Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things
Speaker 1: Hillsdale at Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to
Speaker 1: take advantage of the many free online courses there, and
Speaker 1: of course I'll listen to the Hillsdale Dialogue all of
Speaker 1: them at Q for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple,
Speaker 1: iTunes and Hillsdale Morning Laura and Evening Grace America. I'm
Speaker 1: Hugh Hewittt. Special emergency pod this week is war Looms
Speaker 1: with Iran. It's an edition of the Big Weekend Pod,
Speaker 1: which will be available over whoever podcasts are saleing podcast Network, iTunes, Spotify.
Speaker 1: But this is the emergency podcast to get you up
Speaker 1: to speed if you've been on vacation or just sleepwalking
Speaker 1: to the last three weeks. President Trump came on my
Speaker 1: program on January eighth and talk some tough talk about Iran.
Speaker 1: He followed up that night with a conversation with Sean
Speaker 1: Andy in which he doubled down on it, then a
Speaker 1: couple of days later with Tony Decopple and on CBS,
Speaker 1: and then a few more times both at True Social
Speaker 1: on X and Drop Buys with report on the Way
Speaker 1: In and Out. From that time forward, I've been devoting
Speaker 1: a lot of my program to thinking about exactly what
Speaker 1: would that mean, what would it look like? And I
Speaker 1: found the very best experts I can. I can't put
Speaker 1: all fifteen experts together onto one podcast. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a pretty long podcast as it is. But I
Speaker 1: got for you the part from my interview with President
Speaker 1: Trump about Iran, and then we have lined up have
Speaker 1: you ready gore all the way through Kareem Sadjupur, who
Speaker 1: was on Friday of this week. If you want to
Speaker 1: be ready for whatever is coming, might be nothing and
Speaker 1: it might be something very big, I suggest you listened
Speaker 1: to this very special edition of highly concentrated Hugh. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: Glory and Amy, Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewett, proud to
Speaker 1: welcome back to the UUs Show President Donald Trump. Happy
Speaker 1: New Year, mister Trump. Good to have you back.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much. You thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I don't want to waste your time, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to dive right in and begin with Iran. Michael Durant
Speaker 1: at the Hudson Institute says, the regime there is failing.
Speaker 1: They have fuel shortages, electricity shortages, water shortage. Kareem Sajiport.
Speaker 1: Carnegie is posting the videos of the spreading protests. Mark Dubovitz,
Speaker 1: So this is a quote. If President Trump brings down
Speaker 1: the Islamic Republic of Iran, he will cement his place
Speaker 1: as the greatest foreign policy president since Ronald Reagan. I
Speaker 1: think it would.
Speaker 2: Actually I already did that.
Speaker 1: I thought I just about that with Midnight Hammer. You
Speaker 1: did that? How much well can I do?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: We just had Venezuela, which has had Midnight Hammer. We
Speaker 2: settled eight wars, eight.
Speaker 1: In the quarter.
Speaker 2: But I'm willing to accept that. I'm willing to accept it.
Speaker 1: What about Iran? Is the aim with Iran the collapse
Speaker 1: of that awful forty seven year tyranny.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to say it, but I will
Speaker 2: tell you they're not doing well, as you know, probably
Speaker 2: better than anybody. They're doing very poorly. And I have
Speaker 2: let them know that if they start killing people, which
Speaker 2: they tend to do during their riots they have lots
Speaker 2: of riots, if they do it, we're going to hit
Speaker 2: them very hard.
Speaker 1: Now dozens have been killed. I know you don't do
Speaker 1: red lines, but if you communicated to them what that
Speaker 1: limit of your patience.
Speaker 2: Is, well, some have been killed by problems of crowd
Speaker 2: control and other things. We're watching it very closely. The
Speaker 2: crowds are so large. There's been a stampede. There's been
Speaker 2: three stampedes, and people have been killed in that. And
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I can necessarily hold somebody responsible for that.
Speaker 2: But they know, and they've been told very strongly, even
Speaker 2: more strongly than I'm speaking to you right now, that
Speaker 2: if they do that, they're going to have to pay.
Speaker 3: Hell.
Speaker 1: Do you have a message for the people of Iran,
Speaker 1: President Trump?
Speaker 2: All I can say is you should. You should feel
Speaker 2: strongly about freedom. There's nothing like freedom. Your brave people.
Speaker 2: It's a shame what's happened to your country. Your country
Speaker 2: was a great country. I remember years ago when I
Speaker 2: was a young real estate developer. Friends of mine went
Speaker 2: to Iran and they did great. They built buildings in Iran.
Speaker 2: They're still up barely by the way, but there's still
Speaker 2: I see pictures of the apartment houses. And they did
Speaker 2: very well in Iran. I ran, they passed away. They
Speaker 2: were very successful developers. They were great people, mostly New
Speaker 2: York developments, but they went to Iran and they built
Speaker 2: some pretty good jobs in Iran. And I remember they
Speaker 2: were saying that people are great. The whole place was great.
Speaker 2: It was a tremendous market. And now you look at it,
Speaker 2: Look what's happened.
Speaker 1: I sat in the office of former President Nixon with
Speaker 1: Great Price on a couch with our end, watching the
Speaker 1: fall of the shot, and he just kept shaking his hat.
Speaker 1: He couldn't believe Jimmy Carter was letting it happen. Would
Speaker 1: you meet with Crown Prince pob Lobby Poblai, who is
Speaker 1: the heir to the constitutional monarchy. He doesn't want to rule.
Speaker 1: He would be a symbolic ruler like King Charles Well.
Speaker 2: I've watched him and he just seems like a nice person.
Speaker 2: But I'm not sure that it would be appropriate at
Speaker 2: this point to do that. As president. I think that
Speaker 2: we should let everybody go out there and we see
Speaker 2: who emerges. I'm not sure necessarily that I it would
Speaker 2: be an appropriate thing to do.
Speaker 1: All right, let me switch to China. Mister President, last
Speaker 1: time we talked, and now he's ask you this. I
Speaker 1: asked you about Jimmy Lai, who is dying in real time.
Speaker 1: He's been convicted. Have you talked to Jijenping? I know
Speaker 1: you get.
Speaker 2: Along with it. I have, I have. I talked to
Speaker 2: him and I mentioned Jimmy Lee. I don't know Jimmy Lai.
Speaker 2: I know of Jimmy Lai, and he was an activist,
Speaker 2: to put it mildly, but a positive activist. But if
Speaker 2: you're a Presidency, he wasn't a positive activist. I spoke
Speaker 2: to Presidency when I was in South Korea and we
Speaker 2: had a great talk about it, and I left it
Speaker 2: with him. He didn't give me an answer one way
Speaker 2: or the other. But obviously so far it hasn't been
Speaker 2: I got a lot of other answers that turned out positive.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard back on that one.
Speaker 1: If Jimmy Lai was free, would you consider that to
Speaker 1: be a very significant gesture by China? I would.
Speaker 2: I think it would be a great thing. I think
Speaker 2: I told President's that he's an old man who's very sick.
Speaker 2: I met his son, who is a very nice young
Speaker 2: man who loves his father a lot. His son is
Speaker 2: the primary person that's working very hard to get him out,
Speaker 2: and I felt I owed it to the son. I
Speaker 2: like the son. I mean, look, I don't know him,
Speaker 2: but I met him fairly briefly, but I love that
Speaker 2: he was fighting hard for his father. I thought that
Speaker 2: was I like to see sons that fight hard for fathers,
Speaker 2: and he was certainly doing that. And I mentioned that
Speaker 2: during my meeting early on in my meeting as a
Speaker 2: list of things that I'd like to talk about, but
Speaker 2: we have not heard back on that one.
Speaker 1: All right, let me turn to Cuba, mister president. For
Speaker 1: sixty seven years, that police state dictatorship has sucked the
Speaker 1: lifeblood out of the people of that island. Is it
Speaker 1: time to increase the pressure there, maybe even quarantine it
Speaker 1: as you have Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think you can have much more pressure
Speaker 2: other than going in and blasting the hell out of
Speaker 2: the place. Look, they are their whole life blood, their
Speaker 2: whole life was Venezuela. They got their oil, they got
Speaker 2: their money from Venezuela. And as you know, when our
Speaker 2: great soldiers went and we had nobody killed, they lost
Speaker 2: many Cuban fighters during that battle. Many amazing job that
Speaker 2: the American soldiers did, led by a man who happens
Speaker 2: to be sitting right next to me, General Caine. Ah
Speaker 2: a job, what a job he did. And Pete Hegseth did,
Speaker 2: and the whole group. What a job they all did.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Actually, John Ratcliffe is walking in, Marco Rubio
Speaker 2: is walking in. We have a whole group of people here.
Speaker 2: They're all fans of yours. They're not walking in to
Speaker 2: listen to this call. They just happened to be walking
Speaker 2: in for the next meeting.
Speaker 1: I got a little advice for you, mister President. Don't
Speaker 1: play golf and give strokes to Director Ratcliffe. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: Don't get many strokes.
Speaker 2: He's a good golfer and he's a very good guy too.
Speaker 1: Back to Cuba, Miguel Diez Canal. Do you think he
Speaker 1: could fall like Hamini and Iran might fall?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think. I look, I think that Cuba is
Speaker 2: hanging by a thread. Cuba's in big trouble. Look, Cuba
Speaker 2: got all of its money for protecting. They were like
Speaker 2: a protector. They're tough, strong people, they're great people. Marco
Speaker 2: has a little Cuban blood in him. I think Marco's
Speaker 2: not doing a bad job, right, What do you think?
Speaker 2: Can I ask you one question? How is Marco Rubio doing?
Speaker 1: Is the equal of any secretary of state in my lifetime?
Speaker 1: And I'm glad he's not taking the Dolphins job. He
Speaker 1: should work for the Browns if he leaves your administration,
Speaker 1: that's right, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: He goes will be successful. But no, I think that
Speaker 2: I think that Cuba is really in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2: But you know, people have been saying that for many years.
Speaker 2: In all fairness about Cuban. Cuba has been in trouble
Speaker 2: for the last forty five years, and you know, they
Speaker 2: haven't quite gone down, but I think they're pretty close
Speaker 2: of their own volition.
Speaker 1: I want to try and define the Trump doctrine, mister President.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to do it on the air. It's
Speaker 1: down to that, don't kill or threaten Americans or our
Speaker 1: property or American security in general, or we will hit
Speaker 1: you very very hard.
Speaker 2: Is that the same and included in theirs don't send
Speaker 2: drugs and don't send things that are going to kill
Speaker 2: our people. But you can you can sort of make
Speaker 2: the savement that you've indirectly said that, but it's a
Speaker 2: pretty direct statement, don't send drugs into our country.
Speaker 1: It's a great doctrine. Now the next question. I'm a
Speaker 1: Salem host of Fox Contributors, so this is a bit unusual.
Speaker 1: Brett Bair does the best interviews with you. I'm exempting
Speaker 1: myself from consideration, but I think you got to give
Speaker 1: Tony Dokapol a chance over at CBS to see if
Speaker 1: they've really changed their ways.
Speaker 2: Is that on the agenda, Well, it hasn't been on
Speaker 2: the agenda, but if you recommend it, I would do it.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of.
Speaker 2: Respect for you, as you know, and I think you're
Speaker 2: doing a great job, and you've done a great job.
Speaker 2: You went a little bit liberal on us for a
Speaker 2: while when you were at nbcby I can't believe. I
Speaker 2: couldn't believe you sitting on NBC trying to answer questions
Speaker 2: that you didn't believe in. You only gave them partial answers.
Speaker 2: You would never fully there, but you couldn't get out
Speaker 2: fast enough. It was very fun to watch.
Speaker 1: I'm happy with I.
Speaker 2: Hear good things about Tony, and I can tell you
Speaker 2: that David Ellison is a fantastic guy and his father,
Speaker 2: Larry is one of the great been good friends of mine,
Speaker 2: both of them, but David's doing a fantastic job, and
Speaker 2: they feel very strongly about Tony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want Barry Weiss and Tony to overtake
Speaker 1: Fox and Salem. But I would like you to give
Speaker 1: him a shot to see if he's got the shop.
Speaker 2: Well, it'll be important to you, I do it. No,
Speaker 2: are you good things about Tony now?
Speaker 1: You gave two hours of The New York Times yesterday.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. The most successful president to the media
Speaker 1: in history, actually, but I would like to see you
Speaker 1: sit down with Matt Contenetty, Guy Benson, Spencer Brown, Mary
Speaker 1: Catherine Ham, the Mandels, Philip Wegaman. All of our superstar
Speaker 1: youngster people are under forty forty five. Is that on
Speaker 1: the agenda sometimes to sit down with art it would
Speaker 1: be I.
Speaker 2: Mean, they have to ask, and it would be I
Speaker 2: certainly like all the names that you mentioned, And I
Speaker 2: will say that I think the Times treated me pretty
Speaker 2: fairly yesterday.
Speaker 1: Well interesting, I haven't read it yet, the transcriptors and outs.
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for the shock and it's a little hard
Speaker 2: not to. We have the greatest potential economy in history.
Speaker 2: We have eighteen trillion dollars coming in the record is
Speaker 2: three and that was from many, many years ago. We
Speaker 2: have something that just took place with Venezuela that everybody
Speaker 2: considered as one of the most brilliant attacks they've ever seen.
Speaker 2: And you know we had we lost no people in
Speaker 2: the middle of a fort. Don't forget that house was
Speaker 2: built in the middle of a fort with thousands of soldiers.
Speaker 2: They lost quite a few people. I hate to say that.
Speaker 1: I talked to an active duty naval officer yesterday who's
Speaker 1: very jealous that they were not there because it was
Speaker 1: such an extraordinary mission.
Speaker 2: You know what, we had an extraordinary attack a few
Speaker 2: months ago in a place called Iran. We knocked out
Speaker 2: the Iran nuclear threat and it was obliterated. And we
Speaker 2: also took out Solomoni and we took out Al Bagdaddy.
Speaker 2: So we've had some good attacks so far. We haven't
Speaker 2: had the Afghanistan disaster. That was the lowest point I
Speaker 2: think in the history of our country, Biden. But if
Speaker 2: you look also the Jimmy Carter disaster, that was a
Speaker 2: disaster with the hostages. And you know, when we were.
Speaker 1: Very democratic president, a.
Speaker 2: Disaster two planes. I said, I hope it's not a
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter deal.
Speaker 1: Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden. They've all been disasters in national security.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about it.
Speaker 2: I haven't had I haven't had any disaster.
Speaker 1: Yet, and I hope it stays that way.
Speaker 2: I hope the word yet is going to disappear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we got to talk about the Golden Fleet
Speaker 1: because this is important. I want to take my hat
Speaker 1: off to you on the Golden Fleet. We need guided
Speaker 1: missile frigates and attack submarines and the Columbia class. And
Speaker 1: the worst way is there going to be enough money
Speaker 1: in the budget to get everything built that we need,
Speaker 1: including new shipyards.
Speaker 2: Well, we are going to have plenty of money. And
Speaker 2: if you notice what I did yesterday, I told all
Speaker 2: defence companies there's going to be no more buybacks. You're
Speaker 2: going to put the money into building new plant and equipment,
Speaker 2: and going to be no more stock options, and there's
Speaker 2: going to be no more salaries of fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: a year. You're gonna put the money in. We're going
Speaker 2: to have a capped at five million dollars and that's
Speaker 2: effective immediately, and all that money that they're sending out
Speaker 2: is going to have to be and you know what,
Speaker 2: the stock prices went up. The reason is I also
Speaker 2: put out a statement, a secondary statement saying that next
Speaker 2: year we expect to have one point five trillion in
Speaker 2: defense budget. And we're also building battleships. You know, we're
Speaker 2: building great battleships. They have twenty five on schedule, but
Speaker 2: we're going to start with ten and then we'll see
Speaker 2: how that all goes. But we're going to build battleships.
Speaker 2: And you know, I thought you remember from Victory at sea.
Speaker 2: You take a look at those great, gorgeous ships, the Iowa,
Speaker 2: the Alabama, the Missouri, those great ships and if you
Speaker 2: see you know what I'm talking.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, provided they've got lots of missile tubes on it.
Speaker 1: I'm all for them. The more missile tubes that see,
Speaker 1: the better.
Speaker 2: I said, why don't we take some of them out
Speaker 2: of bath balls. The new ships will be one hundred
Speaker 2: times more powerful than those battleships that we so admired.
Speaker 1: Now I know you're up up upping the construction Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Shipyard and enhancing capacity.
Speaker 2: And numerous others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wondering, are you gonna build a new.
Speaker 2: Walk into the shipbuilding business?
Speaker 1: That is that's the best news. Do people understand how
Speaker 1: important that is to the economy.
Speaker 2: I think they know. But the Philadelphia Yard is one
Speaker 2: of the yards that's going to be opened up. But
Speaker 2: we have numerous yards that are opened up. Some of
Speaker 2: those yards have been built up by housing projects. You know,
Speaker 2: they're all in the water, so they tended to be
Speaker 2: in nice locations. But we have many yards opening up,
Speaker 2: and we're going to be very much back in the
Speaker 2: shipbuilding business. And in some cases we're partnering with South
Speaker 2: Korea and others initially because we have to get you know,
Speaker 2: we used to make almost a ship a day during
Speaker 2: World War Two and then we just totally got out
Speaker 2: of that business stupidly. But we're back in the shipbuilding business.
Speaker 1: We have to be all right now. I want to
Speaker 1: switch to one of my other favorite topics with the
Speaker 1: image at the Supreme Court. I know you don't expect
Speaker 1: a retirement in the spring, but if one happens, you've
Speaker 1: appointed sixty Appeals Court judges. Would you expect to take
Speaker 1: either a runner up from last time? I Judge Ktlidge
Speaker 1: or one of your appointees. Judge Row is fifty three
Speaker 1: on the DC Circuit. Judge Rushing on the fourth is
Speaker 1: forty three. Judge Strass on the eighth is fifty one.
Speaker 1: A MultiPar is fifty six. Don Willets sixty. Then you
Speaker 1: got Senator Cruz is fifty five, and you got District
Speaker 1: Court Judge Eileen Cannon. I think she did a good
Speaker 1: job in the Florida case. She's forty five.
Speaker 2: Ye, she did a great job. She's a great judge.
Speaker 1: Yes, she did, and she came to the right constitutional
Speaker 1: conclusion about the illegality of the appointment.
Speaker 2: Highly respected. Yeah, So those are all great names. Every
Speaker 2: one of those names is a great name. Now, Ted Cruz.
Speaker 2: The nice one about him is, we get a one
Speaker 2: hundred percent approval. Every Democrat would vote yes, and every
Speaker 2: Republican would vote yes because they would love to get
Speaker 2: him the hell out of the Senate, all of them,
Speaker 2: so that he's the only one that would be guaranteed confirmation.
Speaker 2: And he's a smart guy. He's a good guy. And
Speaker 2: I say that jokingly, but I always say Ted would
Speaker 2: get a one hundred percent approval. The Democrats want him out,
Speaker 2: the Republicans want him out, and he'd do great and
Speaker 2: he's smart. But all of the names that you mentioned
Speaker 2: are great names, every one of them.
Speaker 1: I know who is advising you on judges this term,
Speaker 1: as Leonard is not and the Federal society is.
Speaker 2: Not well I'm using some people actually that you know,
Speaker 2: i'd rather tell you on a personal prisis, not on
Speaker 2: a phone call. But I have some very good people
Speaker 2: that are advising me, people that you know in respect.
Speaker 1: I have the legislative agenda for this year. I know
Speaker 1: I watched your talk to the Republicans at the Trump
Speaker 1: County Center, and I know you talked about healthcare. That
Speaker 1: would be great, but it would be easier to get
Speaker 1: done if you have bundled it with, for example, the
Speaker 1: Dreamers Act, the AM Radio in Every Car Act. Both
Speaker 1: of those have got super majority. Do you think that's
Speaker 1: the strategy, bundle healthcare with very popular laws, get them
Speaker 1: to the floor and move them.
Speaker 2: Well, I think healthcare is so big and so important
Speaker 2: that it probably supersedes some slightly less you know, a
Speaker 2: very popular thing, but less important. I like the AM
Speaker 2: in every car, the AM radio in every car. I
Speaker 2: like that. I'm in favor of it. It's interesting. A
Speaker 2: lot of people don't know about that, but it's actually
Speaker 2: a very big subject.
Speaker 1: So it's a huge deal.
Speaker 2: It's a huge we're going to be doing something on that.
Speaker 2: All of the things you mentioned I like, but I
Speaker 2: think healthcare is so big and so powerful, it's going
Speaker 2: to really going to have to stand in his own way,
Speaker 2: all right. So I want, you know, with healthcare, it's
Speaker 2: pretty simple. I want because if you take a look,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you study insurance companies, but these
Speaker 2: guys have made literally trillions of dollars. I want the
Speaker 2: money to go directly to the people and let the
Speaker 2: people buy their own healthcare, and everybody loves it.
Speaker 1: I do too. I think that would be a genius.
Speaker 1: I just think to get Democratic vote you might have
Speaker 1: to put the Dreamers Act in or the Radio Act.
Speaker 2: In along with the Democrats is they're totally in bed
Speaker 2: with the insurance companies. And what you know, what I'm
Speaker 2: doing is the exact opposite. I'm giving the money to
Speaker 2: the people. They've given the money to the insurance companies.
Speaker 2: It's hard for them to vote against the insurance companies
Speaker 2: who have made a fortune because of the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Now, Miss President, when we have that sit down that
Speaker 1: probably talk about judges, I would like to talk to
Speaker 1: you about Richard Nixon, because I believe your understanding of
Speaker 1: American power projection is very similar to his, and I
Speaker 1: think he also liked to keep people guessing. Some people
Speaker 1: call it the Madman theory. I just thought it was
Speaker 1: a strategic sense. Do you think that comparison is apt?
Speaker 2: Well, look, I don't know. We're just respected. We're respected
Speaker 2: again as a country, and I'm respected, but we're respected.
Speaker 2: We had a president who shouldn't have been there. First
Speaker 2: of all, it was a rigged election, and that's now
Speaker 2: coming out loud and clear. But we knew that. I
Speaker 2: knew that four years ago. But it was just a rigged,
Speaker 2: horrible election. That's where we go. We got a man
Speaker 2: that allowed millions of people our country from jails and
Speaker 2: mental institutions and drug dealers, and what a shame that
Speaker 2: what Biden was just a horrible president. And you know,
Speaker 2: if she would have won, which is the equivalent, if
Speaker 2: she would have won, our country would have been right
Speaker 2: now Venezuela on steria disaster.
Speaker 1: A disaster, and Tim Wills would have been the vice
Speaker 1: president instead of vice president of Vance. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: Let me turn to politics. In my last couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: mister president, I want to honor your time. You crush
Speaker 1: the debates in twenty fifteen sixteen. The last one was
Speaker 1: just Secretary Rubio Senator Cruizer, We've talked about Governor kh
Speaker 1: and U, and then there were no more. You skip
Speaker 1: the debates in twenty five, twenty three, twenty four. You
Speaker 1: will control, You will whether or not the GOP has
Speaker 1: debates in twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight. Do you
Speaker 1: think they are a good thing for the party or
Speaker 1: a bad thing? Do you want to have them or
Speaker 1: do you not want to have them?
Speaker 2: Well, I always liked them. For me, I love debating.
Speaker 2: But I think I did the right thing. I had,
Speaker 2: you know, ten people. They're all smart people, they're you know,
Speaker 2: governors and senators, and I figured, why should I allow
Speaker 2: myself to be whacked by all ten people? At the
Speaker 2: same time, I think I did a very fun A
Speaker 2: lot of people said you have to be in the debates.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't think I do. And then I
Speaker 2: had the debate with Biden, which turned out to be
Speaker 2: a good debate. I don't think I got enough credit
Speaker 2: for that debate because I made him choke, but he
Speaker 2: didn't do well in that debate. And the interesting thing is,
Speaker 2: without that debate, would he have been allowed to continue running.
Speaker 1: Uh, Yes, he would have been, and that would have
Speaker 1: been a disaster. For the party, even worse than Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: because you can't hide the fact he was infirm. He
Speaker 1: was infirm, he wasn't there well.
Speaker 2: He didn't do too well, I would say that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the Democrats.
Speaker 2: To wrap out is not the greatest go ahead.
Speaker 1: Who is the strongest Democrat in twenty twenty eight? Gavin Newsom, AOC,
Speaker 1: Jasmine Crockett, Jared Poulos in Colorado, Chris van Holland, Wes Moore,
Speaker 1: Andy Basheer. Who's their best choice?
Speaker 2: You know, as you rattle off those names, I'm just
Speaker 2: seeing in't and amazing. With three hundred and fifty people,
Speaker 2: of course, we have no idea that Biden let and
Speaker 2: so many nobody knows. But with let's say three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million people, that that's the best they can do,
Speaker 2: it's pretty sad. I think Newsom's hurt because he's done
Speaker 2: so badly in California. He has, he's done so so badly.
Speaker 2: I just you know, look, he's a sort of a
Speaker 2: good politician, but he doesn't get the job done. I
Speaker 2: think people are gonna people aren't going to stand for that.
Speaker 2: There's nobody. I do have a couple of people that
Speaker 2: I think would be really tough candidates, but I don't
Speaker 2: want to name him because not chosen.
Speaker 1: Well, that does make some sense to me. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: close with mister mayor, Mom Donnie, and you decide when
Speaker 1: to conclude the interview. Mister President, I know you love
Speaker 1: New York City. It's going to be a nightmare. I've
Speaker 1: only lived there once. I've only lived there in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: It's going to be worse than nineteen eighty, which was
Speaker 1: damn bad and I left and went to law school
Speaker 1: because it was so bad. Will the city be able
Speaker 1: to recover after?
Speaker 2: Mom, Donnie, Well, it's going to be interesting. You know.
Speaker 2: I've met him and came to the Oval office. Yes,
Speaker 2: we've had some nice conversations. Are very good. And then
Speaker 2: he hit me a little bit on the tremendous victory
Speaker 2: and you would say it was a tremendous victory on Venezuela,
Speaker 2: and I said, gee, I thought he would have at
Speaker 2: least waited a month. I was surprised that he hit
Speaker 2: me on that, but he did. You know, So, what
Speaker 2: are you going to do? Kid? I expected it. I
Speaker 2: just thought it would be maybe three or four weeks
Speaker 2: instead of immediately, because I do get along with him.
Speaker 2: He's got a great personality, is a nice guy. His
Speaker 2: policies are not good, but maybe he changes. You know,
Speaker 2: That's what I would view because I want to do
Speaker 2: everything I can to help New York. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I hope you're wrong. I hope New York is thrive,
Speaker 2: will thrive. But typically those policies, maybe you say not
Speaker 2: only typically in history, those policies have never worked.
Speaker 1: They did never work. The last thing I'll say to you,
Speaker 1: miss President, Golden Dome is the most important legacy you're
Speaker 1: going to leave if it gets built. I've read some
Speaker 1: studies that say Ravenna, Ohio is where the hubb out
Speaker 1: it be for space Force to control that because of
Speaker 1: the polar ice cap. Have you decided where the central
Speaker 1: lopecation of Golden Dome will be yet?
Speaker 2: But I love Ohio, I can tell you that. And
Speaker 2: I've worn Ohio big everything every time, and everybody I've
Speaker 2: endorsed from Ohio is one and you know, it's been great.
Speaker 2: But I've heard that's one of the one of the
Speaker 2: places very much being considered.
Speaker 1: All right, mister President, thank you for the time. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Come back again soon and I look forward
Speaker 1: to talking to you again. Congratulations on a great first
Speaker 1: year in your second term.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. You take care of yourself. Thank bye.
Speaker 1: Morning Glory and Evan Grayson Mac. I'm who ewit in
Speaker 1: the Relief Actor Studio West. Earlier today, President Trump posted
Speaker 1: on true Social and I want to read it to
Speaker 1: you before we get to our guests. Avive Reddy Gore,
Speaker 1: Iranian patriots now all in cap, keep protesting, take over
Speaker 1: your institutions. Three exclamation points. Save the names of the
Speaker 1: killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I've
Speaker 1: canceled all meetings with the reading officials until the senseless
Speaker 1: killing of protesters stops. All in caps, and then all
Speaker 1: in cap help is on its way. Period. Miga MiG
Speaker 1: Maker on great again, three exclamation points, President Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: That posted at nine forty three am East Coast time.
Speaker 1: I'm joined now by Aviv Retti Gore. Aviva is a
Speaker 1: senior analyst for The Times Visrael. He's also a podcast
Speaker 1: where the Ask Aviv Anything podcast comes in long form
Speaker 1: and in short form. I listened to today's on the
Speaker 1: two into Fadas, which gave me names and dates that
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Aviv, Happy New Year to you, welcome back.
Speaker 4: Thank you you good to be here. And also just
Speaker 4: the Free Press. I'm also with the Free Press as
Speaker 4: a Middle East aily.
Speaker 1: I've always got to say that Times Visual the Free Press,
Speaker 1: and then we need to tell people. You're also on Patreon,
Speaker 1: which I is the only Patreon I belong to because
Speaker 1: it's the only one I get real value. I subscribe
Speaker 1: to the Free Press, but I get real value from
Speaker 1: your Patreon. How do people find that? Just Patreon and
Speaker 1: Aviv Retti.
Speaker 4: Gore yeah, or ask Aviv anything on Patreon. Thanks so
Speaker 4: much for the plug. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's only five bucks a month and it's really
Speaker 1: very much worth it. Like Dan Senor's special edition as well,
Speaker 1: I've gone into funnels silos from my news to go deep.
Speaker 1: Have you before I go any further? What do you
Speaker 1: make of what I think is a hinge moment in Iran,
Speaker 1: especially in light of what President Trump posted this morning.
Speaker 4: At this very moment, there are reports that phone lines
Speaker 4: can now call out of Iran again. Some of the
Speaker 4: digital blackouts appears to be lifting or was broken, or
Speaker 4: maybe hackers did it. We don't quite know. There was
Speaker 4: a news from CBS News that they got initial reports
Speaker 4: that the report's about twelve thousand dead in the last
Speaker 4: just two three days that Iran International ran. It might
Speaker 4: be much higher than that. People in Iran are talking
Speaker 4: about something very big, very dramatic. These are, you know,
Speaker 4: early days. We don't have a lot of information. The
Speaker 4: whole country taken off the internet, but the regime crackdown
Speaker 4: has gotten lethal. The regime itself has admitted two thousand dead.
Speaker 4: So everything is escalating. All the gloves are off, the
Speaker 4: regime is terrified, and into that context that those signals
Speaker 4: that we can get out of Iran. President Trump's statement
Speaker 4: probably echoes very very loudly what he said on your
Speaker 4: podcast what was it three days ago, where he just said,
Speaker 4: you know, they know that a lot of that they're
Speaker 4: going to pay a price, and he urged people to
Speaker 4: take the names of officers and officials involved in the repression.
Speaker 4: That's actually really fascinating because we've already seen that. You know,
Speaker 4: there was this what they called a Tianamen Square moment
Speaker 4: where one protester was sitting down on the street in
Speaker 4: front of the police trying to clear out the protests,
Speaker 4: and that protester would go on to get beaten by
Speaker 4: those cops. And what's really fascinating is within a few
Speaker 4: hours the names of the of the agents of the
Speaker 4: regime who beat the protester were publicized on Iranian internet.
Speaker 4: And so it's a new day, it's a new moments.
Speaker 4: Are no longer willing to play the regimes game in huge,
Speaker 4: huge numbers. We don't yet know how it's going to go.
Speaker 4: It's important to say twenty percent of this country is
Speaker 4: deeply Islamist and believes in the regimes ideology and will
Speaker 4: die for the regime. We not literally twice on the
Speaker 4: population will die, but twenty percent of the poplation will fight.
