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Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Q&A: Iran War special - who will replace the Ayatollah?
00:31:07
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A
This is a Global Player original podcast.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Q and A bonus episode of the X Files with me, Christiane Amanpour in London
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and Jamie Rubin here in New York City.
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As you all know by now, this is where we answer your questions. And this is going to be a special one because we're in the middle of a massive war that's day by day morphing and taking on different perspectives and shapes and widening in ways that apparently the United States didn't imagine. So we're going to start immediately by answering your questions. Let's get started. Jamie, why don't you read the first question?
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I will, Rodrigo, on YouTube. What are your thoughts on the news of the possible appointment of Ali Khamenei's son as the new Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, if he is appointed, do you expect that he will just be a continuation of the previous regime? Are there any other possible leaders who could emerge and who are still alive?
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B
Well, I'll take a stab at that. Well, Mujtaba, who is the son of Ayatollah Khamenei, has long been sort of mooted as the successor. You know, Khamenei kind of said, no, no, no, this shouldn't be a hereditary position, but whatever. Now it seems that he is the name that's being raised from Iran anyway as the possible new so called supreme leader. Just to say that the Israelis, in fact the Defense Minister Israel Katz has said whoever emerges as a new supreme leader, Israel will consider a target and will go after them. So there's that. But Mujtaba is a combination of things. He's hardline, he's close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On other issues, he's said to be more pragmatic. It is said that in the attack on Khamenei's compound on the first day of the war, his wife was killed, his son was killed. This is Mujtaba's wife and his son, his mother, Khomeini's wife was killed all along with Khamenei and the others. So there's a lot of blood that has been spilled when it comes to between the United States, Israel and Iran. So we don't know what's going to happen, but they seem to be going through the motions of their deep state. They have layer upon layer upon layer of bureaucracy, knowing that many layers can and at any time would be targeted. So that's all I can tell you right now. I don't know whether he'd be more pragmatic or whether he would just stick with the so called religious stuff like his father did and be a guardian of the revolution. Again, we're assuming all this in that the regime survives, but he might be a bit more pragmatic. And then I think the name I'm hearing in terms of civilian leader who's running the country right now and who might be considered somebody that the United States could work with as an insider is the current national security honcho, a secular person, Ali Larijani, who allegedly, according to my sources there, is running day to day operations along with the speaker of the Parliament, who's called Mohammad Barre Alibaf, a former commander of the irgc. And I said speaker of the Parliament. And he's been an often and failed presidential candidate. So that's what's happening right now.
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A
Yeah, let me just add a few thoughts there. I think it's perfectly obvious that if the Ayatollah Khamenei's son becomes the new Ayatollah, that not that much will change. Certainly not the revolution, the upheaval, the people taking to the streets, the new regime that President Trump has called on them to pursue. I think it's interesting that the idea of regime change, which the administration is taking extraordinary steps to try to distance themselves from, even while the Israelis continue to pursue that as their objective, they're trying to do, I mean, I don't think necessarily it's going to work, but they're going after police stations across the country. They're trying to create upheaval across the country again. We'll have to see whether what's left is still going to take orders. And if it's Ayatollah Khamenei's son, as you say, blood on blood. Revenge is hard to deny. If you lost your mother, your wife, your father, it's hard to see them suddenly becoming pragmatic. But if in end President Trump wants an exit strategy, which he seems to be desperate to have, he keeps talking about it. Anybody can be that person because he's shown that he doesn't actually seem to see regime change as his objective. But I think we should accept that so far there is no sign of a fundamental change in the structure of this regime, maybe more pragmatic, certainly weaker, without a navy, without an air force, without air defenses, and probably with very, very remaining ballistic missile capability. When the US and the Israelis are done with this.
