Latest / The Fourcast / Former CIA analyst: Trump likely to attack Iran

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Former CIA analyst: Trump likely to attack Iran · The Fourcast

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  Iran is a very hard target country.
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  The sort of naval and aerial assets that are moving into the
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  region suggest, I think very strongly that a strike might be
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  imminent. Folks inside the US intelligence
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  community, the White House might have some sense of what's
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  coming. But the people I talked to in in
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  DC describe this incredible challenge with trying to
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  understand what's going on, you know, between Donald Trump's
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  ears. So is Donald Trump more
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  dangerous than his foreign enemies?
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  Hello, and welcome to the forecast.
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  Today, we're joined by a writer who spent years inside the US
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  intelligence system. David McCloskey is a former CIA
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  analyst who worked in agency stations across the Middle East
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  during the Arab Spring and said in the Counterterrorism Center
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  on Syria and Iraq. He contributed to the
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  President's Daily Brief and delivered assessments to
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  congressional oversight committees, senior White House
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  officials and military commanders.
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  He has since written a series of modern espionage novels grounded
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  in that experience. His latest, The Persian, follows
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  the covert struggle between Iranian and Israeli intelligence
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  services and the fallout when a Mossad operation unravels.
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  David, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, great to
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  be here. Well, you're joining us at a
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  very interesting time in a place that you used to cover right
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  now. There was AUS Carrier Group on
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  its way to that region. As a former analyst who spent
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  time there, how do you see the next few days unfolding?
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  It does seem to be a bit of a repeat of the Venezuela script
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  here. Now, there's always the
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  possibility that's Trump decides to back down, that the Iranians
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  wave a hand and say we'll, we'll negotiate.
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  And, you know, it stops, however, that this sort of naval
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  and aerial assets that are moving into the region suggest,
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  I think very strongly that's a strike might be imminent.
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  And, you know, analysts all around the world, I think maybe
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  unlike my time when I was inside the agency, we're now having to
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  try to predict the actions of Donald Trump, which is very
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  challenging. Is that more challenging than
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  trying to predict the actions of foreign leaders?
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  Oh, I think so at this point, yes, very much so.
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  Obviously, you know, the folks inside the US intelligence
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  community at the White House might have some sense of what's
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  coming. But the people I talked to in in
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  DC and we're still some still at the agency or have recently
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  left, describe this incredible challenge with trying to
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  understand what's going on in his mind.
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  And so, you know, it, it is very much, I think, comes down to
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  what's going on, you know, between Donald Trump's ears.
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  Well, look, you mentioned Venezuela there.
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  And look, we're all trying to work out what Donald Trump might
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  be doing, but just looking at the options that he has, your
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  understanding? So Venezuela, it looked like
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  there were intelligent U.S. intelligence assets that were
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  very well placed in Venezuela. How difficult, though, is Iran
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  to get intelligence sources? Either place them in there or
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  just get information out of them.
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  How, how difficult does that make for decisions that you make
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  and advice that you give a president?
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  Yeah. I mean, Iran is a very hard
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  target country. It's an extremely, what we'd
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  call an extremely high counterintelligence threat
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  environment. It is obviously though an area
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  when you look back at in particular what the Israelis
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  have done inside Iran over the past couple of years, This is a
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  place where Western intelligence, Israeli
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  intelligence agencies have really been able to act, in
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  particular the Mossad. So take for example the 12 day
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  war last summer. The Israelis were able to build
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  pattern of life information on dozens of senior Iranian
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  military officials, security officials, decision makers.
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  They were able to get deep into their comms such that in one
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  instance they were able to convince all of these people
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  that a meeting needed to occur at a particular place.
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  Everyone went there and the Israelis blew up the meeting
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  room. That level of sort of
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  penetration is absolutely astounding and suggest to me
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  that maybe not just the CIA on its own, but this sort of
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  partnership of, you know, allied services, the Mossad, the CIA
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  and the Arab services probably have an incredible ability to
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  act inside Iran. Now, whether they know exactly
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  what's going on in the supreme leader's mind, that's a
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  different intelligence question. But the ability to really act on
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  the ground demonstrated capability on the part, in
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  particular of the Israelis. How important is is that stuff
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  for the decision making process? Because we've, we've, we've had
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  lots of bluster from, from President Trump and a lot of
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  people looking at this thing, right?
