CSPAN - Washington Journal Steven Cook
Aired: 2026-03-01
Duration: 33:40


=== Why Has Iran Been Resilient? (06:07) ===

[00:00:43]  Welcome back.
[00:00:44]  We're going to continue our discussion about the ongoing Israeli and American strikes against Iran with Stephen Cook, who is the Middle East and Africa Studies Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
[00:00:55]  Welcome back to Washington Journal.
[00:00:57]  Thanks for having me.
[00:00:58]  Can I first get just your reaction to the size and the scope of this operation by the United States and Israel?
[00:01:04]  Well, there's really nothing surprising about the size and scope of the operation.
[00:01:08]  The United States has spent the last month flowing unprecedented numbers of military forces in the region, at least unprecedented in the last two decades.
[00:01:18]  It is a huge, huge amount of force in terms of aircraft and naval assets.
[00:01:25]  We have two of three operating aircraft carriers in the region right now.
[00:01:30]  And it's been unprecedented that the United States and Israel have launched from the same air bases.
[00:01:36]  There seems to be a division of labor between the United States and Israel in the attacks.
[00:01:40]  The United States going after Iran's nuclear facilities or what remains of them after the strikes last summer, its ballistic missile manufacturing capacity and its inventory of ballistic missiles as well as other military assets, while the Israelis have been focusing on regime assets.
[00:01:58]  Senior leadership, there was a report in the Israeli press that in the first minute or so of the attacks, Israelis eliminated 40 senior leaders of the military and security services of Iran.
[00:02:13]  So the president has made clear that this is a days-long event, not kind of a one-day, two-day type of event.
[00:02:23]  In addition to degrading Iran's military capabilities, such as they were, it's clear that there is a continuation of what was an Israeli strategy during the 12-day war in June 2025, I'm sorry, which is to create a pathway for Iranians to rise up and bring down the regime.
[00:02:45]  It's very, very unclear whether that can be successful.
[00:02:48]  This is a regime that has proved itself to be more durable and resilient than anybody had ever imagined.
[00:02:53]  And it's very, very hard to undertake regime change from the air from many thousands of miles away.
[00:02:59]  I want to pick up on those last two points you raised about the capacity of the Iranians themselves to actually engage in regime change as well as sort of who steps in to fill the vacuum and the continuity of the revolutionary government.
[00:03:14]  Let's take the Iranian people first.
[00:03:17]  You know, I just was reading a story from Time magazine about upwards of 30,000 people being killed in the protests, probably a lot more.
[00:03:25]  How much capacity is there for the protest movement in Iran to take advantage of this moment?
[00:03:31]  Yeah, this is the question that people have been asking themselves.
[00:03:35]  The Iranian people, or a large part of the Iranian people, have been in open revolt against the regime, not just since December when this most recent round of protests began.
[00:03:46]  Which were mainly about the economy at first.
[00:03:47]  They started about hyperinflation.
[00:03:50]  They started within a core constituency of the Islamic Republic, the Bazaris in Tehran, who have been suffering under tremendous economic mismanagement and hyperinflation.
[00:04:02]  It then led to demands for change in the regime.
[00:04:06]  But as I said, Iranians, large numbers of them, have been protesting the Iranian regime, demonstrating every few years, so in these spasms of huge demonstrations of people power going back to 2009, the so-called Green Revolution, which didn't bring down the regime.
[00:04:22]  But it's clear that it is extraordinarily unpopular with vast numbers of Iranians, which is why the regime needed to use heavy weapons and killed as many as perhaps 30,000 people in just a number of days in December and January.
[00:04:40]  Do they have the capacity now to bring down the regime?
[00:04:44]  Again, these are questions that we won't know the answer to unless people try.
[00:04:50]  There haven't been big protests yet.
[00:04:52]  There have been celebrations in cities around Iran at the news of Ayatollah Khamenei's death, but there hasn't been organized protests.
