know, a media is designed to try to create an objective foil to what they see power doing. | ||
| And right now you see a lot of divides, even among conservative media, over what the president is doing. | ||
| So it's not a stacked deck. | ||
| Let's just be clear about that. | ||
| I think secondly, around the October 7th terror attacks, which were led by Hamas, horrible, horrible day, initiated really the decimation of Gaza. | ||
| And I just want to, you know, you put on the table that, yes, going after Hamas, completely legitimate in the eyes of what happened. | ||
| Dealing with tens of thousands of deaths of innocent people is something that is also part of that equation. | ||
| It's hard for a lot of people to stomach in that process. | ||
| That has led to, I would argue, the success of Prime Minister Netanyahu being legitimate in terms of taking on Hezbollah, taking on Hamas, engaging in transnational executions and killings, assassinations abroad. | ||
| And he's been very, very successful at decimating many of the opposition to Israel. | ||
| That led to the change in regime in Syria and to the fall of Bashar al-Assad. | ||
| And now you have the question of, okay, now Iran is in the target. | ||
| Is that too much or is that going to be part of the Churchillian-like success, if you will, of B.B. Netanyahu? | ||
| We don't know how it will come out. | ||
| But I would also say when it comes to regime change, and it's very, very important to remember the United States is not good at regime change. | ||
| We have had very bad examples, whether it's in Libya, whether it's in Iraq, of incredible blowback that has come back and cost trillions of dollars. | ||
| So the things that created the conditions that created the forever wars and the ongoing American engagement were exactly the kinds of things the caller was asking for the President of the United States to do and execute. | ||
| And there are a lot of people around him who came to office and who won the presidency because of the perception that Biden was weak and bland on these issues. | ||
| And Donald Trump had clarity and definitive reasons not to put the United States back in that track. | ||
| That is what we're talking about today and why this is such a big issue, not only in Tehran or Tel Aviv, but in Washington, D.C. What about our Middle East allies, the UAE, Jordan, et cetera? | ||
| How do they see the threat of Iran? | ||
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unidentified
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So they're holding their breath to see what happens. | |
| But just this past week, I interviewed the diplomatic advisor to the ruler, the president of the UAE, Anwar Gargash. | ||
| And Gargash, just months before when I had seen him, along with Tulsi Gabbard and others in India, had put out an olive branch to Iran. | ||
| And you could feel that the region was coming on to realize, wow, we're going to be moving in a different direction with Iran. | ||
| We had a normalization between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which the Chinese helped to broker. | ||
| There was a kind of new acceptance that there were new possibilities with Iran and the UAE could help play a bridge in that or Qatar or even the Saudis. | ||
| And so in this situation, there was a calming that was going on. | ||
| When I interviewed Anwar Gargash last week, he strongly condemned the actions of Netanyahu and the bombing. | ||
| He said, nothing can be achieved that we need to have achieved from this kind of action there. | ||
| We have to have, you know, basically saying diplomacy matters, but also saying you can go to such a point that you radicalize the Iranians in a situation where it completely changes the climate and we're back again to a fragmented, balkanized, highly toxic, unstable, and unpredictable Middle East. | ||
| That is the potential consequence of right now. | ||
| And we're at a crossroads. | ||
| And so the president putting a calming on for two weeks, probably good, but it could still be a bad story. | ||
| Or it may be something where everyone says, where do we need to go? | ||
| Now, the big question is, will Israel accept, even if the president were not to proceed, will Israel acquiesce to that condition? | ||
| Or will they see themselves as the only one who can lead in the region at this time and continue to say cut the head off the snake to engage in regime change? | ||
| I don't see Prime Minister Netanyahu backing off at all at this moment, even though President Trump has called for a calming. | ||
| Ogden, Utah. | ||
| Linda, good morning to you, an independent caller. | ||
| You're on the air with Steve Clemens. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| My question are three points. | ||
| How much, and we are, if we do go to war with Iran, and it will be a war, not a one-o-day two things, how much is it going to cost? | ||
| How many soldiers' lives we're predicted today? | ||
| Because that whole region, in my feelings, is not worth one American soldier's life. | ||
| And what cause amount of soldiers' life is this war going to cost us? | ||
| And how can the big, beautiful bill cost if we're going to war with Iran? | ||
| And which countries supposedly support the U.S. All right, Linda, we'll take your questions. | ||
| It's a really great question, Linda. | ||
| I mean, costs matter. | ||
| What can't you do? | ||
| Because there may be a war. | ||
| Donald Trump will define it as a war of necessity if we do go to war. | ||
| That war of necessity could preempt what President Wunsch was, a pivot to Asia, a de-emphasis on Europe, a movement of American resources and money and spending, developing a bigger navy, developing other military components. | ||
| All of that could be put on hold or delayed significantly because of the very high. | ||
