There is a consistency from Donald Trump when it comes to
Iran. He thought there should have
been military action in 1980. It's very clear he thinks that
America should be stronger when it comes to Iran.
And, and although he says no forever wars, everything he's
done shows he is interventionist.
He just wants to highlight America's military might.
What he might have done here is unleash something he can't
control. Hello and welcome to Trump
World. I'm Matt Frey in London.
And I'm Anushka Astana in Washington, DC And Matt, we've
just listened to the man who calls himself the secretary of
War, Pete Hegseth, talking about the justifications for Iran and
talking in particular about the Americans taking out an Iranian
warship. Let's just start by having a
listen to what he said. Last night we sunk their prize
ship, the Soleimani. Looks like POTUS got him twice
their Navy. Not a factor.
Pick your adjective. It is no more.
In fact, yesterday in the Indian Ocean and we'll play it on the
screen there. An American submarine sunk in
Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international
waters. Instead it was sunk by a
torpedo. Quiet Death, the first sinking
of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War 2.
Matt, when I listen to that, I find it absolutely extraordinary
because they're kind of saying the thing out loud that for
years, for decades, we've heard governments try not to say,
which is they don't care about international law.
They're not even trying to make the legality argument.
I mean, it's a real message to send out there, isn't it?
Absolutely. You know, in the roll out of
the, you know, the different justifications for this war of
choice, which I think we have to reiterate is what it is.
It is a war of choice, not one of necessity.
I think, I believe humbly they keep coming up with different
reasons. And another reason that we heard
today for the first time spelt out in in slightly more detail
than before is what Pete Tex has said about this assassination
plot, alleged plot against Donald Trump.
Now, we we do know that someone was arrested last year when he
was president-elect or the year before who was an Iranian agent
somehow linked to the regime. And now Hexa is claiming that
they they killed the guy who was in charge of the unit that
plotted to assassinate the American president.
I mean, the the so-called Secretary of War went out of his
way to say this was not one of the justifications for going to
war against Iran. But but it but it is there, you
know, in the background. And then he added this line.
President Trump had the last laugh.
I mean, the, the point I think that this makes for me is this
sort of unbearable intellectual lightness of this whole
exercise, The blindness with which they talk about something
as serious as war and whether it's the different
justifications for this war, the fact that they've come up for so
many different reasons of why they went into this conflict.
But also the language, you know, the kind of Rambo language that
they're using even by the standards of of previous wars.
And we had some of that language with George W Bush in Iraq is
really quite extraordinary. And it, I think all, a lot of it
stems from Donald Trump's philosophy of how you exercise
power. It's all about him.
You know, Litasimwa, I'm the state.
I am in charge. I didn't care about Congress.
I didn't care about my allies. I didn't even consult my best
friends in the Gulf before I did this.
You know, I talked to the Israeli Prime Minister a lot.
You know, we're in this together, but no one else is.
And I find that really quite alarming.
It is interesting how Donald Trump himself has also talked
about this idea of they tried to assassinate me, he said.
They tried to kill me a few times.
I got them 1st, but yeah, the reasoning is quite confused.
And the reason it's quite confusing is because they've
given all these different reasons.
In fact, one thing we've been doing this week is trying to
compile some of those reasons. Just have a listen to the
justifications that we've heard. To the great, proud people of
Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand.
The president's been extremely clear about our objectives, and
it's that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.
We knew that that would precipitate an attack against
American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively
go after them before they launched those attacks, we would
suffer higher casualties. No, I might have forced that
hand. You see, we were having
negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they
were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we
didn't do it. The objective was not regime
change. The objective was to take out
those missiles, the short and mid range missiles and their
ability to produce them. #1 Donald Trump comes out, he talks
about regime change, and we can discuss that.
Number 2, they're talking about trying to make sure Iran doesn't
have nuclear capability, although of course, just months
ago they told us they had obliterated Iran's nuclear
capability. A bit of a contradiction there.
