← Bulwark Takes
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A
Ever notice your dog acting totally out of character? It might be stress. My dog Max used to lose it every time I grabbed my keys. The second I'd reach for the door, he'd be pacing, whining, or tearing up the couch. His separation anxiety was stressing both of us out. So I tried Cradle. They make vet formulated calming products with premium ingredients. Chews, bars, tinctures, whatever works for your dog. And here's the thing, they help dogs stay calm and relaxed without making them drowsy or zoned out. Whether it's separation anxiety, thunderstorms, car rides, or just the chaos of everyday life, Cradle helps support balanced behavior. And the best part, you can try cradle risk free. If it's not a good fit for your pup, you get your money back. No stress, no hassle, no hard feelings. So if you're ready to help your dog find their calm head to cradlemypet.com that's k r a d l e. My pet dot com, that's cradle with a K. Try it risk free today because a calm pet is a happy pet.
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Jack Harndale was helping his daughter Emily lift an awkward dresser up a staircase when he slipped and fell backwards. A week later, Emily asked him how he was doing.
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I'm good.
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Truth was, he wasn't good. Jack needed help. Then the darndest thing happened. Emily called Pacific Source My health plan. Jack learned that Pacific Source provides members with support beyond healthcare. In Jack's case, we got him in touch with the local food bank, but.
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C
You guys do that?
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B
Yes, we do, Jack. Pacific Source health plan.
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C
Hey, everybody, it's Tim Miller from the Bulwark. Excited to welcome to the channel. Mark Polymeropoulos. I got that right. I nailed it. Co host of Eyes on Geopolitics Potty retired from the CIA in 2019 after 26 years in the intelligence community. He's an expert on counterterrorism and a bunch of other relevant stuff. He's the author of Clarity and Crisis Leadership Lessons from the CIA. Mark, I wanted to do. I kind of just go and do a little around around the region with what we got going on in Iran with you to get us up to speed on the latest. Just right off the top here, there's an Axios report on Thursday where Trump says that he must be involved in picking Iran's next leader. And so I don't know, I assume that in the past I've heard rumors that the CIA has been involved in coups and in picking leaders before. I don't know if that was during your era. But how does he see that working, do you think?
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Well, nobody really knows that. I mean, this is such a story of a military operation which decapitation strikes, the fusion of intelligence with targeting, with precision weapons. I mean, the opening days of the war now followed by this level of uncertainty and what looks to be terrible, not even post war, but planning that's going on right now. And now Trump, you know, he said that there was not regime change. There is regime change now. It's, I'm going to choose the next leader, but it still might not be regime change, according to some of the other cabinet officials. And look, look, there is a, there is a long and some would say sordid past that the CIA be involved in coup plannings. But what you don't have is the president announcing that he is the one who's going to choose the next leader. You know, is it conceivable that, you know, if there was such a covert action plan that you would have identified individuals in Iran who could take over? Sure. Would that be presented to the President? Yes. Would he have personal approval? I don't know. Usually he would take the recommendation of the national security staff, you know, the way things normally work as this goes through an interagency process. But the idea that he's going to kind of pick and choose is rather preposterous. And, you know, I think in the back of his mind, he's thinking of the Venezuela operation in which we now have put a member of the regime, you know, Rodriguez, who, you know, in power. Nothing's changed. The regime is still there, you know, the same people who abused the Venezuelan people. If he thinks he can do that in Iran, choosing a leader, you know, from a regime that has the blood of 30,000 Iranians on their hands, this is getting crazy. And so we're really in a level of, I honestly think Trump just kind of, well, we know this. He just says things off the top of his head. We all react to it could be true, might not be true, but I don't think they know what they're doing right now. And that's the biggest worry to me.