Speaker 4: And the entire besieged militia is hundreds of thousands of people,
Speaker 4: with many more who could volunteer. So it's it's almost
Speaker 4: a kind of mini civil war when you have a
Speaker 4: revolution against this regime. But nevertheless, it has never gone
Speaker 4: this far, and the rage and the lack of any
Speaker 4: willingness to tolerate the regime pretending like everything's okay or
Speaker 4: can never go back to normal, that's all new, and
Speaker 4: so it is a it is a new moment. It
Speaker 4: could fail, but it's never gone this far before.
Speaker 1: So Aviv I had done an entire outline because we
Speaker 1: schedule this six weeks two months in advance to get
Speaker 1: ahold of the vvs in demand everywhere in the world,
Speaker 1: and so I'm happy to talk to him every month
Speaker 1: or so. And we scheduled this weeks ago, and I
Speaker 1: have a whole long list of questions are going to
Speaker 1: get pushed to the back about the Hari Dam and
Speaker 1: the legal legal reform and the elections. That's the next time.
Speaker 1: This just came up. Not long ago. You had Barry
Speaker 1: Strauss on your program. He wrote the new book last year,
Speaker 1: Jews Versus Rome, fascinating book. I had listened to it
Speaker 1: on tape after I listened to your interview, I went
Speaker 1: back and bought it because the names are hard to
Speaker 1: get when you're listening. I mean, I know Pompey the Great,
Speaker 1: and I get Tiberius, and I know this pro Consul
Speaker 1: and Cestius and all these very things, but I need
Speaker 1: to get the chronology in black and white. So I
Speaker 1: really want to kind of do the same thing with
Speaker 1: you throughout that book, which is the History of the
Speaker 1: Great Revolt sixty six eighty to seventy and of the
Speaker 1: Diasper revolt and of the bar Kobat revolt in about
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty eighty. I want to go back then,
Speaker 1: because Iran is all through that book under the name
Speaker 1: of Parthia, and so Iran modern day Iran was part
Speaker 1: of ancient part empire, the only empire that kind of
Speaker 1: got to a standoff with Rome prior to the revolution
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine. How did Israel and Iran get along?
Speaker 4: They were quite good friends. They were I don't want
Speaker 4: to exaggerate it. They weren't, you know, Bosom buddies, but
Speaker 4: they had a real relationship and alliance. They shared enemies.
Speaker 4: Shared enemies is a very powerful incentive in the Middle
Speaker 4: East to be close. And more than that, the Iran
Speaker 4: of the Shah, okay, the Shah had a repressive regime.
Speaker 4: It was a deeply problematic regime.
Speaker 5: It killed people. It was you know, it was.
Speaker 4: Nothing compared to what the Ayatolas would go on and
Speaker 4: build after the revolution to topple the Shah. But nevertheless,
Speaker 4: the Shaw was not a democrat. But the Iran of
Speaker 4: the Shah was a modern country. It was a country
Speaker 4: where women walked around in you know, with their hair
Speaker 4: out and universities were ill universities and one of the
Speaker 4: tragedies of the last forty seven years of Aetola's rule,
Speaker 4: and there are many tragedies. Iran is a gutted country.
Speaker 4: It's an economy in ruins. It doesn't have electricity, it
Speaker 4: doesn't have you know, it's one of the wealthiest in
Speaker 4: terms of hydrocarbon reserves countries on Earth, and people live
Speaker 4: with less electricity than in most of much of the
Speaker 4: Third World. I mean, it's just it's it's a country
Speaker 4: that has been demolished by this region and the Iran
Speaker 4: before this region of the shop was a country that
Speaker 4: was modernizing with modern universities and modern you know, in
Speaker 4: modern economy and was looking for ways to have investment
Speaker 4: and development. Incidentally, last time you interviewed President President Trump
Speaker 4: noted that he had had friends back in the seventies
Speaker 4: who were real estate developers in New York who were
Speaker 4: looking at Iran to build and had built buildings in Iran,
Speaker 4: and investing in Iran was a smart move because of
Speaker 4: those hydrocarbon reserves, because it was an economy that could
Speaker 4: have turned the place into you know, some mix of
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Speaker 5: There's nothing preventing.
Speaker 4: That from happening, except that the Islamist section of Iranian
Speaker 4: society took over the country and ruined it. Israel saw
Speaker 4: a friend. Israel saw a modern nation, and Israel saw
Speaker 4: basically just the modern commercial world that everybody wants to
Speaker 4: live in. You know, there's a world that's not taken
Speaker 4: over by crazy ideologues demolishing their own country just to
Speaker 4: retain power. So Iran was that it was a friend.
Speaker 4: It was what the Middle East should always have been.
Speaker 4: It would have been but for something it could be.
Speaker 1: When you say it could have been a mix of
Speaker 1: Turkey and Saudi Arabia, I think it could have been
Speaker 1: another Israel, because they had the wealth, and they had
Speaker 1: the university and an tremendous base in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: of an educated elite who could have been at the
Speaker 1: vanguard of the technology revolution in the last fifty years. Instead,
Speaker 1: they went backwards. And you're probably not old enough to
Speaker 1: remember this, but I remember it well. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: I was working for then exiled President Nixon and Clementy
Speaker 1: and Ray Price, and I and he would sit on
Speaker 1: a couch and watch this, and the whole world thought
Speaker 1: Harmione was was going to be a good force. Did
Speaker 1: the Israelis get tricked by that too? The whole world
Speaker 1: not Nixon. Nixon said there's a disaster, But did Israel
Speaker 1: think Hamione would bring anything better than the Shaw?
Speaker 4: I can't speak for every analyst, and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a big country with a lot of people who
Speaker 4: have very strong views and not necessarily a lot of knowledge, So,
Speaker 4: you know, speaking as a media pundit, right, No, Fraserelis
Speaker 4: was a disaster, and it was very clearly a disaster.
Speaker 4: And in fact, Kamenei made a point of building his
Speaker 4: coalition with the communists and building his coalition with the
Speaker 4: third world as we might call them today, with all
Speaker 4: of these anti Western powers that were secular, that were
Speaker 4: progressive in Iran. I'm not speaking now about college campuses
Speaker 4: in America. I'm talking about you know, Iran in the seventies.
Speaker 4: He actually built his coalition that was able to topple
Speaker 4: the Shaw with these other powers. One of the main
Speaker 4: things that he shared of all the topics on Earth,
Speaker 4: they didn't agree on religion, they didn't agree on the economy,
Speaker 4: they didn't agree on who should actually run the place.
Speaker 4: After the revolution, they all agreed that the Jews of
Speaker 4: Israel were in evil crime against history and had to
Speaker 4: be removed, whether for progressive, secular for Islamic reasons.
Speaker 1: So this was AA. I gotta take a break and
Speaker 1: go off air, and I'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Hugh Hewitt Show on the Salem
Speaker 1: Radio Network, watching it on the Salem News Channel, and
Speaker 1: this will be part of the podcast today as well.
Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere, Stay tuned. Have Viv ready. Gore can
Speaker 1: be followed on x at Aviv retted Gore. He is
Speaker 1: with the Free Press, he is with senior analysts at
Speaker 1: the Times of Israel. His patreon asked Aviv Anything, Stay
Speaker 1: tuned to the UIT show. Welcome back to America. I'm
Speaker 1: Hugh Hewett. I guess there's Aviv rehtted Gore. You can
Speaker 1: find ask Aviv Anywhere, Ask Aviv Anything Anywhere on the
Speaker 1: podcast World Ask Aviv Anything, Aviv. The reason I brought
Speaker 1: up in the first segment Barry Strauss is it seems
Speaker 1: to me that an ancient civilization like Persia, which was
Speaker 1: part of the Parthian Empire, has beneath that, just beneath
Speaker 1: the surface of this Islamist radicalism, extremism. Another civilization used
Speaker 1: to study history. Israel's an ancient civilization. Do they lay
Speaker 1: dormant forever or is there a reason to give hope
Speaker 1: that maybe the eighty percent of Iranians who want to
Speaker 1: connect with their Persian roots can overwhelm the regime.
Speaker 4: This is an extraordinary nation and it has faced really
Speaker 4: a gutting kind of brain drain.
Speaker 5: Probably hundreds of.
Speaker 4: Thousands, I mean hundreds of thousands of scholars and scientists
Speaker 4: and mathematicians and are contributing to every country in the
Speaker 4: world except Iran because they can't do their work and.
Speaker 6: You're on under this region.
Speaker 4: It is an extraordinary civilization, It is ancient. It has
Speaker 4: one of the one of the cynical element regime is
Speaker 4: that every time there's a protest, every time there's one
Speaker 4: of these, you know, we're uprisings against the regime, and
Speaker 4: it feels a little threatened. It starts to talk about
Speaker 4: Persian history, about the Persian civilization, about the great ancient
Speaker 4: Iranian people, and as soon as everything stabilizes. This is
Speaker 4: something that Roy, an Iranian American writer said beautifully as
Speaker 4: soon as the regime stabilizes, it goes back to being
Speaker 4: Islamist and in part having this ideology of erasing that
Speaker 4: Iranian past in favor of this puritanical Islam. So there
Speaker 4: is absolutely a cultural contest, a culture war, but a
Speaker 4: deeper sense, not not culture war, you know, Republicans democrats
Speaker 4: like an ordinary Western culture war in a democracy. There's
Speaker 4: a culture war between the two cultures of Iran, the
Speaker 4: Islamic Persians, you know, pushed by Ramenei, not sort of
Speaker 4: a peaceful ordinary Islam, but this militant revolution tionary on
Speaker 4: the march, demolishing countries, version and everything that Iran and Persia,
Speaker 4: and you mentioned Aparthi as you said, all this ancient
Speaker 4: story of this ancient storied people who are extraordinarily talented
Speaker 4: and extraordinarily wise, I should say, Persian Jews led Iran
Speaker 4: in the vast, vast majority, less than twenty percent remains
Speaker 4: in the country, and they're under constant regime surveillance, and
Speaker 4: they can't leave the country without forfeiting their every last asset.
Speaker 4: And even then eighty percent shows to leave. And they
Speaker 4: are a huge, you know, strong, wealthy, successful community both
Speaker 4: in Israel, in California, anywhere where they step. So yeah,
Speaker 4: this is an absolutely extra you'd start measuring finding metrics
Speaker 4: of achievement of Iranians. It's amazing, and their country is
Speaker 4: totally gutted and their economy looks like, you know, I
Speaker 4: don't know what the bottom billion of this world. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know the failures of the UN Human Development Reports,
Speaker 4: and there's no reason.
Speaker 5: For it except this regime.
Speaker 1: And by the way, go ahead, go ahead of you.
Speaker 1: You're gonna say, by.
Speaker 4: The way, Malay in that sense where you had one
Speaker 4: of the wealthiest countries of South America, a successful democratic
Speaker 4: and then a bad ideology takes over and a third
Speaker 4: of the country turns into refugees and people can't eat.
Speaker 4: And that's the story. That's the story of this regime.
Speaker 4: People should look up the literal water shortages that have
Speaker 4: gutted Iranian agriculture. They should look up, you know, the
Speaker 4: scale of the hydrocarbon reserves. They should look up the
Speaker 4: incompetence the Twelve Day War, you know, with President Trump's
Speaker 4: decision to help the Israelis with been donning hammer because
Speaker 4: he has said for literally two decades, Iran can't get
Speaker 4: a bomb. All of that stuff is what everyone's talked about.
Speaker 4: But just for a second, let's take a step back
Speaker 4: and just look at Iran. This regime for forty seven
Speaker 4: years has told its people they need to sit quiet
Speaker 4: and suffer because the regime is doing some great important
Speaker 4: thing for Islam.
Speaker 5: What is that great important thing?
Speaker 4: Preparing the destruction of Zionism. Never mind if that's a
Speaker 4: good or bad thing. I happen to like my people
Speaker 4: in my country and my nation and my children. But
Speaker 4: even if you don't like my people, forty seven years
Speaker 4: of preparation, and Israel cleaned their clock in twelve days,
Speaker 4: and Irani in general used to be able to walk
Speaker 4: around the streets of Tehran and command some respect. And
Speaker 4: Irani in general, who walks the streets of Tehran today
Speaker 4: didn't bother.
Speaker 5: Killing is the only reason he's alive.
Speaker 4: If you're in the IRGC, so's there's just why again,
Speaker 4: leave the morality aside, just look at the competence.
Speaker 1: This reason you also mentioned in your first in the
Speaker 1: first segment we talked about, you mentioned the fact that
Speaker 1: they have been brutalized by their currency collapse. I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that this is a hinge moment
Speaker 1: is the real is worthless. So everybody's life savings, including
Speaker 1: those of the besiege, those of the IRGC, everyone except
Speaker 1: the very top elite who managed to turn it into
Speaker 1: gold or jewels, they've been wiped out in the last
Speaker 1: six months or since operation of Midnight Hammer and the
Speaker 1: Israeli Twelve Day War. Do you think that is a
Speaker 1: driver here? Because, by the way, coverage of Iran in
Speaker 1: the United States is awful. I have to go to
Speaker 1: the Times of Israel to learn anything about what's going
Speaker 1: on in Iran because the American press doesn't care or
Speaker 1: doesn't have the expertise. So do you think that the
Speaker 1: collapse of the we all gives this one more energy
Speaker 1: than the Women's movement in twenty two where the Green
Speaker 1: movement in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, We've already had revolutions of protests, uprisings of the
Speaker 4: students of the liberal activists. We've seen that and they
Speaker 4: were easily crushed. Didn't help the President Obama wouldn't support them.
Speaker 5: And then we saw the Woman Life I.
Speaker 1: Forget freedom exactly, Women Freedom Life.
Speaker 4: The Life movement, which was a whole new thing because
Speaker 4: it was specifically about the religious restrictions and about the
Speaker 4: religious regime and ever since that, by the way, it
Speaker 4: was crushed, and it was crushed brutally. Twenty thousand people
Speaker 4: were arrested and thrown in prison. But the regime has
Speaker 4: started to get a little more lax in enforcing the
Speaker 4: hijab rules, for example, and so we know that they
Speaker 4: got scared. Now we're seeing something completely different. Over the
Speaker 4: last year and even more than a year, You've had
Speaker 4: these because you have these electricity shortages, because you had
Speaker 4: these running water shortages. You've had different groups protesting. You
Speaker 4: had the truckers you protesting. You had agriculturalists, of farmers
Speaker 4: and various kinds of people who work in agriculture starting
Speaker 4: to mount serious protests. You have a lot of disquiet
Speaker 4: among the Arabs in the south. You have a lot
Speaker 4: of movement in all kinds of different sections. And then
Speaker 4: the reality plunges and just implodes, and then you get
Speaker 4: the Bazaris. The bizarre is the small shopkeepers or spread
Speaker 4: up you know, significant importers, business people of Iran, the
Speaker 4: people on whom the economy stands, the people the regime
Speaker 4: has to keep happy.
Speaker 5: They didn't join this uprising.
Speaker 7: Are this uprising?
Speaker 5: Everybody else?
Speaker 4: The students, the farmers, everybody joined them. So we suddenly
Speaker 4: have a cross section of Iranian society of people who
Speaker 4: have never protested, wouldn't have protested, but they can't live anymore.
Speaker 4: This regime has gutted everything. And one of the points
Speaker 4: that I made before about the currency that we all
Speaker 4: collapsed if you're not.
Speaker 5: Close to the regime. If you are close to the regime, the.
Speaker 4: Government actually enforces a separate currency exchange rate for you,
Speaker 4: so you can afford to you know, live feed your family,
Speaker 4: buy iPhones. Everyone else in the country can't afford water
Speaker 4: and electricity. And so this regime has driven more and
Speaker 4: more sections of Iranian society to rise up against it.
Speaker 4: And this might be that Tippic it might not, but
Speaker 4: it might.
Speaker 1: Be that it reminds me of Poland in eighty five,
Speaker 1: and then the East Block in eighty seven to eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and then the Soviet Union in eighty nine to ninety one.
Speaker 1: They're all gone. Now. I'll be right back with Aviv
Speaker 1: Rhttig Gore. Followhim on ax at Haviv Retty Gore, Ask
Speaker 1: Aviv anything is on any podcast network and a Patreon,
Speaker 1: Stay tuned on t quit. Welcome back to America. I'm
Speaker 1: Hugh Hewitt with Aviv Rehttig Gore. Whether you're listening in
Speaker 1: your car on the Salem Radio Network, are affiliates watching
Speaker 1: on the Sale News channel or catching up on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Aviv's podcast is Ask Kaviv Anything. Israel got ten million people,
Speaker 1: Iran's got ninety million people. On October the seventh, Israel
Speaker 1: suffered twelve hundred murders, and the numbers coming out of
Speaker 1: Iran are not yet well. I guess the high estimates
Speaker 1: would be roughly proportional. The high estimates are twelve thousand
Speaker 1: that have been phoned into CBS News have been butchered
Speaker 1: by the mullas. What kind of a effect do you
Speaker 1: think that will have? That kind of a masker because
Speaker 1: you've lived it, you've lived it for two and a
Speaker 1: half years. What do you think the average Iranian emotional
Speaker 1: state is? Because everyone's going to know someone when twelve
Speaker 1: thousand people get mowed down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let me just say Iranians have suffered a lot
Speaker 4: more than Israelis.
Speaker 5: My own government didn't do.
Speaker 4: It to me, and I don't live in an oppressive state,
Speaker 4: and I you know, the ordinary run ninety two million
Speaker 4: people in iran don't have a vote and don't decide
Speaker 4: the most fundamental things and have been essentially forced to
Speaker 4: live in poverty for the regimes revolution, and so this
Speaker 4: regime massacring people is a whole it's a whole different story.
Speaker 4: You know, if the United States government, because of some
Speaker 4: cultural or Vietnam protests, eat somebody, then all of America
Speaker 4: talks about it. And it's different from a brutal, oppressive,
Speaker 4: five decade regime that forces women to cover their hair
Speaker 4: everywhere suddenly murdering many, many thousands of people who are
Speaker 4: demanding things like the right to devote. So Iranians are
Speaker 4: suffering profoundly. Their families are struggling literally to get by
Speaker 4: to eat, and this regime is willing to murder huge
Speaker 4: swaths of its people. One really dangerous statement came out
Speaker 4: of Kamuna himself, who said, we lost hundreds of thousands
Speaker 4: of people to make the revolution happen. He's not talking
Speaker 4: about the revolution the top of the Shah. He's probably,
Speaker 4: I don't know what, talking about the Irani rock board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 4: We're willing to kill hundreds of thousands to that's the
Speaker 4: bar for protecting this revolution. He's threatening to kill in
Speaker 4: the six figures. And that's the thing that everybody has
Speaker 4: to watch out for right now. Now this regime suddenly
Speaker 4: ups the ante. You don't shut off the entire country's
Speaker 4: internet if you're not trying to hide something.
Speaker 1: Now, if he summons up the Iraq Iran War. I
Speaker 1: read a book by a fellow by name Ashan Ostovar
Speaker 1: called Vanguard of the Imam, and he said that their strength,
Speaker 1: the regime strength, was rooted in the veterans of that war,
Speaker 1: the Iraq Iran War, which ran for ten years, and
Speaker 1: about which I think Donald RUMs felt famously said, can't
Speaker 1: they both lose? But the question that's that generation of veterans,
Speaker 1: they're dead or they're very old men. Now do they
Speaker 1: still have a grip on the imagination of the country.
Speaker 4: They have nothing. They have nothing, They have no grip.
Speaker 4: There's that again. There's a twenty percent of Iran's population.
Speaker 4: You hear this from academics in the West, from Iranians.
Speaker 4: You hear this from Israeli intelligence, which, as we learned
Speaker 4: back in June, have a pretty good sense of what's
Speaker 4: happening in Iran. There is twenty percent of the Iranian
Speaker 4: population that is utterly totally committed to this regime. Ideologically,
Speaker 4: it's having the same economic troubles everybody else is having.
Speaker 4: We're not seeing them come out quite in the same
Speaker 4: numbers in the past, even though the danger is greater.
Speaker 4: I don't know what that means. I don't know if
Speaker 4: that just means that they're gonna come out next week.
Speaker 4: I don't know what that means, you know, I don't
Speaker 4: know to say. Everything is moving and we're getting these
Speaker 4: very sort of minor, small signals, and we're trying to
Speaker 4: interpret the larger picture. But the eighty percent who aren't
Speaker 4: in that deep Islam is true believer section of Iranian
Speaker 4: society have no respect for this regime at all and
Speaker 4: view this regime correctly as just a mafia.
Speaker 5: It's just a mafia.
Speaker 4: There's no They don't even believe in the things that
Speaker 4: they say. You know, the regime generals their families. More
Speaker 4: and more of their families live abroad, live in the
Speaker 4: United States, live in Britain, live in places where they
Speaker 4: don't have to suffer with the people that their own
Speaker 4: family members in the IRGC are forcing to suffer. And
Speaker 4: so there is this deep disconnect this stuff makes its
Speaker 4: way through Iranian social media. Everybody knows that they're a
Speaker 4: mafia that pretends to be a religious movement. It hasn't
Speaker 4: been a religious movement for decades. And that's basically the
Speaker 4: story here.
Speaker 1: So I would encourage everyone to go over to the
Speaker 1: Commentary podcast because Eli Lake was the guest on Commentary
Speaker 1: Podcast today and he made the point Aviv just avered to,
Speaker 1: which is that a lot of the Iranian elite are abroad,
Speaker 1: their children are abroad, and that one of the things
Speaker 1: the United States and England and other people ought to
Speaker 1: consider is sending them home, is saying, you've got to
Speaker 1: go live with the disaster that is the country that
Speaker 1: your parents have made, and they've sent you to school.
Speaker 1: And he mentioned that the daughter of the Iranian Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: I think that's what he said, or the Iranian President
Speaker 1: is a nursing student at Emery. Now, don't give her
Speaker 1: a hard time. It's not her fault what her parents
Speaker 1: have built and her father has built. But Aviv makes
Speaker 1: an important point when we come back Israel's role in
Speaker 1: whatever the United States is going to come up with,
Speaker 1: which got it could be unfolding tonight. We don't know
Speaker 1: could be underway right now in America. I'm here, Welcome
Speaker 1: back in America. I'm Hugh Hewett with Aviv Reddy Gore.
Speaker 1: I do believe we're at one of those hinge moments
Speaker 1: in history where what happened in Iran's going to drive
Speaker 1: a lot of the next thirty to fifty years. Aviv.
Speaker 1: I've got Bernard Lewis books by the shelf load. I've
Speaker 1: read about The Looming Tower by Lawrence Right. You and
Speaker 1: I have talked about Hamas and Wahabism and radical Sunni Islam,
Speaker 1: radical Shia Islam. I don't get at all other than
Speaker 1: they were waiting for the hidden in mom to come
Speaker 1: out of the well. Why in the world do they
Speaker 1: support Hamas and why are the Jews so central to
Speaker 1: their theology? Do you have any idea?
Speaker 4: It's extraordinary, It's an extraordinary thing in Sunni Islam. I
Speaker 4: any Muslims listening to us will know this, or if
Speaker 4: they don't, they should look it up because they should
Speaker 4: know this, and anyone else please fact check it. In
Speaker 4: Sunni Islam, the most widespread tradition is that alaksa on
Speaker 4: the which translates to the thing at the edge in
Speaker 4: Hebrew Kotse the place Muhammad goes to at the end
Speaker 4: of his life and sends to Heaven.
Speaker 5: That place is Jerusalem.
Speaker 4: That is a widespread sunny tradition, not the only sunny tradition,
Speaker 4: but nonetheless wise in Shia Islam, Alaksa is not in Jerusalem.
Speaker 5: It is simply not. There is no Shia tradition of that.
Speaker 5: It is in Iraq.
Speaker 4: And the whole idea that this regime has created has
Speaker 4: has sort of latched onto this sunny vision. It's an
Speaker 4: attempt to create a political argument for Iranian leadership of
Speaker 4: the Muslim world. And Iran's leadership also saw its its
Speaker 4: own attempt to destroy Israel and building out these proxies
Speaker 4: with tens of billions of dollars over forty years that
Speaker 4: Iran's Iranians didn't have. But the spending on kesbealand the
Speaker 4: proxies in Iraq and Syria, and the Huthis of Yemen
Speaker 4: and every en Kamas and huge spending on Kamas, hundreds
Speaker 4: of millions of dollars at least, all of this investment
Speaker 4: in the proxy system to destroy Israel was essentially a
Speaker 4: Shia argument in the Muslim world. You Sunnis have failed
Speaker 4: to destroy Israel for a century. You have, you know,
Speaker 4: embarrassed Islam. In that sense, we will succeed and that
Speaker 4: will be evidence that Shia Islam is correct. That's the
Speaker 4: kind of stuff you actually get when you drill down
Speaker 4: into it, when you actually listen to an interview on
Speaker 4: Al Jazeera or whatever with an Iranian Ayatola, and you
Speaker 4: actually try and get into why do you want to
Speaker 4: destroy us? I'm not saying why you don't like his
Speaker 4: El you don't like Israel?
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 4: You cannot like France too? Who cares like not? Why
Speaker 4: don't you like Israel? Why are you invested to the
Speaker 4: point of gutting your own economy with this obsession of
Speaker 4: the destruction of a country you have no border with
Speaker 4: and no interests in.
Speaker 7: What is that?
Speaker 4: And you very quickly discover it isn't actually Shia Islam.
Speaker 4: It is Islam. It's an Islamic veneer on an imperialist
Speaker 4: project that's meant to force the Sunnis to rally behind
Speaker 4: the Iranians.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: It's a regional control. There's someone that developed back in
Speaker 4: the seventies and sixties.
Speaker 1: Oh that makes you just gave me at least a
Speaker 1: narrative to understand, because I can go find a Sunni
Speaker 1: extremists imm preaching on the internet the destruction of Israel
Speaker 1: in about ten minutes, and it's whether it's Isis or
Speaker 1: whether it is Al Qaido, whether it's any of their
Speaker 1: offshoot groups around the world, But I can't find Shia
Speaker 1: im Mom's. They're supposed to be almost as peaceful as
Speaker 1: another branch of Islam, the third branch which is eluding
Speaker 1: me right now, the one that's very, very peaceful. When
Speaker 1: did that? Why don't we know that? Is there no
Speaker 1: effort to expose what the Shia pretenders are that Israel
Speaker 1: and the United States are undertaking. Is there any effort
Speaker 1: to put that message out there to do legitimize the regime?
Speaker 4: Sheia have in the Muslim world a long tradition of
Speaker 4: being oppressed by the Sunnis, and so the Shia have
Speaker 4: developed a much less It's weird for me to, like,
Speaker 4: you know, fly the flag of the Shia right now.
Speaker 4: I mean, the greatest force trying to annihilate my people
Speaker 4: at this moment is a Shia political force. But nevertheless,
Speaker 4: the Shia have been less aggressive, less conquering, belligerent, you know,
Speaker 4: colonialist and imperialists than Sunni's overall over fourteenth centuries. I'm
Speaker 4: not singling out any particular people or group or time,
Speaker 4: but in general, the Shia have been the oppressed and
Speaker 4: are much more, much less committed to a kind of
Speaker 4: conquering vision of Islam than the Sunnis. So the Muslim
Speaker 4: Brotherhood vision of the takeover, of getting back to the
Speaker 4: takeover of the world, that's.
Speaker 5: A Sunny project and doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 4: And she is at until really Kromieni and Romiani who
Speaker 4: found it, this Iranian version of Sheism, this political Sheism.
Speaker 4: So just in general, if you go to the Shia
Speaker 4: of Lebanon, until they were radicalized by vast Iranian money
Speaker 4: through chrisbela Iranian shea excuse me, Lebanese Shia were a
Speaker 4: quiet group. They were not on the warpath. They did
Speaker 4: not conduct you know, conquest and massacres. It's similar for
Speaker 4: the Alo whites of Syria who are sort.
Speaker 1: Of thinking of the Sufis. I couldn't. I couldn't come
Speaker 1: up with the name of the Sufis. They're the very
Speaker 1: pacifist branch of Islam. If I am remembering my Lewis correctly,
Speaker 1: But Shia was not was not Wahabist.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Shia have never been Wahabists.
Speaker 4: All the Wahabism, all of the Muslim Brotherhood stuff, all
Speaker 4: the stuff you get out of you know, the al
Speaker 4: Qaeda stuff, the the Saib and all of that stuff
Speaker 4: all happened in Sunnism. All this radicalizing of Islam in
Speaker 4: the modern age happened in Sundism, and the Shia were
Speaker 4: very late to the game. And Komeni basically brought in
Speaker 4: a lot of these ideas and a lot of these
Speaker 4: ways of thinking and talking and gave it as Shia
Speaker 4: vanir and she of vocabulary. But he basically did that
Speaker 4: as a power play to take over Iran.
Speaker 3: That was the idea.
Speaker 4: It's it's hard to understand this regime in Iran as
Speaker 4: a religious movement just because it refuses to act as one.
Speaker 4: It really is just about oppression and power. And when
Speaker 4: you actually go to meet the Shia and talk to
Speaker 4: Shia in Iraq, for example, you get a very ambiguous
Speaker 4: kind of relationship with this Sheism of Iran as this
Speaker 4: thing that isn't what Sheism always was. Even by the way,
Speaker 4: if Iran will support them in their great internal sectarian
Speaker 4: wars in Iraq against the Sunnis and the brutality of
Speaker 4: the Sunnis during Saddam's time and all of that. You
Speaker 4: can sometimes get an appreciation for this ally in Shia Iran,
Speaker 4: but you still don't see an Iraqi Shia in Lebaneshia,
Speaker 4: in Syrian Shia, and frankly, Tilda Hui's in Yemenishia. You
Speaker 4: don't see that kind of aggression that the Iranians introduced
Speaker 4: into Shia politics. And so the Iranians took over and
Speaker 4: kind of reframed Shia politics in the Middle East in
Speaker 4: a way that has demolished frankly, every Shia polity or
Speaker 4: every polity does a large population of Shia Iran has
Speaker 4: been a disastrous curse on the Shia Sunnez of the
Speaker 4: Arab world and Persia itself.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to Aviv a little bit off air.
Speaker 1: I'll add it to the podcast today, but please don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere, stay on the radio station or on the
Speaker 1: television station.
Speaker 2: But I'll add the last.
Speaker 1: Bit of the lea to the podcast right back on
Speaker 1: the podcast Down with Aviv, Reddy Gore and Avivan Commentary Today,
Speaker 1: John pod Hoortz Exit question was on a scale after
Speaker 1: President Trump put up his post this morning, on a
Speaker 1: scale of one to ten, what do you think the
Speaker 1: United States will do? With one being nothing and ten
Speaker 1: being anything necessary to Maduro Hamini go in and grab
Speaker 1: him and kill the him and get them and four
Speaker 1: out of five people set a six with some fireworks
Speaker 1: spectacular that we can see. John Potterwartz said at eight
Speaker 1: he thought we're going all in because they're as weak
Speaker 1: as they've ever been. But it occurred to me, as
Speaker 1: I listened to the commentary podcast and Eli Lake knows
Speaker 1: his Iran history, it occurs to me that really depends
Speaker 1: upon the people of Iran and how they react of
Speaker 1: being shot down. I mean, it really is merciless. So
Speaker 1: we saw in Israel on ten to seven the Israelis
Speaker 1: fight back with their bare hands, rocks and whatever they could.
Speaker 1: They kept throwing grenades out of their bomb shelters, and
Speaker 1: then they went to war, and the war's not over yet.
Speaker 1: What do you think the average Iranian in the eighty
Speaker 1: percent does? Now, I'm asking you to be a prophet,
Speaker 1: and I know it's unfair, but you've studied what happens
Speaker 1: when people are they have no hope. They have no money,
Speaker 1: they have no water, what do they do?