Yeah. And then, and then the reason
which I think Marco Rubio actually accidentally said out
loud was the real thinking behind the scenes.
Because the reality is you can have a moral argument about why
you go to war. We heard that back when Iraq
happened in 2003, and we hear it now.
The moral reason is that these are evil, murderous regimes.
But always behind the scenes, you also have to have a legal
reason, a legal rationale for why you're going ahead.
And what Marco Rubio did in Congress this week and then
clearly panicked about it. Because, you know, in the next
appearance the next day, he was trying to say, I didn't really
say what you literally heard me say, which is the rationale that
there was an imminent threat. And it's a slightly bizarre
rationale because the argument was, Israel, we're going to
strike with or without us. That's clearly what Benjamin
Netanyahu told Donald Trump when he was here in February.
And the response to that would have been that Iran was
basically going to hit American military sites and kill American
people. And that's why we believe there
was an imminent threat. But it it, it's a kind of
strange argument. And it's definitely the one they
made to lawmakers because I was standing there when the
lawmakers emerged. Mike Johnson, who is, you know,
the Republican speaker of the House, was absolutely clear.
He said this is the reason they gave us.
And he he said it in in explicit terms, This is not about regime
change. But I remembered so well because
I was in Washington at the time, the build up to the Iraq war
and, you know, the proposition of going after Saddam Hussein,
who had nothing to do with 9/11 in the kind of post 911 white
hot spirit of revenge was, you know, questionable at the time.
The difference was that the majority of the American public
was very much behind that war, at the beginning at least.
And George W Bush went out to sell that war, that reason, that
Kazu's belly, that reason for going to war over and over again
to his allies, to the United Nations, to the American public,
to Congress. And we know how that war of
choice ended, and it ended disastrously, OK, Saddam Hussein
was removed, but Iraq descended into virtual civil war.
The country is still suffering from the after effects of that
invasion. We also know how Afghanistan
ended. I mean, America has had a
terrible record with wars of choice.
And I'm afraid whatever reasons they come up with now, it, it
you know, it's, it's, it's fishy, right?
It doesn't, it doesn't sound to me as convincing even as some of
the arguments that we heard in 2003, especially because they
keep changing their mind. So I think if you're Donald
Trump and you you got into politics because you didn't
believe America should be going to war unless it was absolutely
necessary, and now you're doing precisely the thing that you
didn't want to do, it raises a really fundamental question
about his state of mind. And I think just cast your mind
back, Anushka, to, you know, Christmas Day.
I mean, on Christmas Day, he'd already bombed Nigeria.
A few days later, he took out Nicolas Maduro of, I mean,
literally took out of his country Nicolas Maduro of
Venezuela. And I think in a sense, because
that operation went so well and there were so few casualties on
actually on either side, relatively speaking.
And, and because it was a clean operation for the Americans and
because they didn't bother with regime change, they didn't
bother with sort of helping the Democrats who tried to turn
Venezuela around. And it was about oil.
But we don't actually know whether there's been any follow
up. So all we have really is, you
know, the the scalp, if you like, of, of Maduro, who's
sitting in a jail cell somewhere in Brooklyn.
And the Israelis must have thought, well, if he's got a
taste for this, maybe he'll now go for the big one in Iran.
And I think they were absolutely panicked that he might try and
resurrect some kind of nuclear deal, you know, as the, you
know, the Obama administration done the kind of deal that he
opted out of. And so they rushed over to
Washington and said, we've got to do this.
This is a great opportunity. You get this build up of
American forces. The Israelis want to go for it.
And Trump now feels empowered by the success of Venezuela to try
the same thing again. Except as we're seeing, you
know, the Iranians have prepared.
I mean, for them, this is existential.
You know, I, I covered the Iraq, the, sorry, the, the Russia
Ukraine war from the beginning. And the one thing we always said
for Russia, it was a war of choice.
