June 13, 2025 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:22:28
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| Transcription by CastingWords Good evening. | |
| It's Friday, June 13th. | |
| Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube. | |
| Today's most important news is obvious. | |
| Israel last night launched a major military assault on Iran, targeting residential buildings in Tehran, where military commanders and nuclear physicists live with their families, as well as bombing multiple nuclear facilities throughout the country. | |
| Triumphalist rhetoric flooded American-Israeli discourse almost immediately. | |
| Until just a little bit ago, when a barrage of Iran's ballistic and hypersonic missiles began hitting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other major population centers. | |
| Escalation seems virtually inevitable at this point. | |
| The question of the level of escalation, always the most dangerous question, when a new war has started is most certainly yet to be determined. | |
| Then there's a question of the role of the United States and President Trump in all of this. | |
| News reports from both the U.S. and Israeli media suggest this morning that Trump was working hand-in-hand with the Israelis to pretend that he was still optimistic about a diplomatic resolution with Tehran, but did so only as a ruse to convince the Iranians that Trump intended to restrain Israel and thus lure Iran into a false sense of security when, | |
| in fact, Trump was not only greenlighting the attack, President Trump's own statements today proudly boasting of the success of the attack, along with his own concrete actions such as ordering U.S. military assets into position to yet again defend Israel, | |
| Strongly bolster those reports and clearly indicate a direct U.S. involvement in this war between Israel and Iran, a U.S. involvement that already exists and will almost certainly continue to grow over the next few days and perhaps few weeks and even months. | |
| We'll examine all the latest developments as well as speak to the American Iranian professor, Mohamed Morandi, who is in Tehran, obviously heard and witnessed a lot of what happened in Tehran, but also has some unique analysis from his role as an American Iranian scholar of foreign policy. | |
| We will then speak with two scholars from the Cato Institute. | |
| One of the very few think tanks in the United States has long counseled restraint and non-interventionism in U.S. foreign policy. | |
| Justin Logan and John Hoffman are both scholars with Cato. | |
| They have followed the Iran-Israel-U.S. | |
| dynamic for quite some time and they'll speak to us about the role of the United States and the options and dangers Trump faces as he navigates U.S. involvement. | |
| Music. | |
| you Thank you. | |
| We devoted our entire show last night to the question of whether it really seemed likely or possible that there would be an imminent attack by Israel on Iran, and if so, what the role of the United States would be, the reaction of Donald Trump would be, in light of Trump's continuous insistence, including as of yesterday, that he did not want the Israelis to strike Iran because doing so would impede his efforts. | |
| to secure a deal diplomatically with Iran to avert the need for a conflict. | |
| And we had Kurt Milzon, who's the executive director of the American Conservative magazine, where he expressed the view that I thought was quite reasonable, though I certainly had doubts, and I think he did as well, that it seemed, at least for the moment, that an Israeli strike on Israel Was unlikely given Trump's genuinely stated desire to avert any kind of war and instead to resolve the conflict diplomatically. | |
| Right as we were concluding, maybe literally within two to three minutes of concluding the show, there was an attack by Israel on Iran that was launched. | |
| We learned about it only immediately after the show, but it was a perfect way to sort almost no attack so far in central Iran and actually zero in. | |
| The East, but it also has targeted various commanders in the chain of command in the Iranian military. | |
| And by reports from the Iranian military, as well as the Israeli military, many of those have succeeded in killing many of the key leaders in the Iranian military chain of command that would obviously impede an immediate response by Iran, though political leadership in Iran. | |
| Including its leader Ayatollah Khomeini as well as the elected leaders of Iran have not been killed nor according to Israel targeted nor will they be. | |
| At least that's what we're hearing as of now but the attacks are ongoing and unfolding and certainly the Israelis and the Americans created a perception that a strike was unlikely given Trump's repeatedly stated desire. | |
| To let the talks progress diplomatically, and yet those attacks nonetheless occurred. | |
| And as we now know, Trump and of course the administration knew in advance that the Israelis were going to attack. | |
| Not only didn't they object, but Trump is now boasting of the success of this attack and the role that he played in it. | |
| It's very clear that even though the Americans didn't directly participate in the sense that American planes were sent or that American bombs were dropped, as we talked about last night, would likely not be the case, the Americans were heavily involved in the sense of coordinating with the Israelis over those attacks, knowing that they were coming, giving the green light. | |
| And now already the Trump administration is deploying military assets in the region with the attempt to protect Israel from any possible retaliation from Iran. | |
| A new Middle East war. | |
| A very dangerous Middle East war in which the United States, under President Trump, has now become involved. | |
| Here from the New York Times this morning, describing the basic facts as we know them. | |
| Iran reels from Israeli strikes on nuclear sites and top officials. | |
| "Iran was reeling on Friday from waves of Israeli strikes that decapitated its military chain of command and targeted a key nuclear facility as President Trump urged Tehran to strike a deal curbing its nuclear program or risk'even more brutal attacks.'Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the assault as a last resort to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, which Israel views as an existential threat." | |
| Mr. Trump, whose administration has been holding nuclear talks with Iranian officials, said on Friday that Tehran, quote, might make a deal or must make a deal before there is nothing left. | |
| That's what Trump said this morning. | |
| Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left. | |
| For years, Israel fought Iran's proxy forces across the Middle East, and more recently, it has exchanged volleys of strikes with Iran. | |
| Yet Friday's strikes, for the first time, it successfully hit Iran's nuclear facilities, including Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, which an Israeli military spokesman had said suffered, quote, significant damage. | |
| Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Israel, quote, should anticipate a harsh punishment. | |
| Later on Friday, the Israeli military announced that Iranian forces had fired about 100 drones at Israel, as Mr. Netanyahu viewed the fighting with the last quote, as many days as it takes. | |
| The Israeli military said it was working to intercept the Iranian attack, and there were no immediate indications of significant damage caused by the drones. | |
| Now, the news of the Israeli strike last night brought a lot of speculation about the role that Donald Trump had played in this, if any, and a lot of people, including his most ardent offenders, were eager to exonerate him from the responsibility that he now clearly has for having encouraged or permitted or even helped initiate a new war in the Middle East, | |
| something that Trump repeatedly said he was so proud of in his first term that he was the first president in decades not to involve the U.S. in a new war. | |
| A lot of people are trying to suggest that this is some sort of embarrassment because Trump did say yesterday, publicly, "I don't want the Israelis attacking Iran now because I want these diplomatic talks to continue, including one that had been scheduled and confirmed on Sunday in Oman, which is the sixth round of talks." | |
| So Trump publicly postured as if he would oppose any sort of Israeli strike, but it is utterly inconceivable Utterly inconceivable that Israel would have struck Iran without getting the green light from the Trump administration for so many reasons, | |
| including the fact that had they done so, Trump would have a million different ways to punish them using all the leverage that the United States has in terms of what it provides to Israel monetarily and militarily and politically and diplomatically. | |
| But also, the Israelis need and are already relying upon The U.S. military to protect itself from any possible Iranian retaliation. | |
| And the idea that they would have done this without Trump's green light seemed immediately and intuitively absurd that they might do so. | |