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  OK, there might be rockets in the sky, there might be
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  ballistic missiles being fired left, right and centre.
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  But those pinpoint precision strikes that have been able to
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  be played out in the past on the mindset of the Iranians of the
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  Iranian regime. How important is that for
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  putting the fear of God into? Them.
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  Yeah. Well, I think it's very
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  important and there's a there's an analogue here potentially
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  with an operation Mossad did against Hezbollah, this pager
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  attack that happened in the fall of 2024.
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  Now, you know, we could have a, a conversation about the ethics
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  of that and, and sort of morality, right?
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  But. And for people who aren't
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  familiar with that attack, this was this massive operation that
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  took years and years to plan, and before you know it, 2000 odd
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  pages end up in the hands of foot soldiers.
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  Hezbollah foot soldiers in in, in Lebanon and they all explode,
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  localized explosions and lots of young men end up losing fingers,
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  eyes and that was a that was impressive.
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  From an intelligence standpoint, absolutely impressive.
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  The Israelis had actually built a product, a pager and a battery
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  that they sold via cutouts and intermediaries to Hezbollah,
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  became the supply chain and as you say, detonated this over the
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  course of a single day, injuring, maiming thousands and
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  and killing dozens. Now, the analog here for Iran is
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  that in that case, in Lebanon, what the Israelis managed to do
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  was to really bruise Hezbollah's command and control
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  capabilities. So the ability of Hezbollah as
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  an organization to send orders to communicate among the upper
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  echelons. And it really damaged the morale
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  inside the organization because you think, what are you fighting
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  for if the people around you, the organization itself, can't
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  even protect you? And I think in Iran, these kind
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  of pinpoint strikes or finding, you know, pockets of leadership
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  and killing them, it can have a tremendous ability on an
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  organization's, you know, sort of capabilities to conduct a
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  fight. So I could imagine, you know, in
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  the context that we're in now, if, for example, dozens and
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  dozens of IRGC, right, the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
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  Corps, the sort of, you know, kind of one of the key military
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  and Security Service institutions in Iran.
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  If that were to happen now or in advance of another set of
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  strikes, especially in the context of the unrest that's
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  going on inside Iran, it could be very devastating.
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  As a former CIA analyst watching the ruins from afar, did you see
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  the events of the last few weeks unfolding?
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  To be honest, now, you know, I, I think the, the thing with
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  these kind of potential revolutionary situations is that
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  they are inherently unpredictable.
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  You, you as an analyst can look at the pillars of stability in
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  an authoritarian regime and say there's potential for unrest,
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  there's potential for protest. But history shows us time and
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  time again that revolutionary situations catch everybody off
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  guard. The French Revolution was not
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  predicted. The Russian Revolution in 1917
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  not predicted. The Iranian Revolution in 79 not
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  predicted 1989. The sweep of sort of anti
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  communist demonstrations across Central and Eastern Europe also
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  not predicted. These things are surprising not
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  only to us or to the people living like living at that time,
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  but to the actual participants. And so I think this sort of
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  swell of unrest in Iran was in some ways not surprising given
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  the the sort of kindling for it. But as it happens and the scope
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  and scale of it, it's totally unpredictable.
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  It might have been predictable, but how?
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  What rocket boosters would have been put on it by Donald Trump
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  repeatedly making comments saying hey, take to the streets
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  and the US is there for you? The US has, we have many
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  problems in the way that we conduct foreign policy in the
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  Middle East in particular. This is one of them.
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  And it drives me nuts because it, it reminds me so much of the
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  experience I lived out when I worked on Syria when I was at
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  the CIA, which is we, we have a strong tendency to have our
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  rhetoric, the communications get so far out in front of what
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  we're actually willing to do that it creates this tremendous
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  gap of kind of, you know, word and deed.
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  And into that gap you can have, you know, an extreme amount of
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  miscommunication both with friends and with adversaries in
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  the region. So in this case it would have
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  been far better to simply say nothing than to convince
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  potentially 10s of thousands if not more Iranians to go out and
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  and protest or to to resist the Islamic Republic when in fact no
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  help was coming, at least not imminent.