And the Russians weren't entirely certain why they
invaded this country. I mean, maybe fascism, maybe it
was, you know, nationalism, maybe NATO threatening.
It was a bit wishy washy, rather like now with the Americans, the
Ukrainians know exactly what they're fighting for, which is
their survival. And whether you like the Iranian
regime or not, and, you know, not many people do they're, they
behave horribly towards their own people.
But for the Iranian regime and the millions of people who
depend on it, who make money from it, whose careers have been
made by it, who believe also, by the way, that the Ayatollah
who's just been slain is, you know, virtually a, you know,
another prophet sent by God, you know, to to lead the Shiite
church. For them, this is existential.
And they've had time to prepare. And what we're seeing now is
that they're rather cleverly picking off, you know, America's
allies in the region, making people who are living in five
star shopping malls and thinking about low tax rates and, you
know, drinking margaritas in a Muslim country.
I'm talking about the expats here.
They're making them think this isn't so good, is it?
And by the way, they've got a chokehold on the Straits of
Hormuz through which 1/4, almost 1/4 of the world's oil and gas
have to flow. So I think think at the moment
to say that Iran, you know, this is done and dusted against the
Iranians, I wouldn't be so sure. It was interesting.
I was speaking to a military, fairly senior military source
this week about the Iranian response because it's easy to
look at it and think it feels indiscriminate.
They're sort of just firing out to try and react to all of this.
And they basically said to me that how they have responded
shows that they have planned it very, very well because actually
it's incredibly targeted, so much so that they're taking out,
you know, the radars that are preventing the US military bases
for operating in the way that they would want to operate.
And of course, they will run out of money.
And their, you know, military arsenal is being depleted at a
pretty fast rate from the strikes from Israel and the US.
But it costs a lot more to defend against those missiles
than it costs to fire them out. I mean, it was interesting you
talking about Iraq. I was in London when they were
making the decision to go to war.
And it was actually my first job working for the Observer
newspaper. And the Observer newspaper at
the time backed the Iraq war. And one of the first things I
did was go through all the letters of readers saying we're
tearing up our subscriptions, we're never going to read the
Observer again. They were so angry about it.
But but the contrast to now, you know, many people thought it
wasn't a legal war, but the contrast to now was there was
massive hand wringing about it. There was massive discussion
about it. The moral argument wasn't
enough. People wanted to know that there
was a legal argument there as well.
And this time there's a been none of that and B, Actually I'm
interested in your thoughts of this.
Politically in the UK, the conversation is so completely
different. Keir Starmer is having the
Tories say to him, how could you not?
How could you not just support this from the start?
I mean, there's a lot of nuance there.
The, you know, ever since he came back to office, Donald
Trump has forced every democratically elected leader in
a supposedly friendly country to make choices, some very
difficult choices between your own voters and your principles
and what you think Donald Trump wants or what he actually says
he wants. And this is really tricky for
all concerned. So if you look at the range of
opinions and reactions this week to this war, there's some
surprises there. Let's start off with Mark
Carney, the hero of Davos, the champion of the middle powers
getting together and sticking up to Uncle Sam saying, you know,
we believe in our democratic principles.
I mean, he may believe on about those principles when it comes
to international trade and having America next door saying
they want Canada as a 51st state.
But in terms of international law, when applied to warfare in
Iran, doesn't give a damn, more or less said the, you know, told
the Trump administration, these are evil ayatollahs.
Do what you have to do. Then you've got Chancellor Mertz
of Germany who starts off with that, you know, quite a nuanced
statement, a bit like Keir Starmer's about, you know, not
quite saying this is an illegal war, but we don't like the idea
of it. But, you know, the ayatollahs
are awful and they deserve to, you know, more or less, I'm
paraphrasing, you know, end up in a shallow grave.
And then he goes to Washington and he changes his position, is
much more supportive. And then Trump rewards him.