| And since then, Trump has issued a series of statements that strongly suggest that he not only knew about it, but— Approve of the strikes and wants to even take credit for what's being depicted as the success of the first wave of strikes. | |
| Here he is early this morning on True Social, quote, "I gave Iran a chance after chance to make a deal. | |
| I told them in the strongest of words to, quote, 'Just do it.' But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done." I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far, and that Israel has a lot of it, and much more to come, and they know how to use it. | |
| Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen. | |
| They are all dead now. | |
| And it will only get worse. | |
| There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. | |
| Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. | |
| No more death, no more destruction. | |
| Just do it because it is too late. | |
| God bless you all. | |
| all. | |
| Not really sure what that even means at this point. | |
| I mean, the Israelis certainly haven't taken out the Iranian nuclear facilities and decapitating Several of the commanders in the chain of command are even killing some of their nuclear physicists, as they did, apparently, while in their apartment buildings in Tehran, killing other people as well, can, I suppose, set back the Iranian program a little bit. | |
| The Israelis have killed many nuclear physicists in Iran over the years, have damaged various facilities. | |
| But ultimately, the know-how of how to make nuclear weapons is something you can't— Extinguish or eradicate, and it would take infinitely greater military force of the kind the Israelis really don't possess, like B-2 bombers dropping massive bombs to destroy underground facilities to really eliminate, physically eliminate the Iranian nuclear program. | |
| President Trump seems to be saying that that's exactly what the U.S. in conjunction with Israel will do, unless the Iranians immediately submit to some sort of deal that really wouldn't be a deal, but I guess it would be seen as a sort of term of surrender. | |
| Here was Trump on Twitter. | |
| Actually, this was Trump on Twitter back in 2012 when there was rising tension between the U.S. under President Obama and Iran. | |
| And here's what President Trump had to say in being highly critical of Obama and the likelihood of what would happen as a result of his deficiencies. | |
| Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. | |
| He's weak and he's ineffective. | |
| All right, so what actually happened there was that Obama did reach a deal with Iran that averted the need for a military conflict by all accounts, including the U.S. intelligence community's own assessments. | |
| Iran was complying with the deal. | |
| It was very difficult for them not to comply with that deal. | |
| There was surveillance everywhere. | |
| There were inspectors all over the place. | |
| And they were not enriching uranium past the point where the Iran deal permitted them to enrich. | |
| That deal was in place, had averted... | |
| He withdrew the United States from that deal, and that's why there's been no deal ever since. | |
| Here was CNN's Dana Bash speaking this morning about a conversation she had with Trump about all of this. | |
| She said, quote, I just spoke with President Donald Trump on the phone. | |
| The president told me that the U.S. supports Israel, of course, as always, the U.S. supports Israel, and called the strikes on Iran last night, quote, a very successful attack. | |
| Quote, we of course support Israel, obviously, and supported it like nobody has ever supported it, Trump said during our brief phone call. | |
| "I don't know if you know, but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61," he added. | |
| They should now come to the table to make a deal before it's too late. | |
| It will be too late for them. | |
| You know, the people I was dealing with are dead. | |
| The hardliners, the president said, he would not specify which people he was referring to. | |
| Asked if this was a result of Israel's attack last night. | |
| Trump responded sarcastically, quote, they didn't die of the flu, they didn't die of COVID, meaning of course they died because the Israelis killed them. | |
| And Trump is not just... | |
| He's even taking credit by saying, "I gave them a 60-day window to get a deal done. | |
| They didn't get a deal done. | |
| So on the 61st day, look what we did to them." And it's another war where the United States is working in conjunction with Israel, another war that the United States started against a major enemy of Now, there's a lot of celebration taking place, a lot of kind of triumphant rhetoric suggesting that, oh, Iran has already lost, the Israelis in the United States have already won. | |
| It reminds me a lot of the kind of rhetoric we heard in the first 10 days of the invasion of Iraq when the regime fell very quickly. | |
| Saddam Hussein and his top aides and family went into hiding. | |
| The regime kind of just disintegrated. | |
| And we were told we won the war. | |
| In 10 days, all the people who supported the war mocked those who were concerned about a protracted conflict, that they were proven wrong, that the war had already been won. | |
| And that's the kind of thing that this rhetoric is reminding me of a great deal. | |
| We'll see what the Iranian response is, what kind of response they're able to amount to. | |
| It's possible maybe they won't be able to amount much of a response. | |
| But it's certainly possible that they will, that this is not just a three- or four-day bombing exercise, but something that instead will turn into an escalatory conflict that will subsume the Israelis and the United States military into a protracted conflict, the results of which are practically impossible to predict. | |
| That's what has always made this war so dangerous. | |
| The Trump administration is already depressed. | |
| Deploying U.S. military assets in the Middle East in response to the Israeli strikes and the possible Iranian retaliations. | |
| A lot of people are saying, look, I don't care about this war. | |
| I see a lot of Trump followers, Trump supporters saying, I don't care about this war as long as we're not involved. | |
| The United States is involved, as always, with Israel. | |
| Trump has made that very clear. | |
| Aside from the fact that we pay for their wars, that we furnish the weapons for their wars, Trump is saying On top of that rhetoric, Trump is already ordering U.S. military forces deployed to the region to protect Israel from possible ballistic missile retaliation or other kinds of retaliation from Iran here from The Hill. | |
| And there's actually an AP report that The Hill just republished this morning. | |
| The United States is shifting military resources, including ships. | |
| In the Middle East, in response to Israel's strikes on Iran and a possible retaliatory attack by Tehran, two U.S. officials said Friday, the Navy has directed the destroyer, the USS Thomas Hudner, which is capable of defending against ballistic missiles, to begin sailing from the western Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern Mediterranean and has directed a second destroyer to begin moving forward so it can be available if requested by the White House. | |
| President Donald Trump is meeting with his National Security Council principals Friday. | |
| To discuss the situation, the U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public. | |
| So already we're putting our own service members, our own military assets in harm's way into the middle of this conflict because, again, obviously this was a joint U.S.-Israeli attack, even if done to give the appearance of the plausible deniability that the Americans didn't directly participate in the military attack itself. | |
| That's what the Israelis are all saying as well from the Jerusalem Post earlier today. | |
| An Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post, "We presented the American administration with evidence of Iran's breakthrough toward a nuclear bomb. | |
| There was full and complete coordination with the Americans." Israeli officials were initially concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump The fear that this remark could expose the attack operation ultimately led to Trump's late-night tweet at midnight, | |
| stating that, "The U.S. seeks a diplomatic solution." And we went over this quite a bit at the time, over the last two or three months. | |
| There was all this talk deliberately cultivated by the White House about how there was a rift between Israel and Trump on the one hand and Netanyahu, or rather the U.S. and Trump on the one hand and Israel and Netanyahu on the other, in anticipation of Trump's trip to the Persian Gulf dictatorships. | |
| There was all these claims that the US was doing this over Israel's objections, weren't including the Israelis, that Trump had stopped the bombing attack on Yemen over the Israelis' objections, constantly creating the idea that there was this sort of rift, that Trump was no longer willing to be impeded in making deals that he wanted to make simply because Netanyahu and the Israelis objected. | |
| There were also suggestions. | |