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  If you were in your old job, if you were still in post at the
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  CIA and you see the president going in the media tweeting out
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  whatever social media post he he he's using, saying, yeah, yeah,
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  take, take to the streets as an analyst, he's actually covering
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  that region. What would you be thinking?
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  I, you know, I'd be thinking it's a terrible idea.
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  I, I really would, because unless we're willing to do
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  something about it, unless it's actually going to be backed up,
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  which this obviously had no, no teeth to it.
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  It all it does is set up, I mean, really sets up a lot of
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  people potentially to be killed who who go out because they
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  think that there will actually be foreign intervention.
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  I mean, this dynamic played out precisely this way in Syria
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  where there were calls from opposition as an activist for
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  the US to get more involved very early in that uprising back in
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  2011. And we said things like Assad
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  needs to step down. There's of course the infamous
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  red line comment by then President Obama that, you know,
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  if Assad used chemical weapons, we would do something.
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  It would be crossing the red line.
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  And, you know, in both of those cases was really demonstrated
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  that we weren't going to to actually follow through on, on
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  our promises. And I think that that has a
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  tremendous, tremendously negative and, and and sort of
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  detrimental impact on our credibility in the region.
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  And it has these knock on effects of actually getting real
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  people killed. I mean, there's been no action
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  so far. However, there is this quote UN
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  quote massive Armada that is on route there now.
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  What can we expect of it? The air and naval assets that
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  are being put into Jordan, out of the dead air base in Qatar,
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  assets in Bahrain, Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia, the Abraham
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  Lincoln carrier strike group that has moved into the Indian
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  Ocean like this is this is what it would look like if you were
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  intending. OK, so the mood music is there.
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  Yeah, the mood, the mood music is there.
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  And it wasn't, by the way, when we had, when we were focused on
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  Venezuela, which you know, feels like 3 years ago, but was 3
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  weeks ago. So this is this is serious and
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  this is what this is sort of the elements of this strike force is
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  exactly what you would use if you were going to do things like
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  destroy Iran's air defense infrastructure or attempt to
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  destroy much of it, hit critical infrastructure, hit leadership
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  targets and potentially in some cases probably conduct cyber
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  attacks against, you know, electrical infrastructure and
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  digital infrastructure and the like.
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  So this is what you would expect to say where the US planning to
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  conduct significant military operations in Iran.
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  I think as we discussed earlier, the sort of $1,000,000 question
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  is, what is the guy in the White House going to think about
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  what's going on? And is he going to want, is he
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  going to see in Iran potentially a kind of replay of what
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  happened in Venezuela where we can kind of use this almost
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  gunboat diplomacy to get, you know, to get things done?
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  Because it's been mixed messaging, right?
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  Like the post that he puts out and the things that he was
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  saying that he wants. The one thing I didn't say in
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  the posts were I want you to stop killing innocent people.
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  There was lots of talk about maybe a deal.
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  Nuclear. We want what's going on nuclear,
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  which I thought was destroyed. And he was celebrating it being
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  destroyed last summer. So then you could be forgiven if
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  you're sitting around thinking, I'm not sure if this guy really,
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  I'm not too sure what he actually wants out of.
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  This yeah, no, absolutely. And it may be the case, you
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  know, again, it's it's so difficult to predict what he's
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  going to do, but it may be the case that he is linking this
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  Armada to the nuclear negotiations and a potential for
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  a deal for the very purpose of having a way to sort of claim
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  victory. Because it's going to be much
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  harder if, if you were trying to, if you were linking this to
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  the suppression of protests, that is going to be something
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  that that is a, that is a very existential issue for the
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  Islamic Republic and its leaders.
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  And it's not something that they would ever stop doing, even if
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  Donald Trump sort of pointed a gun at their head.
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  And so this, this potentially could be a way.
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  I always, I always hate ascribing some kind of devious
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  strategy to what Donald Trump does because I'm frankly, I
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  think he's very instinctual. But it may be the case that in
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  in in this instance, it's sort of the demands are linked to
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  something that the Iranians might actually be able to give
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  on. And so he could claim victory.
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  Three weeks ago there was real hope among people You speak to
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  voices that were coming out of Iran of possible regime change.