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C
I mean, he said, speaking of things that he just says, what's the David Frum line? There are a lot of secrets but no mysteries with Trump. You know, he's not exactly, doesn't exactly keep things close to the vest. And the very beginning of this, he said that they had identified two or three potential people in the Delsey Rodriguez mold, but they all got killed. You know, so to me, that, that speaks one to the planning issue. And here you talk about a little more. But second, there's, there's another player here, like with Israel. And I doesn't, I'm not, I don't know that we have any reason to believe that they're on the same page with Trump. I, I don't, you know, if, if, if Israel is out there just kind of yeeting like random mullahs and future ayatollahs because they're concerned about their own security. I don't know that they're like necessarily that excited about just doing a quick and dirty replacement pick in the Venezuela model.
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D
No, I think that, so the Israel thing is really interesting now. I think some of us, including myself, you know, we focused in the past on what we saw were some deltas between, you know, Trump and Netanyahu and certain things, you know, over the last year of the Trump administration. You know, I mean, Trump has said that he does not approve of, for example, west bank annexation and things like that. But what it turns out in the Iran case is you have in the pre war planning, you know, intelligence, you know, fusion cells that were set up clearly outstanding cooperation with the Israeli military. But now when it comes to kind of post war, and I think I'm pretty confident others in saying this, that there's going to be a natural separation in terms of U.S. goals, whatever they may be disjointed, and Israeli goals because the Israelis actually don't care other than Iran is weakened. And so if the Israelis and they look, the Israel has a long history up in Kurdistan. They certainly have relationships with ethnic minorities in Iran. A lot of their covert action operations are run through Kurdistan, for example, or Azerbaijan, other places. But if they want to arm the Kurds, and I think they probably are, and foment some type of uprising that would lead to what would be for us the worst case is civil war in Iran. For them, that's what they want. It's a weakened state. They don't care about things such as the 30,000 protesters who were killed. And I'm not dinging the Israelis on this.
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C
Sure.
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Because they have different national security interests. But you know, when it comes to,
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C
because we have none and they have some national security interests and we have basically none. So.
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D
Yeah, but I think there is a, is a difference right now. And the Israelis, you know, I have a lot of, you know, friends who are former Israeli intelligence officers. It's pretty clear that they're quite happy to see kind of a mess ensue in Iran, by the way, that was their model for Syria. If you remember, over several months ago, the Israelis were arming certain parts of the Israeli, of the, sorry, the Syrian Druze, and it caused problems for the Syrian central government. We freaked out and we told them to cut it out. They were happy doing that because what do they want, a week in Syria? And so the Israel factor is fascinating to me, let alone, of course, that Marco Rubio came out, you know, several days ago and said, basically we did this because the Israelis are going to attack, then the Iranians are going to hit us. And so we had to preempt the most preposterous and idiotic statement possibly in diplomatic history, but fascinating to see how this kind of moves along and, you know, will there be a time in which, you know, the goals are such that Trump says something to Bibi, hey, cut it out. Or the Israelis going full on right now and, you know, we'll see.
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C
I want to go back to you. So you mentioned the Kurds and how Israel is arming them. You have some experience with the Kurds from your career. There was a leak earlier in the week that the US Was also interested in arming the Kurds and supporting them. Leak out of the CIA. You follow, I'm sure, more ruminant feeds than I do. I follow more political feeds. And a lot of the more isolationist MAGA types were posting, this is fake news. Right. Like, don't trust this reporter. Trump isn't this stupid. He would never do this. As the week has gone on, it seems like we're at. We're doing it. That's what it seems like. Well, so what is your assessment for the extent of what, what it seems like is happening and the chance of success? Just give me a whole, Just give me your whole rundown of the, of the Kurdish gambit.
