Latest / The Nation Podcasts / Palestine and the Iran War w/ Yousef Munayyer | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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Palestine and the Iran War w/ Yousef Munayyer | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the old world is dying, the new world struggles to reborn, now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: With those words from Grappsy, I welcome you to the Time of Monstrous Podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm G.T.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: of the Dictionary Magazine, which is a sponsor of this show.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously the war in Iran continues to dominate.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a kind of ceasefire and a sort of blockade of the blockade.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: have people are waiting for negotiations to resume.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this kind of interregium, I thought it'd be good to take stock of where we stand and I'm very happy to have on.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll set fireman here.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Frequent Guestal program, I real expert on the region is particularly the Palestinian issue.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, welcome to the program.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Chief.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Good to be with you once again.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's just do a little bit of sort of like stock taking about what's going on.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I think pretty clear, maybe let's be honest, the narratives that are coming out of Washington, particularly from Donald Trump and Hagetath about how this is like, but a great military victory for the United States, that they achieve regime change and have a much more moderate regime in place.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's your sense of what we're retold and how accurate it is?
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it was inevitable that we were kind of going to be in this place where after all of these military operations by the United States and this war on Iran that they would, you know, have to be talking about and boasting about the success of their tactical operations.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: as a way to create a narrative of victory, even though there's no reality of victory when it comes to the confrontation between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, at least not at this point.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look, I don't think there was ever a question whether or not the US military could successfully blow stuff up.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We blow stuff up better than anyone else in the world.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually what we excel at, I think, more than anything else.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: No one quite blows things up the way the US military does, both in terms of scale and scope and its ability to project power and blow things up in various corners of the world.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's that's our claim to fame here in the in the American Empire.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's not the issue here.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: The issue here is not whether the United States could execute these military operations, but whether or not the execution of these military operations translates to a political outcome that the United States failed to achieve diplomatically and that they had sought prior to the war.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: we're not at that place now.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think we're closer to it than before the war began.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I like to tell people, like, look, you know, if you have the world's biggest hammer, and you have, you know, the largest collection of nails in the world, and you just hammer these nails into a tree repeatedly.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... man that's a lot of a lot of force and a lot of damage but if the objective is to cut down the tree like what did you really accomplish right and i think what we're seeing here on display is really the limits of american power uh... this was always going to be an asymmetric confrontation and it's one of the reasons why i think a lot of the war planners you know who have who have considered some version of this
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this military expedition over the last 40 years and I've concluded that like this is not going to be a simple thing.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be easily resolved and given the lessons of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war, it became very clear that any kind of land incursion in Iran would be would be even crazier for the United States to attempt.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So at some point you were going to get into a stalemate and a stalemate in an asymmetric confrontation always is going to favor the weaker power.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: In this case, the Iranians and translate to a kind of leverage at the bargaining table that they would not have had otherwise.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is going to have massive, I think, long-term global strategic implications for the United States, and the process of showcasing the limitations of American power.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've also alienated ourselves from our allies in Europe, from our allies in East Asia.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We started a war that created a really catastrophic energy crisis where people all over the world without consulting them in any way.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: we've got ourself into this quagmire without any clear exit plan.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And at the end of the day, the Chinese, in this moment, look like the responsible stability-seeking power that wants to bring this to a conclusion.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of those things combined, I think, are disastrous for the United States's position in the world moving forward.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can still blow things up with the best of them.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is why that has been the purpose of the narrative out of the defense department.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because this is what we have right now to show for our actions in Iran.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: We blew up this many ships.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: We blew up this many buildings.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that is clearly not translated to political objectives in any discernible way just yet.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's absolutely right.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, of course, it reports one way that President Trump was sort of cheered up by the war by his advisors was that they presented him with videos every morning of legs we pulled up and as you suggest these images that don't translate into like any real.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: concrete gains.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: In terms of actually like what is actually the goal here, I think maybe it's probably useful to sort of disaggregate the different parties because I don't think that there's any one unified goal and I'm not even sure from the point of view of Trump if there is a goal in mind and all.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so I mean, let's just start with like, you know, America's ally, Israel, Benjamin and I have been pushing for the score for a long time, you know, for 30 or 40 years.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you finally got it.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as far as I can tell, the, from the Israeli point,
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: A view, I mean the goal is not like a new nuclear deal with Iran, it's like to destabilize Iran, maybe ideally to have a satrapi in the form of the set of the shock coming in, but that's unlikely and maybe just as preferable is Iran in a weekend state of internal conflict and civil war.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it is a pretty fair reading.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look, I think it's important to understand that there is a lot where we've heard about Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions, right?
