← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Q&A: Trump vs NATO, Christiane in exile & where is the new Ayatollah?
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- [00:03]
A
This is a Global Player original podcast.
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B
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the bonus Q and A episode of the X Files with me, Christian Amanpour in London and Jamie Rubin. Wherever he is, he can tell us. But of course, this is where we answer your questions. And I'm actually recording in my office today instead of my home, so I don't have my usual lovely camera or my usual lovely microphone. Bear with me. I hope you can hear me. So, Jamie, where are you? And you can ask the first question.
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A
Yes, I am in one of the great countries in the world, Costa Rica. One of my favorite things about it is that there's no army because they've managed to keep peace with their neighbors. But more important, as you may remember, Christiane, from our visit a year in order to graduate high school in this country, you have to pass a test in civility.
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B
Yeah, it's lovely.
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A
Which really makes the people different than their neighbors. In any event, let me jump right in with the questions. Dima on Facebook asks why is Trump calling on other countries to patrol the Strait of Hormuz when the US has the world's largest navy? Why involve NATO rather than Gulf states?
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B
So I'll take a stab at it. So basically, it's very confusing, all of this, because none of these other countries, not NATO nor any other allies, wanted to join this war. It wasn't their war. It was sprung upon them. It wasn't like it had been taken to the UN or anything like that. And they really didn't want to enter it. And clearly, certainly in my opinion, and in what we're seeing play out and what analysts are saying, the attack by Iran or the retaliation strikes by Iran on the Strait of Hormuz took the US by surprise. Maybe they thought, thought maybe it might happen, but clearly they didn't know the ramifications of it. And now they're really up the creek without a paddle because having dissed and bullied their allies for all of this year and basically saying allies are weak and we don't need them and we're going to dump you in the doo doo anyway and when, et cetera, et cetera. Now he needs help because I think the US Is really in a very bad position, particularly with the spike in oil prices, which frankly does affect everybody. But it' especially a problem politically for the United States and economically because it affects not just oil prices and gas at the pump, but groceries and fertilizer and all those things that also rely on exports through the strata form walls. Another thing that Ann Appelbaum wrote In her recent column was, look, as Trump has bullied and sort of tried to threaten and threaten to overtake and NATO ally that is Greenland, what the allies think is if they even come to Trump's aid five minutes down the road, he won't remember and he won't care. So what's in it for them in this particular instance? Jamie, what do you think?
- [03:11]
A
It's a very good question. It goes to the heart of what is complex about this war. I can't think of another incident or war or use of force in which the United States didn't have a basic level of understanding with its closest allies. All the great things America's done in the world, it's done with European allies. And that is why alliance management is so important. That's why you brief them. That's why you tell them what you're up to. That's why you get their understanding in advance. And that's why in extremists, you can ask them for help. We need help. Why do we need help? Yeah, because one, European countries have a lot of minesweepers. That's one of the unique tasks for the Strait of Hormuz. The United States has a lot, but we have a lot of responsibility. So that gets to the two points. One, we do need allies to conduct an operation in the Strait of Hormuz because of their unique capabilities. We don't want to take every capability we have in the world and put it in the Strait of Hormuz. As a global power. The United States has what we like to call global responsibilities. Keeping the sea lanes open is one of the primary tasks of the United States and has been for the last dozens of years by bullying the allies. And I think you got to the heart of it. Greenland was a moment where the allies no longer believed that their relationship with the United States was the same. It went so far, and we saw it was like a red line for the Europeans in terms of their understanding. So I would say, short answer is we. We would benefit from them. Unfortunately for the allies, Trump is a. Is the kind of person who will remember who helped him and who didn't, and he's now in a tricky position. And we can get to this in some. The other questions. The military has gone as far as it can go in certain respects unless we escalate to a major. Another. Another level. And we can talk about that in a minute.
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B
And just one other thing. The US Decommission took offline its minesweepers, basically, and said they didn't need them anymore. And this was, I think it was under this administration, maybe it was in the works before, but they don't, they're just not, not available. So it is not enough. Yeah, it's, it's a pretty big issue. Let me ask you this, Joe. Do you think the disagreement between Trump and NATO is becoming irreparable? Do you think this increases the risk of Trump withdrawing from NATO or at least threatening to again, what do you think?