| That Netanyahu had wanted to attack Israel previously, but that Trump put a stop to it and Netanyahu was enraged. | |
| And at the time, there were some people, not many, but some people who I was citing but wasn't necessarily convinced by, I will admit, who were claiming that, no, of course there's no actual rift between Netanyahu and Trump. | |
| There's no real split at all between the U.S. and Israel that this is essentially theater to convince the Iranians That they don't have to worry about an attack for now because the US is constraining Israel. | |
| And every time Trump spoke optimistically about progress toward a diplomatic solution, so went this theory. | |
| That was designed to lure the Iranians into a false sense of security to believe that there was no attack imminent because the United States wouldn't permit the Israelis to attack while the US was still negotiating. | |
| And it does seem as though the people who were arguing that turned out To be vindicated because both the U.S. and the Israelis are now boasting of the fact that that was all theater, including this late-night tweet from Trump where he had earlier in the day suggested maybe the Israelis are going to attack. | |
| I hope they don't. | |
| And the Israelis were concerned that was signaling to Iran they were going to attack and that would eliminate the surprise. | |
| And that's why Trump went back last night and said, We're still on the diplomatic path to make the Iranians think that we were still trying to negotiate. | |
| In other words, it was all a ruse jointly orchestrated between the two countries. | |
| This is what Axios reported. | |
| And again, Axios has that former IDF soldier, Barak Ravid. | |
| And when I say former IDF soldier, I mean until 2023. | |
| He was in the reserves. | |
| He's an Israeli citizen, has basically served as the Israeli And Axios reported this today. | |
| The article says Israel's strike on Iran was eight months in the making, but then here's what it reports. | |
| "Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to impose an Israeli strike in public and didn't express opposition in private. | |
| We had a clear U.S. green light," one claimed. | |
| The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel's target list wouldn't be moved to new locations. | |
| Netanyahu's aides even briefed Israel reporters that Trump had tried to pull the brakes on an Israeli strike in a call on Monday, when in reality, the call dealt with coordination ahead of the attack, Israeli officials now say. | |
| The U.S. side has not confirmed any of that. | |
| In the hours before and after the strike, the Trump administration distanced itself From the Israeli operation in public statements and private messages to allies, Secretary of State Marco Rubio swiftly stated that Israel's attack was "unilateral" with no U.S. involvement. | |
| Hours later, though, Trump confirmed that he knew the attack was coming, but stressed the U.S. had no military involvement. | |
| Now, as I said, since then, there have been a lot of statements from Trump, as we just showed you, boastfully and proudly taking credit for the key role the U.S. played, warning that more is to come, either from the Israelis and /or the Americans. | |
| Unless the Iranians quickly agree to a deal, which, as we went over last night, has dramatically shifted from the American perspective. | |
| It began with a recognition, and Steve Whitcoff said this, others said this, that of course the Iranians need to be able to enrich at low enough levels to be able to have a nuclear energy program, but not so high that it can be used for a nuclear weapon. | |
| And over the last week or two, you heard Trump's rhetoric start changing, where he said Iran can't enrich at all. | |
| Which was the way that people like Netanyahu and Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham, who wanted a war in the first place, had to pretend they wanted a deal the way Trump did, tried to set this up, was, oh yeah, we want to deal with Iran as long as it means you dismantle their entire nuclear energy program and don't allow any enrichment. | |
| That was obviously an attempt to pretend to want an agreement while ensuring no agreement could ever be reached, where war was the only alternative. | |
| And it seemed as though Trump began absorbing that. | |
| Language and that view over the last 10 days and even tried to pretend that somehow it was the Iranians who had changed. | |
| Trump said something happened to Iran. | |
| They were on the road to a deal and now suddenly they're insisting on things we can't allow them, meaning enrichment. | |
| Even though low levels of enrichment was always the prerequisite to getting a deal because Iran will not give up its nuclear energy program. | |
| Here is an Israeli journalist, Amit Siegel, who's reporting pretty much the same thing, that all of this was a ruse between the U.S. and Israel. | |
| Citing an Israeli source, quote, Trump pretending that he was still on the diplomatic track that was designed to signal to Iran, don't worry, we're still engaged in diplomacy, so we're not going to let Israel attack you. | |
| When in reality, that was all an orchestrated plan to lure the Iranians into a false sense of security. | |
| Just to give you a sense for how, obviously, bipartisan support for Donald Trump will be, the Democrats only support Trump when he bombs people in the Middle East. | |
| Here's Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the longtime congresswoman from South Florida. | |
| She represents a very heavily Jewish district. | |
| I know this district. | |
| I grew up either in it or very close to it. | |
| She's a longtime vehement supporter of Israel. | |
| I'm sure this is something similar to what Chuck Schumer will say, other Democratic Party leaders. | |
| "I stand firmly behind Israel's right to defend itself. | |
| Iran has long funded terror groups who killed Americans and has moved to develop nuclear weapons to aim at Israel. | |
| If Israel strikes set back, Iran's nuclear program will all be safer. | |
| The White House must ensure the safety of U.S. civilians, diplomats, and military in the region, and the U.S. must support Israel's defense. | |
| We must always work closely with our allies to protect Americans. | |
| So, there you see Debbie Wasserman Schultz, long the head of the Democratic National Committee, echoing what I'm certain will be a large view with the Democratic Party if not the majority, refusing to criticize Trump for anything, in fact, urging him to make sure that he does everything possible to militarily use the U.S. military to protect this foreign country that they all love and to which they have demonstrated loyalty. | |
| Speaking of politicians with demonstrated loyalty or people with demonstrated loyalty to Israel, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas went on Ben Shapiro's program last night to talk about the strike by Israel, coordinated with the United States, on Iran. | |
| And here's what Ted Cruz had to say, very much echoing what the vast majority of sentiment within the Republican Party is already. | |
| Well, listen, there are two messages that are critical to be heard tonight. | |
| Number one, America stands unequivocally with Israel. | |
| Period. | |
| The end. | |
| That is critically important. | |
| Israel is acting to defend herself against the existential threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. | |
| But number two, and this is equally important. | |
| Look, we have a very large number of American servicemen and women in bases in the Middle East that are in harm's way. | |
| And I want to ask every one of your listeners, every one of your viewers, if you're a person of faith, pray for Israel tonight. | |
| Pray for Israel, pray for Jerusalem, and pray for our servicemen and women, the Americans in harm's way. | |
| And a message that I think is critically important, I want the Ayatollah to hear. | |
| If you attack American military bases, if you kill even a single American serviceman or woman, I'm absolutely confident that President Trump will respond with overwhelming force. | |
| So this is the mindset of a lot of people, certainly in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, which is we're going to put our soldiers in that region. | |
| We're going to insinuate themselves right into the middle of a conflict. | |
| We've worked with the Israelis to initiate this attack. | |
| Weapons they use came from the United States for that purpose. | |
| And if Iran kills so much as a single American soldier in retaliating against this attack on its country, then Who knows what this means, but obviously it's designed to insinuate that we could use nuclear weapons against Iran or we could just destroy all of it. | |
| This is consistent with President Trump's very extreme war-mongering rhetoric that Iran had better agree to a deal on American terms before there's nothing left in Iran, meaning all of Iran is destroyed. | |
| Now, we have documented many times, including last night, That for literally 40 years, literally 40 years, Israel, and especially Benjamin Netanyahu, have been warning the world that Iran is weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon. | |