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let's begin with that.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: All the evidence that we have points to the fact that the Iranians do not have nuclear weapons,
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: they do not have the capabilities to produce them at this time, they do not have the capabilities to operationalize them and that the Iranian nuclear weapons program has been suspended for a very, very long time.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, there are a lot of states that have nuclear weapons.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: only one has ever deployed a atomic bomb that's been the United States, most other states that have them including the North Koreans, including the Pakistanis, including the Indians, including the other countries that possess some of the Russians and Chinese, and so on.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: They understand that this is a game that you lose by playing.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: right, and not only do the Israelis have significant deterrent capabilities, they also have nuclear weapons and they have first and second strike capabilities.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the idea that the Iranians were going to somehow race to a nuclear weapon and then use that to destroy Israel, which is of course the narrative that the Israeli Prime Minister and so many of his allies, repeat, at Nazim, it just doesn't make any
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not grounded in reality or logic.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, putting that to the side now that we've dealt with it, I think it's important to understand that this is really about the geostrategic situation that Israel is in.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has always largely been about that.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Israel is a small country.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It in relation to many other actors in the region.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has a relatively small population today somewhere around 10 million.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when you think about that 10 million in many ways, when we think about how it translates into military power, it's much smaller than 10 million, because there are several segments of Israeli society that don't contribute to the conscripted military and the proportion.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: of that population that doesn't is growing.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this is a major issue inside of Israel today.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so you have this tiny country with a tiny population that dominates the ethnic kin, the Palestinians, of half a billion people around it who make up its neighbors.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And is going to live in a adversarial relationship with the vast majority of the people around it.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: who, all by the way, have much greater numbers, have much greater resources, and to survive in that condition.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the Israelis are essentially faced with a choice, and that choice is find a way to make peace with the Palestinians, which they've chosen not to do.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: or exist in this climate of constant perpetual warfare in an ever-expanding circle of fire.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is where we are today.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: For a long time, I think the Israeli perspective towards the region has been shaped by, you know,
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: working with Washington to maintain collaborative relationships among certain regimes.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then working to maintain a deterrent balance against those adversaries who wouldn't play ball, whether it's a Lebanon or Syria or Iraq or what have you.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that's changed to important things have changed over time.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, the nature of Israeli capabilities.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And number two, the extent to which the United States military has been willing to be at the disposal of the Israelis as well.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this has allowed them to move from a vision in the region that is not simply about management and deterrence, but is about domination and hegemony.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, if you are a tiny country that is in a confrontation with a larger group of much bigger, more powerful states, the best way to kind of achieve a gemony across this space is to ensure that those states are constantly failing, constantly warring with each
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: entities.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not coincidence that when we hear about the partition of Syria, for example, that these tend to come from Israeli sources or the partition of Iraq and to smaller ethnic states or regions or the partition of Iran and to like Kurdistan and
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And all these other sort of Israeli fantasies, these are coming from a place that seeks to dominate this region by keeping it constantly in division and war.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that makes sense from the perspective of Israeli interests.
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make sense from the perspective of American interests, which I think is really, really important here since the United States happens to be attached by the hip.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: to Israel in this war.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, no, I mean, I think you raised a bunch of, how you really good points.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's absolutely the case that, you know, if one looks at Israel, they have a kind of divide in conquer strategy, which is applied not just to Iran, but to Syria and Lebanon and other neighbors, I mean, the question then becomes, not what is Israel up to because I think that's fairly clear.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only thing I would add to what you're saying is, I think it needs to be underscored
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: contact with the neighbors and keeping the region Balkanized, and also constantly engaging in wars with its neighbors is a way of avoiding the Palestinian issue.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what is often seen the sort of like logic used.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's like the way the Palestinian issue is only a problem because it has like outside sponsorship.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this was the argument that was like, you know, made about Iraq.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, there was a, the famous slogan, you know,
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The road to Jerusalem is through Baghdad.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was a slogan during the first Iraq war.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the idea was, you know, like you get rid of Saddam Hussein, and it's what we could do with the Palestinians.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now where we told that the road to Jerusalem is through charad.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like to me, like from the outside, like that just seems like an absurd fantasy, because the Palestinian issue is in the problem, because, you know, the Palestinians exist.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: and they're not going away anywhere and you have to deal with that, but it seems like Israel's preference is always to deal with some sort of external force as a way of avoiding the Palestinian issue.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did you think that's a fair reading?
