← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
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- [00:00]
A
What is going on? Iran is incredibly weakened, I think there's no doubt, but it is absolutely showing that it still has the ability to lash out.
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B
This is an angrier regime. This is a regime much more determined to resist. The idea that these people are going to bow down and say we surrender is not going to happen.
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A
No follow up. And Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons. So the winging it and the freestyling and the freelancing in my opinion is quite dangerous for all of us. Hello everybody and welcome to the X Files with me, Cristiana Manpour in Florida
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B
this week and Jamie Rubin here in New York City.
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A
And no matter where we are, it is all Iran, all the time. It's just filling every single headline. And we're going to keep talking about it because it's incredibly dire and getting worse and worse globally. So really, are talks actually happening? You know, even though Trump says there are negotiations, are there they really happening or is it just parameters? How will Iran end up after this? The United States, the Gulf states, Israel, etc. And is America really diverting much needed weapons to from Ukraine to Iran? We'll start talking about that in a moment. So let's start, Jamie. It's hard to tell, but clearly there are no face to face negotiations happening right now. Each side has sent points to each other, the U.S. 15 points, the Iran's five points. And they are not even talking past each other at the moment. Apparently they're only sort of mediators. Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, maybe some others who met over the weekend to try to discuss which way forward. Should we just discuss what Trump has just put out as we speak? He's basically saying the United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime, all capitalized to end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made. But if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormu Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, Khag island and possibly all desalinization plants which we have purposely not yet touched. This will be in retribution for our many soldiers and others that Iran has butchered and killed or over the old regime's 47 year reign of terror. So that's the latest on truth social. Where do you see some diplomacy emerging from that statement?
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B
Well, it's not a very diplomatic way to get started, but it follows the pattern. And the pattern is the military goes about executing what it can do, which is destroy Iran's conventional forces, destroy Iran's missiles, destroy Iran's various navy and its drone capabilities to the extent it can. But meanwhile, the United States has gone back to square one. We are now not even talking to the Iranians directly. And what happens in a situation like this is papers are passed essentially by an intermediary, whether that's Pakistan or Egypt or Turkey or somebody else. This intermediary passes the messages from the United States and those back from Iran. And what I think is important for people to know about this, that means there's nothing secret going on, because the 15 point are pretty well known on both sides. The Iranians have said what they want. The United States has said what it wants. And what does it want? The same things it wanted before the war started. Some way to deal with the nuclear issue, some way to deal with ballistic missiles, and some commitment not to fund Hezbollah. But what this shows you, to me is that the Trump administration doesn't understand what was called the axis of resistance. And this is the most important thought I want to contribute. Resistance mentality is what the Iranian regime has had since it began. You know that better than anyone, Christiane. And they had a thing. It was called the axis of resistance in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Iran itself. That resistance mentality is what Trump never understood, that you're not dealing with what you would call rational actors. You're dealing with people whose life has been about resistance. So the idea that they're just gonna quit one day and say, okay, you win, is not who the Iranians are. And that's why this negotiation is going to be so difficult. And for me, it's hard to see us getting much better than we could have gotten before the war started on any of those three issues.
- [04:50]
A
And that is where it's so difficult to kind of see the way forward, because in the meantime, they have destroyed so much on all sides. There's so much destruction being done right now to Iran, to the Gulf, to, you know, everywhere. Of course, in that resistance packet is Hamas, or at least it was. Maybe it still is in Gaza. I've been told by, you know, negotiators and people like that. I've been talking to some of the Arab intermediates and others that whatever's said in public is either counterproductive or it's just said as a way of putting their positions out in public. Like Iran has said, we're not, you know, surrendering. We're not, you know, accepting these 15 points because they actually amount to total capitulation. Trump on his side says, we're in very, very good negotiations. And there's a lot of noise around just from previous negotiations that have been done, let's say, in the Clinton administration, when you're in the State Department, important ones, whether it was Kosovo and Milosevic, whether it was whatever in the Middle east, whatever. How should the parameters of negotiations, what should the principles, whether it's the US Or Iran be doing?
