Latest / The Fourcast / Iran-Israel ceasefire: will deal Trump brokered actually hold?

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Iran-Israel ceasefire: will deal Trump brokered actually hold? · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  It could have turned into a much bigger or in the Middle East or
• 0:04
  the US. Donald Trump has said a lot of
• 0:06
  things over the years. One time he makes an off to cuff
• 0:10
  remark about regime change and all of a sudden everybody's got
• 0:14
  their knickers in A twist. Well, he he's the president.
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  You've got to listen to what he says.
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  Churchill was the Prime Minister and what Churchill said was in
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  wartime, truth is so precious it must be guarded by a bodyguard
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  of lies. Isn't it the case, but it was
• 0:30
  Netanyahu that made the running on this?
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  Or do you think it was the Americans who were in control
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  all along? Hello and welcome to the
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  forecast. I'm Christian Gary Murphy, and
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  I'm joining you from Washington, DC, where I've just been trying
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  to grab a word with a few senators on the Hill for their
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  reaction to this announcement that came last night from Donald
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  Trump of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.
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  We've had a remarkable day so far, of course, in which both
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  sides sent final volleys of missiles the other way.
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  And we had a very furious response from Donald Trump, who
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  has said he is much more angry with Israel than he is with Iran
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  for unloading, as he put it, a huge amount of explosives onto
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  Tehran in the final hours of the ceasefire.
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  But it seems from official announcements from both sides
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  that the ceasefire has been agreed.
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  And Iran is saying that as long as Israel doesn't fire at it, it
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  will not fire at Israel. So how has how has this
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  remarkable turn of events been pulled off?
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  Will it hold? And what does it mean for the
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  insecurity and ongoing conflict in Gaza?
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  Joining me today, Mark Kimmitt, who's former Assistant Secretary
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  of State for Political and Military Affairs under the Bush
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  administration, and Negar Mortazabi, the Iranian American
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  journalist and host of the Iran Podcast, also a senior fellow at
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  the Centre for International Policy.
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  Mark, it's, it's quite an extraordinary turn of events.
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  What do you think's happened? I'm a universal skeptic when it
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  comes to the issue of cease fires.
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  As we saw, there was already violations.
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  There were already violations of the last 12 hours.
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  Let's hope this one holds. The real question is not will a
• 2:16
  ceasefire hold, but what comes after the ceasefire lasts for a
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  few days. Is this the road to negotiation?
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  Is this the road to demands by Israel and Iran outside of the
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  negotiations? So while it's good to see that
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  the the shooting has stopped, the question is for how long and
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  for what purpose. What do you think's actually
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  been achieved so far? Well, I think the Iranian
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  nuclear program has been set back a number of years.
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  I think that the United States has demonstrated its
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  capabilities by the dropping of the mass ordinance penetrator,
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  But I believe other than that, very little has been achieved.
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  But again, that was that was the entire purpose of the campaign.
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  And the campaign objective seems to have been generally achieved,
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  although Iran still clings to its right in its mind to have a
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  nuclear program. *** what do you make of this and what's
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  happened? Well, I think this sort of goes
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  with what the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
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  has been pushing for the past 2 decades, 20 something years,
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  both publicly and privately, to try to drag the US into a war
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  with Iran or to sort of find a strategy either for the US to
• 3:42
  start it or as we saw, for Israel to start it and then drag
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  the US in it. I think it could have turned
• 3:50
  into a much bigger and more disastrous essentially quagmire,
• 3:55
  the next big war in the Middle East for the US.
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  But for now, I think it's important that both sides pivot.
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  They took an off from it, turned into just the one tick for
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  attack, one US attack, 1 Iranian retaliation.
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  Thankfully no lives lost on either side.
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  And I think it's the escalation on that very important front,
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  which is the US and Iran. On Iran and Israel, I'm not very
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  hopeful that this is going to stop.
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  I mean, the Israelis attacked again, I think with the hope of
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  dragging the US also into this and keeping the US engaged.
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  And for now, I think that episode has changed, but it may
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  come up again. So I think the US has the power
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  to push for serious diplomacy, to push for ceasefire.
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  And I'm just seeing new posts from the president on social
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  media trying to sort of push for that ceasefire language.