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think this partly true, but I also think that at the same time, the Israelis have figured out how they want to deal with the Palestinian issue.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's either through the management of some form of apartheid and now through eliminationism.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think this is that they've already sort of have a solution for how to deal with that.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: The bigger challenge that they're facing is, well, the implications of that means that we're going to be in conflict with the rest of the region.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: or different actors within the region over time, one day.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a Dom, one day it's Tehran, one day it's Hezbollah, one day it's Yemen, one day it's but the key dynamic here is that the Palestinians are the ethnic kin of the vast majority of people surrounding Israel.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they sympathize with them.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they feel that what's happened to the Palestinians is wrong.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that defines their relationship with Israel more than anything else.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right?
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not changing anytime soon.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I think that is what shapes Israeli strategy more than anything else.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, there was a time when the Israelis sought to use certain regional dynamics as a way to pressure the Palestinians.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: the Abraham Accords, for example, the, you know, the policy towards Iraq and the days of Saddam, or what have you.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to an extent that that has worked, but I think the Israelis have got to the point where they're not really concerned about the Palestinians so much anymore, they have much greater ambitions.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think they also understand.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a part that's particularly important for folks who are listening in the United States to think about.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they understand how much of what they are capable of doing in the region is dependent on the United States.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they also understand that there's an expiration date to American influence in the region.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is within that window, right, that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis hope to achieve what, you know, what they called their dreams for the past 40 years that they have been unable to get any other president to go along with until they convinced Donald Trump to go to war in Iran.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is a closing window, I believe, for American dominance of the region, and
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's because of that that the Israeli seek to achieve as much as they can within this time frame because it's probably not going to be as easy to do so moving forward.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think this shapes a lot of it as well.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know, I think that makes a lot of sense.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as you suggested, like earlier, this is really a gender.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is really a bit of a little bit of a nice state once.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, one could say that some version of, you know, is really American, hegemony, is what the U.S. wants with like, you know, what we once saw earlier with both Trump and Biden with the Abraham Accords is some sort of vision of,
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: like regional cooperation, working with the GCC states this sort of real-air out of crats for the online system that builds up prosperity and is enriching.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not what we're seeing now, right?
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is like, if you wanted to blow off the apron, have a cohorts, you'd be pretty much doing what you're doing now because the current war shows all the sort of like, it highlights all the tensions between,
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Israel dominated Middle East and, you know, what I think most of the GCC countries are like willing to kind of live with.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe, you know, our Emirates might be okay with this, but I'm not sure if the other countries are, but what's your sense of that?
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how does like this war fit in with what is in American interest as it gets what's in Israel's interest?
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's not just blowing up something like the Abraham Accords, it's blowing up something far more central and important to the American national interest, which is the production of natural resources in the region.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think with every administration, there is their own sort of view on things, Biden certainly had his own view, Trump very unique in his own way.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when we talk about the American national interest in the region, it has been about one central thing more than anything else.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is guaranteeing the free flow of natural resources out of the region and into the
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: single actor or group of actors can prevent that from happening.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the security and stability of Middle Eastern nations has already always been key for the United States in that regard, and it has sought to navigate its relationships throughout the region with that as the sort of guiding principle.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so if you're willing to help the United States, when it comes to the free flow of natural resources, you're in our good graces, and if you're not, we're going to have a problem.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is that is kind of shaped U.S. policy more than anything else, and then the other thing is the relationship with Israel.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is what one has always been in conflict with the other.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Always.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And today it is perhaps more in conflict than ever before, because the Israelis now have effectively brought the U.S. into a war that has led to the closure of the straits of her wars.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this has a profound impact on the price of oil and gas, and many, many downstream effects on the global economy, which are going to be felt by Americans, but are also going to be felt even more significantly.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: by folks in Asia and East Asia and in Europe as well.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: One thing we don't we don't talk a whole lot about just a little bit odd in this moment is the United States used to be far, far more reliant on oil from the Middle East than it is today.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are far more independent in terms of reliance on oil today from from the region.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it still has a pretty significant effect on the global market and it's not just about the oil.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about all the other products that are made from oil.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about all the other products that come through.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those rates, including different gases and fertilizers and what have you, that are shaking a global interdependent economy.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's terrible for the global interest, that's terrible for the American national interest, and that's happening to make Benjamin Netanyahu's 40-year dream come true.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not in any way in America's national interest to be doing this.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we have a administration at the top of the United States.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: which interprets things in very unique ways and this needs to be seen not just through the prism of the U.S.-Israel relationship but also through the unique sort of reality of Donald Trump's style of politics.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: which is effectively a mafia, so style of politics.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: He makes people offers that they can't refuse.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He uses the American military and the weight of U.S. bilateral relations to
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: change outcomes, whether it's in his threats to invade Greenland or his operation to take over Venezuela or his threats on Panama now with Iran and so on.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is a unique American policy under Trump that deserves its own investigation and analysis, which is different than many others.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, but I mean, like what's interesting here is I think that Trump's particular kind of like you know gangster style as you indicate that usually like the sort of smart gangster, you know picks on somebody small enough like you know like as a small local convenience store owner or restaurant owner
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: and you know says you know I'll offer you protection and that's been trump style in terms of you know like Venezuela you know lately what they did there is like a a very quick easy war in terms of just removing the leader make you deal with the existing overhead.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you all blowing up the ships in the Caribbean and in the Pacific?