- [05:40]
A
Well, this again gets back to the idea that we have someone who behaves like a king at the top of our government. There isn't the normal process of discussion and examination of issues, discussions with allies. And on any given day, we now see that this president will make crazy decisions without thinking them through. He didn't understand that the, the Strait of Hormuz was this vulnerable. He didn't understand that the regime wasn't going to fall. You learn those things by having a normal process. I think it would be hard for President Trump to leave NATO, but what he can do, and this is what's so troubling, is he can raise doubts about whether we will support a NATO ally. And the big winner of we've talk about in this war is Vladimir Putin, who now gets high oil prices to fund his war. And there are real concerns that he would do well to divert the world's attention by taking a Baltic state or attacking another country that's part of NATO. By the President Trump acting in anger towards our NATO allies, that puts at risk the essential promise to come to the aid of our allies. I don't actually think that's going to happen, but it's a time where my usual judgments about what's possible and not possible have been thrown out the window because they are at the whim of one man who is enabled by the people around him. And I think we can get to this again in a minute. I think there's a struggle now going on for the mind of the president between what I would call the former neoconservatives who want to escalate this war to some sort of ground attack, and the MAGA people, one of which, and we're going to get to this in a minute, has resigned. There is a struggle. Donald Trump wasn't a president who wanted to launch wars. The former neocons have seen this as an opportunity to return to the center of the game because they all want to overthrow the Iran regime. And that struggle is going to go on and how it plays out is going to not only determine the end of this war, but what's Donald Trump's presidency going to be like for the next three years.
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B
So let me just take first, before we go on to the next question, the idea of overthrowing the regime or both The US Intelligence community and now a leaked cable between Israel and the State Department as reported by the Washington Post. They both basically indicate, A, that the regime shows no sign of collapsing despite the ongoing assassinations of their leadership, and B, Israel has said that they don't think that the Iranian people can topple the government because, quote, they'll be slaughtered. So it's a very precarious situation what's happening right now, which raises the question of what actually is the end game if the actual greatest wish of Israel and probably the United States, is for the regime to be toppled. And I have just been in touch with actually a key Iranian government official who I reached. Despite all this mayhem after the news of Lari Jani's assassination, and now today, as we record the news of the assassination of the intelligence minister in Iran said, look, we are a state and we are stable. We've got many, many layers. We have no choice. We are going to go to the end. This is just important. We are going to go to the end. We have no choice. And he said, all these assassinations are uniting the base. I thought that was an interesting way to put it, because it's the US that talks about base all the time, and their base is becoming united around this. And you can see it just even today, the funeral of Ali Larijani, massive crowds were out in, in the streets of Tehran, even under the proven threat of targeted assassinations and bombings and things like that. So this part of it is becoming very, very difficult to see how it's going to play out. And of course, Israel wants to, quote, unquote, sow chaos in the leadership. But as yet, it does not look like they are in chaos. They're getting more repressive, more hardline, you know, getting more and more around the irgc.
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A
Well, let me just add a point there, because I think people are interested in this. I find it really fascinating that the Israeli military has brought the Wall Street Journal reporters into their targeting system and are trying to prove that they're making progress in the assassination of Basij and IRGC and other leadership targets. They're sharing information about texts they sent to people. They're trying to change this perception that they know exists, that the regime didn't fall as quickly as, say, the Trump people had hoped. We, on this program, didn't expect it to happen. Quickly. So they're trying to keep alive the idea that the regime is weakening while the people you're talking to, the Iranians, are trying to keep alive the idea they're going to fight to the end.
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B
Exactly.
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A
And I think that's exactly where you see the efforts of the senior officials from Israel trying to push one line that we can target these people, but we can get their phone numbers, we can get them under bridges, we can do whatever we want one after the other. And there is chaos leading to weakening of the regime and then ideally the overthrow. While the Iranians are saying to you what you know, they're saying they're going to fight to the end. So far, I think as an observer, I think you and I would agree the Iranian side of this equation seems more persuasive because there's no sign that people, the average people are going to stand up and face the bullets and the there is a depth to the regime.
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B
Yeah. And even worse for the US And Israeli side. They are saying now and analysts really on that side are basically saying Iran is in the driving seat right now and we see no end. This is mostly on the American side. We see no off ramp because it's in the hands of the irgc. And furthermore, even though Lari Jani and I've interviewed him several times, both in person and down the line, as we say, via Satell, you know, he comes from a very hardline religious family in Iran. His brothers have all been in big positions like he has as well. He was speaker of the parliament for years. He's very close to the irgc. He was very close to the former supreme leader Khamenei. And he was also, I reported this yesterday, Jamie. He was what opposition sources are telling me, the favored transitional candidate. If there was somebody they were trying to hook up with Reza Pahlavi or whatever to go back and have some kind of transition as of this past September, that means about six months ago he was the favored candidate and then became unfavored and a target in February of this year. So about a month ago because he took pretty as he would aggressive responses to US and Israel after the war started. Also, he is apparently was responsible for the very ruthless crackdown on the protesters that was his file and he apparently gave those orders. So that's interesting. And I was told I was right, that this guy was actually the most favorite transition character. So that does again raise the question of what is the plan of Israel and Trump other than to keep bombing and to keep getting closer and closer as they run out of targets to, you know, making and to getting closer and closer to civilians, and civilians are getting more and more worried.