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  Does that hopeful misplaced now? Well, you know, again, I, I
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  would, I would think about regime stability and the context
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  of an authoritarian regime like Iran's as being something called
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  pillars, right? What are the pillars of that
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  regime stability? And the pillars are things like
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  elite cohesion, the loyalty and effectiveness of your military
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  and security services, the socio economic contract that you have
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  with the population. Do you have a legitimacy
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  narrative? How fragmented and divided is
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  the opposition against you? And what does the foreign
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  environment look like, you know, on most of those the Iranian
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  regime I think has was weak prior to late December, early
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  January and has been significantly weakened as a
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  result of the suppression of the unrest.
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  Look at the socio economic contract, right?
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  I mean, inflation rates in Iran are 50 to 70%.
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  You know, I mean, we change governments in the states if the
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  inflation rate hits three 4%, right?
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  We're talking about the most devalued the rial has ever been
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  against the dollar. We're talking about oil prices
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  that have declined by 20 or something percent over the past
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  year. And almost all of Iran's oil has
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  sold to China, which is a very not the best partner, right?
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  They're getting this stuff on steep discount.
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  So that's one snapshot of a place that's going very badly
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  for the Iranians. The the legitimacy narrative of
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  the Islamic Republic, I think was already extremely hollow and
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  has now been exposed by this violence is something that is
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  just very few Iranians actually believe in anymore.
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  But the problem is that the two most important pillars, elite
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  cohesion and the loyalty and effectiveness of the military
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  and security services. It hasn't really cracked.
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  It really has not. And so, and predicting when
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  those things split is again, as we were talking about in the
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  context of revolution, it's really it's, it's almost, it's
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  impossible. It we get to the limits of human
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  cognition. And the, the fact of the matter
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  is that intelligence agents all around the world, those two
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  pillars are the most difficult to collect on, right?
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  That's, that's where spy agencies from the CIA to Mossad
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  probably have real gaps. And so I think it comes down to
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  this question, though, of those coercive institutions, right,
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  The besieged law enforcement command, the IRGC, do those
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  things hold? And so far, they seem to be
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  holding. Now, will they hold after or if
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  Donald Trump decides to conduct a massive round of strikes
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  against these institutions and a bunch of their infrastructure?
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  It's hard to say. But it does seem that they were
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  the the Iranian regime was able to use those institutions to
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  kill 10s of thousands of people and they held together.
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  And these institutions are vast, right?
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  Like so the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is big.
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  The militias are absolutely vast.
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  What are we looking at? Like 800,000 to 1,000,000 armed
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  people in a population of 90 million.
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  I'm not sure if it's quite that high, but it is.
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  It's hundreds of thousands, certainly, and it is.
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  Who are armed and clearly have no question about using those
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  arms on. Civilians, absolutely.
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  And that's, you know, these, these very personal dynamics.
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  It's something I, I saw up front in the Syrian conflict where we
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  kind of, I think we, we look at these and we, we kind of say,
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  especially from our Western vantage point, how in the world
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  do you have hundreds of thousands of people who are
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  willing to use violence against others?
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  And, and the reality of it is so mundane.
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  But it's the power of these institutions is in this mundane
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  reality that in a in a context like an Iran or in Syria, where
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  it's actually very hard for most people to support their
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  families. Many people are sort of
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  marginally employed. And where there isn't real hope
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  among many people in the population for a future.
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  If you have stable employment for a a state institution, your
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  whole world can be linked to a paycheck an organization is
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  giving you. And if that organization is
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  going to say go out and we need you to, you know, we're going to
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  suppress these protests, these rides, you can start to get into
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  a very US versus that mentality. Even if you personally might be
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  very ambivalent about the ideology of the Islamic Republic
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  and take no joy in the violence that you're committing, you
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  still might do it because the alternative is no future for
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  yourself, right? And and that is the position
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  that I think hundreds of thousands of these, you know,
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  Iranians are in right now. And it's why these these
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  revolutionary kind of protest uprising dynamics get so nasty
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  and, and can be it can be so challenging to overthrow or
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  unseat these kind of regimes. The Assad regime eventually was
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  overthrown. Yes.