Speaker 4: This regime has done nothing for forty seven years. The
Speaker 4: demolished other power center in Iran with the Communists, and
Speaker 4: after the Iran Iraq War, it massacred the communists. It
Speaker 4: has has systematically gone through Iranian society and degraded and
Speaker 4: demolished anyone who could replace them, so that even if
Speaker 4: a revolution does come, there's nobody to lead it and
Speaker 4: there's no power center, single power center, that can actually
Speaker 4: see it through. That's what makes this moment so dangerous
Speaker 4: to the regime. That the Bazaris are such a power.
Speaker 4: If the interests of the basic you know, economic backbone
Speaker 4: of the capital and of the major cities of Iran
Speaker 4: are the uprising, then the Iranian regime has a problem
Speaker 4: because there is a kind of power base. It still
Speaker 4: doesn't have a clear leadership.
Speaker 5: It's still not.
Speaker 4: Clear who actually makes the decision steps in. This regime
Speaker 4: has a lot of bodies it's willing to go through.
Speaker 4: I mean in the hundreds of thousands, as we said,
Speaker 4: before it falls. So I would say two things. One,
Speaker 4: it looks like Iranians don't think anything will ever get better.
Speaker 4: It looks like the regime has managed to convince most
Speaker 4: Iranians of that, and that it's very dangerous for the
Speaker 4: regime because people have to have a reason, they have
Speaker 4: to have something to lose. It doesn't look like they
Speaker 4: think that they have something to lose. And I'll say
Speaker 4: a huge compliment to President Trump in that regard. I
Speaker 4: have no idea what President Trump is going to do.
Speaker 4: He bombed Iran while pretending to be considering not bombing
Speaker 4: Iran by lighting the planes. Everybody in Venezuela didn't predict it.
Speaker 4: Not only didn't predict it, the signals were going in
Speaker 4: all different directions in the last three days, President and
Speaker 4: Trump has said he's going to negotiation and also not
Speaker 4: going to negotiation. That is exactly how you should behave
Speaker 4: if you're about to demolish something, if you're about to
Speaker 4: take them down, and also just if you're terrifying them
Speaker 4: into overreacting, which itself could be the destabilizing factor that
Speaker 4: throws them out of power. So President Trump, inasmuch as
Speaker 4: an American president can affect this, and there's quite a
Speaker 4: bit he can do, but you know, it's not his decision.
Speaker 4: In the end, He's not the factor. But he's basically
Speaker 4: done everything right so far, and saying both sides of
Speaker 4: the thing. Saying something and then the opposite thing is
Speaker 4: a fantastic strategy with this regime, especially after Maduro, especially
Speaker 4: after Midnight Hammer.
Speaker 5: So I think.
Speaker 4: America is in the right place, basically positioned to help
Speaker 4: without being the leadership of this thing. The Iranian people
Speaker 4: will bleed a lot more before this regime dies. If
Speaker 4: this is suppressed, they'll be a bigger and worse one
Speaker 4: because there's nothing in this regime that's capable of turning
Speaker 4: Iran around and setting it on a better path.
Speaker 1: So very last question, we saw what the IDF and
Speaker 1: Mosad can do. Now, I'm not one of those Americans
Speaker 1: that think Masad is thirty stories tall, but I was
Speaker 1: pretty impressed by the Beeper operation and by the takeout
Speaker 1: of the people in Cutter and the people in Tehran. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Israel has got operatives on the ground in Iran, but
Speaker 1: there aren't enough Israelis. Even if they do to actually
Speaker 1: take them out. Do you think they will follow the
Speaker 1: American lead here act independent of it? And the key question,
Speaker 1: if Iran gets scared, they're going to throw ballistic missiles
Speaker 1: at your country. That's what they did. They've done that
Speaker 1: four times now, once against America and three times against you.
Speaker 1: What do you think Israel's reaction. I don't think I
Speaker 1: personally don't think Israel will hold back this time. What
Speaker 1: do you think.
Speaker 4: If Iroan forces, you know, revisiting of the Twelve Day War,
Speaker 4: I don't think Israel will be able to contain. I
Speaker 4: think I think this will be the end. I think,
Speaker 4: first of all, Ron will Be will need there to
Speaker 4: be a serious war with Israel as a distraction, as
Speaker 4: an excuse to crack down more viciously internally, as a
Speaker 4: stabilizing force, and I think the Israelis will have to
Speaker 4: deny them both those things.
Speaker 5: They'll have to have.
Speaker 4: A war where the regime really is destabilized. I'd be
Speaker 4: very surprised if he many survives or if his son,
Speaker 4: who is sort of being groomed to replace some survives.
Speaker 4: This will be something that really does does cause terrible
Speaker 4: damage to the Iranian regime. But the Israelis would be
Speaker 4: why is to respond in a way that looks visibly
Speaker 4: like it's trying to avoid hurting the people of Iran,
Speaker 4: And so you know, it's quite likely that Ronald drag
Speaker 4: us all into a rerun of that war essentially. At
Speaker 4: the same time, it needs to be handled very wisely,
Speaker 4: because it really is the Iranian people who can topple
Speaker 4: this regime, and it has to look like it's then
Speaker 4: toppling the regime, and that allows us all kind of
Speaker 4: post revolution stability. If they can't, just if it isn't
Speaker 4: doesn't appear to be some American or Israeli project, the
Speaker 4: regime will claim that anyway. It told us, any Islamist
Speaker 4: factions will claim that anyway. But most Iranians have to
Speaker 4: know that it's not what's happening, and then it can
Speaker 4: actually happen.
Speaker 1: Well said, as always, Aviv, I thank you for the
Speaker 1: extra time today Again, find ask Aviv anything wherever podcasts are,
Speaker 1: support them on Patreon, read them in the free press,
Speaker 1: razors senior analysts, and occasionally at the times of Israel. Aviv,
Speaker 1: thank you taught to you in a few weeks or months.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the time.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to America. I'm Hugh Hewett. As you heard
Speaker 1: me say at the beginning of the show, the biggest
Speaker 1: story in the world is what's going on in Iran
Speaker 1: and I know we are all have our favorite interesting stories,
Speaker 1: and I cover the news as it breaks, but the
Speaker 1: biggest story in the world is in Iran. For forty
Speaker 1: seven years that tyranny has been in place, and for
Speaker 1: almost as long, the Foundation for the Defensive Democracy has
Speaker 1: been working to bring it down and free the people
Speaker 1: of Iran. Joining us now is the CEO of the
Speaker 1: Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, Mark Dubovitz, who has
Speaker 1: been on with me before. He did a great podcast
Speaker 1: series last year on Iran, which are twelve parts. He
Speaker 1: added another part this weekend called Iran Breakdown. I recommend
Speaker 1: it to you. Mark. Welcome. Let me start with a
Speaker 1: big what's your reaction to what's happened over the last
Speaker 1: two weeks in a day?
Speaker 8: Well, Hugh, thanks so much for having me on. Look here,
Speaker 8: it's extraordinary.
Speaker 9: I mean, as you said, I've been working on Iran
Speaker 9: for twenty two years, working with lots of administrations, including
Speaker 9: the Trump administration, both both Trump administrations on maximum pressure
Speaker 9: on the regime but also encouraging maximum support for the
Speaker 9: Iranian people and the Radiom people have been out on
Speaker 9: the streets since two thousand and nine, repeatedly calling for
Speaker 9: death to the dictator and the Islamic Republic establish relations
Speaker 9: with America, with Israel, and now in the past two
Speaker 9: weeks they've taken to the streets. Millions of Iranians are
Speaker 9: on those streets, but they're also getting mowed down by
Speaker 9: the security forces. Thousands of Iranians have been slaughtered, Tens
Speaker 9: of thousands have been arrested, tortured, and dozens executed.
Speaker 8: So it is a pivotal moment for the United States,
Speaker 8: for Iran, for the region.
Speaker 1: So I've stressed in my audience they can't trust what
Speaker 1: they see on X unless they know that the person
Speaker 1: on X is someone they can trust. They can trust
Speaker 1: you and trust Cliff may Kareem Sawd you pour at Carnegie,
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of colleagues at FDD. I'm pushing out,
Speaker 1: how do you tell if you're just you know, nubie
Speaker 1: to the Iran issue, who to trust on this about
Speaker 1: what's going on there? Since the regime's severed outside world
Speaker 1: contact with the people of Tehran and across all of Iran.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean here, listen, it's difficult to know what's
Speaker 9: going on the ground because, as you said, they've shut
Speaker 9: down the internet.
Speaker 8: They're interfering with starlink access.
Speaker 9: Videos are still coming in and we're certainly seeing what's
Speaker 9: happening on the ground.
Speaker 8: What do I trust?
Speaker 9: Look, I don't trust anybody defending the regime number one.
Speaker 9: Number two, I don't trust anybody saying that US intervention
Speaker 9: is going to lead to some kind of rally around
Speaker 9: the flag. The notion that millions of Iranians are on
Speaker 9: the streets and they're getting mowed down by the security forces,
Speaker 9: but somehow, with President Trump intervenes and goes against the regime,
Speaker 9: these Iranians are going to defend the regime, I think
Speaker 9: is nonsense. So anybody's saying that should not be trusted.
Speaker 9: I think a lot of good Iranian voices, my colleagues said,
Speaker 9: got Samanajad certainly Resipolovy.
Speaker 8: I mean, he's all over.
Speaker 9: Social media, the crown Prince, the son of the former Shaw.
Speaker 9: He is been very articulate, and I certainly would trust
Speaker 9: many of the things that he's saying.
Speaker 1: Okay, now let's talk about what the president can do.
Speaker 1: He was my guest last Thursday, and he said, very bluntly,
Speaker 1: will hit him very very hard if they kill people.
Speaker 1: But he also gave him a little bit of an
Speaker 1: out he said some of these deaths were because of stampede.
Speaker 1: Later that night, he didn't use that out with Sean
Speaker 1: Hannity as much, and it's been totally abandoned by Sunday night.
Speaker 1: The president now knows there are thousands of people dead.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we've confirmed that to him. What could he do,
Speaker 1: in your view that would be most effective in fraeing Iran?
Speaker 8: So I think there are number of things he can do.
Speaker 9: I mean, first of all is to target the security
Speaker 9: forces that are actually engaged in this brutal repression.
Speaker 8: Go after the repression apparatus.
Speaker 9: And you could do that through offensive cyber and or
Speaker 9: military strikes against the IOGC is on a Revolutionary Guard corps,
Speaker 9: the besiege, the police.
Speaker 8: These are the people that are engaged in this brutal repression.
Speaker 9: Number two is ready to reach out to Elon musk
Speaker 9: Is to try to restore or improve the starlink connection.
Speaker 9: So these videos are coming out Iranians right now, being
Speaker 9: murdered in the dark. They need to be brought to light,
Speaker 9: and that's very important. I think the presidents and Elon
Speaker 9: can do that. Number three, you know what, Premister Natanyahu
Speaker 9: and President Trump discussed at the end of December that
Speaker 9: you reported on you was the growing and reconstituting Iranian
Speaker 9: missile program, which is gonna represent a significant threat to
Speaker 9: the United States and Israel as it gets rebuilt.
Speaker 8: The Israelis are gonna go take it out. I think
Speaker 8: better the United States takes it out.
Speaker 9: Because of the United States takes out the missile program, Kamine,
Speaker 9: the Supreme Leader Baran is gonna be quite reluctant to
Speaker 9: respond because he knows that if he attacks the United States.
Speaker 8: That's the end of his regime.
Speaker 9: If Israelis take it out, it's going to lead to
Speaker 9: another round around the fire, hundreds of not thousands of
Speaker 9: ballistic missiles at Israel, and we're going to be in
Speaker 9: a major war in the United States. And President Trump's
Speaker 9: gonna have to deal with that. And Trump, if he
Speaker 9: has the opportunity, take out those dangerous ballistic missiles. Support
Speaker 9: the people, unlock the communications, go after the regime apparatus.
Speaker 1: Mark, This is a difficult question for anyone to answer,
Speaker 1: but you'll know if anybody knows. I heard Kareem today
Speaker 1: in a podcast with Dan Senor say that the IRGC
Speaker 1: is one hundred and fifty thousand strong. All right, i'rn
Speaker 1: ninety million people ten percent, nine million people, one percent
Speaker 1: of nine hundred thousand people. So one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand IERGC members. That's a third of one percent. How
Speaker 1: hard is it to overthrow one hundred and fifty thousand thugs.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of thugs. They got a lot of guns.
Speaker 1: There are any other guns in the Irun. But that's
Speaker 1: not a big police state. It's a relatively small, isn't it.
Speaker 8: Well, there's one hundred and fifty thousand IERGC.
Speaker 9: There's probably two to three million members of the Basiege,
Speaker 9: which is their militia. Those are the thugs that drive
Speaker 9: around in motorcycles and beat up and and torture and
Speaker 9: kill Iranians. So you've got a couple of million there,
Speaker 9: and they're also importing thoughts from Iraq. This is the
Speaker 9: Iraqi Hazbala and the Schiait militias that they're bringing in,
Speaker 9: bringing in Arabs to kill Persians because in some cases
Speaker 9: the security forces throwing to turn their guns on their
Speaker 9: own people. So the regime's apparatus is formidable. But you're right, listen,
Speaker 9: I mean, there's ninety two million Iranians, and if ten
Speaker 9: percent came to the street, they could overwhelm the security forces.
Speaker 9: And certainly some of them are armed, particularly some of
Speaker 9: the Kurdish groups, the Baluchis and others.
Speaker 8: So I think that's that's certainly a potential.
Speaker 1: So, Mark, you're not old enough to remember the actual revolution.
Speaker 1: I watched it in real time with Ray Price and
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon and San Clementy my second job out of college.
Speaker 1: People marched in the daytime. Then do you expect anti
Speaker 1: regime marches to occur in the daytime? Yeah, they are.
Speaker 8: They're occurring in the daytime, they occurring in the nighttime.
Speaker 8: I mean, what I'm.
Speaker 9: Worried about you is that if there's no US intervention,
Speaker 9: that these protests are going to die off because of
Speaker 9: the brutal repression. And whether it's day or night, the
Speaker 9: guns are being turned on Iranians, thousands are being slaughtered.
Speaker 9: At some point, they're just going to have to They're
Speaker 9: going to stay home. And if they stay home, the
Speaker 9: regime is going to come out of this. Yes, a
Speaker 9: wounded animal, but a bitter one, a lethal one, a
Speaker 9: much more dangerous one.
Speaker 8: And I'd be worried that Orion's would never go back.
Speaker 3: On the streets.
Speaker 1: Follow Mark on exit, M Dubovitch. Follow everyone at FDD.
Speaker 1: At FDD, Mark is coming back next hour. So other
Speaker 1: than my drivetime audience in the inside the Beltway, here's
Speaker 1: them for six minutes to repeat a lot of this.
Speaker 1: So make sure you listen to those segments of my
Speaker 1: interview with Mark Dubovitch and follow him. Welcome back in America.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break. Sebastian lie son of Jimmy Lai,
Speaker 1: is going to join me this hour. This segment though,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing back Mark Dubovitch, who is with us last hour,
Speaker 1: is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defensive Democracy.
Speaker 1: Is one of the actual people you can trust on Iran.
Speaker 1: Follow them on exit, M Dubovitch. Follow everyone at the
Speaker 1: Foundation for the Defensive Democracies, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of them. There are half dozen Iran experts. The FDD
Speaker 1: is actually the go to place. Mark. When we ran
Speaker 1: out of time last hour, I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 1: President Trump mentioned on Air Force One last night that
Speaker 1: the regime wants to negotiate. My reaction is, God, no,
Speaker 1: don't do that. That they're just playing for time. Is
Speaker 1: that your reaction.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you absolutely. I mean this is a typical regime trick.
Speaker 9: They're back is against the walls. So they offer negotiations
Speaker 9: and try to trap American negotiators. And the only place
Speaker 9: where they tend to win against America is at the
Speaker 9: negotiating table. They won against Biden, they won against Obama,
Speaker 9: they think they could possibly win against President Trump. I
Speaker 9: think it'd be a big mistake to go back to
Speaker 9: the table fundamentally, because number one, it would be a
Speaker 9: betrayal of the Iranian people that are on the streets.
Speaker 9: And number two, Hugh, there's no way that Ali Khamenei,
Speaker 9: the Supreme leader of Iran, is going to meet the
Speaker 9: minimum demands that President Trump has a full dismantlement of
Speaker 9: their new clear missile programs and terror networks.
Speaker 8: No way Kamine is going to give into that.
Speaker 9: And if not, he's just going to play for time,
Speaker 9: try to divide America, try to divide the White House,
Speaker 9: try to divide the US from Europe. And he's going
Speaker 9: to ultimately try to embarrass the President. And I don't
Speaker 9: think the President is going to be embarrassed and is
Speaker 9: prepared to be embarrassed, So he needs to enforce the
Speaker 9: red line that he laid out.
Speaker 1: Now, Mark, the Israelis could have killed Hamione, and no
Speaker 1: doubt we can kill Hamione, but there are arguments on
Speaker 1: both sides. We to leave him alive or we do
Speaker 1: if we have the ability to have him shot killed.
Speaker 9: Well, I do think we need to decapitate the leadership
Speaker 9: of Iran, and that includes Kamene, but also includes senior
Speaker 9: IRGC commanders, those who are in control of the command
Speaker 9: and control system of Iran, and that includes the repression apparatus.
Speaker 9: So yeah, if you decapitate the leadership, then this possibility
Speaker 9: of other stepping into their place. I mean, that's what
Speaker 9: President Trump did in Venezuela with Maduro. I think there's
Speaker 9: more than just Kaminae. There are others, but certainly decapitation
Speaker 9: effort should be seriously considered.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, Mark, what are the How many IRGC
Speaker 1: bases are there? How many besiege bases? The final Israeli
Speaker 1: wave was going to hit them. President Trump waved it
Speaker 1: off in order to bring that conflict to an end
Speaker 1: last June. How many target sites are we talking about?
Speaker 9: So there are, I mean there are dozens and dozens
Speaker 9: of RGC and besiege bases all around the country, obviously
Speaker 9: headquarters in places like Teylan, but certainly it's a target
Speaker 9: rich environment. I mean, the Israelis and the Americans have
Speaker 9: detailed intelligence on all of these bases, maneuvers, apparatus. This
Speaker 9: has been studied for years here, I mean particular by
Speaker 9: the Israelis, I mean MOSAD and military intelligence in Israel
Speaker 9: have a very, very large and expansive target set, and
Speaker 9: that information has been provided to the Americans. So there's
Speaker 9: no shortage of targets. Just the question of what President
Speaker 9: Trump will choose.
Speaker 1: If President Trump brings down this regime, I think he
Speaker 1: goes to the top of American presidents, at least since FDR.
Speaker 1: He's going to actually surpass Reagan. The Soviet Union, of course,
Speaker 1: dissolved under George H. W. Bush. How would you rank
Speaker 1: that achievement. I think Iran is a lynchpin, and I've
Speaker 1: got Nixon on the brain. Nixon used to say, it's everything,
Speaker 1: It's one of the two pillars of the Middle East.
Speaker 1: And so how big of a moment is this for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I've said publicly here you know that that if
Speaker 9: he brings down the Islamic Republic of Iran, he will
Speaker 9: be one of the greatest foreign policy presidents in modern history,
Speaker 9: if not the greatest. I mean, the Islamic Republic of Iran,
Speaker 9: first of all, has killed and named thousands of Americans.
Speaker 9: It has created massive bloodshed and chaos in the Middle
Speaker 9: East and continue to drag us into these endless wars
Speaker 9: in the Middle East. It's sponsored terrorism globally. It's threatened
Speaker 9: to kill President Trump up and try to kill him,
Speaker 9: and it is try to build nuclear weapons. It has
Speaker 9: built a massive ballistic missile program. It's fired hundreds of
Speaker 9: those bulistic missiles at Israel, and missiles and drones at
Speaker 9: our allies in the Middle East.
Speaker 8: I mean, it has been such a.
Speaker 9: Force for murder, chaos, and violence that to get rid
Speaker 9: of it and to replace it with something better and
Speaker 9: more stable, more peaceful, and more prosperous would be a
Speaker 9: game changer for American national security.
Speaker 8: And by the way, it would also allow us.
Speaker 9: To do what we need to do, which is to
Speaker 9: focus our resources in the coming years on the multi
Speaker 9: generational threat from the communist Chinese Party.
Speaker 1: Now I read him here quote and he laughed, he said,
Speaker 1: haven't I already done that? He's done pretty well. I've
Speaker 1: got to admit ruining the Iranian nuclear to turn is
Speaker 1: a big deal. But do you think we could count
Speaker 1: on a post harmonious Harmonius regime being stable and at
Speaker 1: least not evil?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean Trump also did say that, he said
Speaker 9: I accept that. I accept that, and he's an a
Speaker 9: view with you, right.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 9: I think he appreciates how important taking down Islamic Republic is,
Speaker 9: and I think he has for most of his adult life.
Speaker 9: I think we have got I don't think we can
Speaker 9: count on anything in the Middle East, and we certainly
Speaker 9: can't count on anything in geopolitics, but there's no doubt
Speaker 9: in my mind that whatever comes next will be much better.
Speaker 1: So everyone in your car go to FDD Foundation for
Speaker 1: the Defensive Democracies. Follow it at FDD, follow Mark at
Speaker 1: m Dubavitch, and there are lots of other people as well.
Speaker 1: But make sure they're reliable. Don't believe the regime propaganda.
Speaker 1: Don't believe the regime mythologists, don't believe people who supported
Speaker 1: the JCPOA, believe people like part Thank Morning or at
Speaker 1: Eating Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewittt on this Monday. As
Speaker 1: I've said throughout the show today, I think we're on
Speaker 1: the brink of a strike on Iran. But I don't
Speaker 1: know anything. I just read people who know things. One
Speaker 1: of them is bet him ben Talablu. Did I get
Speaker 1: it right? Bet him think because it's one of those
Speaker 1: names that always was going to trip me up forever?
Speaker 1: Did I get it right?
Speaker 10: To worry?
Speaker 6: Great? To be with you here? Yes, pretty close?
Speaker 1: Great, We got time. So I want to do a
Speaker 1: deep dive for the benefit of the audience where We've
Speaker 1: got lots of cameras in Minnesota and appropriately so, but
Speaker 1: not enough people are following with great specificity what is
Speaker 1: transpired in the aftermath of a massacre that is really
Speaker 1: without precedent in post war World War two. Do you
Speaker 1: agree with me on that it's bigger than Tianamen Square.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, the reported estimates we keep getting keep growing. Now,
Speaker 6: thirty to thirty six thousand is a reported estimate. Yes,
Speaker 6: in terms of confirmed people, places, names, faces, it's about
Speaker 6: five to six thousand, depending on the human rights organization
Speaker 6: you choose. But those human rights organizations are steadily and
Speaker 6: busily looking from seventeen to nineteen thousand other cases right now.
Speaker 6: So if you again you take a bottom of the
Speaker 6: barrel assessment here it's twenty to thirty thousand plus. And again,
Speaker 6: this is not just yours truly as a member of
Speaker 6: the running diasp for saying this. This is CBS News,
Speaker 6: this is Iran International, this is Time magazine, and this
Speaker 6: is you know, Times of London. Everyone is coming to
Speaker 6: the same conclusion because they're looking at the same internal sources.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to come back and establish why people
Speaker 1: should listen very closely to you after I get the
Speaker 1: quick update our executions underway despite Donald Trump's red line.
Speaker 6: If you look at what's going on in Persian language
Speaker 6: social media, yes, indeed, And yet you don't have to
Speaker 6: take it for me. You can take it from Iranian officials,
Speaker 6: including someone from the judiciary who mocked actually President Trump
Speaker 6: for believing. Yet someone who also similarly mocked President Trump
Speaker 6: for believing that there was a stay of execution, or
Speaker 6: a pause of executions, or even just a kind of
Speaker 6: an about face on the repression altogether, was a former
Speaker 6: advisor to the Supreme Leader, mister Larry Johnny. These guys
Speaker 6: are like their brothers or the Kennedy family brothers popularly
Speaker 6: called in Iran, and this brother Mohammed Jabad. Larry Johnny
Speaker 6: in a recent Persian language talk show had actually again
Speaker 6: the president for believing that there were these pauses or
Speaker 6: stays of execution.
Speaker 1: Given well, this is why I want the audience to understand.
Speaker 1: The reason I think as strike as imminent is because
Speaker 1: the Iranian officials have been taunting President Trump. Half of
Speaker 1: them have been, including the Atolahameni and his sort of thugs,
Speaker 1: and then the other half of the Iranian regime tries
Speaker 1: to talk nice to us through mister Whitcoff. And we'll
Speaker 1: talk with Benham about that in a moment, but let's
Speaker 1: start by establishing who you are. It's the first time
Speaker 1: on the show, so I've got to ask you. Was
Speaker 1: Aldreus a communist? By Benham?
Speaker 6: First time caller, longtime listener. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 6: Nixon history at Paraphernalia, so I do believe he was.
Speaker 1: Yes, And have you read the Looming Tower?
Speaker 6: I have. Actually, this is a controversial point in the office.
Speaker 6: I have actually only skimmed the Looming Tower and stayed
Speaker 6: away from the documentaries because with some of other colleagues
Speaker 6: there's a line I'm infamous for given that I focused
Speaker 6: on Iran and the acts of resistance in the office,
Speaker 6: which is sometimes I find Sunni terrorism not as interesting
Speaker 6: as Shia terrorism.
Speaker 1: Well that was actually I understand it completely.
Speaker 6: For you, but a nine to eleven hits home very hard.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I actually am very glad you made the
Speaker 1: key distinction. Al Qaeda is Sunni Wahabbist extremism Islamist fanaticism,
Speaker 1: and what's going on in Iran is the Shia fanaticism.
Speaker 1: And so tell us your background on Iran about him
Speaker 1: so the audience can understand you are not talking out
Speaker 1: of your hat.
Speaker 6: Well, I try not to anyway. But I'm a first
Speaker 6: generation in Iranian American born and raised in the United
Speaker 6: States to two immigrant parents. On my mother's side, her
Speaker 6: father was a political prisoner at the heyday of the revolution.
Speaker 6: He was a reporter under the previous government, taken to
Speaker 6: Eving Prison. Thankfully he got out, but after he got out,
Speaker 6: the whole family fled. And I wouldn't say that cast
Speaker 6: an overcast through a shadow over my future my career,
Speaker 6: But I was interested growing up as a first generation
Speaker 6: Iranian American about these issues, seeing that the Iran I
Speaker 6: knew at home and with family and with friends being
Speaker 6: drastically different than the Iran I saw in the nineties
Speaker 6: and two thousands, and again in the heyday of the
Speaker 6: Global War on Terror at Post nine to eleven Middle East.
Speaker 6: But about nineteen years I've spent in Washington, d c.
Speaker 6: All working on open source stuff, and thirteen years at
Speaker 6: the Foundation for Defensive Democracies, where I've been intimately involved
Speaker 6: in their Iran program, and I'm the senior director of
Speaker 6: their Iran program now, where I oversee the breath and
Speaker 6: depth of a lot of their work on Iran. And
Speaker 6: I've had the privilege over these thirteen years to be
Speaker 6: invited to four different continents to brief media, government, military,
Speaker 6: academic audiences around the world on the Iran issue.
Speaker 1: So I only try and bring on people who are serious,
Speaker 1: mister Ostovar. Richard Goldberg is on tomorrow your calleing. Mark
Speaker 1: Tibowitz has been on this program, Clifford, May I try
Speaker 1: and bring on people but that know what they're speaking about.
Speaker 1: I got to ask you, know, I've been listening to
Speaker 1: the book King of Kings by Scott Anderson. How do
Speaker 1: you write it as a history of nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: seventy nine and the immediate thereafter.
Speaker 6: Well, I eagerly bought it because, you know, history is
Speaker 6: kind of what animates us in the policy space. If
Speaker 6: we don't know history, we're not going to know what
Speaker 6: we're talking about today. I recommend buying the book. I
Speaker 6: have some major qualms with the way the book goes
Speaker 6: through the lives of certain individuals, particularly some folks at
Speaker 6: the State Department at the time. It kind of uses
Speaker 6: their personal story to tell a story of the Iranian Revolution.
Speaker 6: I don't think that's always the best prism to tell
Speaker 6: history through. I think if you're doing history as biography,
Speaker 6: you're better off focusing on, you know, the biographies of
Speaker 6: people in the Middle East, because they've really made and
Speaker 6: reshaped their states. You know. Focusing on a bureaucrat at
Speaker 6: the State Department to understand something as seismic as the
Speaker 6: Iranian Revolution is not the best tool. So I think
Speaker 6: it's an important book to have. It is certainly, by
Speaker 6: no means the only book to have on that revolution.
Speaker 6: I would recommend two good books on twentieth century Iran,
Speaker 6: The Last Jaw by Ray tak Here, as well as
Speaker 6: of course Days of God by James Buckan.
Speaker 1: All Right, what do you make of Vanguard of Them
Speaker 1: Mom by mister Rostovar.
Speaker 6: I've actually done a book review of Vanguard of the mom.
Speaker 6: It's actually the nicest, best synthesis of the IRGC, which
Speaker 6: is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps out there from the
Speaker 6: academic world and in terms of the policy world. You know,
Speaker 6: there are some people that I know and respect and
Speaker 6: work with that have talked about the Guard core, this
Speaker 6: kind of tip of the revolutionary sphere of the Islamic
Speaker 6: Republic as being able to create a military dictatorship overnight.
Speaker 6: And then there's some people who talk about it purely
Speaker 6: within the Islamic or Islamist lens. Mosto Far does a
Speaker 6: nice balance in between. So Vanguard of the mom is
Speaker 6: a good book if you want to understand the orige
Speaker 6: and the evolution of the IRGC.
Speaker 1: Now, I have been following a few people very closely.
Speaker 1: Kareem Saidyrpoor, who I'm honored to know. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: respect his work, and he's at Karnage absolutely. Am I
Speaker 1: right that you respect Koreas? And I've been following you
Speaker 1: and Mark Dubowitz and other people. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to trust when people say here's Persian language media, and
Speaker 1: I'm translating it for you because you can't believe everything.
Speaker 1: Have you seen a lot of misinformation on the web
Speaker 1: the in the recent weeks, Well.
Speaker 6: It depends a great deal what you're looking at. There
Speaker 6: is a lot of narrative based misinformation. You know, Iran's
Speaker 6: octagenarian Supreme Leader, so called Supreme Leader, as President Trump
Speaker 6: likes to say, believes that sometimes more important than the
Speaker 6: kinetic war is winning the narrative war. You know, these
Speaker 6: are people who actually believe what they're talking about, and
Speaker 6: they're trying to make you believe what they're talking about
Speaker 6: as well. So they have spent considerable time, effort, attention,
Speaker 6: money to try to sow scored on social media, to
Speaker 6: try to sow discord within the Iranian opposition, to try
Speaker 6: to sow discord everywhere. And you don't have to take
Speaker 6: that just for me. You can even look at the
Speaker 6: way the Bided Administrations Director of National Intelligence talked about
Speaker 6: the way they even tried to penetrate and even fund
Speaker 6: and fuel many of the pro Palestine protests here. So
Speaker 6: you are precisely right to talk about the challenge and
Speaker 6: the kaleidoscope of the information environment and to make it
Speaker 6: even harder to understand, not only is this regime putting
Speaker 6: out disinformation and misinformation, calling Iranian protesters who are unarmed terrorists,
Speaker 6: saying people who were killed were actually regime loyalists, and
Speaker 6: forcing their families into forced confessions and all of this
Speaker 6: other atrocious stuff that has really turned the street against
Speaker 6: the state for many years now inside Iran. But then
Speaker 6: they also had this two plus week internet blackout for
Speaker 6: fear of having been seen as transgressing Trump's redline on
Speaker 6: this crackdown.