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D
So, you know, there's a, there's a cartoon, I think a Peanuts cartoon. Obviously someone doctored it. Lucy taking, you know, the football and kind of, yeah, pulling it away from saying us portraying the Kurds once again. For those of us who, you know, like myself, who worked with the Kurds in the past, I lived with them in the mountains of Kurdistan in December of 02 to January of 03. This is when we were prepping for the infill into Iraq. And I'm going to set this whole conversation up by, by relaying an incredible back and forth I had with a very senior Kurdish PUK official that's one of the Kurdish factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. And basically I was a young CIA officer I gave him my rah rah speech. America is going to come, you know, institute democracy in Iraq and you're going to have a free Kurdistan. And he said, Stop, Mr. Mark. And he said, look, we've done this before with you. We're going to cooperate now, but you're going to screw us in the end. You will betray us. And by the way, I know it's coming, so don't give me any of this BS about democracy. And I was a little chagrined from that. And I'll never forget that because that's exactly what seems to be happening again. I think there was certainly there was a phone call from President Trump. It's now out to a Kurdish official. This is Iranian Kurds basically asking for help. The rest of the Kurds, these are the Iraqi Kurds, I think, feel they have no choice but to assist. And then CNN puts out reporting that pretty well sourced that we are actually doing that already. And Tim, a really important point on that. In order to do that, this is what I did for a living. If we're going to arm a group in order to conduct covert action, that takes a finding. And that finding is a regime change finding. And so that means that there is actually regime change on the table, that there was a, there was, there was a.
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C
What do you mean a finding? Explain that.
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D
What do you finding is a, is a written order that the National Security Council via President presents to the Central Intelligence Agency. And you know, there's back and forth and then the President, the CIA writes it, the president then signs it and it authorizes the CIA to conduct covert action. But there's an end goal. And if you're providing weapons to the, to the Kurds to foment an uprising in Iran, that is regime change. And I think maybe that part of it was missed a little bit in terms of the analysis. Not for me, not for all of us. We're like, wow, we're at it again. Here we go again with my Kurdish friends. For the Iranian experts, I think a lot of people looked at, said, well, hold on a second. You know, you might foment a whole bunch of chaos going on, but the Iranian people in a, in Iran, which is a multi ethnic society country, might be like, well, hold on a second, the Kurds, really, how about the Turks who are going to freak out at this. And so there's a lot of things to say like, okay, has this, again, has this been thought through? And I'm not sure we have that competency, competency in our, in our government now that's my concern.
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C
I mean, it seems like it definitely hasn't, right? And it's like everybody. Pompeo is talking about Mekar arming the Kurds. Trump is saying that we had people in mind. Now they're dead. They didn't have a plan for what comes next, just on the arming, because having done this kind of thing. So it also, I presume, means that we have significant special forces in Iran, like arming the Kurd. Like we can't arm them without having troops there or at least some type of force there, right?
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D
Well, no, we could do it from Kurdistan. You know, the US Has a presence there. The Israelis have a presence, presence.
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C
So the Iranian Kurds are leaving Iran,
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D
you know, and, you know, so that, that's a way to do this. But also in my channels, there's a lot of rumors that, you know, American SOF Special Operations Forces might be involved in this. And if you saw President Trump in the last couple days has not discounted this. Neither has Secretary of Defense. I'm not going to say Secretary of War because that's stupid. Secretary of Defense.
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C
On this show, we do Secretary of War to kind of make fun of him. That's the only way.
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D
And then we'll drop and do, you know, push ups and bench 315 or whatever he's doing. But, you know, but there is a notion, and I think it's out there in my world that, you know, we might have, you know, SOF Special Operations forces on the ground and they're not discounting that. You know, there are things such as reports in which you hear, you know, you know, people, you know, who are getting mobilized in the reserves. We saw that, I think it was the New Hampshire reserves were mobilized, certainly in the Air Force. Then you also, you know, hear from my old world that people are gearing up and that means there are plans to put US Forces in Iran. Certainly the Israelis are going to go in, I think, and they're probably. Israeli Special Operations forces are there already. And so again, so, Tim, you're a political guy we haven't even talked about. This is insane. A year ago, Trump ran on never ending, you know, no more never ending wars. Every cabinet official he has was railing against Kamala Harris and the Democrats were gonna cause us to go to war, you know, in the Middle East. And now we've gone from what they wanted to do, this kind of short term strategy in Iran, which obviously isn't working. We're talking. And the Pentagon, I think, announced today it might go the Call ups might last until September. And so we're talking that's, that's six months from now. This is getting to be exactly what Trump said he would never do. And I don't, I guess the MAGA cult all rallies around, who the hell knows but the American, I don't know. I know the opinion polls look pretty grim. Trump says he doesn't care.