King Donald rewards the German Chancellor with a compliment
saying, you've been very much on my side getting it in the neck
of the Spaniards who are terrible, terrible people.
And he the, you know, the, the way that he orders Scott Besson,
the Treasury Secretary, to cut off all trade with Spain.
But you know, the Spanish Prime Minister, to his credit, has
stuck to his guns and his principles and said, no, even if
you you can do two things at the same time, you can pour the
Iranian regime and you can stick to international law.
And then you get to Keir Starmer's position.
He is caught in, you know, in a very difficult place between the
so-called special relationship, which ain't that special these
days and arguably hasn't been for a very long time.
And then his own backbenchers who've been breathing down his
neck ad nauseam since he came to power about all sorts of other
domestic issues. And he knows that if he gives in
to Trump, they're going to absolutely destroy him.
So that, you know, some some, you know, Labour MPs on the left
side. I spoke to one of them the other
day. He said he was cheering Keir
Starmer on. You know, this is a guy who
doesn't like Keir Starmer because Keir Starmer had his
so-called Love Actually moment. You know that famous scene from
the film where Hugh Grant, as a British Prime Minister, stands
up to the American president and and tells him?
I'd call it love. Love Actually ish.
Love Actually, Ish. It was lovely, actually.
Ish. Yeah.
But in return he got hate, actually, didn't he?
From Donald Trump? Or a bit of hate, actually.
I mean, that was amazing watching that yesterday it.
Was amazing. It was, it was amazing what
Starmer said. You know, you cannot do regime
change from the air, which is a fairpoint.
And by the way, you know that Dan Kane, the, you know, the
chief of the joint, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in America, the
senior general in America would probably agree with him.
But at the same time, Trump's reaction to this was really
quite petulant. And by the way, can we just say
very quickly this obsession with Winston Churchill that Americans
have, it's very unhealthy. It really is.
Yeah, yeah. I thought it was kind of
extraordinary sitting there watching to Donald Trump talk.
He's obviously picking up the phone to journalists who have
his number and just giving them different messages.
And then he was asked, obviously, in the White House
how we felt about the UK. Apparently he's been very angry
ever since that phone call where Keir Starmer spoke to him about
not using the bases. And then he obviously, as you
just mentioned, made this point. It's not exactly Winston
Churchill I'm dealing with that. It's interesting because I've
spent a bit of time this week with British diplomats who were
obviously tearing their hair out.
I think the feeling is we need to just stay quiet.
We need to try and ride this through.
Keir Starmer, obviously under political pressure at home, has
to stick to the line, which is, you know, around the legality
point. But also, it's interesting.
Someone was saying to me tonight, it was one day that we
didn't allow the bases to be used one day.
And, and this is what you get in return for that.
But they also said when when they're having conversations
with their counterparts in the State Department, in the
Pentagon and so on, that they do get a completely different
message than you hear from Donald Trump.
I mean, take Chagos Islands, which is one of the things that
Donald Trump keeps criticising. He keeps going on about the.
Stupid. Island away.
Yeah, the stupid island. But you know, what diplomats say
to me is we heard nothing ever from anywhere else in the
administration that they were annoyed about the deal at all.
And in many ways, they felt like the deal was there to support
America with that base. But it does show it doesn't take
much, does it, for Donald Trump to really hit out.
And I do find it amazing, the journalists who were telling me
about how they just literally ring the president up and once
in a while he just answers the phone and, you know.
I mean, in this case, you've been talking to people not just
in Washington but elsewhere in the States.
What? Where is American public opinion
in this? Where's the MAGA crowd on this?
Well, it's really fascinating because obviously Donald Trump
is someone who has promised no forever wars and you don't have
to go very far back to find members of his administration
making that point. Pete Hagseth in December
launching the defence strategy, basically saying we're not going
to go for regime change, we're going to try and deter war.
JD Vance, 10 days before the last election, basically saying
it would be madness to go to war with Iran because it would take
up too much resource, it would cost too much.