| And that's the reason we have to go and have a war with Iran. | |
| And of course, for 40 years, none of that proved true. | |
| proved false, very similar to the warnings that Also, it all turned out to be proven false. | |
| We showed you 40 years last night of Israeli warnings that are identical to the ones we were subjected to over the last week, that somehow Israel convinced Trump that this time Iran really was days away or weeks away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. | |
| I'm certain the Israelis tried to convince Trump of that. | |
| I wouldn't be shocked if they actually succeeded in convincing Trump of that. | |
| Even though Trump's hand-picked director of national intelligence, who he put in that position to coordinate the intelligence and assess what the best intelligence is, namely Tulsi Gabbard, said in March, late March, as this Newsweek headline indicates, Tulsi Gabbard says Iran is not believed to be building a nuclear weapon. | |
| And this has been the assessment of US intelligence agencies for quite some time. | |
| "Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard stated that the intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapon program he suspended back in 2003." Such is the ease with which you can get a lot of Americans to cheer whatever new war you offer them, even after running on a platform, as Trump did, of no new wars, certainly no new wars in the Middle East, no wars for Israel. | |
| But you can have them watch 40 years of the same lie being told over and over, having it debunked, having it disproven, after watching the same thing happen in Iraq. | |
| And the minute the bombs start falling, There's this instinct to stand up and cheer for our country's war. | |
| We're so happy we started a new war because we had to do so because Iran was days or weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon. | |
| It's an extremely dangerous situation. | |
| It's a new war that I absolutely put on Donald Trump's ledger in terms of what his record is. | |
| I'm sure in his mind this is him running to be a peacekeeper by showing the Iranians, "Look what we did to you in the first couple days." A lot more is coming. | |
| You better sign a deal along the lines that we demand. | |
| But the Iranians have been extremely clear for many years that they will never give up enrichment, that it's their sovereign right to have a nuclear energy program. | |
| And you're about to hear from Professor Morandi in Tehran, who's been on our show before, that this was foundational to the entire Iranian revolution, is we don't want to be a country. | |
| Run by a puppet regime of Tel Aviv and Washington with the Shah of Iran. | |
| We want our own sovereignty. | |
| We want to make our own decisions about who we are as Iranians. | |
| And the idea of giving up a right that every other country has for nuclear energy has been something Iran has always said they would be unwilling to do no matter what. | |
| Now there's an attempt to suggest that Iran has been so decapitated, so devastated by this initial round of attacks that their ability to retaliate against the Israelis or other Key assets in the United States or oil assets in the region has been decimated. | |
| I guess we'll find out. | |
| Lots of people in Iran certainly don't believe that's true. | |
| They believe that retaliation against Israel and especially if the Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates participate in defending Israel like they did the first time. | |
| If that happens, then those countries can become targets of Iran as well. | |
| And these are tiny little oil dictatorships. | |
| And any attack on them, any involvement of those countries in a war, of the Persian Gulf, will skyrocket. | |
| Oil prices would likely cause an economic meltdown. | |
| There's a lot Iran can do. | |
| And I guess the Trump administration and supporters of Donald Trump, the ones who support him in this new war, believe that the Iranians will just stay quiet. | |
| They won't retaliate. | |
| They're too scared to. | |
| That has been a miscalculation that people have made many times throughout history. | |
| And only time will tell, probably very shortly, whether that, in fact, is the Iranian posture. | |
| But any time you start a new war like this, it's extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. | |
| And anyone who believes at this point that this is something that Yahoo did without Trump's approval or did it and humiliated Trump as though Trump didn't want this, but the Israelis did it anyway. | |
| Sorry, that is not even remotely plausible. | |
| And Trump's statements and all the reporting, let alone all the logical inferences that one would make about Israel's calculus, all making clear that the United States gave this the green light and Trump is very supportive of it and continues to be and continues to intend to support it, not just rhetorically and diplomatically, but military as well. | |
| That the United States already is moving assets into the region to potentially involve itself in this war and that the Americans will absolutely continue to do so should the Iranians retaliate in any way. | |
| So if you thought you were getting this MAGA agenda of mass deportations, Trump yesterday said no mass deportations. | |
| We're basically going to give amnesty to people working in farms and hotels and all these other places that are necessary for the economy and just get out the criminals. | |
| And if you thought you were getting some sort of anti-interventionist or anti-war posture, you already had the Trump administration greenlighting, the unraveling of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, the devastation of Gaza, which is ongoing, the resumption of President Biden's bombing campaign in Yemen that killed a lot of people but that ultimately achieved nothing, which is why Trump ended it, and now you have... | |
| There's all sorts of ways that this could escalate, and even if it doesn't, the instability already created is something that everybody ought to be deeply concerned about, to put that mildly. | |
| Thank you. | |
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| Professor Mohamed Mirandi is an Iranian-American academic and political analyst. | |
| He is based in Tehran, where he is located right at this very moment, and is the head of the National American Studies program at the University of Tehran, where he now teaches English literature and Orientalism. | |
| He has become one of the leading voices inside Iran. | |
| To give a perspective that is crucially different than the kind of echo chamber we hear from the Washington think tank community and he is generally regarded as a supporter of the country's general foreign policy orientation and political interests, which is why he brings a very valuable perspective, usually deliberately suppressed and unheard. | |
| In Western media, but we believe, as we've said before, that especially when war breaks out, it's more vital than ever to hear exactly from people inside those countries we're not supposed to hear from or we're supposed to consider our enemy. | |
| He has been on our show before. | |
| We've followed his work for a long time, and we are very happy to have you be able to hear what he has to say. | |
| Professor Morandi, thank you so much for taking the time to Join us tonight. | |
| I know that you have a lot going on. | |
| So we had you on our show, I think, about a month ago to talk about the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran, which has now happened. | |
| Before we get to the kind of geopolitical implications and the like, you are in Tehran. | |
| What is it that you can tell us that you heard, that you saw, what is happening in that city over the past, say, 12 to 16 hours since this attack began? | |
| Well, the attack began early in the morning. | |
| And people were asleep for the most part. | |
| I, by chance, happened to be awake. | |
| And there were sounds of very loud explosions. | |
| And it turned out that some of these explosions were in our neighborhood or close to our neighborhood. | |
| And they targeted apartment blocks, apartment buildings. | |
| They destroyed one apartment building with 10 units. | |
| And children were thrown out of the windows and onto the streets. | |
| Women were murdered. | |
| Neighbors of targets were killed. | |
| Family members of targets were killed. | |
| It was stunning. | |
| And people here are outraged. | |
| And then, of course, the fighting. | |
| People heard the news about the fighting and about the airstrikes being carried out across the country. | |
| We are where we are right now. | |
| Commanders were murdered in the eyes of Iranians or marchers, and they've been quickly replaced and they're regrouping. | |
| We expect that the Iranian retaliation would begin possibly in the coming hours. | |
| I want to get to that retaliation in a second, but before I do, one of the theories that I've heard for the last several weeks is that this whole The notion that there's some kind of rift between Netanyahu and Trump is theater, | |
| that it's artificial, that it's not real, that the purpose of that, as well as Trump's optimistic claims about the progress of negotiations with Iran, was all kind of a ruse to lure the Iranians into a false sense of security, not really being on high alert. | |