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A
Well, we'll get to the how to end the war in a moment, but let's go to this very personal question. Yes, Christiane, and this, this is from Janine on email. In this week's main episode, you referred to yourself as an exile from Iran. Are you officially banned from visiting the country?
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B
Okay, so the answer is yes, that as a journalist. As a journalist, I am banned because of my reporting during the last, well, one of the last major uprisings in 2009 was called the Green Revolution. It was over that disputed election where the people thought their candidate should have won. And instead Ayatollah Khamenei called it for Ahmadinejad, who is a very radical, very belligerent Iranian president who really, I think, really made Iran even worse when it came to the international community in terms of Holocaust denial, in terms of, you know, bigging up their nuclear program, saying Israel should be wiped off the face of the map. I mean, really put Iran into majorly pariah status, if it hadn't been before. So, yes, I have been banned officially since then. I said exile because I'm out of Iran and have been since the revolution. I've gone back and forth for work. But I'm not a refugee. I wasn't officially, you know, I didn't flee flee, but I did leave to go to university. So I guess I'm amongst the exile population. I don't know what it would be like for me as a, as a civilian if I went back. So that's that answer. And that's all we need to say about that. I'm going to ask you this strange Victoria on X. How significant is Joe Kent's resignation as Trump's counterterrorism chief over this war?
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A
Well, I think it's symbolically and substantively important. Symbolically, it's important because it's a prominent MAGA individual who's resigning. Substantively, it's important because it cuts to the heart of the divide that we were talking about earlier. He represents the sort of Tulsi Gabbard, no more Wars Vice President J.D. vance, Wing of this Trump administration. He's the kind of person who said we got into too many wars in the Middle East. People died, I guess his wife died in a terrorist attack. This gentleman, Joe Kent. And he's done, you know, I would say an honorable thing and which is, you know, say this no longer fits with why I joined government and why I believed in this president. And then he's asked the president to think about whether he's going to lose all of the MAGA people. And the reason, I think it's substantively important as well. We're at a crucial moment here. There are three things the Trump administration is going to consider doing now. If they don't just stop the war any day now, they can stop the war, say they've achieved a certain objective. They can take Kharg island, as we talked about, which is where the Iranian oil capabilities are. They can try to go in and take the remaining uranium enrichment, which a lot of the nuclear proliferation people are very, very worried. Why? Because now there's a really good reason for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, something they could have done 20 years ago, 15 years ago, to actually construct and test a weapon to deter any further attacks on their country by threatening to use nuclear weapons. That would be another major ground operation, perhaps with as many as 100,000 troops. And the third is the Strait of Hormuz. If the Navy can't do it, you can try to do it with along the corridor on land. It would be difficult. But again, a major operation, someone like Joe Kent is looking down the line and saying, if President Trump doesn't just stop this war now, we're in escalation territory. And the people that I'm talking about, the former neocons, John Bolton, Marco Rubio, Elliot Abrams, all the people who were strong, strong supporters of the Iraq war, are urging, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, they are urging the president to do one of those three things. Either to take Kar island with tens of thousands of ground forces, to take the uranium enrichment facility, again with tens of thousands of ground forces, or to try to protect the Strait of Hormuz. Because right now, President Trump can't easily end the war if the Iranians don't let him. In other words, he. I think a couple of weeks ago, he could have just said, we achieved our objective. That's it. They're weaker. But now, by threatening the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians have a card they didn't have have before. If they continue to threaten the Strait, the only thing he's got to do to respond to that is to threaten to restart the war. So we're now in a weird place where there has to be some negotiated end to this, either publicly or through an intermediary, or else we are in escalation land. And that is very serious stuff with a ground force going into place. It's something I Never thought I'd, I'd say, but we're now in a, you know, when administrations get into these wars, they, they get committed to victory and they can't see clearly. Again, weighing the costs and the benefits. And the nuclear issue is one that a lot of people, for better or worse, are, are worried about. The Iranians now restarting after the war ends.
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I mean, honestly, it is head spinning. Just a quick note on Joe Kent because I think I have to do this. Yes, he's one of those MAGA types who falls into the Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, you know, sort of group of people who are very anti Israel. And there are a lot of people in the Israeli and American Jewish community who say he's, you know, issued a lot of anti Semitic tropes while he's given his reasons for resignation. But beyond that, he did resign over saying apparently that it's Israel that dragged Trump into this war. That's what he said. And I don't know what you think about that, but Jamie, it's not unheard of. Like, remember your friend Richard Clark, who was the terrorism counterterrorism czar? He resigned right after 911 or before 9 11.