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B
Can I just before we go to the next question, you know, Jamie, as we record, which is Wednesday afternoon at exactly 3.10pm UK time, we don't know what's going to happen. We're going to try to get this out as soon as possible. But the war has been widened beyond the expectation of the United States and certainly the Gulf allies. I don't understand why they didn't know that this was going to happen. Because Iran telegraphed it over and over again. Iran allegedly sent a missile towards Turkey, a NATO nation, and Turkey has announced that NATO, you know, Forces Defense Forces took down that missile. It didn't reach Turkish airspace. Some of the remnants of the, I believe the anti defense missile did fall on, on Turkish territory. But this is very serious because it's going in all sorts of directions that apparently the war planners didn't plan for and didn' even imagine. And Jamie, you'll see this in the United States, but we're watching it very closely obviously here. And I particularly because I can see, as you just said, the Iranian people are on the verge of being sold down the river. Essentially the administration is saying we'll break the country. You deal with the pickup and the fix up. This is a total betrayal of what the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel said at the beginning that we will help you
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take back help is on the way
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and encouraging them even after the war broke out to come into the streets and do it. There's a very, very big betrayal now that they're backing off. And at the beginning of this week, as we discussed, what's his name, the Secretary of War, as he likes to call himself, Pete Hegseth said that this is not about regime change anyway. What they're trying to do now, Jamie, four or five days in is, is, is, is counter what's being sort of described as this rolling rationale for war, all these differing explanations of why they went to war, what their end strategy would be. They're trying to come up with a coherent reason for all this now. So Jamie, I don't know what you think, but they're basically saying that, I mean, I think they're telegraphing that if we destroy enough of their missile launch capability, et cetera, et cetera, that'll take away the threat and that's it, basically. What do you think?
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Yeah, I think you're right. I mean the best example of this is the Secretary of State saying that we attacked because the Israelis were about to attack. The President said that was not true and then Rubio changed his mind. The fact that Rubio could do that tells you that there is not been the kind of coherent explanation of this war that I think the American people deserve. I mean, this is a real war. This is having real consequences across the region. With regard to Turkey, I think you make a good point there. It's both a reflection of the administration's failure to plan, but equally the Iranians backfiring because Turkey was against this, as best as I could tell, was denouncing it until this attack. And now with Iran attacking Turkey, what's known as a moderate Sunni Arab leader, sorry, Muslim leading country in the world, you know, they're turning everyone against them
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by attacking them, including the Gulf states, which now including Saudi Arabia, indicating they take the right to, you know, to. To. To, you know, for retribution or whatever. The right word is retaliation, I suppose, for having been hit themselves. So there's a lot of immediately showing up, you know, apparently unknowns, which, again, I'm surprised because Iran did telegraph what it was going to do. But also, you know, people are being. Americans are being told to get out of the region, but they're being offered no help by their government. And I think this is very difficult to understand. Jamie, let me read the next question. Kendall, on email. Is there any serious basis for believing that President Trump is pursuing war to distract from domestic scandals, secure oil, or expand executive power? Or is that speculation, an unhelpful distraction from the real human costs involved?
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A
Well, this is one of those questions where the answer to the question is contained in the question itself. We don't know. We really don't know the motivation for this. There's been some very troubling reporting that President Trump had long meetings with the Israeli leader Bibi Netanyahu, and that that was the cause of his decision to go towards a kind of a neoconservative, which is to try to weaken the Iranian regime, which is what they can do and what they will do. And the beneficiary of that, let's be absolutely clear, the biggest beneficiary of this war so far is Israel, because the United States is helping Israel achieve its military and political objectives in the region. So the rationale for war is unknown. I think the only thing to say about President Trump here is if he has one unique skill that I've never seen before, war, it's an ability to constantly change the subject by doing new and different things every day and sometimes five times a day, changing rationales for the war, changing subject matters from Venezuela to Iran. Remember, Marco Rubio was supposed to be the leader of Venezuela and supposed to be running the place, and now he's running around trying to explain this war so they change the subject, whether it's domestic, whether it's international. I think, interestingly, since President Trump is a businessman, I think what may affect him the most is the fact that the business community seems to be switching from initial support to fear over the effect on trade, the effect on oil. The Qataris have announced they're not going to be able to send any liquid natural gas. They've called for this legal term force majeure. We can't do it anymore. And so the regional breakdown of the Straits of Hormuz, they're coming up with plans to escort ships, all of which is a way of saying the world economic damage is starting to become clear. Because when you create a chaotic situation like this and the Persian Gulf is so important to energy supplies, you're going to damage the economy. And maybe that will be the real rationale for an off ramp. But it's very hard to know what goes through the President's mind. This is what happens when you don't have a system where the President is seeking congressional consultation. There's a, there's a vote, there's discussion, there's explanations by his people. He seems to verge back and forth ten times a day.