[00:05:02]  There was organized protests on the university campuses leading up to the American and Israeli attacks, but I don't think we know enough about the Iranian opposition, which is divided, to know whether it can coalesce around one particular figure, the Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, the Shah who was brought down in the 1979 revolution.
[00:05:23]  Reza Pahlavi is someone who people have been calling out his name in the streets, which has been rather extraordinary.
[00:05:29]  But there are tremendous questions whether he can really unify a quite divided opposition.
[00:05:33]  So then let's go back to the Iranian regime, the revolutionary regime that exists now.
[00:05:38]  As you just mentioned, the Israeli government is claiming to have knocked dozens of people out in its early strikes.
[00:05:44]  Who steps into that space and why is it that this regime has been so resilient?
[00:05:51]  Yeah, so right now there is a three-man council that is running the country.
[00:05:56]  The president, Masoud Pezeskian, sorry, the leader of the judiciary, and they have named a temporary Ayatollah, a guy named Ali Reza Arafi.
[00:06:09]  They are going to rule the country until the legal process plays itself out and there can be an actual selection of a new supreme leader.
[00:06:17]  Why has this regime been so resilient?
[00:06:19]  It's had 47 years to establish itself institutionally.
[00:06:24]  It has extraordinarily robust means of political control.
[00:06:28]  As we've seen, Iranians have been in open revolt and they've been willing to use lots of force and violence to maintain control over the country.
[00:06:37]  This most recent spasm is perhaps the most extreme, but through its internal security services, Iranians have not been able to overthrow a regime they clearly do not like.

=== Iranian Resilience and Regional Impact (02:53) ===

[00:06:50]  Let's talk about sort of some of the key U.S. interests here.
[00:06:54]  What have been some of the more malign activities that Iran has directed towards the United States in recent years?
[00:07:00]  Well, it has been essentially a 47-year campaign on the part of revolutionary Iran against the United States.
[00:07:08]  We can go back to the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in the 1980s, all throughout, up to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, in which the Iranians helped Iraqi militias harm American soldiers in large, large, in large, large numbers.
[00:07:31]  The Iranians have been Sowing chaos throughout the region and seeking to destabilize America's partners, not just Israel through its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, but also Saudis,
[00:07:47]  Iraqis, Emiratis, Jordanians have all suffered at the hands of the Iranians who have tried to upend a regional order that is favorable to the United States as well as its partners.
[00:08:01]  You mentioned Hamas and Hezbollah.
[00:08:03]  There's also the Houthis, several groups that are effectively proxies for Iran and that, as you mentioned, kind of work in different ways in the region.
[00:08:14]  What happens to those groups right now and what kind of response do you think we might see from them in this moment?
[00:08:20]  Yeah, this is what's known as the axis of resistance.
[00:08:24]  And the Iranians over many years have nurtured the development of proxy groups, the most significant of which was Hezbollah from Lebanon, as well as Hamas, various militias in Iraq, and more recently the Houthis in Yemen.
[00:08:40]  Those groups have been battered by both the United States as well as Israel.
[00:08:47]  Can they muster the ability to respond to the United States and Israel?
[00:08:52]  So far, they haven't.
[00:08:53]  Hezbollah has released two statements, one more belligerent than the other, though the Northern Front in Israel remains quiet.
[00:09:01]  Iraqi militias have not fired on Americans or Israelis just yet.
[00:09:06]  But we are really in the early going of this conflict.
[00:09:11]  So what are you watching for next as these strikes and the retaliatory strikes continue?
[00:09:17]  I'm looking for two things, really.
[00:09:18]  One, what we were talking about just before.
[00:09:20]  What will the Iranian people do?
[00:09:23]  And exactly what the proxies are going to do.
[00:09:28]  The Iranians have spent a lot of time and effort trying to build up this kind of forward strategy of defense for them by building up these proxies to undermine American partners in the region as well as the United States.