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B
If it was a normal situation where you were dealing directly with the other side, you would be talking in a diplomatic, you would be accepting that you're dealing with an adversary, and you would be going about the business in a very technical fashion. You would bring technical experts on nuclear, you'd bring technical experts on ballistic missiles, you'd bring someone who has an idea of how to prevent Iran from providing assistance to Hezbollah. Those are the three main things the United States is looking to achieve. But right now, the way I see it is that the Iranians have this one advantage, which is we've given them control over the Strait of Hormuz. They get to say whether it's open or closed, because shipping companies don't want to take risks. And the ability to escort ships is a massive operation that will take a long time to clear the Strait of Hormuz from sea mines, etc. So the Iranians have this question they have to answer, will they allow the Strait of Hormuz to be open or closed? Will they allow ships to come in or out? And they get to do that, frankly, just as easily in public as they do in private. And so what I see in this back channel, which is what it's called when you have the Pakistanis or the Egyptians or someone else doing the work, it's really just message passing. It's just precise message passing. They're trying to make sure the other side accurately knows what the adversary is saying. The public thing about this is obviously so different under President Trump because he says all these things that vary from moment to moment. And Christian, the start of the post says that I'm dealing with a more
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A
reasonable regime, but he's implying that they have regime changed already.
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B
Yeah, exactly. And I think arguably this is an angrier regime. This is a regime much more determined to resist and much more determined to be in resistance mode, which, I'm sorry to say, is what they know how to do, because that's the mentality of this axis of resistance. And so Trump thinks he can break their resistance through threats, but the threat he's making here to Attack electrical power generation or desalinization plants is something his Arab allies do not want him to do. It's my understanding they made absolutely clear to him that if the United States or Israel attack these power generating supplies, the Iranians will respond by attacking Arab facilities. That's the last thing his Arab allies want. And whether you think it's because of financial reasons, of the connections of the Trump family to the Arab regimes, or for foreign policy reasons, which I would hope it would be, this administration is very, very closely aligned with the Gulf states. So I find it hard to believe that this threat will be taken seriously by the Iranians because they know that the Arab don't want to escalate to a war that destroys all of the capabilities for generating electricity in the Arab world or some of it, or the desalinization plants, which obviously are crucial.
- [09:22]
A
Yeah. And desalinization, of course, affects citizens and civilians everywhere. And so many of the Gulf states and parts of Iran depend on this for their water consumption. Now, the last time President Trump threatened to bomb all the power plants, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, came out and said that a, this would be a war crime because desalinization, power plants, et cetera, are used for civilians and for their use as well, no matter where they're positioned. And then he also said that that threat last time he made it was a panicky threat designed to placate the markets. Now, the whole Strait of Hormuz is incredibly, incredibly difficult and complicated. All people have to do is read about it, read the distances, read the topography in Iran, read where they've got their missiles and their defenses. Iran is incredibly weakened. I think there's no doubt. But it is absolutely showing that it still has the ability to lash out, whether to Israel or whether to its, you know, the Gulf neighbors. And it's also saying that it wants to have some control over the Strait of Hormuz going forward, like even maybe generate a toll. It is allowing certain oil tankers through. Trump already said this weekend that it's allowing 20 more through. So Iran is showing that it will allow those that it views as friendlies right now. So it's not fully closed. But, Jamie, what do you think the many thousand ground forces, that is the Marines and the 82nd Airborne Special Forces who are there or going there are going to be used for, because the hag is again, is again what something that Trump is talking about. And then you've got the enriched uranium that you see in various accounts, Wall Street Journal and others, that they really want to get that 400 kilos of enriched uranium out. And it's going to be super difficult because, a, it's so telegraphed. I mean, if you were Iranian, you'd be waiting for a ground force first to come. They, you know, they need to set up a perimeter. They need. It's not like you go in, get it out of the ground and go out. It takes apparently at least a week to do that, including needing an airstrip, according to the reports.