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  We've seen Hezbollah in Lebanon decimated over the last 18
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  months. We've seen Hamas in Gaza
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  decimated. This is the axis that Iran was
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  propping up. What do all of those three
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  forces falling or not being in the shape that they were two
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  years ago mean for the strength of Iran right now?
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  Yeah. Well, again, you go back to that
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  pillar construct, that last one, It's the foreign environment.
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  What? How is that supporting your
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  regime and its stability or is it working against you?
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  And I think you would have to say that Iran had built up some
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  measure of strategic depth in its support for those
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  organizations and countries. And, you know, it was often
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  thought rewind the clock a couple years before, all before
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  essentially its entire axis of resistance was tremendously
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  weakened. And it had always been thought
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  that if there were strikes on Iran, you know, if if Trump's
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  Armada is sailing to Tehran or out, you know, to the Persian
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  Gulf now and Hezbollah is is strong and hasn't been decimated
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  by Israel, that you would have to think about the strike on
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  Iran in the context of what would become this kind of multi
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  front, multi pronged conflict. You don't really have to think
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  about that right now. And so Iran, I think is much
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  weaker, much weaker regionally than it was a couple of years
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  ago. And as a results, it's going to
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  make it, you know, again, going back to what's going on in
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  Trump's head, the calculation is very different than if you had a
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  real active threat, particularly against Israel from Hezbollah
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  and from Hamas or even from some of these kind of Iraqi or Yemeni
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  militias. The Houthis, like all of this
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  has been. Iran's assets in the region have
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  been really crippled over the past couple years.
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  They may be weaker, but you know you need to watch a nature
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  documentary to see weaker. Scared animals can be the most
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  unpredictable and terrifying. So if you're looking at the
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  Iranian response now, if you're if you're ACIA analyst watching
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  this, what are you telling the president he needs to be worried
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  about? If you're in Israel right now,
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  are you looking nervous as well? Well, certainly a couple weeks
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  ago when Trump starts to threaten the Iranian regime and
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  tell the protesters that help us on the way, you know, the
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  Israelis were very concerned because a lot of these assets
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  that were moving to the region, in particular in a lot of these
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  aerial assets, you know, that we're moving into Jordan are
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  really critical for the interception of what would
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  probably be another missile and drone barrage that the Iranians
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  would attempt to unleash on our assets, but also on on Israel if
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  if there's a strike. And so, you know, getting,
• 23:02
  getting these assets into place is a critical piece of curbing
• 23:08
  whatever response comes. Now, I think the response
• 23:11
  depends a lot on how the Iranians perceive the strike
• 23:18
  because there is definitely a way in terms of the the, the
• 23:22
  sort of intensity of the strikes and the targets where you could
• 23:28
  communicate that this is not an attempt to unseat the regime.
• 23:34
  Now, obviously there's a lot of room for but, but really, if
• 23:40
  you're right, if you're an ACIA analyst right now and you're
• 23:43
  writing about the response or the potential response, you're
• 23:46
  probably scoping this from the standpoint of how the Iranians
• 23:50
  perceive it and saying, if the Iranians perceive this, this is
• 23:53
  the type of response. If the Iranians perceive this,
• 23:57
  this is the type of response. And I think it's very possible.
• 24:00
  And in fact, I mean, I'm almost certain that there's a range of
• 24:03
  options depending on how threatening the Iranians see the
• 24:09
  US strike. And I think it'd be anything
• 24:11
  from, you know, another volley of missiles and drones in all
• 24:17
  the way up to, you know, a much more full throated attempt to
• 24:20
  actually engage, you know, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf.
• 24:24
  But again, I mean, look, Iran's air defenses were completely
• 24:30
  overcome during the 12 day war last year.
• 24:33
  It's leadership was completely unsafe and they really weren't
• 24:39
  able to strike. I mean, there were there were
• 24:43
  drones and missiles that made it through the Iron Dome in
• 24:46
  Israel's air defense systems, but but not many.
• 24:48
  Yeah, the casualty rate was was very.