Speaker 1: So, benam, have you at the foundation or a group
Speaker 1: of people put forward for journalists like me who want
Speaker 1: to follow credible experts, a comprehensive list of people that
Speaker 1: they I try and do it occasionally. I'm always mentioning
Speaker 1: you and Mark and Kareem and Richard and Yashar, who
Speaker 1: I disagree with, but I think he does a good
Speaker 1: job reporting on Iran. We have one minute. Have I
Speaker 1: missed somebody other than I clif heard? May of course,
Speaker 1: But have I missed anyone I should be following? Absolutely?
Speaker 6: I think you know, you hit some of the greats.
Speaker 6: It's an honor to be included among them. I personally
Speaker 6: don't believe it's my view as a think tanker in
Speaker 6: Washington to you know, name some and not name others.
Speaker 6: But I think you know folks who are in the
Speaker 6: media space like you, who have found credible and reliable voices.
Speaker 6: When you amplify it a we're grateful and be the
Speaker 6: American people are grateful. So you know, kudos to you
Speaker 6: for doing that.
Speaker 1: When we come back from break, I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: bet Him to walk us through the situation as he
Speaker 1: understands it. Monday mid day drive time inside the Beltway,
Speaker 1: a snowed in belt Way, but from all this sort
Speaker 1: of so as I see inside the United States and
Speaker 1: from Israel, which I trust on this file people like
Speaker 1: a Meet Segal and not Aveyal and others will get
Speaker 1: his take on where we are on this Monday. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned at the qq AT shot. Welcome back to America.
Speaker 1: I'm qqw At Benham Ben Talablue is an Iranian, first
Speaker 1: generation Iranian American and an expert on the Islamic Republic
Speaker 1: of Iran. So Benham is joining me for the most
Speaker 1: of this hour, not in the last three minutes when
Speaker 1: we transition to Larry Elder, but most of this hour
Speaker 1: in order to talk about where we are. So I
Speaker 1: want to give you the floor the nine minute segment, Benham,
Speaker 1: Where are we right now in your estimate, and what
Speaker 1: do you see happening in the hours, days, weeks ahead.
Speaker 6: We're at a critical juncture, not just in the long battle,
Speaker 6: the forty seven year battle between the street and the
Speaker 6: state inside Iran, but we're also at a critical juncture
Speaker 6: in US Iran relations. Never has military force been threatened
Speaker 6: so overtly and credibly, I might add in this way.
Speaker 6: So I think right now we're at the countdown to
Speaker 6: a highly likely strike, overt kinetic strike by the Trump
Speaker 6: administration against the Islamic Republic of Iran, with many questions
Speaker 6: lingering about the targets, about the relationship between the strike
Speaker 6: and protest, about how to counter the regime's potential retaliation,
Speaker 6: and perhaps most importantly, how a strike politically and from
Speaker 6: a policy perspective feeds into what the President had already
Speaker 6: wanted to achieve with respect to Iran.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of options on the table.
Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of people talk about impediments in
Speaker 1: the Israeli media. They mentioned that Turkey has reinstalled radar
Speaker 1: in Damascus, which may be an impediment to the IDF
Speaker 1: working with us. That might not matter to our stealth
Speaker 1: fighters coming off the Lincoln or from the air bases.
Speaker 1: What is your assessment of the Israeli American coordination level
Speaker 1: and whether or not an American strike would be joint
Speaker 1: or prior to Israeli strike.
Speaker 6: It's actually an excellent question because if past this prologue,
Speaker 6: the coordination that exists not just at the military level,
Speaker 6: but at the political and intelligence level between Israel and
Speaker 6: the United States, and in particular between the Trump administration
Speaker 6: and the net Yahoo government in Israel is quite extensive.
Speaker 6: I mean quite literally. They were able to dupe and
Speaker 6: fake and bob and weave over the past few months
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty five, prior to the Twelve Day War,
Speaker 6: with many credible journalists and experts left guessing as to
Speaker 6: the different sides of, you know, the Iran issue. These
Speaker 6: two countries and administrations came down on only to see
Speaker 6: that they were singing from the same sheet of music
Speaker 6: once the actual kinetic activity started with the Twelve Day War.
Speaker 6: So ultimately, I actually think there's a lot more that
Speaker 6: is going on behind the scenes. I think in terms
Speaker 6: of order. You raise a very interesting question, is it
Speaker 6: America first than Israel or is it Israel first in America?
Speaker 6: And in terms of the targeting, if there is going
Speaker 6: to be something kinetic, and again it highly looks like that,
Speaker 6: will there be a division of labor? You know, last
Speaker 6: time these really is cleared the way for America to
Speaker 6: have a powerful strike against the nuclear program. This time,
Speaker 6: of course, you have to worry about how can you
Speaker 6: suppress the regime's lethal ballistic missile force, anti access area
Speaker 6: general capabilities while being able to hold the political and
Speaker 6: security elite responsible for the crackdown against the States. So
Speaker 6: one wonders, right now, is there a division of labor?
Speaker 6: And if passes prologue, I highly think there is, so.
Speaker 1: Benam, I've asked everyone about this. There are only three
Speaker 1: export oil exporting terminals in Iran. One is on carg Island,
Speaker 1: there are two other ones adjacent. That is the lifeblood
Speaker 1: of the IRGC. That is the currency upon which their
Speaker 1: terror network operates, and they pay their people even it's
Speaker 1: hard currency through shadow companies. Why don't we hit them
Speaker 1: if we go in?
Speaker 6: So? I think thus far the US has been a
Speaker 6: bit reticent to escalate and Moss against energy. One reason
Speaker 6: has been energy prices. The other reason has been the
Speaker 6: Iranians might go full force against GCC energy infrastructure, which again,
Speaker 6: if passes prologue, the regime would try to do that.
Speaker 1: That would be the Golf Coordinating Council. You now five
Speaker 1: dollars in the tip jar, then i'd be a rule
Speaker 1: of the heug here would show that former congress from
Speaker 1: Mike Allagher would break no acronyms without expert Okay, the
Speaker 1: Golf Coordinating coordinated Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yes, so if America's Arab partners on the other side
Speaker 6: of the Persian golf places where we have a lot
Speaker 6: of bases. But you remember in twenty nineteen there was
Speaker 6: a drone and cruise missile attack by the regime against
Speaker 6: Saudi oil facilities. It's assumed that it could engage in
Speaker 6: a much larger and much wider operation. Really from the
Speaker 6: mid Obama period twenty ten twenty twelve, when there was
Speaker 6: the talk of oil sanctions being floated in Washington and
Speaker 6: then enforced over time, Iran had talked about responding in
Speaker 6: kind against energy infrastructure. So you know, there's a desire
Speaker 6: not to spook or provoke the Islamic Republic into doing that.
Speaker 6: But then again, at this point in time, when the
Speaker 6: regime is so weak, when the regime basically has no
Speaker 6: air defenses, when it's come up short against American and
Speaker 6: Israeli conventional military capability, when its nuclear program is down,
Speaker 6: when its proxies have been neutered. The question is if
Speaker 6: Iran does respond to a US attack against Caig Island,
Speaker 6: for example, just hypothetically, it would be leading with its
Speaker 6: chin because it would literally try to attack civilian infrastructure
Speaker 6: on the other side of the Persian Gulf and in
Speaker 6: so doing bring Uncle Sam in in a much much
Speaker 6: bigger way. So potentially the Islamic Republic is threatening damage
Speaker 6: that it can't win an escalation spiral with respect to
Speaker 6: So those are options that remain on the table. I
Speaker 6: don't think the US might start with that, but those
Speaker 6: are options that remain on the table, and perhaps the
Speaker 6: US could credibly wield that as a tool to get
Speaker 6: Kamina to take this punishment or even decapitate the Hominy
Speaker 6: led government there as a way to bargain against responding.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be overcomfident, but I was in
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration when Operation praying manage happen, and President
Speaker 1: Reagan or ordered half or two thirds of the Iranian
Speaker 1: navy sunk and it was. And they didn't put a
Speaker 1: glove on us. I don't recall that they did. Maybe
Speaker 1: they did have one destroyer strike. I'm not really worried
Speaker 1: if we go all in about their ability other than
Speaker 1: for Israel. I mean, they could fuse all lot Israel
Speaker 1: with every launcher they've got left and try and overwhelm
Speaker 1: Iron Dome. What is your greatest concern? Because the oil
Speaker 1: money keeps that regime alive. There's no way it survives
Speaker 1: three years without the oil money.
Speaker 6: Precisely, going after a higherg island and Assalujah would basically
Speaker 6: be a death blow to the regime's economy, and there
Speaker 6: would be expediting the taking time bomb that is already
Speaker 6: the poor economy of the Islamic Republic. That being said,
Speaker 6: I think there have been updated plans. If I had
Speaker 6: to guess from the Department of War now with respect
Speaker 6: to Operation Pragmant is how not just to go after
Speaker 6: the conventional Runi Navy, but the much more smaller and
Speaker 6: more greatly first Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp Navy, which uses
Speaker 6: fast attack craft, underwater drones, anti ship cruise missiles. So
Speaker 6: the US has the opportunity to defeat this if it
Speaker 6: operates from range, if it is willing to take a
Speaker 6: few hits and then land a few major blows. But
Speaker 6: ultimately I think you're right when it comes to the
Speaker 6: balance that have passed this prologue, if the US chooses
Speaker 6: to come in a big way, it can actually decisively
Speaker 6: tip the balance and neuter the forces in the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 6: It could be messier now, however, which gets me to
Speaker 6: what my fear is, per your question, the regime will
Speaker 6: be able to land blows against critical energy infrastructure or
Speaker 6: even the American bases, given the distance, and given that
Speaker 6: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard cord now compared to the nineteen
Speaker 6: eighties as precision strikes short range ballistic missiles, many of
Speaker 6: which were not used actually in either the Twelve Day
Speaker 6: War or the April and October military exchanges between Iran
Speaker 6: and Israel. So the threat is the precision strike threat
Speaker 6: across the Persian Gulf, and second, of course American basing infrastructure,
Speaker 6: so not just energy and civilian targets there, but facing
Speaker 6: an infrastructure and third, exactly what you mentioned, which is
Speaker 6: resuming their medium range ballistic missile strikes against Israel, hoping
Speaker 6: to puncture through Israel's layered air and missile defenses.
Speaker 1: When we come back from break, I will ask Benham
Speaker 1: whether or not in his assessment, the IRGC poses a
Speaker 1: threat to the Lincoln or any of its strike group
Speaker 1: escorts or other American naval assets, and what kind of
Speaker 1: threat it poses to our airmen and cutter and our
Speaker 1: other facilities among the Gulf allies that we have. And
Speaker 1: to MBZ, who has been our stauncher's strongest ally other
Speaker 1: than Israel for many many years in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: and MBS who is the up and coming dominant power
Speaker 1: in the region. I'll ask him that after the break,
Speaker 1: don't go any where, stay tuned to the Good Hewitt Show.
Speaker 1: Welcome Back in America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. My guest from
Speaker 1: the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is that foundation
Speaker 1: head of the Iran program there Bentham Ben Talablue, who
Speaker 1: you can follow the real Benham ben on X and
Speaker 1: I will be reposting that in this interview over at
Speaker 1: YouTube my YouTube channel if you want to send it
Speaker 1: to your friends. Benham based on your extensive contacts, give
Speaker 1: me what you believe is the scenario that will unfold
Speaker 1: within and even your time. Frange because we can't keep
Speaker 1: a carrier off the coast of Iran forever, and the
Speaker 1: Lincoln's been out for a while anyway.
Speaker 6: Well, the first thing I would say is, never underestimate
Speaker 6: the ability of the United States to spend money. There
Speaker 6: have been times we've had two carriers in the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 6: Obviously it was a very different regional threat environment in
Speaker 6: the Sencom aoar, in the Sencom area of responsibility, I
Speaker 6: should say, sorry, another five dollars in the tip shar.
Speaker 6: But so never say never when it comes to Uncle
Speaker 6: Sam being able to spend money, to build leverage, to
Speaker 6: generate the terms by simply amassing these forces and being
Speaker 6: able to politically and militarily strangle the Islamic Republic. But
Speaker 6: that being said, I do think we're the countdown period
Speaker 6: to a strike. The real question is what kind of strike?
Speaker 6: And this is actually where you know decision makers in
Speaker 6: Washington are much more tight lipt than ever before. Trump
Speaker 6: term two is very different than Trump term one in
Speaker 6: that respect. Just as an observer and someone who lives here,
Speaker 6: but I will tell you this, the President is keeping
Speaker 6: the cards close to his chest. I think the mistake
Speaker 6: during Trump term one, as we would focus on the
Speaker 6: people around him, you know, who's up, who's down, the
Speaker 6: kremlinology of the situation, the president, the commander in chief,
Speaker 6: is absolutely one hundred percent in charge. And the reason
Speaker 6: we don't have a strategy set yet or we haven't
Speaker 6: had much insight yet, is that the President is choosing
Speaker 6: not to reveal this. And again he could be building
Speaker 6: up to a situation like we had in last summer
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty five, where he feigns in one direction
Speaker 6: and goes in another. But I think we have to
Speaker 6: understand that more than any other president, President Trump covets
Speaker 6: flexibility and actually creates uncertainty in doubt both in the
Speaker 6: minds of allies and adversaries alike, for his and the
Speaker 6: US strategic benefits. So that's one reason why we're all
Speaker 6: still in this game and holding pattern as the US
Speaker 6: continues to move more assets in theater. I think at
Speaker 6: a very minimum, if we're going to ascribe something to
Speaker 6: what the President is interested in doing, it is to
Speaker 6: borrow a line from Machiavelli's the Prince. It is to
Speaker 6: satisfy and stupefy, to be able to satisfy the constituencies
Speaker 6: that want to strike, and to hold up that US credibility,
Speaker 6: that US red line to look more like Reagan on
Speaker 6: Iran than Obama on Iran, and then more importantly, to
Speaker 6: stupefy to make sure that that credibility transcends just the
Speaker 6: Iran paradigm, to keep the ball rolling, if you will,
Speaker 6: when it comes to US military wins following Venezuela, following
Speaker 6: Operation Midnight Hammer, rather than having this be a critical
Speaker 6: juncture where US credibility and capability is doubted despite the
Speaker 6: successes at least with the regime change at the top
Speaker 6: in Venezuela and at least with the counter proliferation operation
Speaker 6: that was Operation Midnight Hammer. So the President is looking,
Speaker 6: i think, to satisfy and stupefy.
Speaker 1: Worry about attempting to take out Ayatolahameini is that it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to hide one person. It can't hide an
Speaker 1: oil terminal or their navy or ier GC basis. But
Speaker 1: in order to increase the deterrent that the President has
Speaker 1: painstakingly rebuilt since the collapse in Afghanistan, or President Biden
Speaker 1: to increase that deterrent, He's got to do something visible,
Speaker 1: I mean something dramatic. That's my opinion, and that I
Speaker 1: think he will dent the deterrence he's rebuilt if he
Speaker 1: doesn't do something visible and dramatic. Do you agree with me?
Speaker 6: I agree wholeheartedly. You know this needs to not just
Speaker 6: be seen, to be credible and have an escalating and
Speaker 6: resonating deterrent effect and credibility multiplier for America's or other
Speaker 6: authoritarian adversaries, not just in the region but elsewhere, but
Speaker 6: most importantly needs to be felt and seen by the
Speaker 6: Iranian people. Less we forget the reason we're in this
Speaker 6: situation is there has been nationwide anti regime protests, the
Speaker 6: most significant protests in the history of the Islamic Republic
Speaker 6: and the most violently repressed, not just in the forty
Speaker 6: seven year history of the Islamic Republic, but in the
Speaker 6: past century, if not century and a half, of contemporary
Speaker 6: Iranian history. And the President shows not once or twice,
Speaker 6: but based on whatever open source you're looking at, print, TV, radio,
Speaker 6: social media eight to nine times, has touched this issue,
Speaker 6: has made it a US issue by talking about holding
Speaker 6: the regime accountable, and therefore this is intertwined with a
Speaker 6: credibility issue and a deterrence issue for Washington. But I
Speaker 6: would push even further. I agree with the line that
Speaker 6: has often ascribed to Henry Kissinger that foreign policy is
Speaker 6: not missionary work. You know, it is not charity to
Speaker 6: strike the government of the Islamic Republic just because we're
Speaker 6: standing with the Runian people. This is a regime that
Speaker 6: has chanted since its inception, death to America and death
Speaker 6: to Israel, and has put its money where his mouth
Speaker 6: is for those four and a half decades.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm coming back for one more segment with
Speaker 1: Ben Tallablue, and when we do, we've got to find
Speaker 1: out it about the threat to the Lincoln, other adjacent chips, Israel,
Speaker 1: and whether or not Iran's terror proxies are inside the
Speaker 1: United States, because indeed, if we hit them hard enough,
Speaker 1: they'll do everything they can to hurt us. And I
Speaker 1: want people to be very wide eyed and awake about
Speaker 1: those risks. Madam's going to tell us about that after
Speaker 1: the break. Stay tuned here on the Salem News Channel
Speaker 1: and the Salem Radio Network, on our wonderful affiliates on
Speaker 1: q CUTT welcome back in America. I'm Hugh hewittt with that.
Speaker 1: Ben Talla Blue bedam General Madis when he was in
Speaker 1: charge of an expeditionary unit out here in Camp Pedal
Speaker 1: had a chief of staff, Clark Latine, who once it said,
Speaker 1: I wish you civilians would think about second order impacts. Well,
Speaker 1: I am thinking about second order impact. Can they hit
Speaker 1: the Lincoln, can they hit our ships? Can they hit Israel?
Speaker 1: And do they have sleeper sales in the United States.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of questions. You have the floor.
Speaker 6: It's a lot of questions, But I'll do my best answer.
Speaker 6: Certainly they can strike US bases on the opposite side
Speaker 6: of the Persian Gulf. At the end of the Twelve
Speaker 6: Day War, we saw the regime fire ballistic missiles at
Speaker 6: a actual raydome facility at the Alludaide base and Qatar,
Speaker 6: so there's a demonstrated ability to do that. We also
Speaker 6: know that there's the IRGC navy threat, the anti axis
Speaker 6: air denial, and the maritime asymmetric threat in the Persian
Speaker 6: Gulf and Strait of Hormones, which can go from anything
Speaker 6: from mining operations placing limpet mines, selective anti ship missile attacks,
Speaker 6: underwater drone attacks, and harassment operations that could make life
Speaker 6: much more challenging, but certainly not impossible either for the
Speaker 6: Lincoln or for our destroyers. And we need those destroyers
Speaker 6: in that region to bolster air and missile defense because
Speaker 6: these are ages enabled ballistic missile defense destroyers as well.
Speaker 6: But if the US chooses to operate from range, which
Speaker 6: is one way you can get around anti axis air
Speaker 6: denial capabilities, or if the US punches the regime hard
Speaker 6: enough and suppresses their fire in a preemptive operation, then
Speaker 6: there's the chance that you can significantly reduce the zone
Speaker 6: of impact act for the US on the opposite side
Speaker 6: of the Persian Gulf and in those waters that you mentioned.
Speaker 6: Israel is an altogether different matter. You know, Iran has
Speaker 6: three chains of missile bases that are underground caverns or
Speaker 6: underground missile bases. You know, there's the Western chain, the
Speaker 6: Central chain, and the Eastern chain that can fire medium
Speaker 6: range ballistic missiles at Israel. You know, if passes prologue,
Speaker 6: you know, I think about thirty people died in the
Speaker 6: Twelve Day War. The regime fired about five hundred and
Speaker 6: seventy plus medium range ballistic missiles and Israel had a
Speaker 6: eighty five eighty six percent interception rate, so that's fairly
Speaker 6: high level of success. But make no mistake that it
Speaker 6: did a significant amount of damage and burnt through a
Speaker 6: bunch of US and Israeli missile interceptors, which is one
Speaker 6: potential reason for the pause in the Middle East today.
Speaker 6: So certainly the regime is weak. Certainly though it can
Speaker 6: do damage despite being weak, But we still have the
Speaker 6: upper hand. It's about being willing to pay those costs
Speaker 6: upfront or distributing them over time.
Speaker 1: I think in the United States, let.
Speaker 6: Me just say this, because the changing face of Iranian
Speaker 6: terrorism in the US has to be taken seriously. I
Speaker 6: think for far too long we've had a politicized border
Speaker 6: debate when this should be a non partisan debate. The
Speaker 6: fact that you have had not just Iranians, but a
Speaker 6: whole host of different nationalities be able to for many
Speaker 6: years coming through the southern border and be undocumented could
Speaker 6: pose one threat vector, but it's not the only threat vector.
Speaker 6: If you look at the past decade and a half,
Speaker 6: the Islamic Republic has tried to work with everything from
Speaker 6: Mexican drug cartels to Eastern European mafias to Canadian biker
Speaker 6: gangs to try to engage in kidnapping or terrorism or
Speaker 6: assassination on US soil against dissidence defectors and even US
Speaker 6: persons and citizens. So that should be setting off the
Speaker 6: alarm bell as well. The fact that also on the
Speaker 6: anniversary of the killing of Cosm Solimani, the regime's former
Speaker 6: chief terrorists, which the Trump administration killed in January twenty twenty,
Speaker 6: his replace talked about wouldn't it be nice if Americans
Speaker 6: were able to carry out our operations or our activities
Speaker 6: for us, you know, having Americans fight Americans rather than
Speaker 6: you know, the Iranians pay a proxy or a gun
Speaker 6: for hire to kill Americans. So there is that fear
Speaker 6: of well of being able to ride the wave of
Speaker 6: lone wolf frustration that could exist in this country. And
Speaker 6: the third, of course, is the potential for those sleeper cells,
Speaker 6: either in certain communities inside the United States or the
Speaker 6: ability to kind of work through a whole host of
Speaker 6: fronts or affiliates that may not even know they are
Speaker 6: fronts or affiliates. Again, this is something that for d
Speaker 6: and I, Avril Haynes and the Biden administration talked about
Speaker 6: when it came to the pro Palestine protests that they
Speaker 6: didn't even know where some of this direction and funding
Speaker 6: was coming from. So those fears exist. Fortunately, law enforcement
Speaker 6: plus national security has done a good enough job so far.
Speaker 6: But good enough is not good enough for government work
Speaker 6: in this case.
Speaker 1: All right, So everyone, you've got to realize there are
Speaker 1: real risks to Americans and to Israelis and to our
Speaker 1: allies and the golf, especially UIE and Saudi Arabia. Let
Speaker 1: me close by asking you in terms of that Turkish
Speaker 1: radar in Syria that's news to me this weekend. Is
Speaker 1: that a real problem? I mean, do the Turks get
Speaker 1: upset if we blow up their radar for Syria?
Speaker 6: The question is do we even need to blow it up?
Speaker 6: Is it something that the Israelis might do or is
Speaker 6: it something that they be able to work around. You know,
Speaker 6: Turkey is no doubt trying to fast replace the Islamic
Speaker 6: Republic as the other Islamist leaning power in Syria. I
Speaker 6: think this is a real challenge for the US to
Speaker 6: be able to deconflict between admittedly a NATO member not
Speaker 6: in good standing, which is Erdowan's Turkey and our major
Speaker 6: partner in the region, Israel, and to make sure that
Speaker 6: they don't come to blows over Syria. But you know,
Speaker 6: make no mistake, Israel has really post October seven, punched
Speaker 6: through a lot a lot of assumptions we have had
Speaker 6: about things that could limit their room for maneuver and
Speaker 6: freedom for military operations. So I would say here, never
Speaker 6: say never.
Speaker 1: All Right, My last question, I am not an optimist
Speaker 1: about regime change. I think this is forty seven years
Speaker 1: of malignancy and you can't cut that tumor out absent,
Speaker 1: but you can certainly stunt its growth and send it backwards.
Speaker 1: Are you an optimist about the regime collapsing?
Speaker 6: Believe it or not, I'm a long term optimist because
Speaker 6: there is no way output through for Uncle Sam and
Speaker 6: the desert. There's no path out of a desert that
Speaker 6: does not include flipping the script on the Iatolahs in Tehran.
Speaker 6: There is no way to pivot to China. There's no
Speaker 6: way to lock down the Western hemisphere. There's no way
Speaker 6: to generate the credibility to deal with Putin or really
Speaker 6: anybody else if you come up short against the Iyatolas
Speaker 6: we have with the exception of Israel right now an
Speaker 6: important intersection in the Middle East. Again, this is not charity,
Speaker 6: This is not missionary work. This is strategy. We have
Speaker 6: fundamentally the most pro American and the most pro Israeli
Speaker 6: population in the heartland of the Muslim Middle East being
Speaker 6: ruled over and repressed by the most anti American and
Speaker 6: the most anti is really government in the heartland in
Speaker 6: the Middle East. And so long as this regime is
Speaker 6: in power, and so long as those ideologies are at
Speaker 6: the helm, a country with the amazing resources that Iran has,
Speaker 6: will continue to force us back in to conflict after
Speaker 6: conflict when we are least prepared for it. So I see,
Speaker 6: you know, the stars aligning. There is really no way
Speaker 6: out put through here. And whether it's in this current
Speaker 6: round or in a potential future around the Trump administration
Speaker 6: or future US administration, I think is going to have
Speaker 6: to realize that this is again not charity. This is
Speaker 6: not Iraq, this is not Afghanistan. There is a world
Speaker 6: of difference between foreign imposed regime change and foreign supported
Speaker 6: regime change. And for again, those strategies, those values, when
Speaker 6: they align, and you seldom get them to align the
Speaker 6: Middle East, you take that shot Bena.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me. Follow him on
Speaker 1: x at the real b eh nam Ben and it
Speaker 1: will pop up and you ought to follow him and
Speaker 1: the people that he follows, you ought to follow. I
Speaker 1: hope you'll come back as we are on the edge
Speaker 1: of in momentous events in the Middle East. Thank you,
Speaker 1: and I'm stn't Foundation for Defensive Democracies FVD dot org.
Speaker 1: Go and find more there. I'll be right now morning
Speaker 1: glory and emigration and Merga. I'm Hugh Hewlett, joined by
Speaker 1: Admiral Mark Montgomery, retired Rear Admiral from the United States Navy.
Speaker 1: He is with the Foundation for the Defensive Democracies. Admiral.
Speaker 1: It was just reported to Actos that Iran has said
Speaker 1: no way, not now, not ever, and never will we
Speaker 1: give up whatever you want, President Trump, and they've cut
Speaker 1: off all communications. It's also reporting President Trump gave them
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour ultimatum. I can't confirm that that's
Speaker 1: what Dacchios is reporting. What do you think is going
Speaker 1: to happen?
Speaker 3: Well, look, the President has done a great job of,
Speaker 3: you know, bringing together his offensive cost and position capabilities.
Speaker 3: That's the not just the aircraft carrier and its air wing,
Speaker 3: but the three destroyers and their Tommac missiles. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know this for a fact, but I'm going
Speaker 3: to bet some money that there's a high class SSG
Speaker 3: and you know got you know, Tomahawk equipped submarine with
Speaker 3: lots of Dalmaks on it somewhere close enough in the
Speaker 3: Arabian Gulf Arabian Sea. And then we've got F fifteen's
Speaker 3: and other Air Force fighter squadrons in al Udeid and
Speaker 3: Qatar and other places in the Middle East. And of
Speaker 3: course we've got our B two's ready to go from
Speaker 3: the continent of the United States. That is collectively enough
Speaker 3: cost and position. The other thing he's done is begin
Speaker 3: to maneuver back into theater sufficient army air defense systems
Speaker 3: to begin to protect our eighteen to twenty spots where
Speaker 3: US forces are spread throughout Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE.
Speaker 3: We can't defend all of them all the time, all
Speaker 3: at once, but we can defend some of the larger
Speaker 3: concentration areas against an runting attacks. So the President's creating
Speaker 3: the conditions where he can impose his will on Iran.
Speaker 1: Now, Admiral the National security advisor equivalent in Iran has
Speaker 1: said any attack on anything in Iran will bring a
Speaker 1: response directed at the United States, but also at Israel.
Speaker 1: Do you think Israel can stand up to a fusilade
Speaker 1: like June again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So let's be clear. If it's the US alone
Speaker 3: striking them, the absolute last thing I would do if
Speaker 3: I was an Iranian planner is attack Israel because I
Speaker 3: just invited an equivalent or larger size of F thirty
Speaker 3: five fifteen fleet to come visit me the next day
Speaker 3: and the day after and the day after and the
Speaker 3: day after, because with US refueling, it's unlimited, and you know,
Speaker 3: until the United States and Israel say, you know, and
Speaker 3: we've had enough. You know, so again, if they do that,
Speaker 3: they're gonna get some serious cost of position. Now they
Speaker 3: may well do it, and then your question is is
Speaker 3: there enough air defense in Israel? And the answer is,
Speaker 3: you know, they'll be challenged like they were last time.
Speaker 3: You know, missiles got through. They have great systems from
Speaker 3: Iron Dome to David Slang to Arrow to the US
Speaker 3: SM three's on the Ages class ships off in the
Speaker 3: Eastern Mediterranean and the remaining THAD elements. US bad elements.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of missile defense there, Hue, but some
Speaker 3: will get through. But Israel is a resilient country. They
Speaker 3: can take that, and their air force can impose maximum
Speaker 3: cost on Iran for doing it.
Speaker 1: Do is our carrier at risk or destroyers at risk?
Speaker 1: And where do you put on the risk level? The
Speaker 1: basin cutter and throughout the region.
Speaker 3: So the carrier and the destroyers have a high quality
Speaker 3: air defense systems, both point defense for the carrier and
Speaker 3: the destroyers and an area air defense for the destroyers
Speaker 3: which would encapsolute the carrier. And of course the air
Speaker 3: wing provides air defense against drones and against cruise missiles,
Speaker 3: probably not against ballistic missiles. So all of that together
Speaker 3: makes them say it makes them relatively secure. You never
Speaker 3: want to be arrogant enough to say nothing can hit me,
Speaker 3: and you need to plan properly and execute properly. But
Speaker 3: I think they're saying, you know, if you look back
Speaker 3: at literally several hundred crews, ballistic missiles and several hundred
Speaker 3: drones launched against our ships in the Red Sea operations
Speaker 3: over two years, none were hit. So we are good,
Speaker 3: but we shouldn't be arrogant. The bases are a different issue.
Speaker 3: Que they can and will be hit if the Runtians
Speaker 3: can figure out which bases have the most porous air
Speaker 3: defense or non existent air defense around them, because I
Speaker 3: don't think we can defend all of them at all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: And how many different would you guess how many different
Speaker 1: strikes can be executed within the initiation first wave? How
Speaker 1: many targets can we expect to disable or destroy in
Speaker 1: a first strike?
Speaker 3: I mean, there's so many. There's a lot that goes
Speaker 3: into that. So I'll just say, you know a lot
Speaker 3: of targets take multiple aim points. How many B twos
Speaker 3: do you want to involve? Do you want to really
Speaker 3: stretch your B two you know, to use everything that's
Speaker 3: not involved in your nuclears set aside. You know, some
Speaker 3: of the B twos are reserved for twenty four to
Speaker 3: seven nuclear missions, you know that kind of stuff. So,
Speaker 3: because the B twos can do a lot of striking.
Speaker 3: But what I would do is I do a deliberate
Speaker 3: several hundred strikes a day. You know, two to three
Speaker 3: to four hundred. We could go up to eight hundred
Speaker 3: one thousand if we wanted, but two to three four hundred.
Speaker 3: But dudover sustained ten or twelve day period where you're
Speaker 3: constantly reassessing where did they move, what did they flex?