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  I don't know if it's going to hold, but going back to the
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  negotiating table where Iran and the US were before Israel
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  attacked, they actually had their next round of nuclear
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  talks scheduled for two days after the Israeli attack.
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  And those negotiations were sabotaged as a result of the
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  attack, which I think was one of the goals of those attacks.
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  If Iran and the US return back to the negotiating table and try
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  to resolve this issue diplomatically, I think that
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  would be the best course of action.
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  And the US does have the power and the influence to make that
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  happen. It's just a matter of whether
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  the president wants to use that power or not.
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  Mark, in terms of what might be on the negotiating table, I
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  mean, you know, if you say very little has been achieved so far,
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  what's possible? Yeah.
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  Well, first of all, I'd like to address a couple of points that
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  were made. Yes, it's true that Iran, that
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  Israel has quite some time wanted to take out the the
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  Iranian nuclear program, which which makes a lot of sense. the
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  United States was not dragged into this conflict.
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  We came into the conflict as a one and done for the simple
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  purposes of using weapons that only the United States had.
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  Donald Trump was very clear that he did not want to expand the
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  conflict. Now with regards to the notion
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  of Israel sabotaging the talks, Iran sabotage the talks, it was
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  clear that they had been given a timeline by President Trump.
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  It is clear that they were slow walking and doing the typical
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  Iranian negotiating style of making demands that they knew
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  that couldn't be kept. They were trying to get this
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  stretched out for a longer period of time, no doubt having
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  to do with the snapback provisions, as well as to be
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  able to continue their to continue their program.
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  But this notion that somehow the United States is this dumb Big
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  Brother that can be #1 dragged into action and #2 that behind
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  their backs, these negotiations were sabotaged by the little
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  brother. I think that's that's a pretty
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  difficult viewed to accept that somehow the Americans are just
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  Israel's patsies. But I mean, isn't it the case
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  that it was Netanyahu that made the running on this?
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  Or do you think, you know it was the Americans who were in
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  control all along? It's been the American policy
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  since the discovery of the nuclear program.
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  It's been the policy of every president that Iran will not
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  have a nuclear weapon. This was a once in a generation
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  opportunity by the Israelis to attack.
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  I can explain that opportunity and why it came now.
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  But I have very little doubt that any other president
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  provided with that same set of data and information would have
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  done the same thing. And what what's the crucial
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  point here is? Is it that Iran was at its
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  weakest point for a long time? No, October 7th brought this
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  around. It's important to understand
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  that for 30 years the Iranian regime has been able to deter
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  Israel from attacks. The reason and the method of
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  deterrence was the Ring of Fire around Israel, that 200,000 plus
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  set of warheads that were owned by Hamas, Hezbollah, inside of
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  Syria. The Houthis October 7th started
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  a war that resulted in Israel chipping away methodically,
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  systematically entirely at the missile programs that these
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  countries had, these missiles that these countries had.
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  And candidly when the missile threat got down to the point
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  where Israel felt it could manage it, rather than being
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  overwhelmed as to use saying from the battle of Thermopylae
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  where the Persians could blot out the sun with their missiles
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  and overcome the Israeli missile defense system.
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  Once that was down to a reasonable level, the the
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  lifetime dream of every Israeli Air Force pilot came about, they
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  were able to strike and they did.
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  That would have happened under Obama.
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  That would have happened under Biden.
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  That would have happened under Clinton.
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  So this once in a generation opportunity presented itself and
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  Israel took it. Nega, do you want to come back?
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  Yeah. So the war, first of all, I'm
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  hearing echoes of sort of the rhetoric that we heard before
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  Afghanistan and Iraq, how, you know, nobody promised those wars
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  to be trillions of dollars to take 20 years and for so much
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  American blood and resources to be wasted in those countries.
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  And there were plenty of good reasons for going after the bad,
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  the evil in both Iraq, Afghanistan, even Libya.
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  And we know what came out of those wars and why the majority
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  of the American public is actually against getting
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  involved into another big war in the Middle East that would
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  potentially AUS Iran war can potentially be even more
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  devastating than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
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  I think that question of the population is very important.
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  Iran is a large country, is a regional power.