• 24:51
  Very low. And so I think, you know, again,
• 24:55
  from from from my standpoint, the Iranians are in a horrendous
• 25:00
  position here without much real leverage and, and frankly this,
• 25:05
  you know, the ability to scare the US or Israel after what
• 25:09
  we've seen over the last year and a half, he's got to be
• 25:11
  pretty limited. And the ability to scare from
• 25:15
  the American side and from the Israeli side is pretty
• 25:19
  impressive, right? During this 12 day War, One of
• 25:22
  the things that struck me wasn't just the the position of the
• 25:30
  strikes that were held in Iran. It was the images that were
• 25:33
  coming out of Iran of Mossad soldier, the the green light
• 25:37
  pictures of operatives operating on Iranian soil that they then
• 25:42
  pumped out to the to the world because they because they I'm
• 25:44
  presuming they wanted Iran to see them.
• 25:46
  Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, and this is, you know,
• 25:49
  while while researching the Persian I, I came across this
• 25:53
  incredible story that that makes a very similar point, which is
• 25:57
  the, the Israelis using most likely local assets.
• 26:02
  This was maybe 3 or 4 years ago kidnapped a member of the IRGCS.
• 26:10
  Their the the Kurds force, which is their kind of foreign
• 26:12
  Expeditionary force. They have a unit called Unit 840
• 26:16
  that was responsible for attempting to conduct
• 26:19
  assassinations and targeted killings of Israelis and and
• 26:23
  Jews around the world. They kidnapped this guy in Iran,
• 26:28
  in Tehran, took him to another safe house also inside Iran,
• 26:33
  filmed a confession of him, and then smuggled that confession
• 26:39
  out and broadcasted across Israeli, Western, and Arab
• 26:43
  media. All of this was done inside
• 26:46
  Iran. All of it was done in part for a
• 26:50
  propaganda victory, you know, to show kind of the true nature of
• 26:53
  the regime and, and, and importantly, to demonstrate that
• 26:59
  the Israelis could essentially do whatever they wanted inside
• 27:01
  Iran. And I think, you know, we will
• 27:04
  see more of that this this go round if something does indeed
• 27:08
  happen. What it's actually saying is
• 27:10
  what could unfold could literally be stranger than
• 27:11
  fiction. I think it almost certainly will
• 27:14
  be. And I can tell you that while
• 27:16
  writing the Persian, there were three or four instances where
• 27:21
  reality essentially scooped me. Is I I started writing in the
• 27:25
  autumn of 2023 and a few months later we had this first.
• 27:29
  You know, the concept for the book is essentially a war of
• 27:32
  assassinations between the two intelligence services and
• 27:36
  reimagining this kind of conflict, the shadow war, so
• 27:39
  that what if the Iranians had the capability to kill Israelis
• 27:44
  inside Israel? And so the story is this kind of
• 27:47
  tit for tat exchange between both services.
• 27:50
  Well, sure enough, few months after I start writing, we have
• 27:53
  this volley of drones and missiles that the Iranians send
• 27:57
  into Israel. OK, I go into the I've got to
• 28:02
  incorporate the fact that this is now happening to the novel.
• 28:05
  Well, then we have a few months later the pager attacks in
• 28:08
  Lebanon and I'm having a, you know, I'm writing a book that
• 28:11
  has Mossad characters in it and Iranian characters in it.
• 28:14
  Had a conversation with my editor and I said, you know, if
• 28:16
  I'd put this in the novel, what would you have thought?
• 28:20
  I would have thought it was stupid.
• 28:21
  You know, this, it's too insane. And then a few months after
• 28:24
  that, we have Trump striking Iran's nuclear program in the 12
• 28:27
  day war. And, you know, these these
• 28:29
  videos of Mossad operatives and assets running around, you know,
• 28:32
  freely essentially inside Iran. And and so I just over and over
• 28:37
  again had to account for the fact that the the reality of
• 28:41
  this shadow war, and I think it's actually true across much
• 28:44
  of the geopolitical landscape today.
• 28:45
  The reality is just much stranger than the fiction.
• 28:48
  So spy novelist like myself, you know, it's it's a gift and a
• 28:51
  curse because we, we get scooped all the time, but there's a ton
• 28:56
  of material out there. And you if you just pay
• 28:58
  attention, you don't even have to come up with an insane idea
• 29:01
  for a plot, because reality will just reveal it to you at.
• 29:04
  Any point? Did you come up with a plot
• 29:05
  detail where a president decides that he might go to war with a
• 29:08
  NATO ally and invades? You know, I'm just throwing
• 29:11
  ideas out there. Greenland.