Speaker 3: What do you show? Because what we're going to try
Speaker 3: to do, my guess is our target set will be
Speaker 3: knock out their ballistic missile inventory plus the ability to
Speaker 3: build future ballistic missiles, knock out their drone inventory plus
Speaker 3: their ability to build future drones. Knock out their crewis
Speaker 3: missile inventory and that production capability and capacity. That's what
Speaker 3: I would take out first. There might be a little
Speaker 3: bit of IRGC leadership strikes involved as well, but I
Speaker 3: would really go for that production something that is rarely
Speaker 3: started to work over in the Twelve Day War but
Speaker 3: did not complete.
Speaker 1: Now, Bro, you were the executive director of the cyber
Speaker 1: Slarium when it was in play. Do the Iranians an
Speaker 1: offensive cyber capability that can be directed at the homeland?
Speaker 3: Yes, But so the yes is they could do something,
Speaker 3: but this is not China or Russia. They can do
Speaker 3: denial of service operations, minor things. I don't think they
Speaker 3: could do major power system disruptions, and they've tried hard
Speaker 3: against Israel and done again minor things but not major.
Speaker 3: In things I think they would struggle against US to
Speaker 3: do a major disruption. The countries that can do that
Speaker 3: are you know, the US, Israel, China, Russia. I don't
Speaker 3: put a run on that list. That doesn't mean they
Speaker 3: can't do They can disrupt, you know, do minor disruptions,
Speaker 3: things that make you know, one water system out here
Speaker 3: or one water system out there, But they're not going
Speaker 3: to be able to do I think that electrical power
Speaker 3: grid takedown that effects like a major city.
Speaker 1: Now, I've had a lot of your colleagues on from
Speaker 1: the Foundation for the Defensive Democracies in the last few weeks.
Speaker 1: They have never not been in the nation and terrorism business.
Speaker 1: Have you ever founded in your ris to study what
Speaker 1: potential they might have either directly or indirectly through their
Speaker 1: proxies in the United States?
Speaker 3: Well, certainly, I mean both Department of Defense friends of mine,
Speaker 3: but also people here at FDD you are under threat
Speaker 3: from Iran. Iran absolutely practices overseas assassinations against their own people,
Speaker 3: their own you know, uh, overseas activists, protesters, dissidents, but
Speaker 3: also against Americans they hold at risk. So the president
Speaker 3: is one they the President's on an Iranian allegedly on
Speaker 3: an Iranian kill list. You know Frank mcgeneral McKenzie, General Millie,
Speaker 3: you know Secretary Esper, John Bolton, Matt Pottinger, you know
Speaker 3: the former, the leadership from the Nationcarity, leadership from Trump
Speaker 3: forty five or broadly on these lists, which is why
Speaker 3: they need security details and protection, and the President among
Speaker 3: most of all, needs to be protected against them. But
Speaker 3: I think it's much more likely that if the President
Speaker 3: decided to do something about the Supreme Leader, that would
Speaker 3: happen before something happened to the president.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, you were in uniform when the war against
Speaker 1: Libya was undertaken, and that war brought down Libya. I
Speaker 1: don't know that you were in the service when the
Speaker 1: war against Serbia was undertaken. That war brought it down
Speaker 1: ken An air campaign exclusively caused the regime to collapse,
Speaker 1: in your opinion in Iran because I don't think so,
Speaker 1: but I don't know enough.
Speaker 3: So I participated in both of those, and i'd say
Speaker 3: the answers.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just think the IRGC is one hundred
Speaker 3: and one hundred and twenty five hundred fifty thousand strong.
Speaker 3: They're not going to go down. I mean, most of
Speaker 3: those guys understand that if the opposition takes over, their
Speaker 3: life expectancy is going to shorten dramatically, So they're going
Speaker 3: to fight, stand and fight. So that would be a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of costant position from the air
Speaker 3: against target mobile ground targets. That's going to be very hard.
Speaker 3: So I think it's very hard. Do I think we
Speaker 3: can create conditions where it's where the governing mechanisms are weakened, Yes,
Speaker 3: but I think it's going to take a lot more.
Speaker 3: I think we have to do. Uh, there's gonna have
Speaker 3: to be a lot more weakening. Personally. Before I did
Speaker 3: this air campaign, I would do three to six months
Speaker 3: of strangulation of their fossil fuel sales. I would grab,
Speaker 3: I would embargo and seize every shadow Fleet ship bringing
Speaker 3: oil from Iran to China. I would put a prize
Speaker 3: crew on it and take it back to the United
Speaker 3: States as as a prize, as our prize. I I
Speaker 3: think that we should put the economic pain onto Iran,
Speaker 3: weaken the regime further, and then do the air campaign.
Speaker 1: Now, Admeral, I don't know if you can stand on
Speaker 1: the segment. If you can tell Duyne and we'll go this.
Speaker 1: But would you answer for me. Uh Karj Island has
Speaker 1: never been on a target list. Why is that?
Speaker 3: I don't let's separate. Has it been our target list
Speaker 3: for us as Have we actually executed a strike? In
Speaker 3: other words, do I think it's targeted?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Do I think that it's been struck? No, I'm not
Speaker 3: certain why. I've never been in a political discussion we're
Speaker 3: told not to strike it. I just feel that, like
Speaker 3: when we're doing our cost and position back in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight, we did cost a position after the Iraq
Speaker 3: you know, the oil the oil ships being sung. We
Speaker 3: went after their naval ships to punish them for their
Speaker 3: illegal behaviors.
Speaker 1: Operation Praying Man. I got to go to break on
Speaker 1: the Saale News channel. I will find out if Fadmal
Speaker 1: Montgomery can stay with us. Continue watching Town news channel,
Speaker 1: stay tuned to this radio station if being in a car,
Speaker 1: If you can, you'll come back after the break. I'll
Speaker 1: ask him more questions like those I've been asking. Am
Speaker 1: stay tuned, Welcome back America, per I. Mark Montgomery, retarding
Speaker 1: States Navy has stayed with me a senior fellow at
Speaker 1: the Foundation for the Defensive Demand Inocracy. So, Admiral, you've
Speaker 1: followed Donald Trump as I followed him through the news media.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've talked with him off the record. I don't know,
Speaker 1: what do you think he's going to do When he
Speaker 1: issued a twenty four hour ultimatum that the Iranians turned out,
Speaker 1: I have my guess, but what do you think?
Speaker 3: So I think that means he's eventually going to strike,
Speaker 3: I know, and not three months from now, but within
Speaker 3: the next thirty days, because I look, I hope it
Speaker 3: isn't at twenty three hours fifty nine minutes we hit him.
Speaker 3: I mean, and he did get that one twenty four
Speaker 3: hour one and then the Israeli struck within it, but
Speaker 3: that was Israeli forces. You know that what kind of
Speaker 3: on his timeline. I hope that he and General raising
Speaker 3: kine are Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have had a
Speaker 3: discussion about how, you know, we can't just go at
Speaker 3: the exact moment he said we would go, because that's
Speaker 3: alerting a otherwise not that consequential defense system that someone's coming.
Speaker 3: So my guess is that you know, he'll do something
Speaker 3: at the twenty four hour period, maybe some cost of
Speaker 3: isition through embargo operations like I mentioned, but eventually you know, Hugh,
Speaker 3: I think we're going to strike him. I think he's pissed.
Speaker 1: So talk me through the best case scenario and the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario from your perspective, Admiral Montgomery.
Speaker 3: So, I think the best case scenario is a well
Speaker 3: thought out, deliberate ten to twelve days strike along with Israel.
Speaker 3: Israel might as well be in it with us, because
Speaker 3: as you as we alluded to in the previous segment,
Speaker 3: it's you know, in it or not. They're probably going
Speaker 3: to be the receiver of, you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: ballistic missiles, so might as well be in it from
Speaker 3: the get go. But a well orchestrated, you know, ten
Speaker 3: twelve day campaign that really removes the Iranian ballistic cruise
Speaker 3: in missile and drone production facilities and their existing inventory.
Speaker 3: And then you know, if there are legitimate nuclear targets remaining,
Speaker 3: I'd hit those as well, I don't. I think we
Speaker 3: in the Israelis took care of that, and anything that
Speaker 3: we didn't take care of is a is hidden in
Speaker 3: a way that would be hard for us to hit.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm not going to count too much
Speaker 3: on that. And then, as we alluded to earlier, there's
Speaker 3: a decision on what type of senior leadership cost a
Speaker 3: position you do. Do you try to kill the supreme leader?
Speaker 3: Do you just work over their senior leadership? And boy,
Speaker 3: they got worked over last year in the Twelve Day War.
Speaker 3: You know, those were big target sets for the Israelis
Speaker 3: and they did some serious damage to the leadership of
Speaker 3: almost all these organizations.
Speaker 1: Would you, if you were advising them, advise him to
Speaker 1: destroy the oil export industry because it seems to me
Speaker 1: the IRGC has no other source of hard currency with
Speaker 1: which to pay the people who depend upon them to
Speaker 1: be paid.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't, but that's because I say, grab the illegal ships,
Speaker 3: you know, the shadow fleet ships delivering the fossil fuel.
Speaker 3: I would go at it that way. I think hitting
Speaker 3: something that you then have to rebuild as your recon
Speaker 3: stituting a country, you know, that's that's that's an expensive endeavor.
Speaker 3: But I look at Ukraine today, or I look at
Speaker 3: you know, a rock in two thousand and seven, in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, you know I would not want
Speaker 3: to impose that that rebuilding costs, and I would instead
Speaker 3: try to grab the ships.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is the worst case scenario so that people
Speaker 1: are fully aware. I'm aware of threats to sailors, soldiers, deirmen,
Speaker 1: and marines. I want the audience to hear you talk
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I mean they will be they will fire
Speaker 3: at some point. This is an existential threat to the
Speaker 3: regime there, and they will fire everything they have and
Speaker 3: they have chemical weapons. You know, they have used chemical
Speaker 3: weapons in the past. So our forces will need to
Speaker 3: be ready for everything. And so you know, I'm from
Speaker 3: the school, you know, you have to assume something could
Speaker 3: get through, So you have to have maximum defenses up.
Speaker 3: You have to you have to establish defensive positions after
Speaker 3: you do your strikes. You have to get everything right.
Speaker 3: You look, our officers, I'm not worried. They're not arrogant.
Speaker 3: They're they they're looking and managing risk properly. The ones
Speaker 3: who are going to be challenged are the ones with
Speaker 3: a fixed GPS. Those are the airfields some of our
Speaker 3: troop concentration areas. You know, we're really going to have
Speaker 3: to defend those well, and they're gonna have to be
Speaker 3: ready for any kind of strike. And you know, we
Speaker 3: have tough soldiers, but you know, in the end of
Speaker 3: you know, ballistic missiles of you know, it's going mocked
Speaker 3: six and weighs a couple thousand pounds. It's going to
Speaker 3: do some damage.
Speaker 1: I remind people that when they targeted Alasad Air Base
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the killing of soul Money, they
Speaker 1: hit it. They actually hit it. So their missiles are
Speaker 1: not the junk that Saddam as saying had in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. How many of those do they have?
Speaker 3: Well, that's an interesting thing. So Israel did some damage
Speaker 3: to that and they fired a ton you know. By
Speaker 3: all reports, I think that forty to fifty percent were
Speaker 3: either expended or destroyed in the last attacks. And we
Speaker 3: have done a pretty good job and is raised in
Speaker 3: a good job trying to prevent the reconstruct, you know,
Speaker 3: the replenishment of that. But you know, the Chinese have
Speaker 3: been a little duplicitous in this, illegally shipping some moting,
Speaker 3: some of the other chemicals and fuel necessary for some
Speaker 3: of the weapons. So they are reconstituting slightly, you know,
Speaker 3: but this is going to be in the high hundreds, right,
Speaker 3: the totality of these numbers, and the drones are much
Speaker 3: higher numbers. But on the cruise and ballistic missile view,
Speaker 3: that's a.
Speaker 1: Lot can the drums delivered chemical weapons?
Speaker 3: I have not seen that, even in Russia or elsewhere
Speaker 3: that doesn't But that's the answer is could they I'm
Speaker 3: almost sure they could have they I have not seen that.
Speaker 1: Is there any scenario in the front of your mind,
Speaker 1: not some science fiction novel, but anything in the front
Speaker 1: of your mind that would lead to President Trump deploying
Speaker 1: troops in Iran?
Speaker 3: Not in the front of my mind. Look, you asked
Speaker 3: worst case. I mean, we could get into some kind
Speaker 3: of campaign where damage is inflicted on us that the
Speaker 3: President finds to be unacceptable, and then we get ourselves
Speaker 3: into a punitive campaign that includes ground ups. I don't
Speaker 3: foresee that. I just think that, you know, if we've
Speaker 3: learned anything since, you know, in the last twenty four years,
Speaker 3: is to avoid that kind of ground campaign.
Speaker 1: Okay, very last question, Admiral. Do they have the capacity
Speaker 1: to shoot down our stealthy aircraft other than by a
Speaker 1: lucky shot?
Speaker 3: No, now we say today the capability to do it? No, that,
Speaker 3: but again, there could be a ballistic shot. There could
Speaker 3: be a weapon that goes off nearby that you know,
Speaker 3: it's something else, and a piece of frag you know,
Speaker 3: fragment gets into an engine. We do have some single
Speaker 3: engine planes.
Speaker 1: You know there in the United States. I mean we
Speaker 1: have Yeah, it happens here, so it could happen there
Speaker 1: in a war zone. What do we do if that happens,
Speaker 1: We go get him.
Speaker 3: We will have a team standing by. I think geography,
Speaker 3: you know, location, location, location, Downtown Tehran might be a toughie,
Speaker 3: but we'll have uh, we would have teams search and rescue,
Speaker 3: combat search and rescue teams standing by in different locations
Speaker 3: to service different geographies. But there are limitations to that.
Speaker 1: Okay. So in your life as a warrior, how many
Speaker 1: times have you had this feeling about imminent conflict?
Speaker 3: Probably six or seven, And it's.
Speaker 1: Different about this one.
Speaker 3: And it's happened five or six. So no, Look, what's
Speaker 3: unusual is this president's just so forward leaning on the rhetoric,
Speaker 3: you know, which is he does it for effect. I
Speaker 3: mean it's not this is not shirtlish, right, this is
Speaker 3: this is how he seeks leverage. And so it's very
Speaker 3: on predictable. For those of us who haven't dealt you,
Speaker 3: who were not New York real estate people for thirty years,
Speaker 3: we're not used to this. So you know, my take
Speaker 3: is that when a president uses this kind of language,
Speaker 3: go time is coming.
Speaker 1: Eedmiral Mark Montgomery, retired, Amerald, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1: We'll stay in touch. I hope you'll be available throughout
Speaker 1: the weeks ahead, as this thing is getting hotter by
Speaker 1: the moment. Welcome back in America. I'm hu here att
Speaker 1: President Trump said yesterday in Iowa. Secretary Rubio said today
Speaker 1: before the Senate Foreign Relations Panel, and Armada is headed
Speaker 1: and is already on station in part to the near
Speaker 1: shore of Iran. What are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm going to ask Danielle Pletka,
Speaker 1: a senior fellow at the American Enterprises Stude. He studies
Speaker 1: these things. She's the host of What the Hell is
Speaker 1: going on with Mark Tieson in the Washington Post and AI.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to ask you, Danny, what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on? And right now with our flotilla.
Speaker 11: So, we've got a carrier battle group that is in
Speaker 11: the region that is close enough to position to strike Iran.
Speaker 11: We've got some additional assets that the President has moved
Speaker 11: into other countries in the region, including Jordan. There are
Speaker 11: some more things on the way that may provide additional
Speaker 11: military options to the president. I think right now what
Speaker 11: we're looking at is a go no go decision.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, what is going to happen and what you
Speaker 1: want to have happened maybe different. Tell me first what
Speaker 1: you think is going to happen, and then tell me
Speaker 1: what you hope happens.
Speaker 11: Look, you know, Hugh, I know that the President made
Speaker 11: a go decision and that he was choked out of
Speaker 11: it by the Israelis who felt they were not prepared
Speaker 11: for what the Iranians were threatening, which is ballistic missile strikes.
Speaker 11: The Iranians have spent the last eight months since the
Speaker 11: Summer War rebuilding their ballistic missile capabilities, and they could
Speaker 11: do very substantial damage. I'm hoping that in addition to
Speaker 11: the offensive capabilities we've brought into the region, we've brought
Speaker 11: additional defensive equipment into the region in order to help
Speaker 11: support the Israelis because some of that was pulled out.
Speaker 11: So what do I hope? What I hope is that
Speaker 11: the President goes with his original decision and that he
Speaker 11: strikes Iran, that the people of Iran finally throw off
Speaker 11: this yoke of tyranny. Islamis tyranny that has been strangling
Speaker 11: them for almost forty seven years, and that we're done with,
Speaker 11: what do I think will happen. I think it's touch
Speaker 11: and go. I think the President is profoundly tempted by
Speaker 11: Iranian blandishments, but he's probably making the kinds of demands
Speaker 11: that they don't want to agree to.
Speaker 1: Danny Pike, we've watched him now for five years, including
Speaker 1: the most recent year. He'll say A and not A,
Speaker 1: he'll say B and not B, and then he'll do
Speaker 1: X now, So I mean he is very good at
Speaker 1: the art of deception, not unlike other wartime leaders in
Speaker 1: recent memory. I'm not sure I have any hope that
Speaker 1: anything the United States can do will end this regime.
Speaker 1: It's got forty seven years of tentacles deep into the ground,
Speaker 1: and they have proven with the execution of thirty thousand
Speaker 1: plus people that they will do do whatever they have
Speaker 1: to do to stay in power. Do you really think
Speaker 1: that anything we do can change that. I still want
Speaker 1: to hit them for punitive purposes to hopefully deter such
Speaker 1: future action, but I'm not an optimist about digging them out.
Speaker 8: So this is unknowable, right.
Speaker 11: We are notoriously bad at predicting revolutions. All I can
Speaker 11: say is that what we were seeing until the Iranians
Speaker 11: clamps down very hard over the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 11: what we were seeing was genuine concern inside the regime
Speaker 11: that they had lost control of the country. You know,
Speaker 11: all of the previous revolutions that we've seen in Iran,
Speaker 11: maksa Emini in twenty twenty two, twenty nineteen, the two
Speaker 11: thousand and nine Green Revolution, they were what you could
Speaker 11: call sectoral revolutions. You know, these were efforts by women
Speaker 11: or women and students or others, unions, economic grievances. This
Speaker 11: was the coalescence of the people of Iran for a
Speaker 11: genuine counter revolution. And while you're one hundred percent right,
Speaker 11: this regime's number one priority above all else is staying
Speaker 11: in power. Not nuclear, not missile, not Israel, not Palestinians.
Speaker 11: Staying in power, and they will do anything to hang
Speaker 11: on to it. At the same time, when your people
Speaker 11: a rise against you, the government starts splitting, and we're
Speaker 11: still seeing those splits today. That's what gives me a
Speaker 11: little bit of hope. I'm not going to tell you
Speaker 11: it's a slam dunk or I'm not even going to
Speaker 11: tell you it's fifty to fifty because I don't know.
Speaker 11: But what I do know is that this is the
Speaker 11: closest that we have come. And when I say we,
Speaker 11: I mean the people who stand against this regime. This
Speaker 11: is the closest we've come in forty seven.
Speaker 1: Years, Danny. I have spent the last two weeks talking
Speaker 1: to everyone, beginning with the President, who knows anybody iron
Speaker 1: and is in the public and has an ability to
Speaker 1: deliver commentary and not give away state secrets. And all
Speaker 1: of them have different target sets, and I ask them all,
Speaker 1: why don't we blow up carg Island Because the regime
Speaker 1: has no other money that doesn't come out of carg
Speaker 1: Island or the other two oil terminals, and they're worried
Speaker 1: about China. Some of them want to blow it up.
Speaker 1: What standy PLETK could think about the target list and
Speaker 1: whether or not it ought to include carg Island.
Speaker 11: So it's really funny you say that, Mark Tison and
Speaker 11: I on our podcast, as you've nicely noted what the
Speaker 11: hell is going on, had my colleague Michael Rubin on,
Speaker 11: and Michael Rubin said, you want to hit them hard,
Speaker 11: you want to hit them once you hit them at
Speaker 11: kaj and that will be That is a single point
Speaker 11: of failure for the Iranian regime. Here's the problem. There
Speaker 11: are a lot of serious problems in Syria right now,
Speaker 11: but one of the problems that the president's new friend,
Speaker 11: Ahmed al Shara, the President of Syria, has is that
Speaker 11: sanctions are absolutely strangling his ability to do anything economically. Now,
Speaker 11: set aside what's been going on, because that's all very troubling,
Speaker 11: but prior to that he couldn't deliver economically. One of
Speaker 11: the things about a transition to a democratically ruled Iran
Speaker 11: is that economic life's blood, that is Iran's oil. And
Speaker 11: so my guess is that when they debate hitting harsh,
Speaker 11: not hitting harsh, hitting the oil infrastructure, not hitting it,
Speaker 11: they are asking themselves, if the good guys come to power,
Speaker 11: how will they repair this? How will they have access
Speaker 11: to money fast enough? And you know, again, I think
Speaker 11: that's just a factor. But in terms of the strategic
Speaker 11: importance of it, I couldn't agree.
Speaker 8: More with the folks who said to you, that is
Speaker 8: a good target.
Speaker 10: All right.
Speaker 1: Let me conclude by I said I don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce harge island and I don't care, but I
Speaker 1: don't know much about it the geography of of Iran.
Speaker 1: I do care about their being able to hit all
Speaker 1: these bases. I played Secretary of Rubio testimony today. There
Speaker 1: are forty thousand Americans within range of Iran. If President
Speaker 1: Trump pulls the trigger, should it be overwhelming force on
Speaker 1: everything that moves that can hurt American troops?
Speaker 11: Well, I don't think that. From everything I understand so far,
Speaker 11: I don't think that that is the President's inclination. Notwithstanding
Speaker 11: his I do think that the I do think that
Speaker 11: one thing they will have focused on very intensely is
Speaker 11: Iran's ability to strike US troops US allies. And that
Speaker 11: doesn't just mean Israel. That also means Saudi Arabia, it
Speaker 11: means the United Arab Emirates, it means unfortunately, it also
Speaker 11: means Qatar, where we have a base. So my guess
Speaker 11: is that we will have very good protection in place
Speaker 11: and that we will take out that ability before we
Speaker 11: do anything else. So is that something to worry about. Yes,
Speaker 11: But our Pentagon planners and these guys in the Pentagon
Speaker 11: people like, they don't like Donald Trump. They respect they
Speaker 11: don't respect Pete Haigsat. That's not the factor here. These
Speaker 11: are the guys in uniform. This is the Chairman of
Speaker 11: the Joint Chiefs, Raisin Kine. These guys know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Danny Plikatt always good to talk to. You're on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world, and I appreciate your making
Speaker 1: time for us from the other side of the world
Speaker 1: on this most important conflext Danny Pliitchett, thank you her
Speaker 1: podcast with Martis and is what the Hell's going on?
Speaker 1: Don't miss it. Stay tuned to the Welcome Back America.
Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined now by Michael Worn, former ambassador
Speaker 1: from Israel to the United States. Doctor Orrin is the
Speaker 1: go to guy on things in Israel, and I want
Speaker 1: to begin by saying, I think everyone in the audience
Speaker 1: shares the relief that all of Israel must share dr
Speaker 1: Orn with the return of the last hostage body. And
Speaker 1: what a horrific chapter do have closed? But I am
Speaker 1: glad that it closed today. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: emotional reaction is in Israel, but relief has got to
Speaker 1: be part of it.
Speaker 12: We look is the first time in two and a
Speaker 12: half years here that I'm not wearing the yellow ribbon
Speaker 12: pin and I don't know if folks ever going to
Speaker 12: take it off of my lapel, but he just came
Speaker 12: off today, several hours ago.
Speaker 13: And I must say our feelings are divided.
Speaker 12: Part of us are sharing the sorrow of the Gavilli
Speaker 12: family whose son was killed performing heroically on twenty three
Speaker 12: In cover seven twenty twenty three E we shared the
Speaker 12: relief of the family receiving his remains.
Speaker 13: For proper burial in the state of Israel.
Speaker 12: And we are are filled with hope for the future
Speaker 12: now that all those hostages have been returned a living
Speaker 12: and deceased, and we can begin to rebuild and take on.
Speaker 13: The next chapter.
Speaker 12: And as you see that next chapter is coming very
Speaker 12: very rapidly, it seems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's turn to that. I'm going to benham
Speaker 1: Ben Talib Blue for the last hour of today's program
Speaker 1: talking about Iran. I think we are on the brink
Speaker 1: of the United States initiating kinetic activity, because it would
Speaker 1: be a dent in deterrence if we don't. How do
Speaker 1: you see this situation? Does the United States go alone,
Speaker 1: does it go with Israel? Does it follow Israel like
Speaker 1: it did in June of last year.
Speaker 13: Well, it's like that answer on the SATs. It's d
Speaker 13: all of the above.
Speaker 12: Okay, one of three things going to happen in the
Speaker 12: United States goes it alone. And I can't imagine that
Speaker 12: the President has moved so many massive assets to the
Speaker 12: Middle East region and it's not going to use them.
Speaker 13: You take out a pistol and don't use it.
Speaker 12: It projects weakness and not strength, and you become basically
Speaker 12: a Barack Obama not enforcing a red line. God forbid. Secondly,
Speaker 12: does does Israel join? And from my sources in Israel
Speaker 12: tell me that thisel very much wants to join, wants
Speaker 12: to be part of this, and we can bring to
Speaker 12: bear immense military power with our air force and other
Speaker 12: assets we have in the region. And then thirdly, the
Speaker 12: third option is that maybe there is a coup within
Speaker 12: the Iranian leadership, that they ditch the Supreme leader and
Speaker 12: they cut a deal. The cut of deal, which is
Speaker 12: sort of Venezuela like. The regime will will survive, but
Speaker 12: it won't be the same regime. It will be not
Speaker 12: it will not be antried, Western, will be pro Western,
Speaker 12: and the oil will flow not to China but to
Speaker 12: the United States.
Speaker 13: And they will stop.
Speaker 12: Supporting terrorists around the world and cease steep, cease seeking
Speaker 12: our destruction, and that would be a gaming change. It
Speaker 12: wouldn't be the best outcome for the people every round,
Speaker 12: I must say, but it would be certainly better for
Speaker 12: the people of the Middle East generally.
Speaker 1: Now you have founded the Israel Advocacy Group, and the
Speaker 1: Israel Advocacy Group studies things from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: Jewish state. Do you expect if the United States initiates
Speaker 1: a strike as punishment, just punishment for the slaughter of
Speaker 1: thirty thousand of their own citizens and the ongoing incarceration,
Speaker 1: probably torture and murder of others, that whether or not
Speaker 1: you want to get involved, Iran will hit Israel. So
Speaker 1: you have to get in a first punch.
Speaker 12: Well, I don't know if we'll preempt it, but I
Speaker 12: would say we certainly have a cause of belly. Iran
Speaker 12: has been trying to destroy Israel now since its inception,
Speaker 12: since theception of this long Republican nineteen seventy nine, is
Speaker 12: responsible for the deaths of countless thousands of Israelis and
Speaker 12: Jews around the world, not just as really blowing up
Speaker 12: synagogues and Jewish community centers in South America, example in Argentina.
Speaker 12: That's just one example precipitating wars. Iran was behind October seventh.
Speaker 12: It trained and funded Hamas and his Bola. We don't
Speaker 12: have to look for a reason to go to war
Speaker 12: against Iran, but it would help if Iran would.
Speaker 13: Do is you know Harry Derry.
Speaker 12: Harry used to say, and I know you know what
Speaker 12: I mean, go ahead, pull the trigger at making my day,
Speaker 12: and all we need is one missile fired and we'll
Speaker 12: take it down and we'll respond.
Speaker 13: And we have to prepare that.
Speaker 12: We have to prepare for the fact that it won't
Speaker 12: be just Iran firing ballistic missiles at us.
Speaker 3: We assume that.
Speaker 12: They have about one thousand, five hundred of these very
Speaker 12: large ballistic missiles. They carry between two hundred and fifty
Speaker 12: pounds of TNT. It knocks down just not just a building,
Speaker 12: but a neighborhood. And we're going to have to get
Speaker 12: to those rocket launchers as soon as possible. But we'll
Speaker 12: also be targeted by the hoodies once again, maybe by
Speaker 12: his Bullah, certainly by the Syrian and Iraqi pro Iranian
Speaker 12: militias in Iraq and Syrias. So we have to be
Speaker 12: prepared for that type of combat again. And I think
Speaker 12: that Israel now will be prepared to deliver a knockout.
Speaker 1: Blow doctor on. And I heard over the weekend that
Speaker 1: Turkey has supplied Siria's new regime with air defenses that
Speaker 1: were not there in June of last year. Does Israel
Speaker 1: still have a clear sky all the way to Iran
Speaker 1: if it needs it? Oh?
Speaker 13: Yes, I do it?
Speaker 3: Does it does?
Speaker 12: Listen, the Russians were there, We had a clear sky,
Speaker 12: and the Russians had seemingly the or purportedly the most
Speaker 12: advanced anti aircraft systems in the world, the S three hundred,
Speaker 12: because they know if they fire our planes.
Speaker 13: We're going to fire back.
Speaker 12: If it destroyed those systems and then go try to
Speaker 12: sell them to people around the world. So I don't
Speaker 12: think Turkey's going to risk that, even if they have
Speaker 12: moved those anti aircraft systems into Syria, they're not going.
Speaker 13: To fire at our planes.
Speaker 1: And is there a preparation that if this goes off?
Speaker 1: I think it has to happen or President Trump will
Speaker 1: have dented deterrency rebuilt if it does go off. And
Speaker 1: I expected it well at some point before the middle
Speaker 1: of March. What's the high end. I mean, those are
Speaker 1: a lot of missiles with a lot of TNT on them.
Speaker 1: Do people have any idea what's coming at Israel?
Speaker 13: Yeah, they do certainly because we had it.
Speaker 12: We had not a dry run, we had we had it.
Speaker 12: We had a dress rehearsal in June last year, and
Speaker 12: I was under fire from those rockets.
Speaker 13: It's unpleasant, you know.
Speaker 12: We have we have bomb shelters in our houses that
Speaker 12: can with stand a hit by his bubble rocket or
Speaker 12: a Hamas rocket. But the rockets that iman fire us
Speaker 12: were killing people in those safe rooms, very very powerful explosives.
Speaker 12: So we have to brace ourselves for that and and
Speaker 12: listen to people of Israel, as you know, we're indomitable,
Speaker 12: we're strong, and we will do this.
Speaker 13: This is an opportunity that comes about.
Speaker 12: I can say, maybe I want to say a century,
Speaker 12: but I almost want to say a millennium, to free
Speaker 12: the Jewish state from a from an enemy that seeks
Speaker 12: our destruction, not our defeat.
Speaker 13: You know, it's extremely rare.
Speaker 12: In history for one side in a conflict to seek
Speaker 12: to destroy entirely other side. You know, our parents fought
Speaker 12: against Germany and Japan. They didn't want to destroy Germany
Speaker 12: advantaces change their government. It's extremely rare and this is
Speaker 12: our chance to be free of it.
Speaker 1: Ambassador Michael Orn, founder of the Israel Advocatesy Group, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining me. Ballaman, actually Dr Michael Lauran, Doctor
Speaker 1: Michael aren't glad to kick it off with former United
Speaker 1: States Senator Jim Talent. He represented the state of Missouri.
Speaker 1: He's now a senior Fellow at the Reagan Institute for
Speaker 1: the Study of Peace through Its Strength. Senator Talent, we're
Speaker 1: talking off there about Admiral Montgomery yesterday, who was fabulous.
Speaker 1: But you're you've been in the defense business as long
Speaker 1: as he has. Do you think we are on the
Speaker 1: cusp of a very violent war?
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't call him.