| Is that something you believe? | |
| And if so, either way, did it work? | |
| Was Iran taken a little bit by surprise by this attack? | |
| I don't think many people believe that there's any divide between the United States and the Israeli regime. | |
| They're close partners. | |
| Regardless of what Trump personally thinks about Netanyahu, that's something different. | |
| Open to speculation, but I don't think that will have any real impact on, and I don't think people here think there's any real impact on the relationship, the strategic relationship between the regime and Tel Aviv and Washington. | |
| As far as I know, the Iranians were prepared for an attack. | |
| They were waiting for attack. | |
| What I think, and I'm speculating to be very clear, I think they did not expect Israelis to attack senior officials. | |
| Whether military or civilian. | |
| I think the expectation was that they would strike military targets or possibly the nuclear program, but not go so far. | |
| And that is why I think that we had these assassinations succeed. | |
| But we have to remember that the Iranians are very much alone. | |
| This is the NATO behind Israel. | |
| Countries across the nation, they're with NATO, they're either member states or they're allied to the United States. | |
| So right now, the U.S. bases in Turkey, in the Emirates, in Qatar, in Bahrain, they're all being used to help the Israeli regime, whether for defensive purposes or offensive purposes. | |
| And their space to Jordan and Syria is open to the regime and the Americans. | |
| So it's very difficult for Iran to fight such a battle. | |
| But Glenn, the fact is that this is all about Palestine. | |
| It has nothing to do really with the Iranian nuclear program. | |
| If Iran had a policy towards the Palestinian issue like Turkey or the Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the United States would have nothing to do with Iran. | |
| But the problem is that Iran refuses. | |
| To accept an ethno-supremacist regime in Palestine, and Iran continues to support the Palestinian cause. | |
| And that is something that is completely unacceptable in the United States and, of course, Iran's independent foreign policy in general, which came about after the revolution, where decisions in Iran are made in Tehran. | |
| There are other reasons, too—the revolution itself and the— The role that the United States played with the Shah and the embassy takeover and all that. | |
| But I think it's clear that the divide between Iran and the United States has to do more about the Israeli regime and what it's doing to the Palestinian people than anything else. | |
| And therefore, if there is a nuclear agreement or not, I don't think that the United States is going to ever accept Iran. | |
| And also under Trump, Under Obama, the nuclear deal was constantly violated. | |
| Trump tore up the deal. | |
| The Europeans ignored the deal. | |
| And it was only Iran that was abiding by its commitments. | |
| And now, with Trump in power, as he's constantly flip-flopping and changing his position, even Wyckoff on one day was talking about accepting uranium enrichment at lower percentages, and then he shifted his position completely. | |
| With all these shifts taking place in U.S. In the White House, whether with regards to the ceasefire in Gaza or the trade war or Iran or Ukraine or elsewhere, it's really impossible to have a deal with the United States. | |
| And even if we do have a deal, who's to say that Trump will wake up the next morning and post something on Truth Social saying, "I don't accept this deal. | |
| The Iranians did the deal or they cheated me or they did this." And then the Europeans would say, "Yes, whatever you say, we follow the leader." We already see that The Israelis, after they attacked Iran, the Europeans are condemning Iran. | |
| The French are saying Israel has the right to defend itself. | |
| The Germans are accusing Iran of attacking the Israeli regime, whereas Iran hasn't done anything yet. | |
| Oh, those drones that they talk about, there were no drones fired from Iran. | |
| But in any case, the regime initiated this. | |
| The Israeli regime is attacking Iranian nuclear installations. | |
| It's killing civilians. | |
| But Iran is to blame. | |
| So how can Iran have an agreement with such countries, such countries? | |
| All right, so that'll make sense. | |
| So then the question then becomes, where are we in terms of this conflict? | |
| There's a lot of triumphalist rhetoric, of course, coming from Israel and the United States, like there was the last time that Israel struck. | |
| We took out so many of their air defenses, but also their ballistic missile capabilities. | |
| If you look at where the strikes actually happened, most of them seem to have happened in the west of Iran, very few in central Iran and almost none in the east. | |
| So the question that I have is, you know, the Iranians are vowing a serious retaliatory response commensurate with the attack itself. | |
| What is Iran's real capability, do you think, at this point to strike Israel in a meaningful way? | |
| Well, after all, The Israelis have the support of the Collective West, and it launched a war against Iran, and they have killed people, and they've damaged Iranian assets. | |
| A lot of it, though, is misinformation and disinformation. | |
| And some of the images that people are seeing online are fake, or they're from somewhere else, or they're AI, but some of them are real. | |
| That's what happens in war, especially when one side suddenly ends war and aggression. | |
| Iran does have a very powerful deterrence, and that is its missile program and its drone program. | |
| But, of course, the Israelis went and, with the help of the United States, targeted senior commanders. | |
| So they put in place new commanders. | |
| And they're regrouping. | |
| And I think that ultimately we will see a significant Iranian response. | |
| I cannot predict the future, but I am confident that the Israeli regime will not come out on top. | |
| They control the internet. | |
| They control the propaganda. | |
| But we have to remember what happened in Yemen. | |
| The White House said and the Pentagon or the Secretary of Defense said that they're going to defeat these The Houthis, as they like to call them, or Ansarallah and the Yemeni armed forces. | |
| And after a month, we saw they failed. | |
| And it was the United States that effectively capitulated. | |
| So I think that Iran was hard. | |
| That doesn't mean the war will end, because Netanyahu needs a war. | |
| But this is going to get messy. | |
| But the big question is, do the Americans get involved? | |
| If the Americans start striking Iran, Then, Glenn, I think we're going to have a global economic catastrophe. | |
| Because those tiny Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, they host American bases. | |
| Iranians will see them as complicit. | |
| And if Iran strikes them for being complicit, they'll be swept away in days, if not hours. | |
| And that would lead to a global economic meltdown, because the price of oil and gas will go through the roof. | |
| So hopefully Trump will be sane enough to stay out of this. | |
| Although he is involved, he's deeply involved, but not to go further. | |
| I don't know how Iran is going to treat the United States for what it is doing now, or how it is going to treat other entities that are completely... | |
| And of course, as you mentioned, because you're in Tehran, there's a slow down internet. | |
| But so far, we've heard pretty much everything until the very last few words there, which I think everyone understood the answer. | |
| Let me ask you this. | |
| So I think what Trump's posture is now, certainly what he's trying to convey is, look, I gave you 60 days. | |
| We didn't get a deal done. | |
| Today's the 61st day, you got a little taste of what So now what you ought to do is sign a deal. | |
| And I think that's something we talked about last night, even before this attack happened, which is the whole time the position of Whitcoff and the Trump administration was, yeah, of course Iran needs to have the right to have low levels of enrichment for a nuclear energy program. | |
| And at some point the rhetoric changed for Trump of saying, They can't have enrichment at all and sort of said, "Oh, the Iranians, something happened to them, they changed, something got into them," as though that was something Iran had originally agreed to do or something. | |
| I'm not sure Trump even understood the enrichment issue. | |
| Or if he did, he got convinced that Iran shouldn't have any enrichment, it was never going to be a deal. | |
| Is there any possibility that the Iranians would now sit down with the United States in the hopes of getting a deal to avert further strikes? | |
| I don't think there is any chance whatsoever that Iran will agree to halt nuclear enrichment, because it is a sovereign right of the Iranians. | |
| It is part of Iran's sovereignty, and the Iranians are not going to give that up. | |
| Iran's revolution was very much about sovereignty and dependence and making decisions in Tehran, alongside supporting the Palestinian cause. | |