Obviously now, you know, marching to a different tune.
But clearly they're not the Iran Hawks who have been pushing
this. And in terms of Donald Trump's
mega base, well, there's two layers to this.
There's the voters, and I'll just come to that.
But then there's the extremely influential commentators, people
like Tucker Carlson, people like Megyn Kelly.
Megyn Kelly is pretty angry about this.
She can't see how there was an imminent threat.
She can't see how this protects American lives.
There is a split in MAGA over the issue of Israel.
It's very, very clear, although Donald Trump's been trying to
deny it this week, that Netanyahu's influence has been
massive and has been a really big driver of this, especially
when you think that those other people around Donald Trump are
not necessarily Middle East Hawks.
They don't want to see America entering a war on behalf of
Israel. Obviously, Donald Trump's trying
to deny that. So they're furious and millions
and millions and millions of people listen to her podcast,
listen to Tucker Carlson and we'll be thinking about it.
So look, I was in a kind of quite pro Trump area in
Baltimore last week before this happened.
And I was talking to what you might call the MAGA base, like
people who absolutely love Donald Trump and they continue
to love him. And when I was talking to them,
one of them was a guy called Tim Fazenbaker, who was actually
running for Baltimore County Council as what he called an
America first Republican. And I put to him like if they
strike Iran, because it was looking very likely at the time,
are you OK with that? And, and basically I got the
same message from different people, which was we are OK with
it. It just about if it's a very
limited operation and one that is purely about taking out the
nukes to keep us safe. If it went further than that, if
it went into boots on the ground, then they would be very
unhappy. And actually I rang one of the
people I spoke to back after the strikes to ask and they were
like very relieved that the first strike had been militarily
so successful, the first strikes in taking out the Ayatollah
himself, because they felt that made the argument more strongly.
But there is massive nervousness and the polls tend to show
people don't think they've made the argument for this invasion.
Just just a final thought on it though, on Donald Trump trying
to search for who is the Iran hawk in the White House.
Part of me wonders if it is Donald Trump.
I was watching back things he said in 1980 yesterday, things
that he had said in 1987 and onwards.
And actually there is a consistency from Donald Trump
when it comes to Iran. He thought there should have
been military action in 1980. It's very clear he thinks that
America should be stronger when it comes to Iran.
And although he says no forever wars, everything he's done one
shows he is interventionist. He just wants to highlight
America's military might. What he might have done here is
unleash something he can't control.
But there, there's a couple of nuances there.
So he did kill, you know, the Revolutionary Guard Commander
Suleimani in 2020. Yeah, Yeah, he did that.
And he did, you know, come out of the Iran nuclear enrichment
deal that Obama had fashioned. He did that as well.
But remember, he also fired John Baltimore or less because he
wanted to go to war with Iran. So Trump has also been on a bit
of a journey. There was some, you know,
there's a loathing there of Iran.
And remember, Iran has been a thorn in America's side since
the revolution in 1979. You won't find many, you know,
Iranian regime friends in the US.
But the fact that he, he himself, Trump has changed his
mind on this. And then if you look at the way
that Hex had spoke today, if you look at the the fact that, you
know, so many of America's friends have been drawn into
this war, you kind of wonder that even if they don't believe
in the crate&barrel rule, you break it, you keep it.
No, you break it and then you leg it out of the shop.
That's the new rule. Who's to say they're not going
to get sucked into this? You know, you have more American
casualties suddenly has to send some boots on the ground to make
you know, or you know, or you let's say you have patrols,
American naval patrols in the in the in the Straits of Hormuz,
which is what they've suggested taking, you know, oil tankers to
safety. I know that Trump has said he
doesn't want boots on the ground and he doesn't obviously care
about nation building. And PTX of today was incredibly
dismissive of the very notion of nation building, which is such a
kind of Democrat thing to do. And you know, which it wasn't
actually was a Republican venture and it failed miserably
in Iraq and in Afghanistan. But the point is, if you have
American warships patrolling the Straits of Hormuz and escorting
tankers to safety and they get hit by the Iranians, who's to
say that that doesn't draw the idea of having naval warfare?