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like what you're basically doing is targeting small countries, even like, you know, threatening my country, Canada, or Zerdig Denmark was Greenland, right?
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because Zerdig, like, weak partners.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think what sort of interesting is, like what Trump is now trying to adopt this towards, you know, Iran.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, which...
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: on one hand, you know, in some ways is a poor country, but it's also like still like a very forwardable country of 90 million people that actually are very well educated population with like a lot of like, you know, like science and engineering.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it has like, you know, not a fairly impressive military record, like, you know, fighting both against Iraq under Saddam Hussein and, you know,
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: to proxy battles with the US.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it is like a little bit interesting to see like do you think like Trump is aware of like you know the differences between like you know fighting Venezuela or Cuba and on the one hand in fighting Iran.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think he's come to learn those differences at this point.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think he would have been better served if he understood those differences before getting into this mess.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that one of the key problems is that he was sold the idea that this would be a cakewalk to bring back a term from a different era.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean Iran is a fundamentally different country than a lot of these different places that you mentioned.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is a significant country and size.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has strategic depth that is supported by a terrain that is unlike anything that the United States had encountered in Iraq.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has significant natural resources.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has a educated
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: which is different than I think what the United States has encountered in a lot of other places.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just going against Soviet hardware.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going against oftentimes hardware that is unique to Iran.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that has been refined and adapted over years of, as you said, proxy confrontation with the United States across the entire region.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this I think has presented a wide range of challenges to the U.S. military who has approached this situation a lot like they've approached a lot of other previous situations where there was the sense that air power was dominant air power was going to ultimately define the outcome.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what we've seen through the use of Iranian ballistic missiles and importantly drones is that the nature of the battlefield itself has changed.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's afforded the Iranians and ability to inflict significant costs on the United States and its allies that do not require an air force.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, we are as we've seen in Ukraine as well.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we are seeing a shifting battlefield today that is complicating what the United States can do
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think Donald Trump was sold the idea that this was going to be a quick thing.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The New York Times had some reporting on this.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we saw with the protests that took place in Iran in December.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was right around the time, the Benjamin Netanyahu was pitching this war to Trump coming to visit, if you will, remember Mar-Lago on New Year's Eve, and it was widely suspected at the time that Israeli agents on the ground in Iran had a lot to do with the mobilization of these protests.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not to say that there isn't legitimate dissent in Iran.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: There certainly
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But from the dynamics that we saw on the ground, the kind of use of arms in these protests, there was a lot of things that didn't fit the normal patterns of Iranian mobilization that suggested that there were foreign elements involved.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a kind of confirmed by Israeli media.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has been repeatedly confirmed by Israeli media and also has been confirmed in the reporting in New York Times that the Israelis basically said, like, hey, this is the recipe, you know,
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: there's sort of been a test of this already in December.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: We know we can kind of stir things up on the ground.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have our ways and our folks there.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can get guns in there and, you know, if we combine a decapitation strike with these things, it'll be a pretty quick and transformational victory on the ground and Iran and, you know, no boots on the ground are required and so on and so
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was a very important comment made before the war it even started.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: by Steve Woodcoff on one of the Sunday morning programs.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he said something to the effect of that the president, this was as the United States was engaged, at least ostensibly, in negotiations with Iran prior to the war.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: While it was moving all of these military assets in the region making it very clear that it was prepared for military confrontation.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Woodcoff said that the president was frustrated.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: that the Iranians hadn't just given up and accepted what Donald Trump wanted despite seeing all this growing pressure around them.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that comment really suggests more than anything else, the kind of mindset that Trump was in about number one, what the Iranians were willing to absorb, but also the amount of leverage that the United States really had over them.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: He didn't make sense in his mind that these negotiations were even still going on.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: He believed that the Iranians didn't have any cards to play and so on.