| The cause of liberation in apartheid South Africa. | |
| But there isn't a chance in the world that Iran will accept such a thing. | |
| Iran is willing to accept the International Atomic Energy Agency being intrusive. | |
| We already did that. | |
| We had it for many years. | |
| But Trump tore up that deal. | |
| But Iran is not going to give up its sovereign right, especially since By doing so, Iran would be held hostage. | |
| If tomorrow the United States prevents Iran from importing nuclear fuel, then Iran's nuclear reactors will all have to be shut down. | |
| These are huge investments. | |
| And we know how the United States uses to strangle Iran. | |
| So I don't see any chance whatsoever under any circumstances that Iran will accept a deal where it is denied its Right, as an independent and sovereign country. | |
| All right, last question. | |
| Obviously, everybody knows it's not exactly a secret that there are major factions in Israel and the United States that don't want just attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities but want regime change in Iran, the restoration of… What they call the Iranian monarchy, which was this very brutal and savage dictatorship that was a puppet regime of Tel Aviv and Washington for decades, which the Iranian revolution overthrew. | |
| They want to reinstall that. | |
| And there's some people who believe that if Iran doesn't show a real deterrence at this they have proxy forces ready. | |
| Is that something you believe is a real possibility, especially in the event that Iran isn't able to mount a real response? | |
| I think Iran will mount a very real response. | |
| Iran has created its own military industry. | |
| It's developed itself in high-tech fields. | |
| It's in the region, the most technologically developed country, using its own indigenous technology. | |
| I think that they will be able to hit back very hard. | |
| Contrary to what the Americans like to believe, the Iranian people have been more united than before by this aggression because they murdered innocent people and because the West is trying to deny Iran its sovereign right. | |
| What they are in fact doing is making the Iranian people more demanding of the government to retaliate. | |
| And so right now the expectation In Iran is that the armed forces hit the Israelis very hard. | |
| The United States and the West, their so-called Iran experts, are always miscalculating. | |
| They hire like-minded people or these Iranians who say what needs to be said in their think tanks, or they hire them for media and they repeat the narratives of the West. | |
| And then these people get money, and then they give money to those politicians to participate in their programs. | |
| And everyone is saying the same thing, and it's well-funded, and people have a good standard of living as a result. | |
| But it creates a very misleading picture of Iran in the United States, just as it does about Russia and other countries. | |
| Push a little bit harder, Iran will collapse. | |
| They've been saying that for decades. | |
| The narrative hasn't changed. | |
| But what I think is going to happen is it's going to create reality, in fact, towards the West, especially after the Iranians have witnessed 20 months of genocide in Gaza. | |
| Well, that's the reason I think it's more important than ever, especially once there's an actual war to hear from people inside the country we're supposed to hate, because otherwise we do fall victim to that very deliberately and lucratively constructed information bubble that's designed to create disinformation. | |
| That's why I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be able to speak with you. | |
| We'd love to have you back on as things develop, and please stay safe as well. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Always an honor. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Appreciate it. | |
| The Cato Institute, unlike pretty much every other think tank in Washington, or certainly almost every other, has long been a voice for restraint and non-interventionism when it comes to American foreign policy and American wars. | |
| I remember quite vividly, all the way back in 2002, 2003, that many of the most And we are very happy to have two of the people who have most closely followed U.S. foreign policy when it comes to Israel | |
| and Iran, particularly relevant, obviously, now with the Israeli attack on Iran. | |
| Justin Logan is the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. | |
| John Hoffman is a Research Fellow in Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at Cato. | |
| We are very happy to have them both to help us work through what is going on, not just in Israel and Iran, but also in Washington. | |
| Gentlemen, it's great to see you. | |
| Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Yeah, sure. | |
| So, Justin, let me start with you. | |
| I have seen from Cato and from both of you over the last several weeks and months kind of a very adamant insistence that the United States not get involved in any military conflict involving Iran, that it do everything possible to try and avert that. | |
| I've seen even since the attack, both of you continuing to insist that the United States do what's possible to stay out. | |
| I guess the question I have for you, What is your view of what the U.S. involvement has been up until this point and likely will be now going forward? | |
| Yeah, I've described the second Trump administration as drinking from a fire hose. | |
| So even if you go back to yesterday, the president of the United States was saying, we're committed to a diplomatic resolution of the Iran nuclear program. | |
| And then overnight in this morning, he sort of both... | |
| So I hope that the ship hasn't sailed, but I'm afraid that the chain of events that was set in motion starting yesterday evening by Benjamin Netanyahu is not anywhere close to something that could be fairly cold peace. | |
| John, we've heard over the last... | |
| For many weeks and even the last few months, the suggestion that there was kind of a split between Trump and the US on the one hand, Netanyahu and Israel on the other, of a variety of issues, Trump's trip to the Persian Gulf and the dictatorships there without taking into account Israeli interests, his cessation of the bombing campaign in Yemen against the Houthi over Netanyahu's objections, and especially | |
| I remember during all of that consensus that people believed that that was happening, a few people I thought were not just skeptical but almost jaded who were saying, No, there is no real rift. | |
| This is all theater designed to lure Iran into a false sense of security, that the two countries are going to jointly attack Iran but want Iran to believe that the U.S. is kind of playing the good cop and not letting Israel attack. | |
| A lot of reporting this morning that suggests that, in fact, those people were correct, that this was sort of all a coordinated effort, including Trump's tweet last night affirming His intention to continue with diplomacy precisely because the Israelis were concerned that the Iranians weren't sufficiently off guard. | |
| Do you think that all along this sort of Trump proclamation that he wanted to avert a war with Iran by achieving a diplomatic resolution was not particularly sincere? | |
| I think it's almost impossible to tell regarding Iran in particular. | |
| If we think about it, if the United States goes to war with Iran, this will consume Trump's presidency. | |
| It will derail everything he hopes to do, regardless of what one thinks of his agenda. | |
| Regarding the rift, what we really saw were Trump addressing issues, what I would say somewhat on the periphery of the two core issues in the region. | |
| On the periphery, we saw him address Yemen, like you mentioned, Syria as well, both of these against the objections of Benjamin Netanyahu. | |
| But the real meat of it that we were all really hoping would be a new deal with Iran. | |
| And an end to U.S. support for the war in Gaza. | |
| And that's where, you know, you put your money where your mouth is, that's where we wanted to see change. | |
| And on the Iran front and on the Gaza front, I think what we're seeing is either a misunderstanding on Trump's end about how to best advance U.S. interests in the Middle East. | |
| Or him being overtaken by regional developments and actors such as Benjamin Netanyahu, who's used to running circles around Washington, D.C. Justin, last night on our show, we did a 90-minute show entirely about the prospect of whether there would actually be an M&N. | |
| Israeli attack, and I think the attack began maybe two or three minutes before we concluded, so we did the whole show kind of questioning the likelihood of whether this would happen, and if so, why. | |
| And one of the things that caught my attention over the last two weeks is that there was a very notable change in Trump's rhetoric. | |
| For months now, he's been heralding the optimism he had that there was a deal likely that he would be able to achieve with Iran, praising the Iranians for the progress, insisting that a deal was very likely. | |