We saw the beginning of this, you know, close quarters much
makes that much more realistic. And then the next step could be
boots on the ground. You know the minute you go down
this slippery slope, even if you think it's a war without
American troops being deployed, just be careful because you
never know how these things pan. I've just finished the
conversation with Jane Gavito, who is senior advisor at the
Cohen Group but was in the State Department, actually was
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, which
included Iran in Joe Biden's time.
A long time senior American diplomat.
She's been in the room for the type of conversations we're
talking about. And before this began, she
warned about what it might unleash.
And that was where I began our chat.
Speaking in January, you suggested that targeting the
Iranian leadership with strikes could basically open a Pandora's
box, that it could unleash something that America couldn't
control. Is that what you think is
happening? I think so.
Obviously this will continue to play out over the course of
months, if not years. But by having eliminated the
Iranian leadership without a clear plan, then you you can't
know what comes next, right. So we're seeing initial
indications that supreme leader's the late supreme
leader's older son may be in line.
He is affiliated with the IRGC. And I think, you know, as we may
have talked about previously, every war game that's been
played out by the United States in recent years has in fact
pointed to the IRGC is taking over if, if regime change is
attempted. So harder line than than what we
started with. Harder line because that becomes
militarily focused over religiously focused.
Correct. More secular, but certainly
stronger as far as as security goes.
And so if you're talking about, you know, and I know there's
many justifications out there at the moment for why we embarked
on this endeavour, but if one of those is protection of the
Iranian people, I, I don't think that an IRGC influenced
government is better for them in any way.
And to be clear, when you were in the State Department, that
was the projection. That was the working assumption
was if you attempted regime change from the outside, the
IRGC would most likely prevail. And you just said months, maybe
years. Was that what could have
happened? Does that look likely to happen?
I think that we don't yet have an understanding that.
I keep going back to the question of what is the
objective here. And over the last 96 hours,
we've heard a few of them. Yesterday it seemed that the
administration was coalescing around the idea of the objective
being degradation of of nuclear, if not missile programs.
But others, you know, including reports yesterday that the
United States is thinking about arming the Kurdish elements in
Iraq and inside Iran. That suggests that maybe regime
change is still on the table until we really know what the
objective is and therefore able to extrapolate from that what
the in state may look like. I think it's really hard to talk
about what that does look like. But if you are talking about
arming insurgent groups inside of the country, then you are
setting in motion a series of events that I think it becomes
very, very hard to influence. And even if you don't, even if
you just walk away at, at further degradation of the of
the nuclear program and the missile program, even there, you
know that a new supreme leader has to be elected and it becomes
very difficult to predict what trajectory that might take.
And when you say it looks like there's no plan, what are the
signs that there's no plan? Well, I mean, first and foremost
that the administration is not yet settled on a single
justification for this operation.
They seem to be floating different options, maybe seeing
what resonates with the public. And so if you don't know what
the objective is, then again, it's very difficult to put
forward a plan to achieve that objective.
So are they driving towards regime change?
There were moments yesterday where that seemed to be the
case. Are they just driving towards a
very cut and dry operation against nuclear facilities?
That's not exactly what we've seen to date.
So it's really hard to answer that question.
There's a lot of unknowns still hanging out there.
I mean, they're trying to slightly backtrack from it, but
it seemed really clear to me that Secretary of State Marco
Rubio briefed the Gang of Eight most senior figures in Congress.
They came out and spoke to us, and I was there listening to
what they had been briefed on. They briefed them that there was
an imminent threat based on the idea that Israel was going to
strike anyway and that that would lead to a response that
would, they argued, kill many Americans.
To someone who's been there, been in the room.
What did you make of that justification?
I mean, that justification actually rings true to me.