=== Call for De-Escalation (03:05) ===

[00:09:44]  If they remain on the sidelines, the Iranians, the entire strategy has been destroyed.
[00:09:51]  All right.
[00:09:52]  Well, we are going to start taking questions from our callers for Stephen Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.
[00:09:59]  Our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000.
[00:10:03]  For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
[00:10:07]  And for Independents, 202748-8002.
[00:10:12]  Before we get to those callers, I want to play a bit of tape from the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who gave a statement at a meeting of the UN Security Council condemning the U.S.-Israeli joint military strikes on Iran.
[00:10:27]  Let's listen.
[00:10:29]  Mr. President, the U.S. and Israel attacks occurred following the third round of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran, mediated by Oman.
[00:10:39]  Preparations have been made for technical talks in Vienna next week, followed by a new round of political talks.
[00:10:47]  I deeply regret that this opportunity of diplomacy has been squandered.
[00:10:53]  Mr. President, third, the region and the world need a way out now.
[00:10:59]  I call for de-escalation and an immediate cessation of hostilities.
[00:11:04]  The alternative is a potential wider conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.
[00:11:13]  I strongly urge all parties to return immediately to the negotiating table, notably on the Iran nuclear program.
[00:11:21]  I note that the U.S. President has reportedly talked with leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
[00:11:29]  Iran's foreign minister has reportedly spoken to his counterparts in GCC countries and Iraq, and everything must be done to prevent a further escalation.
[00:11:39]  To this end, I call on all member states to strictly uphold their obligations under international law, including the UN Charter, to respect and protect civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law, and to ensure nuclear safety.
[00:11:58]  Let us act responsibly and together to pull the region and our world back from the brink.
[00:12:05]  Thank you.
[00:12:07]  And we're back with Stephen Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, ready to take your questions about the ongoing conflict in Iran.
[00:12:14]  We'll start with Mike in Philadelphia on our line for Republicans.
[00:12:17]  Good morning, Mike.
[00:12:20]  Good morning.
[00:12:20]  I just want to state that the region he's going over there, he doesn't check with Congress, which is a rogue president acting on himself.
[00:12:28]  And then he says about with NATO, but there's an ocean to protect us, that they need us to protect them because there's an ocean between us and them.
[00:12:36]  So what's the urgency of Iran if there's an ocean between us and Iran as that immediate threat to our country?
[00:12:43]  It's just all distraction from this criminal empire, this criminal regime, all involved with this Epstein.

=== Geopolitical Ramifications Of The Attack (15:18) ===

[00:12:49]  It's a bit of cover-up.
[00:12:50]  And it's got to answer to this.
[00:12:56]  Well, thanks, Mike.
[00:12:57]  I'm going to set aside the question of the Epstein file since it's not my area of expertise.
[00:13:02]  I have personal views on it, but not professional views.
[00:13:05]  But I will say this: that there are real questions going back to the president's statement that he released, the video in which he said that Iran's missile program was a threat to the United States.
[00:13:18]  That, I think, was news to the expert community.
[00:13:23]  It is true that the Iranians have been working diligently on their ballistic missile program.
[00:13:27]  And if left unchecked, the U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran will have one of the largest inventories of ballistic missiles in the world within 10 years.
[00:13:39]  They clearly are working on their ballistic missile technology.
[00:13:43]  It seems clear that they would want to have ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.
[00:13:48]  But there's really no publicly available evidence to suggest that they are a direct threat to the homeland of the United States at this time.
[00:13:57]  We have a question that we received via text from Guy in Oklahoma who says, Hi, Steve.
[00:14:03]  Will it take Israeli or U.S. boots on the ground to complete the topple of the Islamic Republic, IRGC, which is the Islamic government in Iran?
[00:14:14]  Or can the millions of Iranian people complete the regime change?
[00:14:18]  And how would we arm the people of Iran to fight the guard?
[00:14:22]  Yeah, this is a terrific question.
[00:14:26]  Will there be Israeli and American boots on the ground?