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  No, it's not a war superpower, but it's a regional power.
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  Just in the past 10 days, we've seen that they, yes, they are
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  the underdog. They've also been able to
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  inflict pain on the other side. And I think that's why
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  prioritizing peace and diplomacy is something that the American
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  people have been wanting every poll has shown, as opposed to
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  getting dragged into a war. As far as past administrations,
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  we saw similar episodes under President Biden 2 times.
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  The Israeli, Iran sort of tit for tat started back in April,
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  again in October. And the administration, the
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  Biden administration threw a very clear red line for the
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  Israelis that they would only participate in defense and not
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  offense. And I think that very much
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  helped sort of de escalate in those two instances and not make
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  this go to a whole other level of, first of all, an open war
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  between Iran and Israel that would continue and then also
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  drag the US into this. That didn't happen under the
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  Trump administration. Even the statements coming from
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  the White House were contradictory.
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  On the first day of the Israeli attack, again, which was just
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  two days before a round of nuclear negotiations were
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  scheduled between Tehran and Washington.
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  On the first day, the White House statement, Secretary Rubio
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  is that the US has nothing to do with this.
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  And then the next day and later we sort of here reporting that
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  it looks like the operations are actually going well in the US.
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  Kind of the President decided to kind of praise them and then
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  eventually get dragged into it, but then taken off ramp and sort
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  of de escalate after the Iranian retaliation.
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  The fact remains is it is clearly the case that Biden was
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  able to deter the Iranian, the the Israelis from attacking
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  simply because at that point Israel still was deterred by
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  that Ring of Fire. That is not the case now.
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  And as somebody who wore the uniform in both Iraq and
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  Afghanistan, I've got that, I understand that.
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  But somehow make the argument that what we're talking about in
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  Iran is any similar, has any bears any similarity to Iraq and
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  Afghanistan? I think is something you read
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  perhaps on a on a cereal box. But certainly one understands
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  that the United States was not and is not prepared to put boots
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  on the ground. Third, we're not being drug into
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  a regional war. The fact remains is that the
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  United States has done A1 and done operation to take out a
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  facility that only the United States could take out.
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  And the president has been very clear that he doesn't want to go
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  beyond that. And we will see if the Iranians
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  are willing to engage in fair and reasonable negotiations.
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  Their nuclear program has now been set back for years, but
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  those negotiations can only be about going from where they are
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  now to complete abandonment of their nuclear program.
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  To somehow suggest that Iran is regional power is, I think, of
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  complete misunderstanding of where their strength comes from.
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  Right. Well, I mean, I mean, obviously
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  that, you know, Iran would would, would see itself
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  differently. But I mean, one of the reasons
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  people will talk about America, you know, getting drawn into
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  this in a much bigger way is because of what Donald Trump in
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  sense himself said about regime change.
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  Now he seems to sort of step back from that and made it very
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  clear that he doesn't want to change the regime.
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  But yesterday or the day before, it was by no means clear what
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  the American strategy really was.
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  And, and if you're in a situation now where you leave
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  the regime in power, weakened conceivably, but still there,
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  and Israel still has a goal of, you know, saying, well, the
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  Ayatollah can't remain in place, I mean, they haven't taken that
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  back. It's still a very insecure
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  situation, isn't it? Well, I'd say a couple of
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  things. And Donald Trump has said a lot
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  of things over the years. He said peace through strength,
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  but he's also said I don't want to get I'm the guy that stops
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  wars, he said. I'm the guy that stopped wars.
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  I'm not the guy that starts wars 1000 times.
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  One time he makes an off the cuff remark about regime change
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  and all of a sudden everybody's got their knickers in A twist.
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  Look, you've got to understand. He's the president.
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  You've got to listen to what he. Says yes, Churchill was the
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  Prime Minister and what Churchill said was in wartime,
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  truth is so precious it must be guarded by a bodyguard of lies.
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  He is lying. He lied the other day when he
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  said he was giving Iran two weeks and then he attacked.
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  Look, that's that's we call lying in warfare, deception,
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  operational security. So he could be throwing the
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  regime change out simply as a method to bait, a method to
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  test. Nobody, nobody believes we're
• 15:55
  going to be involved in regime change.