| And it was only in the last week or so when he began saying, you know what, I thought Iran was willing to do so, I'm not so sure now. | |
| And one of the specific rhetorical changes that I perceived in what Trump was saying was that all along, the idea always was going to be, the framework would be that, of course, the Iranians would be able to enrich uranium at low levels. | |
| Necessary to have a nuclear energy program, but not nearly high enough for a nuclear weapons program. | |
| Steve Witkoff said that the U.S. was open to some sort of an agreement whereby the Iranians could continue to enrich. | |
| And then you had this other faction, the neocon faction, warmongering faction, whatever you want to call it in Israel and the U.S., who was trying to sabotage the deal by saying, Yeah, we too want a deal. | |
| It just can't allow the Iranians any enrichment. | |
| It has to dismantle their entire nuclear program, including their nuclear energy program, knowing they would never agree to that. | |
| And I heard Trump several days ago saying the problem is that the Iranians can't have enrichment, and something seems to have gotten into them, almost claiming it was Iran that changed. | |
| Do you think there was a change along the way in terms of how Trump understood the enrichment issue? | |
| Or his willingness to allow the Iranians to enrich. | |
| What is it that changed, do you think, from what had been some promising rhetoric for months to some darker and less promising rhetoric over the last week or so? | |
| Yeah, I mean, the president is not a details guy. | |
| I think that, you know, his fans and enemies alike would concede the point. | |
| So the fine intricacies of nuclear physics, I think, are not his specialty. | |
| So he came out and Witkoff came out both initially talking about a deal three and two thirds percent enrichment, which is nowhere close to what's required for a nuclear weapon. | |
| And they were roundly denounced. | |
| you know, I'm here in Washington, up and down Massachusetts Avenue with the usual suspects saying, no, absolutely not. | |
| We need zero enrichment. | |
| We need Iran to get rid of its ballistic missile program. | |
| And if you take away any uranium enrichment and you take away Iran's ballistic missiles, they're essentially defenseless. | |
| They look a lot like the Syrian military looks right now, which has just been completely denuded of any ability to defend itself. | |
| And Israel flies over its airspace as it sees fit. | |
| And I think the pulling and hauling behind or we've gotten additional concessions at the margins from Iran to a really sort of unreconstructed neoconservative program of demanding total surrender. | |
| And I think as you suggested, Anybody with an IQ above room temperature knew that the Iranians were never going to go for that. | |
| Well, so I guess the question is then, you know, just to follow up on that with you, is where we are now. | |
| Because we interviewed a little bit ago Professor Mohammed Rondi, who's in Tehran. | |
| He's an American-Iranian scholar who's generally a supporter of Iranian foreign policy and an opponent of Western antagonism in that region. | |
| And the question that I had for him was, you know, is it... | |
| Is it just sort of all kind of now all bark and no bite in terms of what they can do? | |
| Or do you think they can and will actually inflict meaningful damage on U.S. interests in the region, on the oil infrastructure, and even on Israel? | |
| I think it's quite likely that they're going to take a run at Israel. | |
| I think it's going to look nastier than the exchange that they had several months ago. | |
| I think they're not going to signal through the Gulf Arab states what's coming. | |
| And I think that, unfortunately, innocent people in Israel are likely to be killed in that. | |
| What I would say, the longer-term question is that you now have, just in the last few hours, new Israeli strikes have targeted the Fordo facility. | |
| So they've targeted all the main Iranian nuclear facilities. | |
| And I would suspect that amid this chaos, the Iranians, either truthfully or untruthfully, are going to say, we don't know where all of our fissile material is at present. | |
| Some of it may have been destroyed. | |
| Some of it is probably buried underground. | |
| And they may surreptitiously spirit out some of that material to be enriched further. | |
| You could see IAEA inspectors thrown out. | |
| So I think the question really here is, you know, from Netanyahu's point of view, if all hell breaks loose, is that a good thing or a bad thing? | |
| Because I think Netanyahu has long viewed not the Iranian nuclear program as the principal problem in Iran, but the Iranian regime. | |
| So the old communists saying the worse, the better. | |
| Are we in a situation where Netanyahu views it as the worst things get, the better, because it brings us closer to an Israel and America versus Iran in a regime change war? | |
| And the longer I think about that question, the more unhappy I get. | |
| Yeah, I couldn't agree more. | |
| That is the most important but also the most alarming question. | |
| John, let me ask you about that. | |
| The Iranians, prior to this strike, were saying: Any strike at all against us, even if it's "unilaterally" from Israel, we're going to regard it as an American strike as well, and we're going to retaliate against U.S. bases in the region, against U.S. economic assets in the region as well. | |
| I think that's the thing Netanyahu is praying for most, because that will essentially force the United States to then become an active military participant or belligerent in this war and now be fighting alongside Israel against Iran for the ultimate goal of regime change. | |
| On the other hand, if you're the Iranians, is there any prospect that you are actually now thinking what Donald Trump, I think, thinks the Iranians are thinking or should be thinking, which is we've just shown you a little bit of taste of what we're actually willing to do to you if we don't get the deal that we want? | |
| And therefore, what Trump is telling them is you should do a deal with us very quickly on our terms, otherwise there's going to be nothing left. | |
| Is that a credible threat, do you think, in terms of forcing the Iranians to capitulate? | |
| Well, first, piggybacking off of what Justin said, my biggest concern in terms of retaliation are the 63 U.S. military bases scattered across the region, many of which are scarcely defended. | |
| So the Iranians have a strong ability to retaliate directly against the United States. | |
| But really, what I would emphasize here in terms of what Iran probably thinks at this current moment is, I think Iran recognizes that in Washington, D.C., There's really been two debates when it comes to Iran. | |
| There's one regarding the nuclear program, and then there's another one regarding regime change. | |
| And the folks who desire regime change, your Netanyahu and your other conservative neocons within Washington, D.C., they view any nuclear agreement as an impediment to their goal of regime change. | |
| And Iran does not desire a nuclear weapon for some, you know, Ideological reason. | |
| They want it because it's a deterrent. | |
| It's the ultimate deterrent against regime change. | |
| And if I'm in Iran right now at this current moment, I would likely view this attack by Israel and the fact that it's ongoing not only as an attack by Israel and the United States, but this could very well be perceived by Iranian leadership as existential. | |
| So whether they have perhaps overplayed the military card, these were not light strikes by Israel. | |
| These were heavy. | |
| These targeted nuclear facilities. | |
| They targeted scientists, IRGC individuals, ballistic missile programs. | |
| So this was a—I think any country on planet Earth would consider this as a declaration of war, not necessarily as a negotiating tactic. | |
| Residential buildings in Tehran clearly blew a couple of them up, if not more than that. | |
| Killed, for sure, some amount of innocent Iranian civilians and, by all accounts, the Iranians, not just the government, but the people are looking at it that way. | |
| So, Justin, the question that I guess we're all getting at, and this is the question I always have as somebody who, as an American, has sat through and watched a lot of these wars unfold. | |
| You know, the question always is like, what is the possible exit strategy or exit route to make sure that this doesn't go on for longer, that it doesn't escalate significantly? | |
| I remember, you know, in February 2022, And the Russians making that clear, the question kind of became, "How is this ever going to end?" And here we are now in its fourth full year, and we're not really closer to an end than we've been. | |
| I mean, there's some movement, but nothing anywhere near that. | |
| I guess it's the same question I have here. | |
| Trump is saying that until the Iranians sign a nuclear deal, this war will continue and the U.S. will participate in whatever way we're participating and maybe even more. | |
| And yet the way the deal is being presented and conceived of, in Trump's mind at least now, is one that the Iranians could never and would never agree to for so many reasons. | |