[00:14:29]  There seems no indication that either country is preparing an invasion force.
[00:14:35]  Of course, the Israelis have clearly slipped their intelligence agents and others into the country.
[00:14:41]  Their intelligence has been rather extraordinary in targeting regime officials, knowing where they are and when they're going to be there.
[00:14:51]  I think that the strategy here is to so weaken the means of the Iranian leadership to control the population that it can come back.
[00:15:01]  People can come out into the streets and collapse this regime.
[00:15:07]  I would be very, very surprised to see the United States assemble an invasion force into Iran.
[00:15:15]  The United States, I think, has learned its lessons from the invasion of Iraq.
[00:15:21]  Regime change, there are, I should put it this way, there are limits to American power.
[00:15:28]  And this is a very, very risky gamble that the president has undertaken in terms of calling for the people of Iran to rise up and bring down the regime.
[00:15:37]  He is leaving it to their hands, but he is also giving them a tremendous helping hand here.
[00:15:42]  Ira is in Palm Coast, Florida on our line for Democrats.
[00:15:45]  Good morning, Ira.
[00:15:47]  Yes, my opinion about what happened with this country, the United States invading Iran, was totally wrong.
[00:15:56]  And they're missing the whole big picture.
[00:15:59]  This thing has been going on for close to 100 years, this conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, but the Palestine and Israel.
[00:16:11]  We need to draw a line there.
[00:16:14]  There's two people in that country, Palestinians and Jews.
[00:16:19]  And there needs to be a Palestine and there needs to be Israel.
[00:16:22]  That's all it is to it.
[00:16:24]  This conflict will continue forever.
[00:16:26]  What the United States has been doing all of these years is just wasting capital, money, and killing, bombing, and killing people.
[00:16:35]  Now, they let Netanyahu kill 100,000 people in Palestine.
[00:16:41]  And they supposedly, the United States wants them to control these people.
[00:16:46]  Two people of different ethnicities, you cannot put them together.
[00:16:52]  Once that they hate each other, so they draw the thing up wrong, like when they draw up Israel, instead of drawing the line for two countries and sending two people up, because both sides need to both need their self-determination.
[00:17:06]  So, Ira, I do want to bring it back to Iran, but since you brought up Netanyahu, I want to play a clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement on the attack on Iran.
[00:17:17]  This is coming via an interpreter.
[00:17:19]  Israel and the United States launched a joint operation, Operation Roaring Lion.
[00:17:25]  The goal of the operation, to put an end to the threat from the Ayatollah regime in Iran.
[00:17:31]  At this moment, the IDF is striking targets of the repressive regime, facilities of the revolutionary guards and the besiege, and together with the United States, sites of ballistic missiles that threaten both Israel and U.S. forces.
[00:17:46]  This operation will continue for as long as necessary.
[00:17:49]  For 47 years, the evil regime in Iran has called death to Israel, death to America.
[00:17:56]  It has crushed the citizens of its own country.
[00:17:58]  It has cast fear upon the peoples of the region, and it has spread a sprawling network of terror throughout the entire world.
[00:18:05]  We are doing this in full cooperation with our friends in the United States under the brave leadership of President Trump.
[00:18:14]  Together with the United States, we will strike the terror regime hard.
[00:18:18]  We will create conditions that will allow the brave Iranian people to throw off the yoke of this murderous regime.
[00:18:26]  During Operation Dogs of War, I was asked many times if toppling the regime was the goal of the operation in addition to removing the nuclear and missile threat.
[00:18:38]  And I answered that this was not the goal, but it could certainly be the result.
[00:18:42]  And indeed, that is exactly what happened when millions of Iranians took to the streets.
[00:18:50]  And now, now they are given the opportunity to take their fate into their own hands.
[00:18:57]  Israel has just come out of sort of the intensity of the conflict in Gaza, and now immediately into this.
[00:19:05]  What is the role here?