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  And so do you actually think he's played this rather well?
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  I think he's used a level of strategic thinking that I did
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  not think he possessed before. That's very interesting.
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  I mean, so do you think he's going to change the world's
• 16:13
  perception of what he's really doing and how good he is at it?
• 16:18
  Now, the world's already made its mind up about Donald Trump.
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  It's binary. In the Middle East, the
• 16:25
  leadership loves him. In America, there's very few
• 16:29
  opinions of Donald Trump that could be changed by his recent
• 16:33
  actions. So, so let's come back to the
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  negotiation question then. I mean, what do you think is
• 16:38
  possible? That's up to the Iranians.
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  It is clear that they do not have the leverage that they once
• 16:46
  had. As Marco Rubio said the other
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  day, we've got to get beyond this.
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  Passing notes from room to room, not looking them at the eye in
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  the eye. If, if the Iranians take a true
• 17:01
  appreciation of where they are, they're in the same position as
• 17:04
  they were in 1988 when how many's patron Khomeini drank
• 17:11
  from the poison chalice and ended the the Iraq Iran war.
• 17:16
  There is the Europeans agree, the Israelis agree, the United
• 17:20
  States agree. Not only will the Iranians not
• 17:25
  have a nuclear bomb, but now the position is they will not have a
• 17:29
  nuclear program. Yes.
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  I mean, Negai, what do you think the Iranian opening position is
• 17:35
  going to be and why is having a nuclear program such an article
• 17:39
  of faith for this regime? So when the president was
• 17:44
  campaigning for the election, calling himself the president of
• 17:47
  peace, and when he was talking about negotiations with Iran, he
• 17:53
  was saying they can have nuclear weapons.
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  He was pretty consistent on that.
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  And that was an acceptable position for Iran.
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  And we thought Iranians coming to the negotiating table with a
• 18:02
  lot of hesitants and that's why they sort of was were
• 18:07
  emphasizing on the indirect talks, which I think was a big
• 18:10
  mistake. If they had done direct talks
• 18:12
  with the US, with Steve Witkopf, maybe we wouldn't be here.
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  Who knows? Because 60 days is also not
• 18:19
  enough time to resolve an issue so complex.
• 18:21
  It took the Obama administration two years of intense
• 18:24
  negotiations to deliver the JCPOA.
• 18:27
  But anyways, the president was saying no nuclear weapons.
• 18:30
  That was the initial position. And then the talks started and
• 18:33
  then the goal posts started to shift towards the end of the
• 18:37
  rounds of talks that were happening.
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  We started hearing talk of 0 enrichment or total destruction
• 18:44
  of the, the entirety of the new program.
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  And this has been a red line. It has been a non starter for
• 18:50
  Iran because they emphasize, well, first of all, U.S.
• 18:54
  intelligence has said time and again that it is a civilian
• 18:56
  program. And the Iranians have emphasized
• 18:58
  that they want to keep a civilian program.
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  You know, this is something they've worked on for decades.
• 19:03
  They've spent a lot of time, energy resources, blood.
• 19:06
  They've actually, as they're saying, they've given blood.
• 19:10
  Nuclear scientists have been killed for this.
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  It's something that Iran has insisted on now as far as the
• 19:15
  value. There's also internal criticism
• 19:17
  now coming from various political, you know, factions
• 19:21
  that maybe you should have invested more in air defense or
• 19:25
  in purchasing fighter jets to defend the Iranian sky better as
• 19:30
  opposed to having a nuclear program or an enrichment that
• 19:33
  couldn't really defend the country.
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  But nevertheless, is their position, it wasn't on starter.
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  And I think the problem with the Trump administration was that
• 19:41
  they thought they could change the goal posts, move the goal
• 19:43
  posts throughout the negotiation and then sort of try to force
• 19:47
  Iran into accepting. I think one thing that's not
• 19:49
  very clear the administration understands is that when you go
• 19:53
  to the negotiating table, you have to be prepared to give
• 19:55
  something. I feel like right now the
• 19:57
  understanding is the, as the president also posted on social
• 20:01
  media, unconditional surrender at the negotiating table or and
• 20:05
  the battlefield is that we come and take something, but we don't
• 20:09
  give anything. We don't make concessions.