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so we can understand from this why he felt, why he easily concluded that once a military operation began, it could be concluded very quickly.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, because he assumed that the Iranians would fold very quickly and were essentially a house of of of cards, but of course this is not how how it's worked out at least not thus far.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even like certain more recent comments, Trump is basically trying to sell this as like, well, we've achieved regime change.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, the old Ayatollah's car on and he says like, now we have a much more moderate government in place that will now negotiate.
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's maybe like worth underscoring.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I would do aspects of this.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is?
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in some ways, you know, in line with what we were talking about earlier, this is the typical Israeli approach to arrivals, which is the sort of, you know, more the lawn strategy like you decapitate the leadership class, but I mean, like to my mind, more the lawn has never really worked.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the sense of, you know, like all of Israel's foes, when it's Hamas, or Hezbollah, have always continued because they're rooted in, you know, genuine mass movements, and you kill leaders and then new leaders arise.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what we want to see in Iran right now, as far as one can make out, it's opaque, but to the extent that there has been any regime change or shift, it's an direction of more hard, hard liners, that these sort of older generation of the late I told
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: tended to be very cautious and pragmatic and now you're getting a new generation of revolutionary guard figures that are much more hard-lined and much more nationalist.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean like what's your sense of that?
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there certainly hasn't been regime change in Iran, right?
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: No matter what President Trump says, I think Trump would have loved a Venezuela style solution here where you take out one set of leaders and then you suddenly negotiate an agreement with a different set and call it a day, right?
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's been no regime change in Venezuela either, the same regime is effectively in place.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: What he's hoping to do is eliminate the folks who he's unable to come to a deal with and the hopes that he can come to a deal with a different set of people, not really change the regime, the Islamic Republic is still very much.
• 31:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: there in Iran.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's kind of remarkable that, you know, we have a president and one believe that this was possible, but also now, was going on talking about how he's achieved this, even though it's very clear that he has not.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: In terms of like the new cast of characters that are at the forefront,
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look, I think there has been internal debates in the Iranian regime for some time about how best to handle the threats from the United States, and they certainly see themselves as threatened by the United States and have been for some time.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: of an authoritarian western ally, Shaw of Iran that was effectively installed after a western back U.S. British coup that deposed a democratically elected Iranian leader who wanted to nationalize Iranian
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: oil assets.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so this animosity is deep in Iran towards the United States.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been there for a very long time.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then after 9-11, of course, we invaded Iran's neighbor to the East.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then we put Iran on a list and access of evil lists along with Iraq and North Korea.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we invaded Iraq, Iran's neighbor to the West.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so if you're sitting into Iran, and you're seeing the American army invading your neighbor to one side, and then the American army invading your neighbor to the other side, and you're put on the list as next, right?
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're preparing for this eventuality.
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think there were many inside the regime in Iran who had been arguing for some time.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, look at North Korea.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody is invading North Korea.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why is nobody invading North Korea?
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because North Korea made a decision to race for a nuclear deterrent.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And once they did, nobody bothers North Korea.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it is obviously an isolated country, but it is a country that is not dealing with the kind of external threats that Iran was dealing with.
• 33:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: That, you know, were opposed to the strategy that was effectively maintained by the IITOLA.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I, that wanted to stay in this sort of gray area where he was, you know, not racing for a nuclear bomb, but also not completely abandoning the infrastructure that could potentially lead to breakout if they ever made that decision.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the voices that were critical of that approach are the voices that remain today.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if that necessarily means that Iran moving forward will make the decision to race for a bomb.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think there is going to be a reassessment of what makes sense for Iran in terms of the best way to achieve deterrent capacity.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're going to look at the period of the previous Iotola's decisions as one that contributed to bringing them to this moment.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not going to be an assessment that's critical of opposing, you know, the, the west.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be one that I think is critical of not taking further steps to safeguard Iranian deterrence.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, this is the, this is the regime change that has been brought upon by, by Donald Trump.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks for having me again.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you eat always a pleasure?