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B
Right. Look, my best judgment is that if they were going to do any of these ground force operations, like Carg island, taking it over, like trying to go into the two sites at Isfahan and the other site where enriched uranium is, they wouldn't be talking about it. Because one thing I think it's fair to say the administration has done reasonably well, is mask their military operations. You may remember that the week that the war started, Rubio said he was going to Israel, which led people to believe that their negotiations would continue. The time that the original airstrikes against Iran took, they were masked. So the military insists on a certain, you know, operational security to surprise your enemy. The Iranians are sitting there, as you say, exactly right. Waiting to see whether we will do something this dramatic. I can't rule out that Donald Trump will order a massive ground operation, but let me be sure to tell you and others, it will be a major operation. To try to go in and take that uranium will be very, very, very difficult. It will take tens of thousands of troops because the military will want to protect the forces on the ground. They will want to have a quick reaction force nearby to assist in case there's an emergency. We don't have near troops in the field right now to do this. Plus, once they get there, they're going to be subject to intense strikes by the Iranians because they know. So what I think we're looking at here is the Trump administration trying to use the threat of attacking electrical power generation or using ground troops as threats of escalation. But what they really want to do, and I'm only saying this from the best analysis I can, by looking at the statements of Secretary Rubio and the military, who are keeping the mission of our military very, very well defined and simple, that is weakening the Iranian regime, weakening its conventional military forces, because that's an achievable mission. Those other missions that we just talked about would be major escalations of this war. And I think, I don't think based on my best judgment, and I could be wrong, because it is the Trump Administration after all that, they want to escalate to a major ground war. And that's what it would be if we did such a thing.
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A
Yeah. I mean, just remembering Having covered the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, I mean, there were at least 150,000 ground troops prepared before it even started. There was a three week bombing campaign and then they went in unopposed because they had told the Iraqi military to lay down their arms. So they were actually unopposed. Unfortunately, they turned on the Iraqi forces. And let's talk about this, because they said, if you remember, Cheney and Rumsfeld said, don't oppose us and you will be who we work with in the future to rebuild Iraq. First thing they did when they got there was de Ba', athification, firing everybody. And that created the insurgency. And aqim, if you remember that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which then morphed into isis. It was really dreadful. An insurgency that lasted years and years and years. There was eventually a surge which helped push that back, but nonetheless, it was really, really terrible. So, two kind of questions here. A, they certainly don't seem from past experience to have enough ground forces there or heading there. And B, they will not have the irgc, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard, to lay down their arms like the Iraqi Republican Guard did. And they will be opposed if they, if they land.
- [15:28]
B
I think you're exactly right. That's why I keep coming back to this phrase axis of resistance. What I'm seeing is a regime that is determined to resist, to use whatever tools it has, to show its willingness to resist, to say publicly, we shall resist and we shall persist and survive. That's what this regime is about. And they're motivated and they have tens of thousands of troops motivated to do so. I see zero chance that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will not oppose an American ground attack of this sort. If we were to take something like Carg island, they will launch all they have at it, and we can see how much damage they can do with things like drones, short range missiles. And what would happen in a war. There would be real risk of casualties. I don't see why this administration would do that. They could again, because it's President Trump and I'm not going to rule it out. But it seems to me that the resistance of the Iranian regime is going to be a theme we're going to have to deal with, because whatever negotiation happens, the Iranians are going to stand up and claim success. You know this better than anybody. The idea that these people are going to bow down and say, we Surrender is not going to happen.
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A
And they've got hundreds of thousands of Basij, as I said, I think in last week's episode that the British intelligence estimates at least a million under arms in Iran at the moment, again, heavily weakened. There's no doubt about it. And actually we're seeing, and I'm seeing images on various news sites, more and more civilian targets, universities, television stations, stuff like that. Stuff that is most definitely civilian, no matter if it's used as propaganda or whatever. Universities are places of education, and this is getting closer and closer to people, and it's affecting people's mood and the perception I'm talking about in Iran of this war. So this is just a quick one to ask you and to discuss. You remember, Jamie, in the Clinton administration, I think it was 70 plus days of an aerial bombardment by the Clinton administration and its allies of choice, a coalition of the willing, that finally got Milosevic to back off and surrender essentially and allow Kosovo to be saved and eventually to be freed of the oppressive Serbian dictatorship on Kosovo. It was majority Muslim, you remember, we all remember that. So there is that possibility, right, that the bombing could or not. How do you, for people who say, well, look, look at Kosovo, look at Milosevic. He did. And then after this, about a year later, the students did actually rise up in Serbia and overthrew Milosevic and brought in democracy.