[00:19:07]  And this is a partnership in particular.
[00:19:09]  How unusual is this?
[00:19:11]  Well, the Israelis point to Iran's support for Hamas and other proxies in the region who are dedicated to Israel's destruction.
[00:19:21]  As, In their words, Iran is the head of the snake, and that it is their firm belief that if you bring down the regime in Iran, in addition to reducing the missile threat and nuclear threat, Israel's security would be assured.
[00:19:39]  And that is why the Israelis are waging this campaign against the Iranian regime.
[00:19:45]  From their perspective, the Iranians started this going back to October 7th.
[00:19:50]  The United States in full partnership with Israel.
[00:19:53]  This is something that the United States and Israel have cooperated and coordinated over many years.
[00:19:58]  But we've never seen the level of coordination and cooperation U.S. forces launching from Israeli military bases, the same places where Israeli airplanes are launching in their strikes on Iran.
[00:20:13]  This is something very, very different, and it would suggest a level of planning that has been going on for many months, even as there have been negotiations between Iran and the United States.
[00:20:24]  Julius is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence.
[00:20:28]  Good morning, Julius.
[00:20:31]  Yes, I would object to the notion that Israel has just stopped a conflict in Palestine.
[00:20:37]  That farce of a peace thing that Trump has talked about is just a fabrication.
[00:20:43]  There are still bombs dropping, women and children being murdered with our tax dollars.
[00:20:48]  As far as us learning lessons from the Iraq war, hogwash.
[00:20:54]  Endless war is profitable.
[00:20:55]  The more ineffective the war, the more profitable.
[00:20:58]  It goes on longer.
[00:21:00]  These are just profit centers for the Epstein class.
[00:21:03]  War equals profits.
[00:21:06]  These think tanks that come on here are basically Epstein-class mouthpieces.
[00:21:11]  They lie, especially when it comes to war.
[00:21:14]  They tell one side.
[00:21:15]  They tell partial truths.
[00:21:16]  I think Mr. Cook has lied about something in particular, Julius?
[00:21:20]  Excuse me.
[00:21:20]  I am not finished, please.
[00:21:22]  And please.
[00:21:23]  All right.
[00:21:24]  I have a very limited.
[00:21:26]  All right.
[00:21:26]  Let's go on to Tom in Hyde Park, New York, on our line for Republicans.
[00:21:31]  Good morning, Tom.
[00:21:32]  Boy, that's a hard act to follow.
[00:21:34]  Good morning.
[00:21:36]  I had a question regarding the larger geopolitical ramifications of the attack.
[00:21:42]  I think for the past few years, the Trump administration is trying to restore the deterrence that the U.S. projects in the world.
[00:21:54]  In other words, threats that are made or military action can follow.
[00:22:02]  We saw our deterrent capacity decline under the Biden administration.
[00:22:08]  So I'm wondering what the guest thinks Russia and China are, or what kind of assessments they're making in regards to the current situation in Iran.
[00:22:17]  Thank you.
[00:22:19]  Well, thanks for the question.
[00:22:20]  And let me just go back to the previous caller because there's something that I just cannot let go there.
[00:22:27]  To smear my colleagues and I who work in think tanks as the Epstein class is deeply and profoundly offensive.
[00:22:39]  These are all very good people, trained academics, people who have devoted their lives to service in the U.S. government and advancing knowledge.
[00:22:49]  The idea that we are somehow part of some cabal of a certain class that is seeking to protect Jeffrey Epstein and those around him is absurd in the extreme.
[00:23:00]  Now, on to this caller's question.
[00:23:02]  One of the reasons why I believe that President Trump has decided to undertake this military action is because if you go back to January 13th, he said that help would be on the way and he warned the Iranian leadership that if they killed large numbers of Iranians, that there would be a price to pay.
[00:23:28]  I think that his advisors within the White House, including Vice President JD Vance, had said that now that you have laid down a red line, you have to follow through.