Speaker 14: I mean all war is violent. I think I think
Speaker 14: we're we're on the cusp of a campaign that will
Speaker 14: be a much more campaign, sustained campaign than we had
Speaker 14: to do to take out their nuclear arsenal. I heard
Speaker 14: Mark say ten to twelve days, which to me seems
Speaker 14: about right, because you there's two objectives here. The first
Speaker 14: is to is to enforce our red line and thereby
Speaker 14: enhance our credibility in the Middle East and around the world.
Speaker 14: President's going to do that be on a shadow of
Speaker 14: a doubt. The second is to further degrade Iran's ability
Speaker 14: to aggress against its neighbors and destabilize the region, which
Speaker 14: is against our national interest. Again if you read the
Speaker 14: national security strategy, so the logical thing to take out
Speaker 14: is their missile capabilities and every and the anti air
Speaker 14: systems that protect him to the extent those are still left.
Speaker 14: And in order to do that job, well, you know,
Speaker 14: it takes a lot of soorties. You're not going to
Speaker 14: do that in today. So one interesting question which Mark
Speaker 14: talked about is whether the Israelis are going to join in.
Speaker 14: I would love to be a fly on the wall
Speaker 14: when Trump is talking with net Yao about that.
Speaker 1: What do you think the preference of the president is.
Speaker 1: I think he would prefer that they not, but I
Speaker 1: don't think he's going to hold him back if one
Speaker 1: missile is shot at.
Speaker 14: Them, right. Look you well, with regard to the Israelis, yeah,
Speaker 14: it's a complicated question. I mean because Israel has moved
Speaker 14: from a containment in the region to a preemption policy
Speaker 14: in the region, and net yeah, who has been very,
Speaker 14: very decisive about doing that, and I think he's got
Speaker 14: the Israeli people behind him, so the Israelis can send
Speaker 14: the message here too. I mean, in the past they've
Speaker 14: tried to do hands off on this sort of thing
Speaker 14: because they felt more vulnerable in the region. If he
Speaker 14: joins in, I think it's a good way of sending
Speaker 14: the message. Look, we're the hedge amount of the region,
Speaker 14: and we're going to act like it when our security
Speaker 14: is at stake. So I think they ought to do it.
Speaker 14: I think Admiral Montgomery was right go ahead and join in.
Speaker 1: You know, I was with a client back in my
Speaker 1: law practice days in Nevada, big swinger, Jewish man, big
Speaker 1: sport of Israel, when Israel did not respond to Saddam's scuds,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't believe it. I was in his office.
Speaker 1: He could not believe that they were not responding. But
Speaker 1: of course Secretary Baker and George H. W. Bush asked
Speaker 1: them not to respond. I don't think Donald Trump's in
Speaker 1: the business of asking people not to respond if they
Speaker 1: want to.
Speaker 14: And I think President Trump adjusts better to changes in
Speaker 14: a strategic in strategic positioning, in other words, in the
Speaker 14: past Israel has acted sometimes like they can't act, they
Speaker 14: can't be a normal do what a normal nation would
Speaker 14: do in a normal situation, okay, which is to take
Speaker 14: advantage of this to attack and degrade their chief aggressor.
Speaker 14: I think the Israelis are done with that, and I
Speaker 14: think Trump is fine with it. Trump is not burdened
Speaker 14: by thirty or forty years of assumptions about the Middle East.
Speaker 14: I mean, he's rethinking the region, he's rethought it, and
Speaker 14: I just think to look, anybody else in Israel's position,
Speaker 14: with Israel's power, would join us in this attack, and
Speaker 14: so I'd like to see him do it now. Again,
Speaker 14: there are a whole lot of factors working that you
Speaker 14: and I don't know about. So maybe they won't, but
Speaker 14: we're certainly going to use their intel, particularly if we
Speaker 14: go after command and control with the IRGC. They're going
Speaker 14: to tell us where everybody is.
Speaker 1: Would you expect any of the Golf Coordinating Council countries
Speaker 1: to join in?
Speaker 14: No, accepted defensively. When the Iranians respond, and you, I
Speaker 14: would reassure people, we're very good at this kind of
Speaker 14: mission when we have time to build up, to plan,
Speaker 14: and when the environment is basically noncompetitive. I mean, this
Speaker 14: is not the South China Sea right where there are
Speaker 14: thousands and thousands and thousands of anti ship crews and
Speaker 14: ballistic missiles along the coast of China. This is a
Speaker 14: basically uncompetitive environment. We're good at this, and so I'm
Speaker 14: not saying that we can't take any casualties. But I
Speaker 14: feel pretty confident in our force protection package.
Speaker 1: Jim, you and I are the same, Ahure. I think
Speaker 1: you can remember they build up to the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one war, which kicked off I think on March one
Speaker 1: or thereabouts nineteen ninety one, and the injections of the
Speaker 1: dead on our team on our side was going to
Speaker 1: be in the five digits and people were horrified at that,
Speaker 1: but it was going to be five digits. Men lost
Speaker 1: their lives, but it was in the hundreds. It might
Speaker 1: not even been over one hundred. I can't remember. In
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal invasion in nineteen ninety one, we lost
Speaker 1: twenty three some soldiers were killed on Heartbreak Ridge in Grenada.
Speaker 1: And then when the two thousand and three invasion happened,
Speaker 1: we thought chemical weapons and everything was going to rain
Speaker 1: down on our troops and didn't happen. Do you think
Speaker 1: that the false premise of four wars with relatively low
Speaker 1: casualties as Americans complacent about the risk our troops face
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 14: Well, we had a couple of wars after that, you
Speaker 14: were unfortunately, you know, we took a lot of casualties,
Speaker 14: so relatively speaking, compared to those other engagements, we took
Speaker 14: a lot of casualties. So no, I think people are worried.
Speaker 14: I think Donald Trump is uniquely reluctant to use American
Speaker 14: military power in a sustained combat type situation. Now, I
Speaker 14: don't know that we'd call ten, twelve, fourteen days all
Speaker 14: that sustained. So this is a president I think who
Speaker 14: uniquely and sometimes I worry about it. Sometimes I think
Speaker 14: maybe he's too reluctant. So we're not going to go
Speaker 14: in until we're ready, until we have in place what
Speaker 14: we need to protect our people as much as they
Speaker 14: can be protected. That's why I say I have a
Speaker 14: fair amount of confidence. I mean, you never know with war,
Speaker 14: and he's got to pull the trigger. It's just a
Speaker 14: question now of when. And I've been saying this on
Speaker 14: the show and on the pod now for the better
Speaker 14: part of a month. So I should be careful, but
Speaker 14: I've got to believe it's going to be soon.
Speaker 1: The podcast that center Talon is referring to a Twain's
Speaker 1: World on which you appear every week when Dwayne gets
Speaker 1: together with the Senator, and it's great national security stuff.
Speaker 1: What do you expect follows a sustained campaign? Bit of
Speaker 1: its two weeks more Molas, more IRGC or perhaps a
Speaker 1: different military general, and the way that CC took power
Speaker 1: back from the most of brotherhood in Egypt.
Speaker 14: Well, I heard one of I think it was Dan
Speaker 14: sen Or's interviewees. You know, he has so many good ones.
Speaker 14: I can't remember exactly which one, but he said, the
Speaker 14: next leader of Iran is not going to be wearing
Speaker 14: a turbine. He's going to be wearing a military cap.
Speaker 14: And I would really expect that when it happens. I
Speaker 14: don't think we should necessarily expect that to happen as
Speaker 14: a result of this campaign, though, because I don't think
Speaker 14: the purpose of it is to achieve regime collapse. What
Speaker 14: I would expect we'll do after that is really go
Speaker 14: after their oil shipments, their shadow oil fleet. I think
Speaker 14: that's a better alternative than carg Island, which you've talked
Speaker 14: about you, because we don't want to cripple the nation.
Speaker 14: We want to cripple the regime. And you can do
Speaker 14: that by going after their oil shipment. So, assuming we
Speaker 14: have the assets to do it, we can do to them.
Speaker 14: We're doing to Venezuela now and choke off revenue. Further
Speaker 14: from the regime.
Speaker 1: Do you think that they are in touch with reality
Speaker 1: enough to know what happens where they do inflec serious
Speaker 1: casualties on American troops And I mean, you've got to
Speaker 1: hit on a destroyer. I think Donald Trump would go
Speaker 1: through the roof.
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, no, I don't think so. You. I think
Speaker 14: this is the collapse and they're going to be very
Speaker 14: This is kind of like Hitler and the Bunkers what
Speaker 14: I think. I mean, this is the collapse of all
Speaker 14: their ideological and eschatological pretensions. I think they'll be desperate
Speaker 14: to do anything to prevent it. And the question is
Speaker 14: which the Israelis may know I don't know, is are
Speaker 14: there regime factions that are drawing back from that kind
Speaker 14: of a scorched earth policy who will act if necessary.
Speaker 14: I think they've been waiting for the Supreme Leader to die,
Speaker 14: which makes sense. I mean, that's the time for a
Speaker 14: transition to something new. So, but are there forces that
Speaker 14: are prepared to say, at some point point, no, you
Speaker 14: know what, We're going to hurry that along. You know,
Speaker 14: we'll bring a pillow to his bedside in the bunker
Speaker 14: and and and we'll get changed before that. And I
Speaker 14: don't know, I don't know that anybody knows. If anybody knew,
Speaker 14: it would be the Israelis.
Speaker 1: I'm watching his son. His son is a master that
Speaker 1: fortune of many, many hundreds of millions of dollars outside
Speaker 1: of the country. And that's not the action of a
Speaker 1: confident next in lines fame leader, is it.
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 14: And I've got to believe that there are people close
Speaker 14: to him who aren't quite as willing to die as
Speaker 14: he may be. I mean, there's a limit to how
Speaker 14: much you know the top leader is one thing, or
Speaker 14: the people immediately around him. But I've never thought that
Speaker 14: when you broad it out the RGC generals and the
Speaker 14: rest of it, that they're as willing, you know, to
Speaker 14: meet their maker as the supreme leader is. So if
Speaker 14: it happens soon, if regime collapses, collapse happens soon, that'll
Speaker 14: be what will cause it.
Speaker 1: We will look for that, and we will look for
Speaker 1: center talent to be back next week. He's also a
Speaker 1: frequent guest on Dwayne's World. I don't know how often
Speaker 1: Dwayne are doing that. He's thinking about rekindling the After Show.
Speaker 1: Be careful, Jim, He'll cut the end of that on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, Morning Glory and evening Grace Americas. I
Speaker 1: promised all day. Richard Goldberg joins us. He is with
Speaker 1: the senior director at the Foundation for the Defensive Democracies
Speaker 1: and he was in the Trump first term at the
Speaker 1: National Security Council with the Iran portfolio, and the Trump
Speaker 1: second term he helps stand up the National Energy Dominance
Speaker 1: Council of Secretary of Berghoman writer, You've heard here a lot.
Speaker 1: They went back to the FDD to study Iran, and boy,
Speaker 1: what a timely time it is. Richard. Welcome to you.
Speaker 1: Hear a show. Great to have you, great to be
Speaker 1: great to be here.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much so Richard.
Speaker 1: Since President Trump appeared on the program, you know, two
Speaker 1: weeks and two days ago and said he's going to
Speaker 1: hit Iran harder than he's ever been hit before. They
Speaker 1: have ever been hit before. If they keep killing people. Well,
Speaker 1: I've had on Mark Davitz, your colleague. I've had on
Speaker 1: Michael Durand from Hudson. I've had on Ben ben Tellerblue,
Speaker 1: your colleague. I've had on I will have on Kareem Sadjapoor.
Speaker 1: I think Thursday have Eve ready gore from Israel. You
Speaker 1: I'm doing my best to get people ready for what
Speaker 1: will be a very big kinetic collision if it happened.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's going to happen with Iran?
Speaker 15: I do think something is going to happen. I think
Speaker 15: the President is a president of determination commitment. I think
Speaker 15: he likely has his mind already set on some sort
Speaker 15: of outcome here and has asked his senior advisors to
Speaker 15: make sure his options are set and the force posture
Speaker 15: matches the options that are most aligned with what he
Speaker 15: wants to achieve. And I think he knows that as
Speaker 15: more and more of this information comes out, the intelligence
Speaker 15: that gets leaked, as some of the Internet peaks back
Speaker 15: on in Iran, his phone calls are being made, as
Speaker 15: pictures and videos come out, he and the rest of
Speaker 15: the world sees that a red line that he drew
Speaker 15: was obliterated by this regime. He is aware of that.
Speaker 15: The promises of no executions apparently have continued in secret
Speaker 15: as well. And when you start seeing a death toll
Speaker 15: in the tens upon tens of thousands, with more still
Speaker 15: in secret locations being held, with more executions potentially on
Speaker 15: the way, that alone, of course obliterates the Red line.
Speaker 15: But he also sees a regime that's teetering, he sees
Speaker 15: historic opportunity, and as he told you, he's already in
Speaker 15: many ways sealed his fate in history as somebody like
Speaker 15: Ronald Reagan who changes the world, whether it's last June
Speaker 15: with the B two bombers Operation Midnight Hammer, whether it's
Speaker 15: the most recent operation against Maduro the Abraham of course
Speaker 15: before that, but you know what, Ronald Reagan brought down
Speaker 15: the Soviet Union, a major threat to the United States,
Speaker 15: transformed the entire world. This president could still bring down
Speaker 15: one of those major threats that is world changing, world
Speaker 15: history changing, if he contributes to the collapse of the
Speaker 15: Islamic Republic of.
Speaker 1: Iran, and in so doing, if that happens, having cut
Speaker 1: off the People's Republic of China from Venezuela and oil,
Speaker 1: he may succeed in cutting off Iran from setting hot
Speaker 1: oil to China, thought have to buy their oil in
Speaker 1: the world market. It's not that they won't get oil,
Speaker 1: it's just that they will pay a lot more for it. Richard,
Speaker 1: does that not serve our strategic interests as well?
Speaker 15: I mean, I think if you, for some reason don't
Speaker 15: care at all about thirty five thousand people being mass
Speaker 15: murdered in forty eight hours and executions going on, you
Speaker 15: just say, not our issue, not our national interests. And
Speaker 15: for some reason you didn't even care about the fact
Speaker 15: that Iran, as the leading state sponsor of terrorism in
Speaker 15: the world, continues to plot war against the United States,
Speaker 15: has tried to assassinate the President of the United States
Speaker 15: while he was out of office. Certainly try to assassinate
Speaker 15: him again if they remain in power after he leaves office,
Speaker 15: and all of the other bad things they do to
Speaker 15: tie us down in the region, All the gold Star
Speaker 15: families around the country who have grieving, have lost loved ones,
Speaker 15: whether in Iraq of Beirut, Cobar Towers over many years,
Speaker 15: in Israel, Gaza, all these different places because of the
Speaker 15: Islamic Republic of Iran. If for some reason you didn't
Speaker 15: see that as a major national security thread to us.
Speaker 15: But you subscribe to great power competition. You say it's
Speaker 15: all about China, that's our greatest existential threat of the century.
Speaker 15: Then let me tell you about why the President is
Speaker 15: executing the most brilliant grand strategy in history right now
Speaker 15: for the United States and taking apart the axis of
Speaker 15: enablers for the top acxis of aggressors against the United States.
Speaker 15: As China starts seeing all of its chess pieces falling
Speaker 15: off the board, as Russia starts seeing its chess pieces
Speaker 15: falling off the board, started with Asia collapsing in Syria
Speaker 15: and then Iran being able to do nothing as the
Speaker 15: President obliterates its nuclear program, Maduro being taken out in
Speaker 15: the middle of the night in fifteen minutes by delta force.
Speaker 15: China is seeing all of its Belt and Road initiatives,
Speaker 15: all of its investments, all of its key supply lines
Speaker 15: being threatened, potentially all the aggressors that are the middle
Speaker 15: powers that can threaten the United States and distract us
Speaker 15: potentially being taken off the game board. And remember, for
Speaker 15: China heavily dependent on energy imports, one of their key weaknesses.
Speaker 15: Fifty percent of their energy imports come through the Strait
Speaker 15: of Hormuz, that's obviously Saudi and the rest of the
Speaker 15: Gulf plus Iran. But if Iran is no longer a
Speaker 15: threat there, if you're able to constrain that oil supply,
Speaker 15: and you've taken off the ability for Maduro to supply
Speaker 15: a few hundred thousand barrels per day going up from
Speaker 15: Venezuela as well, they are left with the potential of
Speaker 15: having to rely on guess who, the United States of
Speaker 15: America from whom they could be buying more oil, and
Speaker 15: other partners where we would have strong relations, and obviously
Speaker 15: the US Navy the ability to interdict in time of conflict.
Speaker 15: That's bad grand strategy for China, that's very good grand
Speaker 15: strategy for US.
Speaker 1: So, Richard Goldberg, I believe that if the President fails
Speaker 1: to strike it Iran, it will dent the deterrence that
Speaker 1: he is so masterfully rebuilt in the first year following
Speaker 1: the disastrous years of the Locust under Joe Biden. However,
Speaker 1: I also don't believe that's going to happen. I think
Speaker 1: what he was doing with me, and then he followed
Speaker 1: with Sean Hannity, and he followed with Tony Dakoppel and
Speaker 1: he did it on true social was trying to prevent violence.
Speaker 1: It did not work ever since then, since the massacre.
Speaker 1: And you use the term thirty five thousand, I've seen
Speaker 1: now today as highest forty thousand. That's almost unimaginable. But
Speaker 1: the president is a visual person. Do you think he
Speaker 1: has a good flow of information from inside Iran? Is
Speaker 1: to exact how widespread the massacre was.
Speaker 15: I think that picture is increasing, and the flow of
Speaker 15: information is obviously accelerating. I do actually think that it's
Speaker 15: possible he did not have a good flow of information
Speaker 15: that first weekend when the massacres were taking place, most
Speaker 15: mainstream media were downplaying the reports that I and others
Speaker 15: were hearing from inside of Iran. The leading opposition news source,
Speaker 15: Iran International, was reporting throughout the weekend five thousand and
Speaker 15: twelve thousand. We were hearing a lot of the stories
Speaker 15: that are now being confirmed through the weekend, But you
Speaker 15: would hear from a lot of sources in government that's
Speaker 15: just not matching what we're hearing so far, both here
Speaker 15: in the United States, in Great Britain and elsewhere where.
Speaker 15: We would rely on the intelligence community to validate rumors
Speaker 15: coming out of Iran. There's no way to deny what's
Speaker 15: happening now. Millions of people came out in the streets.
Speaker 15: There was mass murder. The blood is still stained across
Speaker 15: Tehran and other major cities. People are still trying to
Speaker 15: identify their loved ones who are being held hostage, even
Speaker 15: as dead bodies throughout Iran. Right now, the fear of
Speaker 15: a continued crack down if anybody else comes out into
Speaker 15: the streets, But also understanding that this is a regime
Speaker 15: that teeters. Why did people come out into the streets.
Speaker 15: There was an economic crisis that Donald Trump helped facilitate
Speaker 15: and accelerate. There has been the snapback of UN sanctions,
Speaker 15: and so there's an understanding in the market that the
Speaker 15: old Iron nuclear Deal is never coming back. Banks were
Speaker 15: teetering on the edge of collapse. One did collapse. There's
Speaker 15: a water crisis because of the mismanagement of this maniacal,
Speaker 15: corrupt regime. There is a power energy crisis where the
Speaker 15: grid is experience blackouts throughout Iran. So people hate this regime.
Speaker 15: They already hate them for what they do to the
Speaker 15: people repression wise, as you can see, they hate them
Speaker 15: because their standard of living continues to go down into
Speaker 15: the gutter. This has spread from upper class to middle class,
Speaker 15: the lower class, religious, secular, all across Iran. And if
Speaker 15: millions of people were willing to take to this streets
Speaker 15: but right now are deterred by machine guns and IERGC
Speaker 15: forces out there, if those IRGC forces somehow are dispersed
Speaker 15: have to run away themselves, stands to reason millions of
Speaker 15: people would come back into the streets if they see
Speaker 15: help on the way, as the President promised. And frankly,
Speaker 15: we long term whether or not this collapses tomorrow. Remember
Speaker 15: nineteen seventy eight to nineteen seventy nine took a year
Speaker 15: before the Shah had to flee Iran. Even if this
Speaker 15: is a long term situation and this regime does not
Speaker 15: immediately collapse or the Supreme Leader has taken out and
Speaker 15: you don't have a full change in regime, the RGC
Speaker 15: steps in a different successor from the MULLA step in.
Speaker 15: If you're able to use this opportunity to continue to
Speaker 15: degrade and dismantle a direct threat to the United States,
Speaker 15: a direct tool of the CCP in China and putin
Speaker 15: in Moscow by degrading their missile program, their navy, their
Speaker 15: drone program, and their command and control. You do a
Speaker 15: great service to the United States. You enforce a red
Speaker 15: line and show the enemies of America this president continues
Speaker 15: to mean business. And maybe yes, you give the opportunity
Speaker 15: for millions of Iranians to come back out and take
Speaker 15: this country back for Iran, which will be a game
Speaker 15: changer for US national security.
Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere. I'm coming right back with Richard Goldberg,
Speaker 1: Senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of DEMOCRACIESFDD
Speaker 1: dot org, and you can follow him at Richard Goldberg
Speaker 1: on AX. I'll make sure I get the right. Is
Speaker 1: there a middle initial in there, Richard or is it
Speaker 1: just Richard Goldberg?
Speaker 15: Just at rich Underscore Goldberg. The underscore touches people some.
Speaker 1: At rich Underscore Goldberg. It's one of the people I
Speaker 1: tell you you should follow routinely online because there are
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people with opinions about Iran, but
Speaker 1: there aren't that many with actual firsthand knowledge of having
Speaker 1: worked the portfolio at the NFC. Richard has don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: I'll be right bats with rich Goldberg from the FDD.
Speaker 1: After these messages, State tuned to the hen Heal It
Speaker 1: Show Welcome back to America. I'm Hugh Hewett with Richard Goldberg,
Speaker 1: senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democrat
Speaker 1: for years and Trump won had the portfoliover Iran sanctions,
Speaker 1: trying to rebuild some kind of pressure on Iran after
Speaker 1: Team Obama gave the world away to them, including paliats
Speaker 1: of cash. He came back in term two at the
Speaker 1: beginning of it to stand up the Energy Dominance Council
Speaker 1: and to try and repair the damage done by four
Speaker 1: years of Biden appeasement. Hypothetical entirely, but before we go
Speaker 1: back to the reality of strike list and priorities. Had
Speaker 1: Barack Obama not gone belly up on Iran in his
Speaker 1: first term and then pursued the JCPO in his second term,
Speaker 1: would this regime have already fallen? Did Obama save it?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 15: He saved it several times. I mean two thousand and nine,
Speaker 15: the last time we remember, well, the first time I
Speaker 15: remember a mass uprising starting in Iran after what people
Speaker 15: understood to be a stolen election. They don't have elections
Speaker 15: in Iran, they have selections in Iran, and you had
Speaker 15: this sort of mass uprising into Ihran suburb taking place
Speaker 15: it was an upper middle class revolt, and they put
Speaker 15: that down with force. And Barack Obama sent the love
Speaker 15: letters behind people's back to the Supreme Leader, saying, I
Speaker 15: want to have a good relationship. By the way, I've
Speaker 15: seen those letters when I was working in the White House.
Speaker 15: This was unimaginable. He abandoned the people in the street
Speaker 15: because he wanted a nuclear deal, because he internalized this
Speaker 15: anti American ideology that we were actually to blame for
Speaker 15: all of our problems with Iran. He believed in the
Speaker 15: false narrative of a coup that the CIA was behind
Speaker 15: that the Iranian regime has put out for years. He
Speaker 15: believed that you need to have a balance of power
Speaker 15: in the region. Let Iran have a little more power
Speaker 15: and that would offset the Saudi power and the Israeli power,
Speaker 15: and then we would have this great equilibrium and Kumba
Speaker 15: Yah would happen, and we just needed to get to
Speaker 15: a nuclear deal because hey, you know, they have grievances
Speaker 15: and we should understand that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Richard, it's not very irrelevant, but I want you
Speaker 1: follow Has anything been heard from the Metternik of MS now,
Speaker 1: you know Ben Rowe says President Obama said, anything about
Speaker 1: the massacre of tens of thousands of people. Have the
Speaker 1: people who kept the eye tolls in power, have they
Speaker 1: had the decency to come forward and condemn the regime
Speaker 1: that they parlayed with.
Speaker 15: No, because they're out there working to media right now
Speaker 15: to say it's over. Too late, can't do anything, too
Speaker 15: dangerous to act. Don't know what would come next, could
Speaker 15: be worse if the Supreme Leader were to go. That's
Speaker 15: who's behind a lot of those news stories and headlines
Speaker 15: that you see out there.
Speaker 3: It's Team Obama.
Speaker 15: Ben Rhoades out there still trying to hope for a
Speaker 15: day where they get back to appeasement as the policy
Speaker 15: with this regime. However, I will say that for many
Speaker 15: people who are let's call them normal, more mainstream, clearly
Speaker 15: don't agree with them on a lot of policy issues,
Speaker 15: but they went along with that because they're Democrats. They
Speaker 15: believe they this is what we have to do. This
Speaker 15: is Barack Obama's foreign policy. So I'll get on the train.
Speaker 15: They are looking at you, you say forty thousand. They're
Speaker 15: seeing at the numbers right now, they're seeing the pictures.
Speaker 3: The videos.
Speaker 15: Those types of people on the left and in the
Speaker 15: center cannot justify the jcpoaim or cannot justify an appeasement
Speaker 15: policy anymore. Are looking at this idea of having a
Speaker 15: negotiation with this regime with everything going on right now, saying,
Speaker 15: are you kidding me? This regime has to end up
Speaker 15: in the ash heap of history, the sooner the better. So, yes,
Speaker 15: there are idealogues out there, and we remember some of
Speaker 15: them who served in the Biden administration too, like Rob Malley,
Speaker 15: the Special envoy for Iran. It was kicked out for
Speaker 15: being a little too close to the Iranians perhaps, and
Speaker 15: many others. They might be rooting against the Iranian people
Speaker 15: right now. They might be trying to, in sinister ways,
Speaker 15: influence the President not to act. But I think the
Speaker 15: vast majority of Americans see what's happening here, see a
Speaker 15: red line declared, See what this regime is capable of
Speaker 15: against its own people, know that it's capable of building
Speaker 15: more and more missiles to use against us and our allies,
Speaker 15: and knows that this is a historic time to take
Speaker 15: advantage of for our national security.
Speaker 1: So, Richard, there are lots of different definitions of what
Speaker 1: we're aiming for. Some people want regime negotiations and if
Speaker 1: we are to believe one of those includes Special Envoy Witkoff,
Speaker 1: but he's been involved in some headfakes of extraordinary proportions.
Speaker 1: There's regime coercion, which is what's going on in Venezuela.
Speaker 1: There's regime evolution, which is what we hope goes on
Speaker 1: long term in Venezuela, to free and fair elections and
Speaker 1: democracy return. Then there's regime punishment and just simply a
Speaker 1: punitive strike saying what you have done here is beyond
Speaker 1: the bounds of what the West will tolerate. That's what
Speaker 1: President Trump did in term one visa Viasade when he
Speaker 1: used chemical weapons. And then there's regime change, which involves
Speaker 1: Iraq in two thousand and three, Afghanistan in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. I'm in favor of at least regime punishment,
Speaker 1: in other words, just a simple punitive strike, and we
Speaker 1: can talk about target lists. Where are you in that option,
Speaker 1: Richard Goldberg? What would you like to see happen as
Speaker 1: a strategic goal.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I am at the very least regime punishment, but
Speaker 15: I would like to see the facilitation of regime collapse
Speaker 15: in transition. That does not mean boots on the ground.
Speaker 15: It does not mean an occupation, does not mean the
Speaker 15: United States literally going to Tehran to do things. Though,
Speaker 15: if somehow the President and General Kine and Director Ratcliffe
Speaker 15: can pull a rabbit out of the hat and there's
Speaker 15: some incredible operation like nobody imagined in Caracas that just
Speaker 15: suddenly happens, I would be impressed with that. I would
Speaker 15: not believe. I would not be predicting that. It would
Speaker 15: seem high risk and dangerous.
Speaker 5: But who knows.
Speaker 15: This president and this team around him have proven everybody else.
Speaker 15: We can't really expect the unexpected with their planning at
Speaker 15: the moment. However, given the normal set of facts in
Speaker 15: front of us, the parameters that we would imagine what
Speaker 15: we would be willing to do with this president should
Speaker 15: be willing to do, and what he should not be
Speaker 15: willing to do. Given the risk to US personnel, I
Speaker 15: think it is quite appropriate A to make sure they
Speaker 15: are punished for going across the red line, but B
Speaker 15: take this moment, seize this moment to continue to squeeze,
Speaker 15: to degrade, to dismantle, and the weaker and weaker and
Speaker 15: weaker they get, the stronger and stronger the people get.
Speaker 15: And yes, you will see some sort of transition. At
Speaker 15: some point, this regime cannot continue if banks are collapsing,
Speaker 15: because the present enforces his thread of twenty five percent
Speaker 15: tariffs against all neighboring countries of Iran, and the cash
Speaker 15: flow starts moving, stops moving from daily trade. And you
Speaker 15: actually use either by naval forces like you saw in Venezuela,
Speaker 15: or kinetic action or cyber action, some sort of prevention
Speaker 15: of the oil flowing out of carg Island, you will
Speaker 15: force an immediate liquidity crisis. You will accelerate what is
Speaker 15: already a liquidity crisis. More banks will fail, There will
Speaker 15: be a massive inability to pay the IRGC payroll. That
Speaker 15: would be be very you know, uncertain for what happens
Speaker 15: next to that regime alone, just internally with fracturing, if
Speaker 15: you were to take out kinetically command and control, if
Speaker 15: you were disrupt communications. At the same time that you
Speaker 15: also have.
Speaker 1: To say it, Richard, does the American people and the
Speaker 1: rest of the world have to see what it is
Speaker 1: that the United States does as a reaction to the massacre,
Speaker 1: because if it doesn't, I don't know that the red
Speaker 1: line isn't erat anyway. I think they have to see.
Speaker 15: It well, of course they have to see it. You
Speaker 15: mean you mean, could there just be a cyber event
Speaker 15: and then you say that's the No, there's no way,
Speaker 15: there's no way that that is sufficient at this point,
Speaker 15: based on what the president has has promised, what he
Speaker 15: has suggested, and what you know, if you're shigen Peing,
Speaker 15: if you're Vladimir Putin and you're expecting if you were
Speaker 15: to default now, moving a carrier strike group there, moving
Speaker 15: all these squadrons, building up a forced posture, and then
Speaker 15: just saying, hey, I had a cyber event and we'll
Speaker 15: call it a day. I think that would be laughed
Speaker 15: out of the room. The president certainly knows that, and
Speaker 15: I think, you know, we should have a little bit
Speaker 15: of level setting here. It's not like she and Putin
Speaker 15: don't believe the president is willing to use force. He
Speaker 15: has proven it certainly over the last year, and in
Speaker 15: his first term he has just taken a dictator out
Speaker 15: of Caracas. I need to have to know he's serious.
Speaker 15: But you start stopping forcing your red lines, that can
Speaker 15: change quickly.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back with Richard Goldberg of the Foundation
Speaker 1: for the Defensive Democracy that we're going to tell about
Speaker 1: risk to American personnel in the region, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about target list. In our last two
Speaker 1: segments on Today Iran in Focus Hours, they tuned. I'm
Speaker 1: hughe Hewing. Welcome back America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The biggest
Speaker 1: story in the world remains Iran and whether or not
Speaker 1: the United States strikes and if Israel joins in with it.
Speaker 1: Richard Goldberg, I want to talk about target sets now.