- [18:12]
B
Well, let's hope that happens in Iran after this war ends. But the difference here are twofold. Number one, Milosevic was a rational actor. He was a businessman in a sense. He did whatever made sense. And once he concluded that the United States was going to continue bombing indefinitely in Kosovo, and then he believed the ground war was real. One of the reasons why people think he, he. He capitulated is because the Russians told him that the NATO countries were serious about a possible invasion. But he was a rational actor. The difference here is that I don't believe we're dealing with a government which makes calculations the way Milosevic made calculations based on, you know, costs and benefits. A rational calculation. Secondly, I don't think they believe the escalation threats, neither the threat of attacking the power plants. Again, it might happen, but I don't think they believe it because they know that the Arab countries don't want it. And so I don't think this threat of escalation will have the same effect it had in the Kosovo case. The threat has to be credible, and I don't think the threat of a ground invasion for them is credible right now. But even then, what the difference will be is the resistance mentality of the Iranian regime, which as you know better than anyone, when your father, not you would know this, but you know the regime better than anyone. I mean, his father was killed, his wife was killed, his, I think it was his mother. The current leader of Iran is in full resistance.
- [19:51]
A
If he's, I mean, he's very definitely not very well. So not sure how much he's actually calling the shots. But the others are. I mean, the IRGC is in that same mode. But there is clearly some movement, there are ideas being exchanged. So there's clearly some movement. When we come back, the US Just let a Russian oil tanker move through its blockade on Cuba to deliver oil to Cuba, which the US Said it wasn't going to do. So it's very hard to pass the diplomacy and it's quite free wheeling in my opinion, quite sort of winging it to the diplomacy of the Trump administration. We can talk more about that after a break. Okay, we're back. Let's talk a little bit about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Two kind of very weird things happening here. On the one hand, Trump with his refusal to declare, you know, all sorts of war end games or anything like that, because he didn't just doesn't really have them. People are saying it's beginning to look, Jamie, a lot like Putin declaration or activity in Ukraine, this never ending nightmare of this ever escalating or ever continuing war. We've talked before about where this might end up. But just a quickie on, on what you think are the similarities a little bit at least in the public messaging without defining a proper end goal.
- [21:18]
B
Well, this is a very complicated topic because it's very hard to put yourself in the shoes of Israelis, of the people in the region who are suffering from the Iranian responses and the Iran itself. From the outside, of course, it looks like a gigantic war zone and it looks like there's a terrible war going on in the region. But the truth is that in much of that part of the world, life is going on. The Israelis are to a degree are used to being in a long war. The Arab countries now that their, you know, oasis theory that it was a perfectly safe place for everyone to go, vacation has been broken. You still life goes on. For the Iranian regime, resistance is their mentality. So unfortunately, what I see here is if Trump were willing to be patient and were willing to let life go on, this war could go on for a really long time because there's no obvious endpoint for it. Clearly this administration doesn't have an obvious war termination strategy. They didn't have a plan. They didn't expect the Strait of Hormuz to be closed. They didn't expect the Iranians to resist this way. They didn't expect all of these things. So all I'm saying about that is that in theory, this could be a long war. My reasons for thinking that's not true is because I don't think this president has the patience for that. I don't think he has the ability to withstand the pressures economically that are going on. Farmers are suffering from fertilizer problems, the oil prices are going up. But it's not like they're. We're suffering in the way that the Israelis are suffering or others are around the world. But the Iranian people, President Trump. Right. And the Iranian people, because President Trump doesn't have a long war strategy and didn't prepare for all of these things. I don't think. I think he's going to be the one who's going to want it to end. And that's why I believe Rubio and the military leaders are, are carefully defining the mission so that at any given day, the president can go back to what's called the status quo ante. What was it like before the war over?
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A
And again, I'm talking to people who know a lot about the last chapter of negotiations just a day before the war started and really believe that there was a really important give by Iran on the nuclear issue. And, you know, if you go back to status quo anti. Well, then what was the war all about? I want to ask you about some things that have been written recently. For instance, John Alterman from I think it's csis, how the US Appears to be adopting the Israeli model. That is, you use your military not necessarily to solve issues, but to contain them. And then keep having. And Trump keeps saying, you know, our lovely stay in Iran, we could extend it and we could keep bombing. And he's been saying this very Israeli tactics, as we've seen the whole. Mowing the lawn. I hate that term. But the whole, you know, telling us, telling the whole world that they've obliterated this, that and the other, and then coming back over and over again, which is unusual for the United States.