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C
But I want to talk about two other things. I'm just curious if you have a take on John Ratcliffe, who's the current director of the CIA. And he's just very behind the scenes, which I guess is usual for a CIA director, unusual for Trump cabinet officials. So I just, I don't know, I'm just wondering what the buzz is around, you know, spook circles about Ratcliffe.
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D
You know, the buzz that I hear from friends both in and out is that, you know, he's never at the Agency. He doesn't, he's at the White House all the time. Now you can make an argument that a CIA director should have that access to the President and he certainly does. There was a weekly golf game that he had. And so, you know, the Ratcliffe, when he does kind of pop out and he says something, usually it's based on, you know, some kind of anti woke statement and it gets really silly or about the Russia hoax, which is, again, is ridiculous. But he has stayed behind the scenes. I think, you know, what his tenure is, you know, when we look at it has to do with kind of the death match he's in with Tulsi Gabbard. They detest each other. Everybody in town knows that. And so I think he seems to be winning. He seems to be winning. So that's kind of it there. The problem I have with, with Ratcliffe has to do with the brain drain out of CIA. You know, I have no friends left there. Literally, it's. And, and these are my friends across the political aisle. You know, a lot of them were, you were kind of traditional conservatives, but not kind of the MAGA crazies. And so, you know, when you, when you lose, people with expertise like myself who would have said, really the Kurds, I mean, I don't think anybody there is actually around who experienced working with the Kurds before. And the Kurds are wonderful, but there's a lot of stuff there. You're like, well, hold on a second, this might cause a civil war in Iran. Are we thinking this through? And so Ratcliffe to me is kind of this bit of an enigma.
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C
And you know, the brain drain is happening Across. And the craziest story of the week is the Cash Patel, last week fired, you know, Iranian specialists in the FBI because they were involved in the Mar A Lago classified documents case. And the only reason they're involved in that case is because Trump had Iranian war plans there. It wasn't like they were going after him. They just got called into it. But they got fired a week before the war.
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D
So the brain drain, you know. You know, George Kent, former ambassador, friend of mine, you know, he was telling me the other day, a quarter of the State Department is gone. That's insane. Cash Patel, the FBI, you know, the special agents I know are pulled off of duty, like, working what's called the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. And there's. And that's where they look at Iranian terrorism as well, and they're pulled to do immigration stuff. And so, you know, you know, we are one terrorist attack, one Iranian asymmetric attack against the United States, where I don't know if Cash Patel can get any more kind of, you know, stuff heaped upon him because he's such a. An awful director, doesn't care about the job, is running around with his, you know, with his girlfriend and using FBI resources to protect. Protect her and her friends. But I think that Americans are at risk because the FBI has, you know, is not on the ball with terrorism. And, you know, terrorism is always a problem that you want it to go away. As a former counterterrorism center, you know, officer at CIA, you know, whatever we do in the world, we have to still be involved in the CT efforts. And I'm really worried that the FBI has been so, you know, turned into this kind of strange machine backing up ICE and doing immigration raids that they are not putting the resources in or, Tim, as you noted, that they end up firing agents who were Iran specialists, by the way, in the intelligence community, in law enforcement, you just don't take someone who is doing something. And you're the Iran specialist. One of the great things at CIA, you know, I spent my career in the Middle east, so, you know, it's not that I was the smartest person of all time. I just. I have so much experience that if you put me on an issue, I know what I'm doing. And so, you know, having. You need experienced people to have, you know, what is the history of Iranian terrorism in the US There is actually. The FBI and New York Police Department have stopped Iranian plots in New York City. There was a big Iranian plot against Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C. several years ago. You gotta know about that stuff, you have to know everything about the target. And again, I worry that we don't have the people doing that. And you're always one really horrible mass casualty event away from that, really coming home to the American people.