• 29:12
  Greenland Well, you know, this is it's funny you mention that
• 29:15
  because the next novel, which I've just finished is all about
• 29:18
  tension in the USUK Intelligence partnership.
• 29:22
  And when I started writing this book book just about a year ago,
• 29:25
  I thought it's going to be a little bit hard to do that.
• 29:28
  This isn't, you know, 80 plus year bond special relationship,
• 29:32
  the two services, the the signals intelligence services of
• 29:35
  both countries bound to the hip, you know, a lot of trust.
• 29:38
  How could it possibly, you know, be strained?
• 29:41
  And you know the ideas that I came up with now and look, in
• 29:45
  retrospect, almost quaint. Does that U-turn make President
• 29:49
  Trump, whatever may unfold over the next couple of months or
• 29:54
  days, even more unpredictable and possibly even more dangerous
• 29:57
  because he's he's he's U turned on, on Greenland.
• 30:00
  He's had to row back a little bit on his criticisms of NATO
• 30:04
  troops in Afghanistan. We've got Minneapolis on
• 30:07
  unfolding as well. Does he, does he need a win
• 30:10
  here? And does Iran, does all of a
• 30:12
  sudden geopolitics become his plaything?
• 30:16
  I think, I think geopolitics is the plaything.
• 30:18
  I think, I think what he's discovering is that if you're
• 30:23
  trying to do anything domestically, look at
• 30:27
  Minneapolis as an example, extremely messy, extremely
• 30:33
  tragic, and if you look at the polling, extremely unpopular
• 30:38
  with most Americans. Now I think he probably feels
• 30:45
  like foreign policy is a playground.
• 30:51
  We can apprehend, slash, kidnap Maduro.
• 30:55
  We can deliver, you know, wild speeches at at Davos and get
• 31:01
  into a massive fight with our NATO allies.
• 31:04
  But come out, I think maybe in his mind the victor because he
• 31:08
  gets these concessions on military bases in Greenland.
• 31:12
  Now Iran, you know, absolutely he has much more freedom to
• 31:15
  maneuver. And frankly, he has, you know,
• 31:19
  it's, it's maybe too glib to say this, but got a lot of shiny
• 31:23
  toys that we can play with when it comes to our military, our
• 31:27
  intelligence services, the global reach.
• 31:30
  There's a lot of president can do.
• 31:32
  I mean, we, we have, you know, he can do tremendous amount
• 31:37
  without Congress really being able to weigh in.
• 31:41
  So is Donald Trump more dangerous than his foreign
• 31:43
  enemies? I guess it depends on which one
• 31:48
  we're talking about. I think he is probably more
• 31:53
  unpredictable than many, many of his foreign adversaries,
• 31:57
  certainly. And that unpredictability and
• 32:02
  frankly that, as we were talking earlier, when we look at the
• 32:05
  Middle East, that massive gap between the things that we say
• 32:10
  and the things that we maybe do makes makes him extremely, I
• 32:15
  think, challenging to deal with for friend and foe alike.
• 32:19
  How much of a challenge does that make him then for his CIA
• 32:23
  advisors? Would you want to be advising
• 32:26
  this President? No, I, I would not.
• 32:30
  It would be a very challenging job.
• 32:31
  And, you know, the CIA very interestingly puts out a, a
• 32:37
  chapter of a book about presidential transitions because
• 32:42
  the CIA, when it, when a new president takes office, as
• 32:44
  they're preparing to take office, the CIA begins briefing
• 32:48
  him or her. And, and the agency, it's, it's
• 32:52
  online, it's available online. Agency writes up a document
• 32:57
  about that process. And it refers to Donald Trump in
• 33:02
  that document as a uniquely challenging intelligence
• 33:06
  customer. This is actually how the CIA
• 33:08
  phrases it. He's a uniquely challenging
• 33:10
  intelligence customer because he doesn't really read the briefing
• 33:17
  guy. Now presidents engage with the
• 33:20
  PDB, the President's Daily Brief, which is this kind of
• 33:23
  flagship product of. I used to contribute to that.
• 33:27
  I wrote for it under George W Bush and President Barack Obama.