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B
Absolutely. I mean, again, in normal times, we would have set political and military objectives, we would have explained them, we would have tried to build support for them with allies around the world so that this was not just the United States. And then we would have gone about step by step achieving them. Underneath all the bluster that's what the US Military is trying to do. But what that analyst got right, I think, is that since we're not likely to resolve the nuclear issue or the Strait of Hormuz issue or all the other issues with Iran in a negotiation in a compressed way with the Pakistanis and intermediaries, what Trump is going to have to do do is threaten to bomb again. If they take steps towards, let's say, enriching the uranium or they threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz again, he'll threaten to bomb again. So that's the mowing the lawn theory, that you can't solve it through a combination of force and diplomacy, but you just keep threatening to go to war. I don't think the, the public in the United States or the Congress or the Republican or Democratic Party wants to see us in that sort of turning on and off switch with war in the Middle East. But that' that's kind of the situation that could result from not having a resolution. And you don't see a resolution easily achievable when this Iranian regime is determined to resist and the administration's objectives are the same as they've always been.
- [26:01]
A
Interestingly, given resistance, there's a lot of resistance in the United States. We've seen the polls. They don't like this war. They don't want to be in this war and it's costing them. But also, there was a whole no Kings protest again this weekend. And according to the people who count, there was at least a million more who took part this time than the last time. There was one of these. And the two main issues were the immigration crackdown, but also the Iran war. So it is playing out very visibly in the United States as well. But another thing, again, unintended consequences. But you know, you would have thought about this if you'd properly war game this. You know, Kim Jong Un who went through his series of negotiations with Trump over nukes, came away with nothing. Trump didn't follow up, of course, according to the South Koreans. And now Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons. Not only that, he told his rubber stamp parliament the other day that, see, I was right. It's absolutely in our best interest to have these weapons because nobody will touch us. So this is an incredibly bad lesson. I think that the United States is showing the fact that in the middle of negotiations that might have led somewhat, they bomb. And then I guess other countries think, well, how are we going to protect ourselves? We better get that, that, that same technology.
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B
Countries of the world agreed, including Iran, never to Pursue nuclear weapons. North Korea broke participation in that agreement. That's what caused that crisis. You're absolutely right. One lesson for this, for the world that will go on for a long time to come, is if you are a regime that is in the sights of the United States, the be sure you're not going to be attacked. And the only way to keep your regime safe and your country from being attacked is to make nuclear weapons. I was chilled to learn that some of the Iranian officials who were involved in the decisions and remember, people forget this. Iran chose not to construct a nuclear device. They had the capability to do so 10 years ago. Fifteen years ago, they made a decision to become what was called a threshold state, not to cross the line. And I was chilled to read about those officials telling people they made a terrible mistake. They should have crossed that threshold 10, 15 years ago, and this war wouldn't be happening. That's the worst possible message for preventing the threat of nuclear proliferation and therefore nuclear war in our world. For countries like that to feel the best way to go is to build
- [28:46]
A
nuclear weapons, it's really a whole set of unintended. We just don't know where we're going in the world. So how about Russia? All of this time has been spent trying to make sure that Putin does not win in Ukraine. So two things. Putin clearly, come on, how do you explain his sending a tanker full of oil, 730, whatever, however much it is, barrels, liters of whatever it is, oil to Cuba, defying a blockade that the United States has constructed around Cuba, naval blockade, telling the Coast Guard not to intercept. Now this, you know, this Russian ship full of oil for Cuba. So they don't just collapse because their grid is in real, real jeopardy. The hospitals can't operate properly. People are dying. It's really, really terrible what's happening on a humanitarian basis. So, I mean, Putin, he was clearly testing the US Right in their own backyard. I mean, literally. That is one of the most. History's most incredible sort of lessons. The whole embargo in 1962 and who's going to bust it and who's going to take missiles there. The Russians and this and that, nuclear weapons and the whole lot. And now Trump allows them to go through what is going on.