What what is different in this is that previous administrations
have worked very hard to restrain Prime Minister
Netanyahu, who, let's be clear, has been moving towards this
objective for his own reasons for 20 years now.
So that the idea that Netanyahu would want to embark on a regime
change operation should surprise nobody.
What again, what's different here is the idea that the US
administration would go along with that plan and even strike
preemptively in order not to absorb the the blowback.
But I, I, I think that was absolutely correct.
I think that if if Israel had gone it alone, and I suspect
that when Netanyahu was in the Oval Office with President Trump
in mid February that that's what he what he previewed, then
absolutely Iran would have struck out at us.
Where you could, of course, corrected is by letting Prime
Minister Netanyahu know in no uncertain terms that the United
States was not prepared to embark on that on that mission.
And then do you think he wouldn't have gone ahead?
I, I think if he believed that the United States was not going
to participate, then I don't think he would have had much of
A choice but to back off and, and that has been in fact the
dynamic for the better part of two decades.
And, and you've been there for this.
I mean, presumably Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to persuade
Joe Biden. And and President Obama, and
we're going all the way back to Bush.
What, what were your conversations about that?
Exactly where you started this conversation that, you know,
first of all, I think is really important in all of these
discussions about where we are to make very clear that this
Iranian regime was evil. They brutalized their own
people. They exported terror all over
the region. And so in none of the
conversations is anybody trying to assert that somehow this
regime should be protected. But the conversations with
Netanyahu would revolve around the idea that no regime change
operation has ever been successful from the air.
You know, for for countries that were certainly the United States
not prepared to put boots on the ground, what, what you thought
you were putting in motion, what you thought you could achieve is
not what would come out of that. And those were the
conversations. What do you end up with them?
Well, I mean, I think you end up either with chaos.
If you are able to kind of foment kind of the beginnings of
unrest within Iranian borders, then you start to have, you
know, separatist groups, militias, skirmishes, etcetera,
that that gives way to increase chaos certainly in border
regions maybe spreading beyond that.
But but with the regime still firmly in charge or you pave the
way for again, a more hard line regime to come into place.
I, I, I think that, you know, there's still a lot of wishful
thinking that maybe you have a Venezuela style situation where
the Iranian leadership that assesses that if they play nice
with the United States and moderate their positions, then,
you know, we, we can find a common path forward.
That's, that's very unlikely for, for a variety of reasons.
And one thing I'm. Interested in is you can make
the moral argument for war and you can say it's an evil regime
that needs to be removed. And I remember working on the
Iraq war where there were the similar arguments.
There was a moral argument to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but
what we wanted was for the UK at the time and the US to make the
legal argument. And as almost this morning, Pete
Hegseth has come out and explicitly said that they
targeted an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in
international waters. So quite openly saying
international law is not going to protect them.
How worried are you about comments like that and about
that move? It's a really dangerous
precedent. And I think that, you know, a
number of comments that have come out over the course of days
and weeks have suggested less of a commitment to adherence to
international law. And of course of the last year,
we've seen a real, in fairness, dating back in some ways to the
Biden administration. We've seen a real dismantlement
of kind of multilateral institutions as the framework
for which, you know, all countries operate.
That's a really dangerous precedent and one that puts our
own service people at risk, our own civilians at risk.
You think it gives a green light to others?
I do. I mean, if you can, absolutely,
if you can blow, blow ships out of the water out of, you know,
whatever domestic justification there may be, again, to your
point, however strong it may be, right.
But if you can do that in violation of international law,
then what is stopping any other rogue actor from doing that to
to American civilians or military or our servicemen?
And can I just ask you about other countries in the region?
I thought it was really interesting the reporting denied
by Saudi Arabia but reported by journalists who have good
sources, that the Saudis were pressing America to do this.