• 33:32
  And it is a it's a book of articles essentially written by
• 33:37
  now the entire U.S. intelligence community, but mostly by the
• 33:39
  CIA, that explains what's going on in the world.
• 33:44
  And Trump, it seems, doesn't really engage with it in the
• 33:51
  same way that Obama and Bush did.
• 33:53
  Is that demoralizing for the service itself?
• 33:55
  If you're sitting in the CIA right now and you're risking
• 33:58
  life, a limb to come up with intelligence, you can provide
• 34:03
  the leader of the free world so that he can make decisions, and
• 34:06
  it turns out that he's not even reading this.
• 34:08
  What message does that send to everyone who's risking
• 34:11
  everything? Yeah, I think that's a, that's a
• 34:13
  discouraging position to be in, Absolutely.
• 34:17
  I will say, though, that, you know, there were like, for
• 34:19
  example, in the Clinton administration, Bill Clinton
• 34:22
  didn't really engage with the BDP, didn't really read it.
• 34:26
  You know, George W Bush read it six days a week and was an avid
• 34:30
  consumer of it. It there's a bit of an up and
• 34:33
  down. Every president's different.
• 34:35
  The, the people who work at the CIA understand that that there's
• 34:38
  going to be a different level of engagement.
• 34:41
  Obviously Trump is consuming intelligence in some context
• 34:44
  because when we look at the, you know, for example, the the raid
• 34:46
  to kidnap Nicolas Maduro, at the heart of that was intelligence
• 34:52
  provided by the CIA about Maduro's pattern of life and
• 34:55
  where he's living and all of that kind of stuff.
• 34:56
  So clearly there's an engagement with some of this, but I think
• 35:01
  he's not, he is, he is not a normal consumer of the
• 35:07
  intelligence from a national security standpoint.
• 35:09
  Because frankly, I think he's not, you know, the the sort of
• 35:18
  chaos that we're seeing geopolitically, the kind of
• 35:22
  flitting from one crisis or one arena to the other.
• 35:26
  I think it's probably very similar to the way he's kind of
• 35:30
  bopping through some of this intelligence stuff and probably
• 35:32
  the way his advisors do as well. It's actually lastly, you're a
• 35:37
  man who spent many years in the CIA.
• 35:40
  Undoubtedly you'll still have friends who are there working
• 35:43
  very hard, risking everything to provide intelligence for USA.
• 35:47
  You're now a chap who's writing books and espionage novels.
• 35:50
  And I'm sure that lots of stuff that's happened over the last
• 35:54
  few years is giving you ideas. And this is all great.
• 35:56
  How much would you like to not be given any more ideas right
• 36:00
  now and just for things to settle down?
• 36:03
  I yeah, just go write like a historical spy novel or
• 36:06
  something like that. You know, honestly, I think it
• 36:10
  might be better for all of us in the world if things settled down
• 36:13
  a little bit. I think a spy novelists have a
• 36:18
  lot of material and that's And that's a good thing from the
• 36:21
  standpoint of the writing, because there is more interest,
• 36:25
  I think now and engagement in what's actually going on in the
• 36:28
  world now. It creates a lot of stress and
• 36:30
  anxiety. So this there's there's a
• 36:32
  putting a take here, right? But I think there's a hunger to
• 36:36
  understand that that chaos we're we're living in a world where
• 36:42
  there's really a revenge of geopolitics again, right?
• 36:46
  And more interested, more engagement with that world and a
• 36:49
  desire to understand it by a lot of people who maybe aren't going
• 36:53
  to pick up, you know, a history of Iran but might want to dip
• 36:58
  into that by reading a spy novel about it.
• 37:01
  But how much faith do you have that under President Trump, that
• 37:03
  chaos might settle down? I don't think that chaos is
• 37:07
  going to settle down at all. I think that we are living in a
• 37:12
  world that is getting more chaotic, more conflict ridden.
• 37:18
  And I think, you know, we're living in a world where in many
• 37:22
  respects, what's going on in the White House is contributing to
• 37:24
  that. Well, that's a terrifying note
• 37:27
  to end on. David McCloskey, thank you very
• 37:29
  much for joining us. That's it for this episode of
• 37:32
  THE FORECAST. Until next time, goodbye.