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So I have just conducted an interview. I'm not going to say who told me this kind of stuff, because I don't want to break a confidence by naming this person. But I can say that some of the people who I've been talking to, who are deeply embedded in this kind of policy for decades, essentially say the current US President is inadequate to this moment, that he's deeply ignorant. The issues that negotiations, were they a ruse, were they not? What were they? Were they zero sum game? But the point is that he and his cabinet appear to be inadequate to the moment, according to quite a lot of analysts who are coming up with, with their, you know, they're, they're, they're trying to, you know, evaluate what's going on on a daily basis. And they see. Now, look, let me tell you what struck me yesterday. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz indicated that there's literally no there, there. Trump said his aides do not appear privately to have settled on who they want to run Iran after the war. Mertz said, my knowledge and understanding today, the American government doesn't have a clearly formulated strategy for the future civilian leadership of the country. Then we see from Secretary Rubio, he was on Capitol Hill for briefings with House members and Senate members, said the US Will be stepping up its military campaign, forecasting a much wider scope. And he Said, we're going to unle chiang on these people in the next few hours and days. It's a phrase, Jamie, as you know, that's kind of a euphemism about overwhelming force. I think it was used during the Cold War. And they keep saying, you haven't seen anything yet. Says, said the Americans, we're going to do faster, more furious, as things do not seem to be going in the way that they thought. And then Trump said the U.S. as you said, might deploy its navy to escort tankers through the Straits of Hormuz. That's a whole nother opportunity for a shooting war. And missiles launched from Iran, Iran to those US Escorts or mines or whatever it might be. So I think there's a lot of unforeseen, unplanned fallout right now, despite the fact that from their part, you know, the first wave, if they wanted to kill Khamenei, they had the intelligence and they did it.
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Before we go to the next question, just let me add one military point. Some of the people who know a lot about this have told me that, that we need to understand the phasing of an air campaign and that the first phase really is designed to protect the air force that will follow. And so while there have been attacks on leadership targets, while the Israelis are doing that, the Americans have focused on making sure their aircraft have airspace control, have control of the Iranian airspace. And they're apparently now believe that, believe that in the south, and they're building it up all the way through the country so that then US Aircraft and Israeli aircraft presumably can choose their targets more carefully and not be worried about being shot down all the time. And that presumably will allow for a set of strikes that I assume will go after the conventional military capability of Iran, which will, at the end, let's face it, there won't be much of an air force, there won't be much of a navy, there won't be much of a ballistic missile capability. Drones, however, is a different, different category. Drones are very, very hard to target because they're small and can be anywhere and they're cheap. So the Iranian capability may end up as a, as a drone army.
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Yeah. And I would say, just to note, because nobody talks about it really, that the vast majority of deaths have been inside Iran, especially against civilians, such as the little girls, elementary age, we're told, at a school in Mina, which is Persian Gulf area, 160 or more, according to the Iran that hasn't been independently verified, but there has been a funeral, huge turnout, small coffins so there's a huge amount of civilian death. There has been in Israel. There is damage and injury to others, as I said, around the Gulf. And this is. This is taking on an aspect that apparently, apparently the United States wasn't prepared for. Can I ask the next question? Because I think you be good to answer this, because I know that we've talked about it a little bit, but. Molly, on blue sky, was October 7th the turning point that moved Iran from proxy conflict to direct war with Israel and the United States?
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Yeah, I think this is a good question. And I think to step back and without emotion or, and look at this analytically, prior to October 7th, there was a certain reality in the Middle East. Iran had an axis of resistance. Enormous power in Lebanon with its relationship with Hamas in Syria, control of that regime. And remember, when people look at what's happening right now, Iran is responsible for Syrian slaughter, the Iranian government and its forces for serious slaughter of 500,000 people. This was the axis of resistance. People like the King Abdullah in Jordan and others were honestly believing that Iran was the regional power. And so October 7th was generated by Yahweh Sinwar. He thought he could generate a war against Israel, and he thought he could use Iran's power, and Iran thought he could use Sinwar to damage Israel. This was the gravest miscalculation of one of these revolutionaries that I can think of, because ever since that enraged Israel, enraged the world, and for the Netanyahu government, one step after another was possible. That they never would have done otherwise. Not only in Gaza, the horrors that we've seen there, the fall of Syria's government, the end of Hezbollah and Lebanon controlling things, and now the leader of this axis being attacked. So this is the biggest backfire that I can think of for one of these revolutionaries. And if Sinwar were alive today, I suspect even he would be rational enough to know that he unleashed a power that he wished he wouldn't, because Iran's power in the region will never be the same.
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Just to be clear, Iran didn't do October 7, right?