• 20:12
  And that's been always a problem with anyone who wanted to start
• 20:14
  negotiations with Iran, which is of course AUS adversary.
• 20:18
  It's going to have a very serious political cost
• 20:20
  domestically here, here in the US The Obama administration, the
• 20:24
  president himself paid a very huge political cost for that.
• 20:29
  And anyone else who's tried to start that.
• 20:31
  So I think I'm not sure if that's understood in the
• 20:34
  administration if they're ready to make that sort of to pay that
• 20:38
  political cost. It sounded like the president is
• 20:41
  at least the MAGA camp is also supportive of that because
• 20:44
  there's so much anti war. But I just think that
• 20:48
  understanding needs to really be deep, that when you do
• 20:52
  negotiations, when you do diplomacy with an adversary,
• 20:55
  it's going to be uncomfortable and you have to make sessions in
• 20:58
  order to take something. But the but the regime is
• 21:01
  incredibly weak, isn't it? Is the truth.
• 21:03
  I mean, it's weak politically. It doesn't have a huge amount of
• 21:07
  support at home. It's just had a disastrous
• 21:09
  military campaign in which it's, it's not been able to deliver
• 21:13
  what it's suggested it could. So it doesn't have a strong
• 21:17
  position going into any of these talks, does it?
• 21:19
  It doesn't, but I want to be careful as far as assuming that
• 21:22
  they are completely powerless. I mean, in the past week there
• 21:25
  have really been assumptions that this is it, this is the end
• 21:28
  of the regime, they're gonna fall.
• 21:30
  There's a regime change. We certainly saw it both in the
• 21:33
  rhetoric of the Israelis and also in their action, you know,
• 21:36
  hacking state TV and putting out messages for people to rise up
• 21:39
  and end the regime, etc. And that didn't happen.
• 21:42
  So I want us to be careful as far as, yes, they're the weak
• 21:45
  party, they're the underdog, but they're not completely
• 21:47
  powerless. In fact, these attacks have
• 21:49
  brought more a sense of unity both within the system and also
• 21:53
  among the population. Not a unity as far as affinity
• 21:56
  for the regime, but as far as, you know, getting a sense that
• 22:00
  the homeland is being attacked, their sovereignty, their homes,
• 22:02
  the actual homes of people with a very high civilian loss.
• 22:07
  And so I don't think that Iran has lost all of their cards.
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  But of course, when they do negotiations, they also should
• 22:15
  be prepared to make concessions. And potentially now, with all of
• 22:18
  these hits of the past 10 days, I think they should be ready to
• 22:21
  make even more concessions than they were before this war
• 22:25
  started. Yeah, the the Iranians are
• 22:27
  famous for demanding preconditions before
• 22:31
  negotiations. They no longer have the ability
• 22:34
  to make those preconditions. Their preconditions usually are.
• 22:38
  We're not going to talk about proxies.
• 22:40
  We're not going to talk about missiles, and we're not going to
• 22:43
  talk about totally disabling and abandoning the nuclear program
• 22:48
  to somehow suggest that they have any leverage in this next
• 22:52
  set of negotiations. Look, in the old days, these
• 22:55
  wouldn't be negotiations. These would be terms of
• 22:58
  surrender. But the United States, in fact,
• 23:00
  is willing to do negotiations. It's clear that the United
• 23:05
  States is willing to offer concessions, and those
• 23:08
  concessions are trying to re to re establish the shambles that
• 23:13
  is the Iranian economy, taking them off of sanctions, offering
• 23:17
  them economic and financial assistance.
• 23:20
  So if the Iranian negotiators can put aside their ideological
• 23:26
  underpants and actually think about what's best for the people
• 23:29
  of Iran, there's a lot to talk about.
• 23:32
  There is no need for any kind of nuclear program in Iran.
• 23:37
  The fact is, we accepted under the JCPOA that they would be
• 23:43
  able to have a civilian nuclear program.
• 23:46
  They violated that repeatedly. If anybody believes that the
• 23:51
  Iranians were not trying to develop a nuclear weapon both
• 23:55
  before and after the first term election of Donald Trump, I
• 24:00
  think that's a willing suspension of disbelief.