| Now, we also have to realize that there's also been a big effort to cut back the size of the Pentagon, to reduce programs. | ||
| You know, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has come in and say, slash budgets up to 50% more, you know, like significantly in some places within the Pentagon. | ||
| So the Pentagon in some ways, I won't say they're reeling, but they're trying to recast the way they get their hands around national security threats and how they meet those challenges. | ||
| And one can assert at the leadership, oh, America can meet any challenge anywhere, anytime with the resources we have. | ||
| And I'm sure that will be said. | ||
| But the truth is, beneath that surface, there are hard choices about money, spending, and how you deploy troops. | ||
| I mean, and so in that equation, it creates a vulnerability for the administration that wanted to reduce debt, that wanted to reprioritize assets, and wars, as the President of the United States has said over and over again, are really bad for business. | ||
| This gets in the way of the big mutual investment climate that the President wanted to have in the Middle East, the trillions of dollars the president wanted to attract from the Middle East into the United States. | ||
| A lot of that will be suspended or delayed if, in fact, there's a war with Iran. | ||
| Where can our viewers go to find the reporting by you and your colleagues? | ||
|
unidentified
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They can go to the nationalinterest.org. | |
| We have a very huge website in foreign policy and politics. | ||
| And so nationalinterest.org. | ||
| They can go to the Washington Note where I publish a lot, and I also put a lot out on social media. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
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And also, I should say, Al Jazeera is the bottom line where I just, in fact, interviewed Senator Chris Van Hollen. | |
| All right. | ||
| Steve Clemens, thank you much for the conversation. | ||
| As always, we appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | ||
| And coming up Saturday morning, U.S. Conference of Mayors Vice President David Holt and second Vice President Todd Gloria will talk about themes for the group's 93rd annual meeting in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| And then the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's senior fellow retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery talks about the Israel-Iran conflict and U.S. military capabilities. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Saturday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, University of Texas at Austin history professor Peniel Joseph shares his book Freedom Season and talks about the pivotal events of 1963 that impacted the civil rights movement in America. | ||
| That year marked the centenary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Mississippi civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four little girls. | ||
| 1963, I think, is the most pivotal year of the 1960s. | ||
| It's the year that gives us both triumphs and tragedies. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it's really the year that makes the 1960s the 60s. | |
| So it's civil rights insurgency. | ||
| It's the Kennedy administration going back and forth with activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and others about what to do next. | ||
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unidentified
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We see a right-wing insurgency. | |
| George Wallace becomes one of the pivotal figures of the year. | ||
| And people like William F. Buckley in the National Review are engaged in a war of ideas with people like James Baldwin, who becomes the best-selling author and really perhaps the most pivotal figure in the entire year. | ||
| So it's really an extraordinary year. | ||
|
unidentified
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Penil Joseph with his book, Freedom Season, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | |
| I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to SRES 259. | ||
|
unidentified
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The clerk report. | |
| Senate Resolution 259, recognizing June 2nd, 2025, as the 39th anniversary of C-SPAN chronicling democracy in the Senate. | ||
| By a unanimous vote, the United States Senate passed a resolution honoring C-SPAN's four decades covering the Senate. | ||
| The resolution thanked cable and satellite operators for providing C-SPAN as a public service to the country. | ||
| C-SPAN does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars, is funded primarily from satellite and cable providers. | ||
|
unidentified
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And called on all television providers, including streaming services, to deliver C-SPAN as well. | |
| We're at a different stage in our history, and a lot of people are seeing their news this way, so we need to expand it and make sure we're on all of those platforms, as well as the ones we already are on. | ||
| So thank you again to Senator Grassley for working with me to highlight C-SPAN's critical role. | ||
| And thanks to everyone who has had a hand in C-SPAN's success. | ||
|
unidentified
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It isn't just an idea. | |
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Well, up next, the United Nations Security Council holds an emergency meeting at the request of Iran to discuss its ongoing conflict with Israel. | ||
| Israel preemptively struck Iran's nuclear facilities back on June 12th. | ||
| Iran then retaliated with its own strikes against Israel. |