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C
Last thing, President Zelensky tweeted something that kind of twisted the knife a little bit on Trump. We received a request from the United States for specific support and protection against Shaheds, a specific type of drone in the Middle East. I gave instructions to provide that help Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security. Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security. Glory to Ukraine. Well, we appreciate it, I guess. I don't know if we've been that great on that score, though.
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D
So, you know, national security is a team sport. And that's, you know, it's not just within US Government agencies, with our allies as well. And the Trump administration has made it, you know, their business to basically denigrate everybody who could help us, whether it's our European partners making fun of NATO contributions in Afghanistan, where a thousand NATO members were killed, you know, backing us up when we invoked the only time in History, Article 5. And when it comes to Ukraine, I mean, God bless this man, President Zelensky, who has been crapped upon so much by the United States. I mean, Trump, and I think it was even the press secretary, Spokesman Levitt, even talked about how, you know, Ukraine took all the weapons that we needed for this. Meanwhile, Zelensky comes out and says, by the way, we have experience with these drones. They do. We can help. And he offers to us. I mean, it's the. It's the greatest trolling of all time. But here I think the Ukrainians actually are serious and they will do it. And here, Tim, it goes.
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C
And they have. And they've also seriously made a lot of advances in this.
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D
They have. And so, but here's the thing again, the planning part of it, okay? So, so brilliant, you know, tactical initiation of the operation, decapitation strikes were degrading the Iranian military, who did not think that those drones, which have been so effective and awful in the Ukraine war, did, you know, did the US Military not understand. Did the intelligence community not understand that that was a vulnerability here and now? Of course it is. And so again, that's. That's the. It's the same thing with the, you know, evacuating Americans from 14 countries. A million Americans have to be pulled out of the Middle East. We did that stuff out of embassies, but we did it months or certainly weeks in advance of military conflict. The Trump administration was way late in this. So again, there's so many signs that the poor planning on this. But one key thing, I don't want to drone on too much, but you know, there is something though at the back of my mind and a lot of us, Look, Iran was an enemy of the United States. I mean, in my 26 year career at the CIA in the middle East, I battled the Iranians. You know, I saw what they did to our personnel at the US Embassy in Beirut. They murdered and tortured our station chief in Beirut. They blew up the embassy, killing seven or six or seven CIA officers. The Marine Corps barracks bombing in Lebanon. Then you go all the way to the Iranian provision of the EFPs, the explosively formed penetrators. They were providing these to Iraqi Shia groups during the war in Iraq and killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands of US soldiers. They're an enemy. I shed no tears that the entire Iranian leadership is dead. But then you kind of the juxtaposition is the planning on this is just turning into a big mess. And so, you know, there's a lot of mixed feelings about people like myself. I don't, I'm not upset the Iranian regime is getting their butts kicked. I just don't know if we know what we're doing just after that. Those first couple days of a little bit of euphoria, maybe that's the wrong word to use, but we're really in uncharted territory now.
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C
Totally agree with you on all that, Mark. I really appreciate the expertise on this. Running back from the beach, you know, getting, getting that tan in and coming to educate us. We'll, we'll stay in touch. All right, brother, thanks.
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D
Really appreciate it. Have a great day. Thanks.
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C
All right, man. Thank you so much. Everybody else, subscribe to the feed. We're trying to keep you posted on everything that's happening in the Iran war and all the craziness back at home. Tell your friends. Give us your thoughts below. We'll see you soon.
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E
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