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B
I have to admit, this one surprised me. Look, I've been operating on the assumption that Marco Rubio, who cares about Cuba probably more than any other issue in the world, had enormous influence in this administration. Clearly, much of the decision making about Latin America has come straight from Rubio, who is the son of Cuban immigrants and who believed more than anything in the need to collapse that regime. And Trump himself talked about Cuba being next. This decision to allow Russia to let oil, I guess it's diesel fuel of some kind, into Cuba surprised me. Putin obviously calculated correctly that Trump didn't want to add another confrontation in a situation where he's already at war and doesn't know how to get out of it. And so he blinked. President Trump blinked. You know, the famous phrase back in the day was that two countries came eyeball to eyeball and the other guy blinked was the famous statement of the American Secretary of State at the time. And. And in this case, I was waiting to see what would happen with this ship because the Cubans really needed it. The Russians were showing they were prepared to run the embargo, and they ran it and ran right through it. And by the time our podcast airs, that oil may be being offloaded in Cuba and a potential collapse and damage to the people there will be averted. And I suspect it won't be the last ship. So the idea that Cuba was next to next, you know, was believed by people because they did enforce the embargo up to now. But Vladimir Putin has Trump's number. There's no question about that. He knows how to read them. Whether this was agreed in advance or privately, I do not know. But he's got his number.
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A
It's unbelievable. I literally could not believe my eyes because I was tracking it, watching it, and then to be told, and, you know, with reports that it's actually going through and the Coast Guard have not been told, told to stop it is just bizarre because, I mean, we're talking about hemispheres, right? So the Russians have now ran into the hemisphere that the US Likes to call itself. And furthermore, with these reports of diverting weapons, particularly missile interceptors, from the defense of Ukraine to the defense of their war on Iran, is another really, really tricky situation. Plus report that they were going to divert NATO money to fill the Pentagon coffers. So what I read, Jamie, is that Rubio apparently told the allies when he was at the G7 in Paris, I think, this weekend, he said that allegedly the US has assured at least some of its allies that weapons already purchased under this program, where allies were made to purchase American weapons to give to Ukraine, that they, at least those already purchased, would not be diverted and nor would the money in the bank, but who knows? But it's very bad for Ukraine, this.
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B
Absolutely. But I mean, to get back to your Russia point, I mean, this is doesn't get talked about very much, but it really should because I remember during the Biden administration, the Republican Party very aggressively attacked the Biden administration because of the fact that Russia was potentially giving money to Taliban to attack American soldiers. Right now every day Russia is giving targeting information to the Iranians that allow the Iranians to target American military facilities. So Vladimir Putin so far is the only clear winner in this war. The President has made it harder for Ukraine to get the weapons that it needs. He's stared down President Trump. Oil prices have gone up for the moment, allowing Putin's war to continue even while the Ukrainians defend themselves. It's not like Russia's having a big victory here. It's just, just being able to continue its war in a more easy fashion. And in what you're talking about, I mean, look, the United States should be defending Ukraine. Ukraine was attacked by Russia in an aggression that we haven't seen in the modern era of one major country in Europe attacking its neighbor to gobble it up. We should be supporting Ukraine. And instead because of, of Trump's decision to invade Iran, all of these follow on consequences have happened that we've talked about. And the loser is Ukraine. Now look what they have to do, they have to go to the Gulf countries, to the Arab Gulf states to try to get support because they're the ones who know how to defend against drones and they're giving those Gulf states help.
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A
And by the way, missiles and all these things are running out. The largest German manufacturer of defense manufacturer, the head of it says, you know, if this goes on for another month, the cupboard will be bare all over in Europe, in the United States, everywhere. And there is a real problem with ammunition and weapon systems being depleted. It's really crazy. And by the way, since we're talking about depletion, because Israel obviously is heavily involved but also involved in another war against Lebanon, the head of the Israeli military said this week that if they're not very careful that the whole military, he said, could collapse in on itself because it's completely overstretched for years and years, you know, in Gaza and Lebanon and all the rest of it. So this is having a lot of knock on effects.