| And so how do you see, what is the best hope for preventing This from really escalating beyond what is already the pretty dangerous level that it's gotten to so far. | |
| Let me start with what comes most naturally to me, which is the pessimistic side. | |
| The United States and Donald Trump are not in control of events in the Middle East right now. | |
| Benjamin Netanyahu and the clerical leadership in Iran are. | |
| That's bad for us. | |
| We should dislike that scenario because I think the escalatory dynamics there are actually quite bad. | |
| If I'm telling a story where there's sort of an exit ramp or a way out of this, you have seen voices in the Republican Party in the sort of of MAGA movement that have been vociferously, violently opposed to this entire approach of letting Benjamin Netanyahu set events in motion and then watching the country get pulled in behind him. | |
| So people like Tucker Carlson, other MAGA influencers, there is a real debate happening here. | |
| And I think if things get nasty enough and things get bloody enough, there are going to be really impertinent questions posed by people inside the GOP. | |
| Asking questions like, when did we debate having a United States regime change war with Iran? | |
| And we've sort of backed into this where there's this sort of beltway consensus that not only can we not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but we're going to define that in such a way that there's no diplomatic resolution to the problem available. | |
| So again, pessimism comes more naturally to me. | |
| But I do think that there is a debate inside the GOP and inside the Democratic Party as well about the prudence of this thing, whereas, as you recall, in 2002 and 2003, there was none. | |
| Along those lines, I want to believe that too. | |
| It is absolutely true. | |
| It's one of the things that made me interested in Trump. | |
| I don't want to say necessarily optimistic about him, but recognizing that perhaps there's a benefit to his foreign policy as compared to The establishment wings of both parties that will just perpetuate foreign policy. | |
| So, Justin, that is something I've, of course, noticed and been very optimistic about, this change in sentiment on the American right, I think, largely ushered in by Trump, where the anti-interventionist position, long represented by Cato and maybe Pat Buchanan and that kind of wing, went from being a fringe view on the American right to a very significant view. | |
| You could almost say the mainstream view. | |
| At least on the level of influencers and pundits within the MAGA movement. | |
| But it still seems like, and this is what Professor Mearsheimer would certainly argue and has argued on our show before, that the Israeli lobby, the Israel lobby is, if anything, as strong as ever or potentially even stronger than ever. | |
| And that within the Republican Party apparatus of elected officials on the Senate level, on the Congress level, you still have virtual unanimity, with a few exceptions now. | |
| That insists that the United States should consolidate behind Israel, that we should use our military to intervene in any war that Israel is involved in. | |
| And I guess what we've seen with Trump and what he just did was a siding with the sort of neocon Israel lobbying of the party that he has long been in speeches repudiating. | |
| So how capable do you think Trump would be, even if he wanted to? | |
| of sort of abandoning Israel in a war like this. | |
| Yeah, I mean, I think the president of the United States has too much power in international affairs, as you and I probably both agree, because the Congress has delegated so much power to the president. | |
| But I think that the president can really get his way if he wants to fight about it here. | |
| I mean, I think the thing, and I don't know the facts of the last, you know, 24 or 36 hours, but if, in fact, the president was sort of buffaloed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Netanyahu, Who set in motion a chain of events, again, that Trump was just sort of riding behind. | |
| He needs to say, we told them not to do this. | |
| And I think if the president wanted to fight about it, he could actually make hay with some of the where the political base is. | |
| You're hearing people like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying they don't want. | |
| A war with Iran. | |
| So I think if the president were to fight about it, he could really make progress. | |
| But I think people like Mark Levin, you know, I'm taken to understand they had a victory lap of sorts last night. | |
| So I think there is a real struggle back and forth. | |
| And, you know, God willing, the president is going to put his foot down and say, we don't want another forever war in the Middle East on my legacy. | |
| So just a couple more questions. | |
| John, I don't know if you're maybe a little more optimistic than Justin. | |
| I'll hope so and look for some more optimism with you. | |
| One of the things that did encourage me was Trump's restarted and escalated President Biden's bombing campaign in Yemen against the Houthi. | |
| And the idea was this is going to go on for a long time. | |
| We're going to exterminate the Houthi. | |
| We're going to destroy and derrade. | |
| Their military capability, and after about a month, Trump blew the whistle on it, put a stop to it, because it became very apparent they were killing a lot of people, but not degrading the Houthi capability in a meaningful way. | |
| And I thought that was an indication from Trump of saying, I'm not getting involved in another one of these. | |
| Like six more months, and then I'm told nine more months, and then, you know, suddenly it's years of bombing in Yemen. | |
| That seemed to be a signal to me that Trump is very conscious that he does not want on his legacy a major new war, especially in the Middle East, the United States, has become endlessly involved. | |
| Do you think a similar dynamic is possible here that even if As I think happened, he did give the green light to Netanyahu. | |
| He is currently kind of gung-ho, thinking he can force the Iranians into capitulation. | |
| That if it goes on for long enough, that Trump will reach a similar conclusion as the one he reached in Yemen? | |
| I'm more skeptical when it comes to Israel about Trump making such a dramatic move like he did in Yemen. | |
| And this is mainly because of the structural foundations of the U.S.-Israel relationship. | |
| This relationship, the quote-unquote special relationship, if you will, I've argued for a long time, is a strategic liability to the United States. | |
| Perhaps one of, if not the greatest liability the United States currently shoulders in international politics. | |
| What President Trump needs to do, I would say, if I was advising him, is going full throttle ahead to support Israel at this current moment in their escalation against Iran is antithetical to the America First movement. | |
| And you were just talking about how there's been change among influencers and so on. | |
| I would also mention that there's been considerable generational change. | |
| We see the younger generations, particularly among conservatives, aged like 15 to 34, that have really changed in their views regarding Israel, regarding the conflicts in the Middle East more generally, because I think the Americans are realizing that this is not in America's interest to remain so cheap to jaw either with Israel or to become so entangled in the region's affairs. | |
| And when it comes to Donald Trump, the man is often influenced by the last person he spoke to. | |
| But I hope cooler heads prevail. | |
| Tucker Carlson was out today pretty strongly pushing back against what the president is doing. | |
| So, you know, it's essentially all hands on deck trying to prevent escalation here. | |
| Yeah, we'll see how that plays out in the last few minutes. | |
| While we were talking, there has been some pretty significant. | |
| Iranian strikes, missile strikes in Tel Aviv, as well as a reported downing of an Israeli fighter jet and the capturing of an Israeli pilot who ejected after his aircraft was hit. | |
| So we'll see how this all plays out. | |
| Certainly between those two sides, there's clearly going to be some more escalation and retaliation. | |
| And I guess the question is what Trump will... | |
| And I think you guys are doing a very important job of being a kind of think tank voice adjacent to the American right, urging restraint general and specifically with regard to this conflict. | |
| It's been an important role. | |
| I think it's been an increasingly effective one because there's a greater constituency for it, as you said, with the American right. | |
| And unfortunately, I think this conflict isn't going to continue for a while longer. | |
| We'd love to have you back on. | |
| As it does to help us kind of analyze and understand everything as it unfolds. | |
| We really appreciate your taking the time to talk to us today. | |
| We hope to see you back shortly as well. | |
| Glenn, it's our great pleasure. | |
| Keep it up, please. | |
| Absolutely, you too. | |
| Thank you. |
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