• 24:04
  The fact remains is Iran has demonstrated that it is no
• 24:09
  longer a responsible country to be able to enrich uranium
• 24:14
  because when they enrich uranium, they not only take it
• 24:18
  to the level needed for civilian purposes, but also to weaponize.
• 24:22
  They say they need it for energy and for research.
• 24:26
  Well, fine, the world is provided is prepared to provide
• 24:31
  them the uranium necessary for energy and for research.
• 24:35
  But they the position is quite clear.
• 24:38
  You are, the world doesn't trust you with an enrichment
• 24:42
  capability because you have demonstrated time after time
• 24:46
  after time that you can't be trusted.
• 24:49
  So you're not going to get to have an enrichment capability.
• 24:54
  And that's where we will negotiate.
• 24:56
  And from that position, there's a lot that can be done for Iran.
• 24:59
  I agree with you that regime change is a foolish idea.
• 25:03
  Hopefully the people of Iran will recognize that the mullahs
• 25:06
  have brought them to disaster. The great nation of Persia that
• 25:11
  has a 2000 year history may one day come back.
• 25:17
  But not if they're going to have a nuclear program, and not if
• 25:21
  they're going to have proxies creating a revolutionary fervor
• 25:27
  throughout the region, promoting groups such as Hezbollah and
• 25:32
  Hamas. And not if they continue to have
• 25:34
  a ballistic missile program that has no other purpose than to not
• 25:40
  only defend themselves, which is a legitimate concern, but also
• 25:43
  to deliver weapons of mass destruction, which if they had
• 25:48
  them, they would use them. But how important do you think
• 25:51
  in the diplomacy is a question of a little bit of respect for a
• 25:55
  sovereign nation? I mean, you talk about the
• 25:58
  world. I mean, America isn't the world.
• 26:00
  I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a big and powerful chunk of the
• 26:03
  world, but the whole world doesn't think the same way about
• 26:06
  these things. And Iran, after all, is a
• 26:09
  sovereign nation that wants to take its own decisions and have
• 26:12
  its own power supplies and security.
• 26:16
  And it, you know, obviously it would say there's a double
• 26:20
  standard at play. Israel doesn't have inspections.
• 26:22
  Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel has the record of
• 26:25
  attacking its neighbors and mass killing.
• 26:27
  So when you talk about responsibility.
• 26:29
  Israel is not part of this negotiation.
• 26:32
  No, but but but Israel is obviously the comparison.
• 26:34
  We can push this hard. The fact remains, as we showed
• 26:37
  the Japanese a lot of respect as they were signing the surrender
• 26:40
  documents on the USS Missouri, That's not what the United
• 26:44
  States is pushing for. It is not trying to take away
• 26:48
  not only capabilities, but the ideology of revolutionary Shiism
• 26:56
  the way we took away the ideology of militarism from
• 27:00
  Japan. The very fact that the United
• 27:03
  States is not talking about war, trimes, crimes, tribunals, so on
• 27:08
  and so forth ought to be a very well, let me just simply not go
• 27:14
  that far. Let me just simply say the
• 27:15
  United States will show Iran the respect it deserves.
• 27:19
  Keep Israel out of the discussions about these
• 27:23
  negotiations. They're not party to it.
• 27:27
  They're not behind the scenes whispering in the negotiators
• 27:31
  ears. This negotiation is about the
• 27:35
  the threat from Iran's nuclear program to the United States of
• 27:39
  America and our allies. *** how do you think that's gonna go
• 27:42
  down in Tehran? Well, first of all, let me just
• 27:45
  push back on some of some of the factual errors.
• 27:48
  I'm I am a critic of many of Iran's domestic, regional
• 27:52
  foreign policy, so I'm not here to defend the entirety of it.
• 27:54
  But there are some points here as far as Iran violating the
• 27:57
  JCPOA, that's just simply false. the US State Department under
• 28:01
  President Trump itself had reported that Iran is abiding by
• 28:05
  the nuclear deal. The reason the US pulled out of
• 28:07
  that deal is just because President Trump didn't like it.
• 28:09
  He didn't like that this was an Obama administration foreign
• 28:13
  policy legacy. He had campaigned on ripping get
• 28:15
  up, and he did because the Iranians refused to sit down and
• 28:19
  negotiate a new deal. Why?