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B
Well, right, I'm going to do something unusual this week and not do a book or a film. I'm going to do a subject and, and a trial. And that is the trial in which the big tech pros, the tech companies finally were defeated in a civil suit about the damage done to young men and women from social media. I think this is an extremely important subject that has changed our world. Try to imagine the world before social media, in the world today without regulation of some kind. This, let's face it, social media has all these benefits that everybody knows, but it has a poison been built into it. Whether that's the shame that comes with not being important, the so called FOMO effect, whether it's people getting suicidal from watching these videos, or the way in which Russia and China have interfered in our information space. I think the French president, President put it so beautifully. He said, how could we have allowed our public sphere in Europe to be taken over by the tech barons in the United States and the Chinese so that we cannot have a normal civil debate about democracy. This is the biggest new issue of our time. And this trial that went on is what I hope will be the beginning of the end of the freedom of those social media companies to do whatever they want. They now face the prospect, like Big Tobacco did, where insiders will show they know the harm they're doing and yet there's no regulation and no cost. Now, I am not saying this is going to yield federal regulation because unfortunately neither party has the guts to do that right now. But it will cause enough civil suits around the country, I hope, like Big Tobacco, to be amalgamated to force behavioral change. Australia, Indonesia, they're already doing it, banning people under 16 from using social media. The United States should be leading this. Europeans have legislation, the Digital Services Act. This has to happen. If our world is going to be based on facts and democratic values and this poison is not filtered in some way, it has to be done. And I'm hoping that people will look at this trial and that's why I'm recommending that people look at it and learn about it, because this is the only way I can see that this terrible poison can be removed from our, our system.
- [38:33]
A
Yeah. And I'm so cognizant in Ireland, you mentioned Australia and other places in parts of Europe, they really. And in the UK there's an active debate on, on banning phones for under, you know, certain ages and banning social media for certain ages. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I mean, I read about this, remember in New York in the mid 2010s and I was very concerned that our son didn't have access to all this stuff until he was able to, to process it properly. I remember banning devices from his room and all the rest of it. Anyway, we can go on for ages about that, but it was a good thing. And they really are now coming to legal grips with it, which is about time. Mine is a recommendation because I watched by this phenomenal production group. It's called the Brian Lapping Group. The producer is Norma Percy. Jamie, you know her, she's done a lot of foreign policy and phenomenal documentaries. Her latest is the Clash of the Superpowers. And it's basically Jean and Trump. And the first hour, I was absolutely staggered that in one hour they essentially showed us, and I don't even know whether it was their intention, but they showed us that Xi, in all his, you know, meetings and dealings with Trump 1.0, was completely clear about his, his, his goals, his implementation, what he wanted to get out of Trump, his preparation for every meeting. And Trump was not clear and was not prepared. In the words of his then National Security Agency adviser, John Bolton, with whom I have a lot of differences. He said Trump essentially wings it. And that to me is really an important lesson. Trump is winging it on most of his foreign policy, that's for sure, including what we've just been discussing over the last half hour or so, how to end, how to define how to deal with this war that he's gotten himself into on Iran. So I think it's incredibly important for people to understand that he generally, generally absolutely wings it. And it's incredibly dangerous. And if I didn't know this before, I do now. I genuinely thought that, you know, the madman doctrine, the madman policy, the madman theory might work. In 1.0, when he was so crazy about North Korea, you remember calling Kim Jong Un from the UN podium, little rocket man. But then going into negotiations, I thought, wow, this is, this is new, this is interesting. Interesting. But guess what? No follow up. No follow up. And Kim Jong Un has nuclear weapons. After three sessions with Donald Trump, this is not good. So the winging it and the freestyling and the freelancing, in my opinion, is quite dangerous for all of us. Jamie, we have so much more to say, but we can save that for our Q and A this week. Right now, that's the end of our main episode, but don't forget, we will be answering your questions and that will come up on Thursday in our bonus episode. So don't forget, you can can always subscribe to our YouTube channel. You just search for Christiana Monpour Presents and you can see it there. And also, don't forget to email us. Don't forget to talk to us on social media as well. Okay, bye until the next time.
- [41:39]
B
And goodbye from New York, from a
- [41:41]
A
very sweaty Florida, let me tell you. My eye, my glasses keep fogging up. Oh, my gosh.