Speaker 1: I've asked all of the experts, and I'll ask Kareem
Speaker 1: when he comes on to finish my week of experts
Speaker 1: on Iran. Why don't we hit carg Island because it
Speaker 1: and the two other oil terminals are the only hard
Speaker 1: currency generators that this regime has to pay its terrorists with.
Speaker 1: Why don't we do that?
Speaker 15: This is the number one source of revenue for the regime.
Speaker 15: If you stop the flow of oil, then you are
Speaker 15: on an egg timer for how long the regime can survive.
Speaker 15: I will add that I also think we underestimate the
Speaker 15: importance of border trade just in its very near circle
Speaker 15: of influence and neighbors. If you actually stop some of
Speaker 15: that daily trade and the currency transfers and the cash access,
Speaker 15: you will also accelerate liquidity crises inside the banking system.
Speaker 15: But yes, we have long had this option, and obviously
Speaker 15: on sanctions alone, we saw this happen in Venezuela as well.
Speaker 15: You have an immediate impact in the market, normal actors,
Speaker 15: normal corporations, and by the way, even state owned enterprises
Speaker 15: of China shy away from completing a transaction because they
Speaker 15: don't want to suffer the blow of a cutoff from
Speaker 15: the US financial system, which is the punishment under US sanctions.
Speaker 15: And so for the Chinese at least, they resort to
Speaker 15: illicit activity. They set up these so called teapot refineries.
Speaker 15: These are unofficial, sort of supposedly disconnected from state owned enterprises.
Speaker 15: They have a ghost tanker fleet, just like what you
Speaker 15: saw in Venezuela. A lot of those, by the way,
Speaker 15: were the Iranian ghost tanker fleet. When you saw the
Speaker 15: US seizing them, They seize them with US sanctions attached
Speaker 15: from the Revolutionary Guard Corps. So you have all these
Speaker 15: ghost tankers bringing oil out of carg Island, chugging along.
Speaker 15: We let them go all the way through the Strait,
Speaker 15: We let them go all the way to China deliver it.
Speaker 15: We know exactly who they are, where they're coming from,
Speaker 15: what cargo they got, and when they unload. And by
Speaker 15: the way, who has the off take agreements after they
Speaker 15: hit the teapot refineries, the state owned oil companies of China.
Speaker 15: So we have always had the ability to escalate against
Speaker 15: Beijing in its sanctions realm to get them to try
Speaker 15: to cut off the transactions. Obviously, that's complicated in a
Speaker 15: very complicated Bilatter relationship, and maybe there's reasons in a
Speaker 15: trade war and other things. We haven't gone there direction.
Speaker 15: There are other ways to exert that influence. The President
Speaker 15: has tried a tariff threat now that doesn't seem to
Speaker 15: have worked so far. We haven't enforced it yet that
Speaker 15: I've seen in the face of Chinese continuing to ignore
Speaker 15: that he is now moving a carrier strike group that
Speaker 15: comes with three destroyers he already had three destroyers on station.
Speaker 15: Does he envision some sort of naval armada quarantine again
Speaker 15: like what we saw in Venezuela, to start seizing the
Speaker 15: very large tankers coming out of carg Island and not
Speaker 15: let the oil flow, start having contracts canceled and simply
Speaker 15: de facto stop the oil transaction.
Speaker 1: From times Richard you're a student of history. We spent
Speaker 1: a lot of World War Two trying to hit Hitler's
Speaker 1: capacity to produce oil and to deny him the ability
Speaker 1: to get to the oil fields and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Why don't we just blow up the refineries. They can
Speaker 1: be rebuilt under a new regime.
Speaker 15: We have that option set. The truth is is that
Speaker 15: if you go back to the Twelve Day War, like
Speaker 15: this option set wasn't on the table. And by the way,
Speaker 15: that target set was on the table for the Israelis
Speaker 15: as well during twelve days of their own air strikes
Speaker 15: and with the exception of a couple of fuel depots
Speaker 15: in an inner near Tehran, they avoided hitting energy infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Why is that?
Speaker 15: Why is it that we hesitate to do that? Well,
Speaker 15: in the end, if you are a military planner, if
Speaker 15: you're advising the president, you say, well, mister President, if
Speaker 15: we hit their energy, then they will have a proportional response,
Speaker 15: which will be to hit other energy, whether that be
Speaker 15: to mine the strait of horror moves and deny Saudi
Speaker 15: oil for moving out to the market, or hit Saudi
Speaker 15: oil infrastructure itself and try to create a massive catastrophic
Speaker 15: disruption event for the market. A couple of responses to
Speaker 15: that the President should know about. Number one, then give
Speaker 15: me at the top of the target list. We're going
Speaker 15: to hit the missiles, the drones and the IRGC navy
Speaker 15: first and take that threat off the board. Why do
Speaker 15: we keep having to be deterred by that threat? And
Speaker 15: number two, this is a different oil market today because
Speaker 15: of Donald J. Trump, and we should understand that this
Speaker 15: is China's pressure point, not ours. Fifty percent of China's
Speaker 15: oil imports comes through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians
Speaker 15: want to mine that straight. They want to attack Saudi
Speaker 15: oil won't be good, not saying we won't have a
Speaker 15: short term price spike because it is a global commodity,
Speaker 15: but we're not going to run out of oil here.
Speaker 15: We're gonna be okay, and we'll get the straight back
Speaker 15: open fast. And I don't think there will be any
Speaker 15: government facilities left in Tehran afterwards from what the President
Speaker 15: would do in response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Richard, thank you. I've been through a lot of
Speaker 1: experts and they all say we got to worry about
Speaker 1: our Golf Cooperation Council allies, and we do. And msz
Speaker 1: NBC is our best ally and NBS is a rising
Speaker 1: ally and we got to worry about world roil markets.
Speaker 1: But Canada's coming online with a lot of heavy crude,
Speaker 1: and we got a lot of heavy crude, and Venezuela
Speaker 1: has got a lot of everything that Iran's got. I
Speaker 1: just don't understand why it's not at the top of
Speaker 1: the target list. But my last segment with Richard's coming up,
Speaker 1: because we do have to discuss risk to Americans. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned on, Hugh Hewett, Welcome back America. On CUE Herett.
Speaker 1: Richard Goldberg is they senior Fellow at the Foundation for
Speaker 1: the Defensive Democracies. He's been in Trump one and Trump two.
Speaker 1: He's an Iran expert. We have a lot of assets
Speaker 1: in the region. Rich I know that families that people
Speaker 1: are on the Lincoln, and I've had family on the Lincoln,
Speaker 1: though not right now, are wondering, Hey, can they hit
Speaker 1: the Lincoln? Can they hit the destroyers? Can they hit
Speaker 1: our base? And cutter? We saw a demonstration attack after
Speaker 1: midnight hammer. We saw Israel hammered a lot I think
Speaker 1: thirty dead. We've seen them hit Ali Sad with ballistic missiles,
Speaker 1: precision strikes on Alisad and whatever year that was that
Speaker 1: they blew up alisade I had friends and family on
Speaker 1: Alisada at that might that got off. How much can
Speaker 1: they hurt us with their ballistic missile capacity?
Speaker 15: They can deaf not only target US bases in the
Speaker 15: region through their ballistic missiles, they also have a cruise
Speaker 15: missile capacity as well. We saw that utilized against the
Speaker 15: Saudi oil infrastructure back in twenty nineteen, along with drones.
Speaker 15: So long as we keep our naval forces far away
Speaker 15: with our standoff capabilities, whether that be Tomahawk strikes or
Speaker 15: fighter jets off the boat, we should be outside of
Speaker 15: their striking distance to our naval forces. They do not
Speaker 15: have much of an air defense left, if any any
Speaker 15: that would be still there will be accounted for both
Speaker 15: by the growlers on the aircraft carrier. Those are the
Speaker 15: electronic warfare fighter squadrons that we have eighteen g's and
Speaker 15: also the fact that the Israelis sort of took out
Speaker 15: all of the Russian air defense already, the Iranian knockoff
Speaker 15: of the Russian air defense. It's not to say you
Speaker 15: couldn't have an oopsie, but the threat is much lower
Speaker 15: from an air perspective.
Speaker 1: If remember the Argentinian has hit that British I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name of the ship that they that they
Speaker 1: sunk in the fall.
Speaker 15: You can't have a total prediction here. You have to
Speaker 15: there there. There can always be something that goes wrong.
Speaker 15: There can always be something like you can't believe that happened.
Speaker 15: But by and large, you do have to be prepared
Speaker 15: for their missile threat. We have missile defenses available, We
Speaker 15: have the s M three's on the destroyers, we have
Speaker 15: some land based patriots and other at our bases in
Speaker 15: the region. So yes, we would be on force protection
Speaker 15: condition highest possible level. People in barracks underground, prepared for
Speaker 15: any sort of retaliation, already moving out most essential critical
Speaker 15: personnel and platforms to prepare for such a contingency. But
Speaker 15: that goes back to the fact that if you have
Speaker 15: a target list and you are most afraid of that
Speaker 15: retaliatory capability, then you want to mitigate that from the start.
Speaker 15: You want to go after all the underground facilities where
Speaker 15: they store their missiles. If there is a launch, we
Speaker 15: will detect the launch immediately and take out the launchers.
Speaker 15: That's what the Israelis did very effectively during the Twelve
Speaker 15: Day War. If you see fast boats going around in
Speaker 15: the gulf, there should be a shoot on site or
Speaker 15: get rid of the boats. Don't hesitate if you see
Speaker 15: anything that looks like mining. Shoot the boats, you know,
Speaker 15: take out the poor, take out the IRGC, Navy headquarters
Speaker 15: and command and control. All of those should be on
Speaker 15: the top of a target. Okay, Richard, you are looking
Speaker 15: to do something real. We got four minutes left, so
Speaker 15: I want to ask you the toughest question. Your phone rang,
Speaker 15: it's the president. Hey Goldberg. I heard you talking to
Speaker 15: Hewett and he was quoting me from two weeks ago.
Speaker 15: Things have changed.
Speaker 1: What do you want me to do? And do you
Speaker 1: really think my red line would be a race if
Speaker 1: I don't do anything? What do you want me to do?
Speaker 1: And would it really be a red line erased? What
Speaker 1: do you say to one?
Speaker 15: Mister president? Everyone's watching. You gave your word, you decided
Speaker 15: that you were going to set a red line, which
Speaker 15: was totally appropriate, and that lead line has been obliterated
Speaker 15: because in the end, these are crazy, maniacal radicals who
Speaker 15: have tried to kill you, and we'll try to kill
Speaker 15: you again when you leave office. But you already know
Speaker 15: that killed a lot of Americans, and they will keep
Speaker 15: killing Americans. This is your moment in history. Strike them
Speaker 15: at their most lethal strategic threat to US long term,
Speaker 15: and then hit them in command and control and senior
Speaker 15: leadership to try to blind them, disorient them, and give
Speaker 15: the people a chance. I'm not saying that's going to
Speaker 15: guarantee it's going to be, you know, the collapse of
Speaker 15: the regime overnight. I don't know what's going to come next.
Speaker 15: I can't guarantee you that, but I do know that
Speaker 15: this regime staying in power, with the ability to lash
Speaker 15: out and reach the United States or our allies, is
Speaker 15: very dangerous and very good for China and Russia. And
Speaker 15: you will do the world and the United States a
Speaker 15: great favor by taking action now.
Speaker 1: So Baby says the same thing. Do you want that?
Speaker 1: Do you want me to have Israel come along or
Speaker 1: you want them to stay home?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 15: I think that if you have the aircraft carrier of
Speaker 15: the State of Israel at our disposal, that means we
Speaker 15: have two carrier strike groups at our disposal. Actually, the
Speaker 15: entire Israeli Air Force and their clandestine and cyber capabilities
Speaker 15: inside of Iran. We don't know what they're what they
Speaker 15: could be capable of doing. If I was the President
Speaker 15: United States, I would say, what are our unique capabilities
Speaker 15: against specific targets that these Raelis can't touch, that they
Speaker 15: can't have impact on? Versus what are the Israelis able
Speaker 15: to do on their own and continue to contribute. I
Speaker 15: think it would be crazy not to coordinate this with
Speaker 15: the Israelis.
Speaker 1: And then he finishes Richard this way, you know, I
Speaker 1: like air to one air. No one called me. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want me to do this. They just put in
Speaker 1: a strike, he put in radar in Damascus. What do
Speaker 1: we do about Turkey?
Speaker 15: Tell him that I hope he really loves what we've
Speaker 15: done to bring the Iraq Turkey pipeline back online and
Speaker 15: the revenue that's creating for his regime and for his country,
Speaker 15: that there's a lot more business to be done, and
Speaker 15: hopefully he understands that the Islamic Republic of Iran at
Speaker 15: war with the United States all these decades. People who
Speaker 15: have tried to kill me personally meet the President United
Speaker 15: States and have killed many, many, many Americans really shouldn't
Speaker 15: be around much longer. After what they've done here in
Speaker 15: the streets and what they continue to do to the
Speaker 15: United States and our allies. And I hope you understand
Speaker 15: that as a NATO ally because we could have a
Speaker 15: great relationship. But I don't think you want to be
Speaker 15: with those guys, right, all.
Speaker 1: Right, very last question. I don't think the red lines
Speaker 1: obliterated yet, because there's a rationale for what he did
Speaker 1: when he did and what he said when he said,
Speaker 1: and I think it was very strategic. But it will
Speaker 1: go away by a date certain. I'm saying Saint Patrick's day.
Speaker 1: How long does he have to act, Richard before the
Speaker 1: damage Obama like damage to his credibility is done.
Speaker 15: I don't like setting a timetable on that. If he
Speaker 15: is intending to act, and he is continuing to move
Speaker 15: forces into position to be able to fulfill his objectives,
Speaker 15: he should use this time to squeeze, destabilize, and disorient
Speaker 15: that can be done in the economic realm, that can
Speaker 15: be done in the cyber realm, and then follow on
Speaker 15: with the kinetic action. So long as that's all sequenced,
Speaker 15: it's all coming together, it's all part of a strategy.
Speaker 15: You know, the time is on his side. He should
Speaker 15: not rush something like this. It should be done correctly.
Speaker 1: Goldberg from the Foundation for the Defensive Democracies. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Follow rich on X at Rich Underscore Goldberg at Rich
Speaker 1: Underscore Goldberg, and visit Foundation for Defensive Democracy that's at
Speaker 1: fdd on X as well all of their They've got
Speaker 1: the strongest Iran department inside the Beltway because they've got
Speaker 1: people who have actually done it, including Rich Goldberg, who's
Speaker 1: been mister sanctions for a long long time. Thank you, Rich.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewittt on the Weekend broadcast.
Speaker 1: Eli Lake joins us. He is, of course the host
Speaker 1: of the Breaking History podcast, a contributor to the Free Press,
Speaker 1: an expert on Iran. Eli in the Davos love in
Speaker 1: among bankers, did anyone have the guts to stand up
Speaker 1: and say Iran just mowed down fifteen thousand of their
Speaker 1: people and imprison the same number and is the evilest
Speaker 1: regime on the planet.
Speaker 16: It's a really good question. I don't think anybody kind
Speaker 16: of put it like that, and I think that's exactly
Speaker 16: how we should think about it.
Speaker 1: But that.
Speaker 16: This is the end of the Obama delusion. I have
Speaker 16: not heard from European capitals that there is a sense
Speaker 16: or an expectation that there will be new negotiations with
Speaker 16: Iran over you know, whatever remains of its nuclear program,
Speaker 16: and eventually we will knit Iran into the global order
Speaker 16: by investing in that country as long as that regime
Speaker 16: stays in power. I think at this point, I hope
Speaker 16: it the regime collapses tomorrow, but even if it doesn't,
Speaker 16: I just don't think that we're going to get back
Speaker 16: to what we lived through ten years ago, which was
Speaker 16: the idea that there would be major corporations investing in Iran.
Speaker 16: The sanctions were lifted as Iran built up this proxy
Speaker 16: network throughout the region and continued to have the nuclear option.
Speaker 1: They did not invite. They ended up disinviting the Foreign Ministry,
Speaker 1: which was a good move, but they have not designated
Speaker 1: the IRGC as a terrorist organization at the EU, which
Speaker 1: is a bad move. The most important question in the
Speaker 1: world right now, and I think by a lot, I've
Speaker 1: been on a Canada rant already today because the Mark
Speaker 1: Carney disgusting address or so cowardly in two faced, But
Speaker 1: the most important question remains, should Donald Trump hit Iran hard?
Speaker 1: And Willie? What do you think, Elila?
Speaker 16: I think he absolutely should. I don't see how I
Speaker 16: mean listen, nobody can bring to what's going on with
Speaker 16: Donald Trump. His messaging has been pretty consistent, and I
Speaker 16: think he tried to kind of create his own way
Speaker 16: out by saying that they had they had canceled the
Speaker 16: execution of I think he has a very specific number
Speaker 16: eight hundred and thirty seven people in the hangings which
Speaker 16: he's talked about. We saw today that one of the
Speaker 16: senior kind of judges in Iran said that is not
Speaker 16: true and that they would be going forward with the executions.
Speaker 16: Of course, the death toll is horrific. I think at
Speaker 16: the very least it's four or five thousand, and it
Speaker 16: could be upwards of twenty five thousand or more. They've
Speaker 16: turned off the Internet precisely for this reason, so you know,
Speaker 16: I hope that this is the kind of final straw.
Speaker 16: And then more importantly, the response from Iran's leaders up
Speaker 16: into and including Ayatol Ali Khamene has been effectively to
Speaker 16: taunt Trump, to question his resolve. That that didn't go
Speaker 16: very well for Nicholas Madoro, it didn't go very well
Speaker 16: for costum Ulimani, and I think that they in some
Speaker 16: ways in that respect, they are sealing their fate.
Speaker 1: My worry is though, that I would have liked to.
Speaker 16: Have seen something, and I understand military assets have to
Speaker 16: be in place. I also understand that, according to a
Speaker 16: lot of reports, and I've heard this too in my reporting,
Speaker 16: that Trump really does want a comprehensive military option and
Speaker 16: to go big. So that maybe takes time, but it
Speaker 16: would have been good to have something two weeks ago,
Speaker 16: a week and a half ago, when he said help
Speaker 16: was on the way, because I think the perception is
Speaker 16: is that there was at least a chance that Trump
Speaker 16: would back off and would seek.
Speaker 1: Some kind of deal. I don't think that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: but that's my Let me go all Sophocles on you.
Speaker 1: You cannot know how good the day has been until
Speaker 1: the night has come. And with Donald Trump, the whole
Speaker 1: Greenland thing, he's an actor. The whole Greenland thing might
Speaker 1: have been a way to divert attention away from this.
Speaker 1: But I did have a very smart national security fellow
Speaker 1: of impeccable credential say we can't hit carg Island and
Speaker 1: the oil terminals, which is what seems obvious to me,
Speaker 1: to to keep in the regime alive, because that would
Speaker 1: possibly bring China in to rebuild it and to embed
Speaker 1: within Iran. What do you think of that.
Speaker 16: There's a lot of reasons maybe why you don't hit
Speaker 16: carg Island. You could also cause an oil shock that
Speaker 16: would do terrible things to the price of energy, which
Speaker 16: has been relatively stable and low, and that would have
Speaker 16: an effect in terms of inflation. So Trump's got to
Speaker 16: consider that. I think he would have an enormous effect
Speaker 16: if he just decided to hit the headquarters in regional
Speaker 16: headquarters for the IRGC, that's the Revolutionary Guard core and
Speaker 16: the besieging militia and then target started similar to what
Speaker 16: Israel did, start targeting senior regime officials up to it,
Speaker 16: including Io Lakamine. You have a number of voices from
Speaker 16: Iran's opposition, not just on the outside, that are begging
Speaker 16: the America to hit this supreme leader. What else is
Speaker 16: there left to talk about at this point? So there
Speaker 16: are a lot of targets in Iran short of carg Island.
Speaker 1: The reason I like carg Island is all that money
Speaker 1: goes to the IERGC. Yeah, Canada is ramping up its
Speaker 1: export of oil. It's at sixty dollars a barrel, seventy
Speaker 1: dollars a barrel is not that big of a deal,
Speaker 1: and it can be we can overproduce. We are just
Speaker 1: about to hit full American production. But Eli, before I go,
Speaker 1: I got to ask you the Carnie speech and many
Speaker 1: of the other Europeans seem to take for granted that
Speaker 1: the United States will always protect them no matter what
Speaker 1: they say about us. It's a little bit of what
Speaker 1: Israel must have to deal with on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: that they are really the lynchpin to security in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, but they get dumped on by everyone and
Speaker 1: it's not pleasant.
Speaker 16: I would say this, it's empty rhetoric. Canada and Europe
Speaker 16: do not have the military, do not have the means
Speaker 16: to protect themselves. That is by our design, and there
Speaker 16: are good reasons for that. So I wanted to say,
Speaker 16: I don't want to give Trump a total path. I
Speaker 16: think that some of the things that he said were outrageous,
Speaker 16: and the way that he went about the Greenland thing.
Speaker 16: I think can have but it's not the end of
Speaker 16: the world, because there is no alternative right now to
Speaker 16: the alliance with America. I mean the meeting with g
Speaker 16: and the I'm sorry not even G like the senior
Speaker 16: Chinese official and the statement that you know things are
Speaker 16: going in a different direction is absurd and Carney ought
Speaker 16: to know better. The idea that Canada is going to
Speaker 16: pursue the kind of relationship it has with China over
Speaker 16: the United States even under Trump, and I get you
Speaker 16: know why he's nervous about things, but don't make threats.
Speaker 16: Don't use that rhetoric because it's just not realistic. It's
Speaker 16: not in the cards.
Speaker 1: But they're going to sell a lot of oil to China,
Speaker 1: which is fine because we have freedom of the sea's
Speaker 1: guaranteed by the United States Navy, and if that ends,
Speaker 1: they can only sell it to us, and they only.
Speaker 1: They don't even spend two percent of their GDP on defense.
Speaker 1: Eli he talked about his submarines. They got four submarines,
Speaker 1: the most recent one which was built in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 16: Listen, I agree, and that some of this is a
Speaker 16: exposing things. I mean, listen, some of what Trump is
Speaker 16: saying is I disagree with a lot of it is true.
Speaker 16: When we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, it's
Speaker 16: true when they say the British did fight, especially on
Speaker 16: the Special operation side, absolutely valiantly.
Speaker 1: That's and the Canadians lost one hundred and fifty eight people.
Speaker 16: And also true, but I'm just saying the Italians and
Speaker 16: the Germans, we couldn't trust them to secure areas they
Speaker 16: they were they they didn't they There are cultural issues
Speaker 16: there that are really deep. It's not just about spending
Speaker 16: more of your GDP. There's it's that there. There's not
Speaker 16: the kind of military culture that we have in America
Speaker 16: right now. So those are deep things that our generations
Speaker 16: are going to be playing out over a generation. But like,
Speaker 16: let's let's let's be realistic. There is no alternative to
Speaker 16: American power. Europeans, Canada, they know.
Speaker 1: That, no matter how many times ago to Davos, I'm
Speaker 1: in the killed Davos Forever club. What do you think? Eli?
Speaker 1: Thirty seconds? I agree with Davos.
Speaker 16: Is is a is a debating society of the plutocratic class.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasuring of the banking class. And I'm sick
Speaker 1: of it. Thank you, Eli Lake. Follow him on X
Speaker 1: at Eli Lake. I'll be right back in America. Stay tuned, Hi,
Speaker 1: it's you, Hewett. You've heard me talk a lot about
Speaker 1: consumer cellular how you can switch your carrier and save
Speaker 1: money without sacrifice. That's because Consumer Cellular uses the same
Speaker 1: towers as the major carrier. You'll save money every month
Speaker 1: on your bill without having to sacrifice the quality of coverage.
Speaker 1: Right now, you get your second month free plus. Folks
Speaker 1: over are fit to get two lines of unlimited talk,
Speaker 1: text and data for sixty dollars a month. That's an
Speaker 1: addition to the second month totally free using promo code
Speaker 1: Q and are you tired of your wireless company telling
Speaker 1: you have to talk to an AI robot, download an app,
Speaker 1: or Horizon pay ten dollars to talk to someone when
Speaker 1: paying your bill? Yeah? No thanks. Consumer Cellular ranks number
Speaker 1: one for network coverage and customer satisfaction. According to ACSI,
Speaker 1: whether you're switching online or over the phone, you'll be
Speaker 1: working with an actual human being based right here in
Speaker 1: the US. So switch and get your second month free
Speaker 1: plus two unlimited lines of sixty dollars. If you're over fifty,
Speaker 1: go to Consumer Saler dot com, slash hu promo Hugh
Speaker 1: or call one hundred eight or call one eight hundred
Speaker 1: four one one forty four fifty four one eight hundred
Speaker 1: four to one one forty four fifty four. That's one
Speaker 1: eight hundred four one one forty four to fifty four.
Speaker 1: Don't forget My code is Hugh. Welcome back in America.
Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewett. A. Greenwald is the executive editor of Commentary,
Speaker 1: a participant almost every day that he's not on jury
Speaker 1: duty on the Commentary podcast. I listened today, Eli. You
Speaker 1: were talking about Iran today as you talk about Minnesota.
Speaker 1: I've been fixed on Iran because I think it could
Speaker 1: be a history changing fortnite ahead. Do you think the
Speaker 1: president is going to order a strike?
Speaker 17: Well, this is very I'm very glad you've asked me
Speaker 17: this because I often, Actually, Hugh, I think of you
Speaker 17: because in the run up to Operation Midnight Hammer, to
Speaker 17: that strike that Trump ordered, I was on your show
Speaker 17: and you asked me then if I thought it was
Speaker 17: going to happen, and.
Speaker 7: I was quite skeptical.
Speaker 17: I didn't think it was going to happen, and you
Speaker 17: were much more certain than I was, and you were correct.
Speaker 17: And I have now kept your voice in my head
Speaker 17: in thinking.
Speaker 7: About these things.
Speaker 17: And you also have to remember that during Trump's first term,
Speaker 17: he called up a strike at the last second as
Speaker 17: well a strike, a strike on Iran because he calculated
Speaker 17: that the death toll would be too great in response
Speaker 17: to the Iranians having knocked down unmanned us drowne but
Speaker 17: that did not stop him from six months later taking
Speaker 17: out costum soul of money.
Speaker 7: So I'm I think it's more like leave him not.
Speaker 3: How about that?
Speaker 1: Okay? I agree with you, And my reasoning is this.
Speaker 1: He's a very visual person. He learns by seeing. And
Speaker 1: John Ratcliffe, who doesn't make any news at all, we
Speaker 1: never see him every day. I think he's bringing in
Speaker 1: new pictures of what they did, and I don't think
Speaker 1: we have quite mentally got our arms around. Channel twenty
Speaker 1: four in Israel is now reporting upwards of eighty thousand
Speaker 1: people murdered by the regime. That if John Ratcliffe and
Speaker 1: our intelligence community gives him pictures of even a tenth
Speaker 1: of that, remember how we reacted to Syria and the
Speaker 1: poison gas, he's going to want to punish people. Oh.
Speaker 17: You know Eleana Johnson, who is the editor of the
Speaker 17: Washington Free Beacon and who was on the commentary podcast Daily,
Speaker 17: She made a good point.
Speaker 7: I think it was today, might have been yesterday.
Speaker 17: Trump has I mean, it's very natural, good aversion, but
Speaker 17: has a profound aversion to dead bodies and unnecessary, and
Speaker 17: I think that he is. And I've also heard that
Speaker 17: in other contexts from in having to do with with
Speaker 17: with other international situations, so I think you're onto something.
Speaker 17: I would also add that if the eighty thousand number
Speaker 17: is anywhere near accurate, think of that. I just have
Speaker 17: to say this as compared to the not accurate Hamas
Speaker 17: Goza Ministry of Health numbers that claim, you know that
Speaker 17: Israel has killed some I don't know, sixty seventy thousand
Speaker 17: over the course of two plus years, and we're talking
Speaker 17: about uh Iran killing nothing but civilians over the over
Speaker 17: a tiny period of time something around eighty thousand.
Speaker 1: Needlessness, simplicity of the media in this double standard. They
Speaker 1: have also made zero complaints that I have seen that
Speaker 1: the regime won't let them in. That was like a
Speaker 1: daily refrain about the net and Yahoo government was, Oh,
Speaker 1: they won't let us into Gaza. What are they hiding?
Speaker 1: What are they hiding? They won't let us into Iran?
Speaker 1: And I mean anybody, zero, nobody, And there isn't a
Speaker 1: Gaza news service. There isn't an Iranian news service because
Speaker 1: they haven't got an internet. Can you imagine even a
Speaker 1: semi modern economy without the Internet. Now everybody's going out
Speaker 1: of business.
Speaker 17: Yeah, well they look in the internet is death to that,
Speaker 17: you know, to the regime.
Speaker 7: They they've got to they've got to go dark to
Speaker 7: do what to take out their people.
Speaker 17: And in some sense it worked because it put a
Speaker 17: temporary cloak over what the regime was up to. Only
Speaker 17: now we're getting some sense of the full extent of
Speaker 17: the brutality.
Speaker 1: Now I got one one big question, I asked Ben
Speaker 1: Dominis this. I just want to say, the only one
Speaker 1: of the Obama era people who I've seen say anything
Speaker 1: with Tommy Veeder was chirping at me that Taco Trump
Speaker 1: and I can't that the lack of self awareness. They
Speaker 1: misjudged this regime so badly. If the regime was willing
Speaker 1: to do this to our own people, imagine what they
Speaker 1: would have done with nukes to Israel. No one seems
Speaker 1: to have made that connection that Tim Obama and Tim
Speaker 1: Biden were wholly wrong about the nature of this regime.
Speaker 17: Obama is I mean, this all sort of comes from Obama.
Speaker 7: I mean, I I don't know the Biden ever would
Speaker 7: have gotten this idea.
Speaker 17: Had Barack Obama not first been president and Biden up
Speaker 17: been his vice president. Obama's whole approach to Iran was
Speaker 17: that the US was somehow talking down to it unwarrantedly,
Speaker 17: and that what we needed to do was offer the
Speaker 17: open hand, if you recall, and sort of welcome it
Speaker 17: back into the community of responsible nations and understand its
Speaker 17: point of view. This was complete, toxic.
Speaker 7: Malign garbage, I mean.
Speaker 17: And when Obama didn't act in two thousand and nine
Speaker 17: after the regime took violent action against those the Iranians
Speaker 17: who protested that rigged election, the excuse was, well, the
Speaker 17: protesters don't want the Americans on their side, it will
Speaker 17: make them look bad.
Speaker 7: Nonsense.
Speaker 17: As we see now, the Iranians are, to the extent
Speaker 17: that they can reach out, are asking for American help here.
Speaker 1: So does the left in America not know and doesn't
Speaker 1: want to learn, or do they know and don't care
Speaker 1: about the nature of this regime China? They kind of
Speaker 1: care about Russia for reasons I'm not quite sure, but
Speaker 1: they don't care about China and the leagers in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong and Jimmy Lai. They don't care about this regime.
Speaker 1: They care about themselves.
Speaker 17: I think liberals generally don't particularly know.
Speaker 7: Or don't care that much. It's not it's not big
Speaker 7: on their radar.
Speaker 17: I think if you're on the left, the honest to
Speaker 17: goodness left in this country, you don't want to say
Speaker 17: word against Iron. You've been You've been protesting on their
Speaker 17: side for two plus years. You've been supporting their terrorist proxies,
Speaker 17: chanting their terrorist proxies, slogans of extermination. You you believe
Speaker 17: essentially in their cause.