• 28:20
  They had one with the US on your effect.
• 28:23
  And I think this also speaks to sort of US sort of position in
• 28:28
  the world that you were alluding to.
• 28:31
  You know, from the viewpoint of the rest of the world, it
• 28:34
  doesn't matter who's the US president.
• 28:35
  If you are your U.S. President, you go and sign an
• 28:38
  international agreement. You shake hands, you put your
• 28:41
  signature. That has to stand.
• 28:43
  And when the party changes after your election, president comes
• 28:46
  and just didn't like what the previous one did.
• 28:48
  And this wasn't just a deal between Iran and the US.
• 28:51
  This was an international deal. Russia, China, US is closest
• 28:54
  allies in Europe. The P 5 + 1, they all agreed on
• 28:58
  this after two years. And then the US just pulled out
• 29:00
  of that deal because one president didn't like the other
• 29:03
  president from the other party. As far as Iran building a
• 29:05
  nuclear weapon, again, U.S. intelligence has said time and
• 29:08
  again as late as this week that Iranian nuclear program still
• 29:12
  remains civilian. They haven't made the decision
• 29:14
  to weaponize the program. Why shouldn't they be allowed to
• 29:17
  have program? Why shouldn't they be as part of
• 29:21
  the sort of nuclear international safeguard, which
• 29:24
  Israel isn't? I mean, there's sworn enemy in
• 29:26
  the region. Yes, Iran and Israel don't see
• 29:28
  eye to eye. There's sworn enemies, but their
• 29:30
  enemy nuclear weapons program, the Israelis could obliterate
• 29:35
  the entire region if they wanted to.
• 29:37
  They're conducting an ethnic cleansing, a genocide in their
• 29:40
  neighborhood. And you know that history also
• 29:42
  didn't start with October 7. Yet October 7th was a horrific
• 29:46
  attack on many Israeli civilians.
• 29:48
  But history between Israel and the Palestinians started 70
• 29:51
  years before that. We have to also look at sort of
• 29:54
  that history and that precedent. So to to, to assume that
• 29:59
  there's, you know, the entire world and then this one party on
• 30:02
  the other side, the Iranians, they have no power.
• 30:04
  They're absolutely weak. And, and it and, you know, it's
• 30:06
  just malign behavior one after another.
• 30:10
  It's just not factually correct. It there is a lot of domestic
• 30:13
  politics, US domestic politics involved in here that's
• 30:17
  affecting U.S. policy. There's all a lot of sort of
• 30:20
  hypocrisy or double standards that the US applies to its own
• 30:25
  ally and friend in the region. That doesn't apply two rivals,
• 30:29
  the way the Western European US allies have been dealing with,
• 30:35
  for example, Russian war crimes in Ukraine, Russia's attack on
• 30:38
  Ukraine's sovereignty, and the way they don't apply or the
• 30:41
  hypocrisy that they do when it comes to Israel and Gaza.
• 30:44
  When it comes to two, again, two sovereign nations, Iran and
• 30:47
  Israel, is just something that the rest of the world sees and
• 30:50
  criticizes. It's not just the Global South,
• 30:53
  it's many other countries also across the region.
• 30:57
  And yeah, I mean, this, this doesn't make things factually
• 31:00
  correct or diplomatic correct. Yes, the US is most powerful
• 31:04
  nation. It is an army that's that you
• 31:07
  can win a war against. But at the same time, we see how
• 31:10
  the US got bogged down in Afghanistan, in Iraq, the
• 31:14
  situation in Libya, and how that brought just more instability,
• 31:18
  insecurity, chaos and conflict in the region.
• 31:21
  And I think just going back to my point, that's why I think the
• 31:23
  American people understand that they don't want to get involved
• 31:26
  in another trillion dollar war, lots of American blood laws for
• 31:30
  what they don't think is going to be in US interest.
• 31:34
  Well, we are. We are out of time.
• 31:36
  Thank you both very much indeed for joining us, Mark Kimmitt and
• 31:39
  Meghan Mosesari. That's the forecast.
• 31:41
  Until next time, bye bye.