Do you believe that? You know, what rings true to me
in this is a comment that was attributed to the Saudis several
weeks before the operation that we would look weak if we didn't
do it. And so I suspect there was, on
the part of our allies in the Gulf in particular, kind of a
sense of inevitability of this. We had amassed the biggest
Armada since the Iraq war. And so the idea that you would
you would bring all of this into the region and then let it sit
there unused, I think struck everybody is not likely right.
And so I I suspect on the part of the Saudis that they
recognized that there was an inevitability to it and sought
to shape that conversation. So I'm sure it was a
constructive, you know, it's never as black and white as go,
don't go. So I suspect there was some
nuance to it. And to be clear, there's no love
lost between the Saudis and the Iranians or the other Gulf
states. I think, again, going back to
the premise, everybody understands that this is an evil
regime that destabilizes the region.
Is there an outcome here that is more positive?
You know, this is a massive barrage of strikes.
It's had enormous. What on the surface looks like
military success. It's not just taken out the
supreme leader. It's taken out many layers of
the regime's leadership. It has decimated Iran's naval
capacity. It probably has taken out much
of its short and mid range missile capability.
Is it possible that the regime cannot survive this and that
perhaps with the arming of Kurds or even other protesters, that
there is an uprising that will remove it?
I'm pretty skeptical. I would disaggregate those two
things and say that what you described at the beginning of
that is in fact a net positive. The world is a safer place if
Iran does not have a giant arsenal of missiles at its
disposal and if it doesn't have the capability to project its
power outside of its own borders.
I think that's a net positive. Again, you can question how we
got here and what the off ramp is, but those are good things
for that to translate into regime change coming from kind
of border regions and non unified opposition forces.
That I think is probably a bridge too far.
At least at this moment. There's no unifying figure,
there's no unified opposition. Even you know, the types of arms
that you know, maybe these these separatist groups have I I I
don't think is any match for. The state and Donald Trump said
yesterday the worst case scenario is they replace how
many with another person who's just as bad.
So they obviously think that that is a realistic possibility.
What would that mean for the world?
I mean, I think we're back to square one, but with degraded
capabilities in the short term. But I think it sets off a cycle
of what we've seen over the last year where, you know they
rebuild capacity and some combination of US, Israel, maybe
other allies have to go in periodically and eliminate those
those capabilities again. But if that's.
Positive. Is there an argument that
they've done the right thing here?
Again, I, I think that degrading their capabilities and we've
we've tried that through a variety of different ways,
right. We've tried it through
sanctions, we've tried it through prior military action
etcetera. So yes, I think that there is an
argument to be made for decapitating their ability to
spread terror. Do you think that it's not a?
Deal was better than this. I'm sorry, do you?
Think that Obama's deal? Was better than.
Absolutely. I I thanks it.
It had its limitations for sure, but it kept channels of
communication open. By having done this on top of
negotiations that were taking place, I think the US has
unfortunately removed itself as a as a credible negotiating
partner for the foreseeable future.
Leaving kinetic action is really our only tool.
And very final question, who do you think in the administration
is driving this? Who are the Iran Hawks in the
White House, in the State Department, who are pushing?
It's such a good question. I mean, we've we've heard
Lindsey Graham, we've heard Tom Cotton and certainly Prime
Minister Netanyahu has a major voice in this.
You know, I, I've hear, I've heard some nuance from others.
And so I hope that there is a rigorous policy debate going on
that leads us even, you know, maybe if this started not on, on
the best of objectives or best clarity, maybe at least how it
goes forward will be the result of of more rigorous policy
conversations. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That was Jen, Gavita, and I
think that that is all we've got time for today.
I hope that people listening, watching will press follow or
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that. And of course, yes, we really
appreciate everyone who follows us.
We appreciate everyone of you listening.
And there was so much to say about this conflict, what it
means about, you know, the breakdown of international law,
what it means about the nature of American power in the age of
Donald Trump, that this story, I'm afraid, will probably run
and run. That's it from Trump world.
Goodbye from London. Goodbye from Washington, DC.