Speaker 1: And now you are embarrassed because they are revealed in
Speaker 1: the full light of day, even though it's a completely
Speaker 1: dark society. When those lights turn on, a whole lot
Speaker 1: of video are going to come our way. Y'allsh allend
Speaker 1: that on that comment online and it's been taunting me
Speaker 1: ever since. We're going to be up to our next
Speaker 1: awful video, Hey Greenwald. Follow on at Abe Greenwald. Listen
Speaker 1: to the commentary podcast every day morning Glaury and even
Speaker 1: Grace America. I asked promised. I'm joined by Kareem Sajafor
Speaker 1: of the Carnegie Endowment. Kareem is one of the belt
Speaker 1: Ways genuine experts on the Islamic Republic of Iran, and
Speaker 1: he has been tutoring me for at least a decade.
Speaker 1: A mutual friend introduced us over dinner when I moved
Speaker 1: back to Washington in twenty sixteen. Had the occasion since
Speaker 1: then to get up meet with him a couple of
Speaker 1: times and dig deep into the Islamic Republic. And boy,
Speaker 1: you're in demand right now, Kareem. First of all, it's
Speaker 1: good to see you. Thank you for doing this. I
Speaker 1: know how busy you must be right now. Is the
Speaker 1: phone just ringing constantly off the hook?
Speaker 18: It is indeed a very busy time, and I appreciate
Speaker 18: you inviting me back.
Speaker 1: To well, welcome back. Can we start by alerting the
Speaker 1: audience telling me your background. You went to the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan. We're going to overlook that here at Ohioseate headquarters.
Speaker 1: But tell your background and how you came to specialize
Speaker 1: in all things Heran.
Speaker 18: Sure, so, I was born in the United States, but
Speaker 18: my parents were originally from Iran.
Speaker 10: They immigrated to the United States.
Speaker 18: Most Iranian families in the United States came here nineteen
Speaker 18: seventy nine or shortly thereafter when they were nineteen seventy
Speaker 18: nine revolution happened, But my parents had immigrated to the
Speaker 18: United States a decade prior to that, and so my
Speaker 18: father was a neurologist. We grew up mostly in Michigan.
Speaker 18: I went to University of Michigan and Arbor. I played soccer.
Speaker 18: The first person I met in freshman orientation was Tom Brady,
Speaker 18: a friendship kich. In hindsight, I should have cultivated and
Speaker 18: you know, I lived.
Speaker 10: I grew up.
Speaker 18: Speaking Persian in our kitchen, I call it kitchen Persian.
Speaker 18: I wasn't formally schooled in it, but I grew up
Speaker 18: with English in Persian. And then I spent several years
Speaker 18: living abroad in college and even in high school. I
Speaker 18: spent a year living in Mexico. I lived in college
Speaker 18: in Italy. I wasn't really interested in the Middle East
Speaker 18: until I felt that things started to change in Iran politically.
Speaker 18: It looked like there was a political opening in the
Speaker 18: late nineteen nineties, and so I started to I went
Speaker 18: to After undergrad, I went to graduate school at the
Speaker 18: Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies. I focused on
Speaker 18: the Middle East, and the first week of my grad school,
Speaker 18: nine to eleven happened, and so that was when it
Speaker 18: was obviously very clear to me that I wanted to
Speaker 18: dedicate my career to this topic. And Hewett, had you
Speaker 18: asked me in two thousand and one whether the running
Speaker 18: regime would look the way it does today, I would
Speaker 18: have said no, it looked like your own. Even back
Speaker 18: then was a country which was on the custop change.
Speaker 18: And so I was based in Tehran with an organization
Speaker 18: called the International Crisis Group. I was based there for
Speaker 18: several until I was nearly imprisoned. I was one of
Speaker 18: the first of the dual nationals that they warned, you know,
Speaker 18: I came back to the United States, and I hated
Speaker 18: that warning. I didn't go back to your own, but
Speaker 18: many of my friends, perhaps more than a dozen, tried
Speaker 18: to go back to your own, and they spent time
Speaker 18: in prison. And so for the last two decades now,
Speaker 18: i've I've been focused on Iran at the Carnegie Down
Speaker 18: for International Peace. I'm a contributing writer at The Atlantic,
Speaker 18: and I teach at Georgetown University.
Speaker 1: So a Gareham, I've told my audience many times I
Speaker 1: watched the Iranian revolution unfold on a couch in the
Speaker 1: Western White House with exiled Richard Nixon and Ray Price.
Speaker 1: We were the writers the former president was doing the
Speaker 1: book The Real War, and we'd watch every afternoon because
Speaker 1: the news would come on three hours earlier, and we
Speaker 1: saw the revolution unfold in real time. Where were you
Speaker 1: when the revolution unfolded?
Speaker 10: So I was a young boy.
Speaker 18: I was born late nineteen seventy, so I was just
Speaker 18: about two years old when the revolution was happening in
Speaker 18: the state of Michigan. And you know, it obviously impacted
Speaker 18: our lives in different ways. So much of our extended
Speaker 18: family had to flee Iran, all of them at ben
Speaker 18: and Iran, and our home in Michigan was kind of
Speaker 18: the safe.
Speaker 10: Harbor for many of them.
Speaker 18: So they fled Iran and they would come to stay
Speaker 18: with us and Michigan prepared until they were able to
Speaker 18: kind of resettle elsewhere. And I think in my parents
Speaker 18: said they probably thought maybe the one day they would
Speaker 18: go back to Iran. But then when the revolution happened,
Speaker 18: you know, we stayed in the United States. And my
Speaker 18: father was someone who he was a neurologist, but he
Speaker 18: was someone who he loved the United States, deeply patriotic American,
Speaker 18: but he also loved his heritage and his culture, and
Speaker 18: that duality was very much part of our childhood that
Speaker 18: we used to always tell us, you know, you guys
Speaker 18: live in the best country the world, in the United States.
Speaker 18: But he was so proud of his heritage and Persian
Speaker 18: poetry and culture, which is so rich because it's you know,
Speaker 18: it's got twenty five hundred plus years of history.
Speaker 1: I've only had one other diaspora member on that hadn't
Speaker 1: been Talablue from FDD. I neglected to ask him. How
Speaker 1: varied is the Iranian diaspora. Does the regime have any
Speaker 1: supporters within it, and has it become increasingly militant about
Speaker 1: making a change in Iran?
Speaker 18: The regime has virtually no support among the certainly the
Speaker 18: diaspora in the United States. When polling is done, I
Speaker 18: think you probably see less than one percent support because
Speaker 18: if you're a supporter of the regime, you know you
Speaker 18: want you live in Iran, you don't want to be
Speaker 18: in the United States.
Speaker 10: And I think for many years there's been not really
Speaker 10: a diversity.
Speaker 18: Of opinion when it comes to people's desired endgame in
Speaker 18: your among the dads for Ionians, even outside the United States,
Speaker 18: I would say vast, vast majority of your Oroonians want
Speaker 18: to see some form of secular democracy.
Speaker 10: I think the debates have been about.
Speaker 18: The means to get there, and whether, for example, economic
Speaker 18: sanctions is a viable or useful tool to try to
Speaker 18: reach that end of secular democracy, whether military action is
Speaker 18: a means that people would accept to get to that endgame.
Speaker 18: And obviously the last month the events in Iran, I
Speaker 18: think have really altered that debate. Whereas one month ago,
Speaker 18: two months ago, probably those who supported some type of
Speaker 18: US military action inside Iran were in the minority, I
Speaker 18: would argue now, and I haven't seen polling, so I'm
Speaker 18: not This isn't scientific, but just anecdotal. My guess is
Speaker 18: that the majority of those who are in the diaspora
Speaker 18: would like to see President Trump made good on his work.
Speaker 18: President Trump threatened on eight occasions that if Uron killed protesters,
Speaker 18: the United States was ready to protect them and take action.
Speaker 18: And obviously the running regime drove a giant truck through
Speaker 18: President Trump's redline, they killed as many as thirty thousand protesters.
Speaker 10: And so I think both within Iran, among.
Speaker 18: The protesters, and in the diaspora, I would say there's
Speaker 18: probably a majority consensus, a majority support for some type
Speaker 18: of US action.
Speaker 1: Kareem were you shocked by the level of barbarity that
Speaker 1: the regime employed in the last three weeks. I was
Speaker 1: one of the eight occasions where the president said help
Speaker 1: is on the way, keep marching, take over. He was
Speaker 1: very adamant that we were going to help. So I
Speaker 1: think we are going to help. But were you shocked
Speaker 1: by the level to which violence they descended. It's just
Speaker 1: Bobby are nineteen forty one Masaco of thirty three thousand
Speaker 1: Jews in Ukraine by the advancing Nazis been anything like
Speaker 1: this since that, you know.
Speaker 18: Unfortunately here, I wasn't terribly shocked by the brutality of
Speaker 18: the regime because at the end of the day, this
Speaker 18: is a regime which has no friends in the world.
Speaker 18: They have no great plan b So, in contrast to
Speaker 18: the Shaw, who didn't want to use a lot of
Speaker 18: violence against people to stay in power, and both the
Speaker 18: SHAW and all of its political and military elites, many
Speaker 18: of them were educated in the United States and Europe.
Speaker 18: They spoke foreign languages and so they could remake their
Speaker 18: lives and Los Angeles or London. But the elites of
Speaker 18: the Islamic Republic, and I told a Harmony himself, have
Speaker 18: provincial backgrounds. They are not people who are are worldly.
Speaker 18: This is a regime which is virtually friendless. You know,
Speaker 18: it's long time allies like the I said regime in Syria,
Speaker 18: Maduro government in Venezuela. Those guys have been deposed.
Speaker 10: Or they're out.
Speaker 18: They have partnerships with countries like China and Russia, but
Speaker 18: those are not secure partnerships, and so for that reason,
Speaker 18: they have a killer be killed mentality. And unfortunately, I
Speaker 18: wasn't terribly surprised that they were willing to employ that
Speaker 18: kind of brutality to stay in power because you know,
Speaker 18: what I say about this regime, and I tol a
Speaker 18: harmony in particular, is that they're homicidal, but they're not suicidal.
Speaker 18: What's paramount for them is to stay in power, and
Speaker 18: so that applies here when and I don't want to
Speaker 18: preempt your questions, but you know, as they're facing a
Speaker 18: potentially existential threat from the United States right.
Speaker 1: Now a minute and a half to break correct, what
Speaker 1: are the spectrum of collapses underway for the people who
Speaker 1: are actually just living there. They're not part of the regime,
Speaker 1: they're Persian, they're Runnia, just trying to get along. What
Speaker 1: are they confronted with right now one minute.
Speaker 18: So this is a regime which is politically, economically, and
Speaker 18: socially authoritarian. Every aspects of people's lives are disrupted because
Speaker 18: they're living under a totalitarian dictatorship that polices their personal lives.
Speaker 18: There's routine power outages, water shortages, and I think people
Speaker 18: are just so exhausted from this reality. Is the most
Speaker 18: sanctioned country in the world, and I think that people
Speaker 18: are desperate for a transition from an ideological regime to
Speaker 18: a nation state, the government that prioritizes economic and national
Speaker 18: interests before revolutionary ideology.
Speaker 1: I will be right back with Karim sad Japur of
Speaker 1: the Carnegie Endowment right after these messages, Police State, welcome
Speaker 1: back to America. I'm Hugh Hewett. Kareem zad Japur is
Speaker 1: the equal of any Iranian analyst in the United States.
Speaker 1: He is, of course, very very much in demand right now,
Speaker 1: and I thank him for making time for the program
Speaker 1: today on the Sale News Channel and the Salem Radio Network.
Speaker 1: Kareem can the regime? Is it possible it would just
Speaker 1: collapse without outside pressure in the form of military force.
Speaker 1: Given the spectrum of failure, as we talked about, you.
Speaker 18: Know, anything is possible with these dictatorships. Here, there's an
Speaker 18: old line that all dictatorships look good until the last
Speaker 18: five minutes, and many of these authoritarian regimes that looked
Speaker 18: so strong before, you know, collapse fairly abruptly. So it's
Speaker 18: my view that even if the United States doesn't take
Speaker 18: military action, this is a regime which is this current
Speaker 18: status quo in Iran is not tenable.
Speaker 1: So there's one hundred and fifty thousand members of the
Speaker 1: Iranian Revolutionary Guard cores tens of thousands more in the besiege.
Speaker 1: They're paramilitary, para police thugs. What about the Iranian military,
Speaker 1: it's ordinary military. Is it radicalized as well? Or is
Speaker 1: it a military military like the American military?
Speaker 18: So the military is a conscript military, so it reflec
Speaker 18: ex Iranian society. I have one one kind of personal
Speaker 18: anecdote about that. Years ago, when I was living in Tehran,
Speaker 18: I went with a group of friends to the Caspian
Speaker 18: Sea and I saw there was some military folks from
Speaker 18: the regular army, conscript army who were just kind of
Speaker 18: walking down walking along the shore of the Caspian Sea.
Speaker 18: And I initially kind of you know, when you see
Speaker 18: military folks, especially revolutionary guards, and passiege and you're on
Speaker 18: especially back then, you would freeze and hesitate a little bit.
Speaker 18: And my my friends kind of continued as they were,
Speaker 18: including a young woman who wasn't properly covering her hair,
Speaker 18: and I looked at them and they said, no, don't
Speaker 18: worry about it. These guys are These guys are for
Speaker 18: the mooney. They're one of us, you know, from the army.
Speaker 18: So what the way there is Lono Republic has managed
Speaker 18: the regular army is that obviously the top commanders have
Speaker 18: been hand picked by the regimes, so up until.
Speaker 10: Now they've always been loyal. But the body of that.
Speaker 18: Military are reflective of Iranian society at large, and I
Speaker 18: would suspect for the most part, deeply unsatisfied with the
Speaker 18: status quo, deeply unsatisfied with their lives.
Speaker 1: So that takes me to my question about if there
Speaker 1: is military action, what should the United States target and
Speaker 1: what shouldn't they target? And I'll follow naturally, should they
Speaker 1: leave the regular Iranian military alone?
Speaker 18: Listen, I don't want to pretend to like I'm a
Speaker 18: military expert, and I obviously haven't. What we've learned from
Speaker 18: so many of US military action over the last two
Speaker 18: decades in the Middle East, including the Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 18: So much of it is the execution, and to our credit,
Speaker 18: to our military's credit, they've done an exceptionally good job,
Speaker 18: oftentimes with execution. But on first the question of whether
Speaker 18: to target the regular army, it would seem to me
Speaker 18: that would be a bad idea because, as I mentioned,
Speaker 18: this is a conscript army for the more part in
Speaker 18: reflective of Iranian society, and you don't want anarchy, you
Speaker 18: don't want total disorder. We saw what happened in Iraq
Speaker 18: when the Bathist army was disbanded, and I think everyone
Speaker 18: fears that possibility of anarchy. So I think you would
Speaker 18: want the regular army to remain intact.
Speaker 1: Would you want if the United States strikes, what would
Speaker 1: you like them to strike in what order? I know
Speaker 1: you're not a military expert, but everybody is talking about this.
Speaker 1: Adaal Montgomery gave me a very long target list yesterday.
Speaker 1: But you're the fellow who studies the country. What do
Speaker 1: you think might bring regime collapse closer?
Speaker 10: So let me say a couple of things to you.
Speaker 18: One is that one of the things I would have
Speaker 18: liked to have seen happened already in fact early days,
Speaker 18: and the protests would have been to lift this iron
Speaker 18: digital iron curtain that the regime has subjected people to.
Speaker 18: They've cut off intnet, satellite connections, they've cut out cellular connections,
Speaker 18: and activity of the country has been about one percent,
Speaker 18: So they've slaughtered people in the dark. So to the
Speaker 18: extent we have capabilities, whether it's kinetic or cyber capabilities,
Speaker 18: to to tear down that digital iron wall, that might be,
Speaker 18: that's very, very important, even if that means, for example,
Speaker 18: because the regime has their own intranet, their state television
Speaker 18: is functioning okay, their officials are doing TV interviews broadcast
Speaker 18: to the United States, and so in some ways, you know,
Speaker 18: one one option is to take out their internet systems,
Speaker 18: so then they have to plug into to to the
Speaker 18: system that everyone else uses. So that that's one thing
Speaker 18: that I would have liked to have seen happen already.
Speaker 18: Second is, uh, you know, the organs of repression in Iran,
Speaker 18: whether that's a command and control outposts of the Revolutionary Guards.
Speaker 18: I think that there's Raelis will certainly want to target
Speaker 18: their their their missile stock pile because Iran is a
Speaker 18: country here which really can't control its own skies right now,
Speaker 18: and you would want to prevent them from from replenishing
Speaker 18: their missile capacity.
Speaker 10: Then we start to get into much.
Speaker 18: More sensitive questions, and obviously the most sensitive one, arguably,
Speaker 18: I think that the current the Trump administration is probably
Speaker 18: debating as we speak, is whether to target the Supreme Leader.
Speaker 18: And you know, I've spoken to folks who served and
Speaker 18: the first Trump administration who are still close to this one,
Speaker 18: who believed that if military action is sick and they
Speaker 18: are likely to target the Supreme Leader eighty six year
Speaker 18: old tel Ali comedy. The only note of caution, and
Speaker 18: here I think that, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 18: claim to speak for people inside Iran, but I think
Speaker 18: most protesters, those who took to the streets against the regime,
Speaker 18: welcome some kind of military action. The only note of
Speaker 18: caution I'd make cure is that we know historically that
Speaker 18: when if oritarian regimes collapse or when they transition, about
Speaker 18: four out of five times they unfortunately don't transition to democracy.
Speaker 18: About four out of five times they transfer, they transition
Speaker 18: to another form of authoritarian regime. Soviet Union is a
Speaker 18: good example of that, we went from Soviet Union to
Speaker 18: Putin's Russia. The Iran of nineteen seventy nine is a
Speaker 18: good example of that. We went from the shaw to
Speaker 18: the Islamic Republic. But so I'm not making the argument
Speaker 18: that military action can transition Iran to Denmark. But I
Speaker 18: think what people want to see, as I suggested from
Speaker 18: the asset, they want to see a government that is
Speaker 18: a national government that puts the economic and national interests
Speaker 18: of the nation first, not death to America and death
Speaker 18: to Israel. They want to an a government whose ethos
Speaker 18: is long live you wrong.
Speaker 1: So Kareem sajafor do you where do you place their
Speaker 1: probability now of a military strike by the United States
Speaker 1: on Iran? And do you have any year that Iran
Speaker 1: will take a first preemptive strike on, for example, Israel
Speaker 1: and the Gulf oil fields in the GCC countries.
Speaker 18: No, I'm skeptical that they will try to take preemptive
Speaker 18: action because, as I said, this is a regime which
Speaker 18: is homicidal, not suicidal.
Speaker 10: And right now, the.
Speaker 18: United States has convened some of the most elite facets
Speaker 18: of the American military, whether that's warships or fighter jets,
Speaker 18: and I'm skeptical that they will want to test President Trump.
Speaker 18: Given President Trump's history with Iran. You have to remember, Hugh,
Speaker 18: and you remember it better than anyone. Twenty eighteen, Trump
Speaker 18: pulled out of the nuclear deal. Twenty twenty assassinated Blossom Sulimani, Iran,
Speaker 18: some military commander. Last summer, he dropped bunker busters on
Speaker 18: Iran's nuclear program. And each of these cases people feared
Speaker 18: that it could be World War three. And in each
Speaker 18: of these cases, I think President Trump feels his decisions
Speaker 18: were vindicated. So I don't think he fears Eron, especially
Speaker 18: now that they don't control their own skies. He thinks
Speaker 18: they're a paper tiger. So I would argue that the
Speaker 18: likelihood of him acting again, I would say is perhaps
Speaker 18: six seven out of ten.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back with Kareem Sajupor don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: America very rare you get an expert like this, so
Speaker 1: listen very closely to what he has to say. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned to The Hugh Hewitt Show. Welcome back to America.
Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewitt spending this hour with Kareem Masajapour. He's
Speaker 1: the first generation of America and his parents emigrated from
Speaker 1: Iran ten years before the revolution, and he knows the diaspora,
Speaker 1: and he studies this at the Carnegie Endowment. He's much
Speaker 1: in demand right now, and I appreciate the time kareem.
Speaker 1: Iran only hard currency comes from oil. It is exported
Speaker 1: from cars Island and from two other oil terminals. There's
Speaker 1: a debate among people that I read and listen to
Speaker 1: as to whether or not the United States and its
Speaker 1: allies ought to target those facilities in order to fash
Speaker 1: the IRGC and the Ayatola and his crony. What do
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 18: My sense here is, and the President has alluded to
Speaker 18: this that the kind of template or strategy they have
Speaker 18: in mind is similar to the Venezuela playbook, which was
Speaker 18: essentially economic stranglehold, and you know, going after oil exports,
Speaker 18: going after these ghost fleets of oil ships. And my
Speaker 18: sense is that that is a more likely outcome than
Speaker 18: going after bombing Iranian oil installations or refiners, which you know,
Speaker 18: could could cause real economic devastation to the population. But
Speaker 18: obviously in the Venezuela strategy that that strategy of you know,
Speaker 18: economic stranglehold was was a prelude to what became a
Speaker 18: political decapitation. And and I do think that, you know,
Speaker 18: based on what the President is said publicly about it,
Speaker 18: I tota homedy, calling him a sick man, I.
Speaker 10: To a homedy.
Speaker 18: We know from you know, FBI statements that Iran has
Speaker 18: been trying to assassinate President Trump during the ten year
Speaker 18: of President Biden. And so you know, my sense is
Speaker 18: that you will see more likely this kind of major
Speaker 18: economic stranglehold and the hopes that that will lead to
Speaker 18: either Iran capitulating or some kind of action to force
Speaker 18: political change in Europe.
Speaker 1: Now, kareem, after thirty to forty thousand people have been
Speaker 1: mowed down in the streets and besieged, and revolutionary guard
Speaker 1: going to the hospitals and shooting people and the bodies
Speaker 1: are left on the sidewalk with little video we have
Speaker 1: is horrific. That's gotten out what you can. Is it
Speaker 1: even fair to expect the Iranian straight to rise up
Speaker 1: a second time after that kind of a devastating blow
Speaker 1: from the regime.
Speaker 18: It's not likely in the immediate term because people are
Speaker 18: in retreat, you know, they're just in shock, and as
Speaker 18: I mentioned from the outset, their communication ability is very
Speaker 18: limited given how the regime has throttled the Internet and
Speaker 18: satellite television and cellular communication, and so I think they're
Speaker 18: in retreat. But as I point out to people here,
Speaker 18: the nineteen seventy nine revolution was a thirteen month process.
Speaker 18: It essentially began in January seventy eight, and Kumani didn't
Speaker 18: arrive in Tehran until February nineteen seventy nine, and so
Speaker 18: we're only really one month into this process. And it's
Speaker 18: strongly my view that whatever the United States chooses to do,
Speaker 18: Iran is a country on the cusp of some kind
Speaker 18: of transformation, because, as I said, not only the society
Speaker 18: has realized, but even within the regime they've realized that
Speaker 18: this status quo is not tenable.
Speaker 1: Krim, how are they even eating that commerce in and
Speaker 1: out of the country is down to nothing, The real
Speaker 1: is worth nothing. I don't know what the farmers are doing.
Speaker 1: Why are the reports you're able to get on the
Speaker 1: quality of life for the average lower to low class
Speaker 1: individual in terms of income, It must be horrific.
Speaker 18: It is horrific because the middle class has been totally decimated,
Speaker 18: the currency has been totally decimated, and it's there's no
Speaker 18: rock bottom. It keeps sinking. I'm sure others have pointed out,
Speaker 18: and you show that the Runian currency visa VI the
Speaker 18: US dollar has depreciated something like ninety nine point nine
Speaker 18: percent from nineteen seventy nine to the present. So people
Speaker 18: are scraping to get by. And what we oftentimes see
Speaker 18: Hue is only what's happening in Tehran. But you know,
Speaker 18: perhaps only a quarter or so of the Runians live
Speaker 18: in the capitol, and I think both economic devastation and
Speaker 18: the brutality is much greater in the places that we
Speaker 18: don't see with the same frequency as we see Tehrone.
Speaker 1: Last question before this break, and then one more question
Speaker 1: to the people. Believe any of the theology that the
Speaker 1: Iatolas put forward Kareem or have they just view it
Speaker 1: as words?
Speaker 18: You know, I think it's very similar to late eighties
Speaker 18: Soviet Union, in which not only within the society but
Speaker 18: within the regime you have very few true believers left
Speaker 18: in the system. In fact, a friend of mine who
Speaker 18: was a professor in Tarhron said, at the beginning of
Speaker 18: the revolution, the regime was eighty percent idiologues and twenty
Speaker 18: percent Charlatan's and now it's the reverse, only perhaps even
Speaker 18: within the regime only twenty percent true believers, So in
Speaker 18: society I would say it's even less than that.
Speaker 1: I'll be back with one more segment with Kareem Sadjapor.
Speaker 1: You can follow them on actually a k sajipor and
Speaker 1: you can read them in the Atlantic. You've got a
Speaker 1: great competion in the current Atlantic as well at the
Speaker 1: Karnegie Endowment. Stay tuned, Welcome back America. I'm huge Hewett.
Speaker 1: I wanted to save the most delicate issue for the
Speaker 1: last career, which is the role of Israel in anycoming
Speaker 1: conflict between the United States and Iran. National Security Advisor,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of national security advisor in Iran, said, if
Speaker 1: there's any conflict with the United States, we're throwing everything
Speaker 1: we got at Israel. What do you expect their role
Speaker 1: to be? What do you want their role to be?
Speaker 1: Does their participation make it more or less difficult to
Speaker 1: topple the regime?
Speaker 18: Well, Israel obviously showed over the last couple of years
Speaker 18: that militarily they're far superior to Iran, even though Iran
Speaker 18: is seventy five times larger as a nation state.
Speaker 10: And so it was Israel which paved.
Speaker 18: The way for the United States to take action because
Speaker 18: they took out Iran's air defenses. And going back to
Speaker 18: what I said earlier about restoring connectivity in Iran, Israel,
Speaker 18: which has a very phisicated cyber capability, Israel was able
Speaker 18: to help restore connectivity within Iran. I think it's something
Speaker 18: that would be greatly appreciated. But they have because they're
Speaker 18: within missile range of Iran and it's a much smaller country,
Speaker 18: things are much more delicate for them. And so that's
Speaker 18: why that's among the many reasons why you have a
Speaker 18: huge US presence now in the region and everyone is
Speaker 18: on alert because ultimately Iranian missiles are not going to
Speaker 18: reach the US home land, but they could indeed go
Speaker 18: after Israel and cause some real damage.
Speaker 1: So kareem to wrap this. Everybody in DC talks to
Speaker 1: you about this. So I'm just curious, off the record,
Speaker 1: what did the other countries in the region not named
Speaker 1: Israel in the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United
Speaker 1: Arab Memorirates got her? What do they want to see happen?
Speaker 1: Do they want this regime to stay there? It seems
Speaker 1: like it's an endless source of woes for a region
Speaker 1: that ought to be booming.
Speaker 18: I think the only country, major country in the world
Speaker 18: which benefits from keeping the Lower Republic iround is Russia,
Speaker 18: because as long as Iran is isolated, it can't exploit
Speaker 18: its vast natural gas and oil reserves. It doesn't compete
Speaker 18: with Russia as it should in global energy markets. It's
Speaker 18: a thorn in the society of the United States. It
Speaker 18: can't compete with Russia and its historic sphere of influence
Speaker 18: Central Asia. Obviously, you know, smaller countries like North Korea
Speaker 18: like to keep it around as well. But the regional countries,
Speaker 18: I don't think any of them like the status quo
Speaker 18: of a country on their border that is so deeply
Speaker 18: ideological and destabilizing. But a lot of them, for various reasons,
Speaker 18: worry about conflict. They worry that they could be retaliated
Speaker 18: against in the case of our golf partners in Saide
Speaker 18: Arabia and Ue the country like Turkey, worries about chaos
Speaker 18: that could spill over refugees into their territory. So everyone
Speaker 18: is watching this very careful. But I think most of
Speaker 18: those regional countries, if they could push a button and
Speaker 18: have a clean transition to a nationalist government, in Iran
Speaker 18: rather than an ideological government in Iran. I think the
Speaker 18: vast majority of them would do that.
Speaker 1: And is there any worry on your part that Iran
Speaker 1: is play sleeper sales In the United States, they sent
Speaker 1: people to assassinate people here before. They've tried to kill
Speaker 1: President Trump. We know that, But what about a widespread
Speaker 1: has the law or related network. Have you got concerns there?
Speaker 18: I'm not too worried about that in the United States.
Speaker 18: In Europe they have carried out operations and usually here
Speaker 18: it's not Iranian nationals that are doing that. They pay
Speaker 18: European Russian criminal gangs or or Pakistani radicals to carry
Speaker 18: out these activities. So that is, you know, certainly a possibility.
Speaker 18: But at the moment, you know, I think that given
Speaker 18: how the news is tightening around their neck, and as
Speaker 18: you mentioned from the odds, even the Europeans have prescribed
Speaker 18: them their revolutionary regards as a terrorist organization, I don't
Speaker 18: think their first instinct is to want to create even
Speaker 18: more problems for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very last question. What is the ceiling? We know
Speaker 1: it's hit rock bottom and they keep digging a hole
Speaker 1: into which they can fall off the floor. What's the
Speaker 1: ceiling for Iran if they were run by even a
Speaker 1: minimally competent nationalist government.
Speaker 18: That's a wonderful question, and it is something which I
Speaker 18: think is obviously in the US national interests. Kissinger once said,
Speaker 18: their few nations in the world with whom the United
Speaker 18: States and the United States has more common interest and
Speaker 18: less reason to world than Iran. And it's my view
Speaker 18: that given Iran's enormous human capital, it's enormous natural resources,
Speaker 18: it's very rich history, this should be a G twenty nation.
Speaker 18: It should be you know, Saudi Arabia, Turkey r G
Speaker 18: twenty nations. Iran should be in that category. You know,
Speaker 18: in nineteen seventy eight, q Iran's GDP was are on
Speaker 18: the same level as Spain and South Korea. And you
Speaker 18: see where those countries are now and where Iran is now.
Speaker 18: And it just shows you what a profound difference leadership makes.
Speaker 18: And I do believe that this country, once it has
Speaker 18: proper leadership, it could have one of the highest growth
Speaker 18: rates in.
Speaker 10: The coming years.
Speaker 1: And I have bonus question, does the United Nations contribute
Speaker 1: anything to Iran? Are they protecting World historic sites? Are
Speaker 1: they doing any kind of relief. Have they been any
Speaker 1: help at all in Iran?
Speaker 10: Not terribly.
Speaker 18: When it comes to the politics, you know, you're only
Speaker 18: used to have a large Afghan refugee presence, and so
Speaker 18: United Nations UNHCR was helpful there. And I do want
Speaker 18: to give a shout out to the new head of UNHCR,
Speaker 18: the former president of Iraq, Badramsali, was a brilliant and
Speaker 18: wonderful guy. But to your question, you know, National Geographic
Speaker 18: Magazine once called Iran the world's first superpower, and so
Speaker 18: there are enormous, amazing historic site and Iran and it
Speaker 18: will be, hopefully one day soon a great destination for
Speaker 18: Western and American tourists.
Speaker 1: I hope you are right. Kareem Sadupor. Thank you for
Speaker 1: joining me for this extended period of time. I'll continue
Speaker 1: to read and follow you on axt You can do that,
Speaker 1: by the way, America at k Sajipor you cannot miss it.
Speaker 1: And his new article in the Atlantic is not to
Speaker 1: be missed as well. One of those experts that you
Speaker 1: can really trust on everything having to do with Iran.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kareem. I want to remind everyone if if
Speaker 1: you miss part of this interview, we will post it
Speaker 1: later at tohewit dot com. It'll be over on YouTube
Speaker 1: as well.