[00:23:39]  Otherwise, you'll end up like President Obama, who laid down a red line about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, that the Syrian regime should not.
[00:23:47]  They did, and the president backed away, and that that would erode America's deterrence capacity.
[00:23:54]  And I think that was an argument that was made to President Trump.
[00:23:57]  JD Vance, the vice president, who is known not to be an advocate of foreign adventures or regime change, made this case.
[00:24:06]  It is in part one of the reasons why the president decided to order up these military strikes.
[00:24:12]  What effect does it have on Russia and China?
[00:24:16]  Well, the Russians are quite weak.
[00:24:18]  They've been unable to achieve their objectives in Ukraine.
[00:24:22]  They are hardly the peer competitor that we make them out to be, but for the fact that they have a large arsenal of nuclear weapons.
[00:24:31]  The Chinese who have refloated the Iranian economy and have developed a closer relationship with the Iranians over the years have to be watching what is going on in the Middle East right now and recognizing that their strategic position there has just suffered a blow.
[00:24:52]  That is different from what their ultimate objective is, which is to dominate East Asia.
[00:24:58]  And they may in fact be thinking, well, the United States could get pinned down in the Middle East once again, providing the Chinese for more room for maneuver in East Asia.
[00:25:10]  But for now, the United States is setting back China's relationship with the Iranians.
[00:25:18]  We have another question via text from Adam, a Republican in Maryland.
[00:25:23]  Anyone surprised by these events, even while negotiations were ongoing, really hasn't been paying attention.
[00:25:29]  While it may also distract from other issues, this is about someone obsessed with legacy and being seen as strong rather than stupid.
[00:25:39]  Expect more of this.
[00:25:41]  Look, I'm not going to get into the psychology of the president.
[00:25:44]  There's lots of speculation about what he thinks and what he doesn't think.
[00:25:49]  But this is what I will say.
[00:25:51]  I think over the course of the last 10 years or more, the president has been saying that he goes by his gut.
[00:25:59]  Any effort to establish some sort of intellectual framework or worldview for the president is, I think, a fool's errand.
[00:26:07]  It is his gut that tells him what to do.
[00:26:10]  He trusts his gut the most.
[00:26:12]  And that's why we do tend to see zigs and zags in American foreign policy.
[00:26:18]  We're in part at this place with Iran because the president's gut told him on January 13th to warn the Iranians not to kill large numbers of protesters.
[00:26:29]  Mike is in Boynton Beach, Florida on our line for Democrats.
[00:26:33]  Good morning, Mike.
[00:26:35]  Good morning.
[00:26:36]  Good morning, Stephen.
[00:26:37]  Good morning.
[00:26:37]  I have a simple question for you.
[00:26:40]  Maybe not a simple question, but a short one.
[00:26:42]  What is the risk of disruption to global energy supplies based on what's happening right now?
[00:26:50]  I think it's a really terrific question.
[00:26:52]  And the Iranians have announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the strategic waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean.
[00:27:03]  That for many, many years has been a red line for the United States, that any closure of the Strait of Hormuz would result in the massive use of American force.
[00:27:16]  It turns out that many ships that were headed towards the Strait stopped at the beginning of hostilities between the United States and Iran.
[00:27:26]  There is one tanker we know of that has been attacked, but right now there's very little traffic.
[00:27:33]  But if the Iranians really did close the strait or attempt to close the strait, it would be met with a massive amount of American force.
[00:27:41]  I will say this, however, on the fears of the war, on the psychology of the markets, we're likely to see a spike in gas prices.
[00:27:50]  I don't think that there's enough slack in the global oil market right now to tamp down on the psychology coming as a result of this conflict in the Middle East and what it might do to the markets starting on Monday morning.

=== Michael On Gas Prices (05:00) ===

[00:28:07]  But at the same time, a lot of people expected that kind of reaction when the U.S. got involved in Venezuela, and we didn't quite see the markets react in the way many people expected.