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No, they were supporting Hamas and, you know, responded to it in their own way. But this is what happens when you arm a proxy and you don't control it. And so Iran thought that it could damage Israel through Hamas, through Hezbollah, and stay distant and be safe from that. But with the results of October 7, one domino after another of the Shiite axis of resistance has fallen. And the regime itself may be on its last legs. I kind of doubt it, but it may be. And that's why I say we have to remember how this started. Israel, the United States, the regional powers, they were living with the, the status quo prior to October 7th. And it was October 7th that reshuffled the regional deck for a long, long time.
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Okay, so I want to ask and posit some other questions around that because clearly, certainly the government of Benjamin Netanyahu generally believes that the only way to keep Israel secure is war. War all the time, weaken everybody around, keep doing it, keep quote, unquote, mowing the lawn. That is a subject in a term that we heard for a long time. So Israel is currently opening and has opened a second front. It is simultaneously bombing the capital of Lebanon, Beirut, as it bombs Tehran and other areas around Iran. It is also, we understand, kind of wants to be the beneficiary of a fragmented Syria style Iran. For Israel, it would be just great if other constituent parts of Iran, the Kurds, the Baluches, the Azeris, the, the Arvaz kind of independence movement, which are mostly Sunnis down towards the south and the west oil country, if they were all at each other's throats and just kept, you know, kept the place in weak failed state condition. Now obviously we know, Jamie, that whether it's Libya or Iraq, that kind of failed state has blowback in the region for all of us and particularly for Americans. So not ideal. So I want to know what you think about Israel consistently. Why has it gone into Lebanon again, including apparently with ground forces or it wants to. And what do you make of the CIA confirming to us that yes, they are considering arming militant Kurdish groups to take the battle to the regime inside Iran?
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Right. This very good question because as the war started, people said, well, why don't we arm the rebels in Iran so they can take over the government? Government. Because I think everyone who understands the history of regime change knows you have to have something on the ground. But we need to remember, as you point out so well and know the region so well, there's a Kurdish region, there's an Azeri region, there's a Baluchistan region, I guess bordering Pakistan. These are areas where Iran's control is not as complete as it is in Tehran. These are areas where there are rebels. There are occasional terrorist attacks and battles and struggles. Rebels. But those rebels are not going to gather an armed force and march on Tehran. At best, if they succeed in getting armed, as Israel may be doing and the US May think about doing, they will do what you just said, which is try to break up the country. And I don't know how this will play out. But I do know that, that Iranians are very proud of their country. And I think that might inspire the kind of response we don't want, which is a regime getting support from its people to protect its own country. All of which is a way of saying that chaos may be Israel's goal, weakening the axis of resistance. This Tehran, Syria, Lebanon and Hamas, that was it. The axis of resistance is Israel's goal and they're succeeding at that. For better or worse. We should just look it objectively. They're getting what they wanted, which is the destruction of that force. We should remember that that force did terrible things in Syria that has committed terrorist attacks all over the world. But that's not necessarily what's best for the United States or the world or stability. But it is what Israeli defense analysts want. And you're right, they may pursue a policy that causes a long, long chaotic Iranian struggle for control of its territory.
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B
And there will be huge backlash and there'll be huge amounts of, of exoduses of Iranians trying to get out of this civil war. The whole region will be destabilized. But let's also not forget that Israel tried to dislodge Hamas with a massive overwhelming force after, after I say 9, 11. It was theirs October 7th. And Hamas is still after the ceasefire declared and the u. S. U.S. you know, so called peace process is still in charge of half of Gaza after two years. Tiny force, tiny piece of territory compared to the massive 90 million people in Iran that's the size of Alaska. So it's incredibly difficult to see how this is gonna play out. Let me ask you the next question. Let's talk about this actually. Or do you want to read this next one?
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Let me read it to you, but we should both comment. What do you make of what Trump has said about Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi since he started started the war? Should Trump be trying to involve him in a possible transition of power more than he currently seems to be?
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So this is from Shannon on email. I tell you, I am like flabbergasted. I just don't know who's talking to who, which way is up for the day after. This is yet another very good question about the day after for which there's been no discernible plan. And I think this is a real problem. And Trump keeps trying to have it always. So the last time, which is just yesterday that he was asked about Reza Pahlavi, specifically who is the son of the last shah and who has positioned himself certainly with an online army, young royalists who in the diaspora, some still in Iran as the only opposition leader. So you'd think that Trump would have at least met with him. He hasn't. And you would think that he'd be supporting him since they seem to be aligned. But Trump has not. And he again said in front of Chancellor Mertz of Germany to the press yesterday in, in direct response to this very question, well, I think he's a nice guy, but I'm not really, I'm paraphrasing, ready to do that. I think it would be better to work with somebody on the inside. So there again, as one of the, you know, one of the online people said Trump is dissing again, Reza Pahlavi. So what does this mean? It means that they haven't figured it out yet. And Trump also said, but even if there are people who we could have worked with inside, we've been killing them. So it is very, very unjoined up. And that is a kind way to describe this. It's very lackadaisical. It's almost shockingly unplanned and it's very, very worrying indeed.