[00:28:16]  Yeah, and that is certainly a possibility here.
[00:28:21]  I think it's because of the kind of swift nature of the way in which the Venezuela operation was undertaken, that there was a government in place.
[00:28:30]  It was not a days-long, perhaps weeks-long military operation that threatened a strategic waterway through which large amounts of the global oil supply passed.
[00:28:41]  20% of global oil supplies passed through the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea there.
[00:28:48]  There could be very significant effects on the global oil market.
[00:28:53]  Michael is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on our line for independence.
[00:28:56]  Good morning, Michael.
[00:29:00]  Good morning.
[00:29:01]  I wanted to make the comment that I believe that the timing of this attack suggests that this is just a distraction from the Epstein testimony from Bill Clinton on Friday.
[00:29:20]  I guess Trump's best friend, Bill Clinton, the serial rapist.
[00:29:28]  And I think that it also is a distraction from Saudi princes' involvement as well.
[00:29:36]  I'd like the guests' thoughts on that.
[00:29:40]  Well, I think there's been a lot of people who have speculated about this question, this wag the dog or wag the tail, whatever it is, that the president is seeking to distract the country from political problems.
[00:29:52]  I don't have any information about that or any evidence that that is in fact the case.
[00:29:57]  The United States and the Trump administration have been focused on Iran almost from the beginning when the president came into office.
[00:30:05]  At first, the effort was to negotiate a deal.
[00:30:09]  From the perspective of the White House, the Iranians weren't willing to negotiate in good faith, and that's why you had Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025.
[00:30:19]  And then once again, I think the President laid out his case for Iran and why now.
[00:30:25]  There are significant questions as to whether Iran poses a direct threat to the United States.
[00:30:33]  Whether the President is distracting from the Epstein testimony of a previous president or his own involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, which we know was robust for a bunch of years, I don't know and I don't care to comment on.
[00:30:51]  Michael is in Virginia on our line for Republicans.
[00:30:54]  Good morning, Michael.
[00:30:55]  Hi, good morning.
[00:30:57]  I'd like to ask the guests, I heard prior to the attack that the Iranian government had relocated a lot of their money and like high-value resources and valuable things out of the country.
[00:31:18]  So does the guests know anything about this, like money moved out of Iran and assets moved out of Iran prior to the attack by the Ayatollah's regime?
[00:31:32]  Well, it stands to reason ahead of this conflict, which everybody understood was a possibility that the regime leadership would engage in moving resources and money around.
[00:31:45]  The Iranians have become adept at illicit finance, given how many sanctions have been applied on the country and individuals within the country.
[00:31:53]  And there are clearly groups around the world who are willing to help them to do that.
[00:32:00]  They would be, it strikes me, it would be foolish of them not to have done so.
[00:32:07]  But right now, the real focus has been on how they have moved their military assets around and how they have tried to hide some of the work they have done in reconstituting their nuclear program by burying it even deeper underground and moving missile launchers and ballistic missiles into mountains where it's much harder for the United States and Israeli Air Forces to get at them.
[00:32:31]  Another question we received via text from Adam a Republican in Maryland.
[00:32:37]  Really, we should be asking why both why and how key figures in our government were in Mar-a-Lago or on vacation or otherwise out of the office at the time these attacks began.
[00:32:49]  What does it say about our own process?
[00:32:52]  Yeah, there really isn't a foreign policy process and national security process in the United States any longer.
[00:32:59]  There used to be an elaborate process in which all the different relevant government agencies would come together and discuss a potential policy.

=== Chain Command Decision (00:31) ===

[00:33:08]  It would then go up the chain of command until it went to the president for a decision.
[00:33:14]  The president runs the United States in a very different way in which the bureaucracy is catching up to his policies.
[00:33:20]  And as I said in response to a previous caller, he relies mostly on his gut as well as a small coterie of advisors that include his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, who is an envoy to many, many different things, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.