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And this is an interesting point. You know, I've spent my career working in and out of government trying to use people who understand foreign countries, try to get their best advice. They than ideally making the best possible decision. US Governments have made terrible mistakes in the past, but usually those mistakes have been based on expertise of some level. They've been based on honest mistakes. Here we're dealing with real absence of any effort to have true experts educate the president. And Marco Rubio, who seems to be super envoy everywhere and some days involved and caring and involved. And now you have a president who's making decisions without any knowledge of the country. And that's why I still come back to Witkoff's famous statement that the president was shocked that they didn't capitulate, which means they don't understand the people who are in power in Iran that go very deep inside the country. Reza Pahlavi, I have no view one way or the other. But when his supporters try to get angry at people who don't support him, the person who's really weakening his potential is President Trump, who has now as you made clear that he doesn't see him as a serious alternative. To say someone's a nice man who doesn't have any popularity is about as hard pressed a statement as you hard boiled a statement as you can make. So Reza Pahlavi's supporters should aim their anger and frustration at the administration rather than someone like yourself we've talked about. I won't dwell on it. Who's tried to be a reporter objectively,
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and I think most importantly, his people, at least from what I can gather from them, are trying to work on the defection piece which he talked to me about in the interview in Munich. I think this claim of having a lot of defectors inside Iran has proven not to have materialized. And they're trying to get defectors. And I think therein lies the possibility or not of there being a meaningful regime change in a way that Reza Pahlavi and a lot of his supporters would want. And Trump said what in answer to what is the worst that could happen? Honestly, he said, well, the worst that could happen is that. And he said in five years, I don't understand where he pulled that out from. Is that we could get somebody as bad, in his words, as who we've taken out or worse. I mean, this is the President of the United States. But listen, we're running out of time, so let's quickly. Why don't I quickly do the Instagram one and quickly answer it and you do the last one. Here we go. SC on Instagram. Are younger generations in Iran more likely to favor regime change than older generations? The short answer is yes. Gen X is very, very involved. And while older generations are, the younger generations are even more motivated. Take the last one, Jamie.
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Yes. Why is the media referring to this as a war if Trump hasn't been granted congressional approval? Callum on Instagram asks, well, look, it's a war because we're using thousands of aircraft and launching thousands of attacks and. And over a thousand Iranian civilians have died and ships have gone down and planes have gone down and missiles are flying around. It's a war. Now, the questioner is right. We didn't declare war. Unfortunately, Congress has not chosen over the years to exercise the power the Constitution has given it. It should be the Congress that makes a decision like this, especially in a case where there's no imminent threat. Threat. There was no time urgency or time pressure that forced the President to respond without the opportunity for a debate in Congress, a vote in Congress, et cetera. So war is a word that's come to have no real meaning any war anymore. You know, we have drug wars, we have wars on crime, we have all sorts of wars. But this is a military conflict of the highest order with the nearly half the American military operating. And so therefore, it's a war.
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Yeah. And I must say that I've also spoken to experts who say in this war the anti the ammunition is running out from the potentially from the US and the Israelis and the anti defense systems anyway could be running out. Obviously they hoping that Iran's missiles will also run out. So there's a lot of hope here which is not a substitute for strategy. That's it though. Jamie. Thanks to everybody for listening to this Q and A episode bonus episode of the X Files. If you have questions for us that you want to answer next time, you can always find us on all the major social media platforms. Our handle is at amanpourpod or you can email us. The address is amanpodlobal.com and of course our next main issue is out on Tuesday. Remember, you can always listen to us for free on Global Player. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel where all our main episodes and our bonus episodes are also airing. You can watch them just search Christiana Monpour Pro presents the X Files. And with that and the very serious consideration of this war and all its rolling rationales and unclear exit strategies, we hope you've given we've given you some more answers and some clarity and some direction as to where this may or may not be going. Jamie. Bye.
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Goodbye from New York City. Again, This has been a Global Player original production.