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A
I think it was during the Iraq war phase. He resigned because he thought, I think his reasoning at the time was the war in Afghanistan was justified. But escalating it to Iraq, he couldn't be part of that anymore and then became a, you know, very prominent opponent of the Iraq war decision because he knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 911 and that was his job. The terrorism account. Yeah, look, it, it's rare, but as far as Israel is concerned, there are those part of the MAGA coalition who don't share President Trump's support for Israel and believe that the winner in this war so far has been Netanyahu. Objectively speaking, that is undeniable. The United has become, in effect, a contributor to an Israeli objective of weakening the regime to go to the next level. What I was talking about in a ground force that will be an American operation, not an Israeli operation. But objectively, the Israelis want a weak Iranian regime. And that's all we can guarantee right now militarily, unless we take this to the next level.
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B
Some military experts have said, listen, don't forget Iran has hundreds of those small boats that it can use to really harass any, not just ships, but also landing troops. It has, you know, weapons on the coastline that goes past Hog Island. And you know, that Trump or the Americans dropped massive bunker busters overnight a lot down the coastline so that would indicate a little bit of maybe preparation for some kind of ground incursion, which most of the experts I talk to say would be incredibly difficult. But can we just, just raise this one point because I think I've got this right. In June, after the so called 12 Day War, Trump and Netanyahu said that they had essentially obliterated the nuclear program. And this highly enriched uranium, 400 kg that we keep talking about is buried somewhere and entombed by this whole bombing campaign. So imagine how completely 360° this operation will have been if after this, this they are even more concerned that Iran might build a nuclear weapon. Not after the 12 Day War, but after this. It's just worth putting out there and that they have as of now the wherewithal should they decide to do that.
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A
Okay, so, yeah, I'm going to go to the next one. How are other, this is from Lorraine on Facebook. How are other Arab states likely to respond if Iran's drone attacks continue? Do they have the will and resources to significantly escalate the conflict?
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B
I don't think they don't want to escalate the conflict. Right. They just want Iran to stop. They need all the defenses they can. I think that they were really surprised. And I've heard some of them speaking, advisors and others, they've been very quiet. You haven't seen MBS on television. You haven't seen, and he's the head of Saudi Arabia, the heads of the uae. You've seen, you know, some seniors from Qatar. But in general they have kept very, you know, low profiles on this. But they are saying, and there's a Arab foreign ministers meeting happening, they are saying that Iran has crossed a red line, not necessarily by striking towards the American bases, but the beyond, you know, into their own economy and civilian targets. Iran, for its part, say, well, we know that, you know, America has moved its personnel from bases to hotels, so that's why we're striking them. But there's financial and others and Iran keeps saying anything that pertains to American power in your region we are going to consider a legitimate target. So I think that's a big, big problem and a big issue. And it's hard to imagine how that whole modus vivandi gets back to normal if and when this war ends. Jamie, I just want to say before you respond to that, I was sent a screenshot of the front of the Guardian. I think it is Jonathan Powell, who is Keir Starmer's national security advisor. The headline says, an advisor attended U. S. Iran Talks, which were the ones that were going on just before the war broke out, and judged the deal was within reach. And I'm hearing this more and more from people who I talk to in the Arab world that they did believe a deal was within reach. Jonathan Powell thought Tehran, Tehran's quote, surprising offer on its nuclear program could have prevented a rush to war. Got to obviously do some more investigating on that.
- [24:36]
A
But let me just quickly respond to that because it's the nuclear issue that has been part of my work for 35 years. Look, there was a deal. The deal was the Iranian nuclear capability that we're worried about is buried deep underground. And they offered to do nothing about that and no further enrichment of any kind for the remainder of Trump's term. That would have been a successful way to deflect the problem. It wouldn't have solved it for all time, but it could have been a solution. This was the tension all along between Trump trying to get a better deal than Obama got and he could have had a better deal. There would have been zero enrichment because they can't enrich now because it's all buried underground. I think the Israelis were very worried about that because they don't want an agreement with this regime. They don't want this regime to be able to operate normally because they consider them their enemy, permanent enemy. And so I think President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed this deal probably in great detail. And the Israelis were very concerned that this would happen, have temporarily solved the problem and it would have. And I think we talked about how a deal was on the table on the Arab question. There isn't a lot the Arab countries can do. They don't have an offensive military capability of any significance. They've put all their money into defense, air defenses, missile defenses. And so what they want is this war to end. I don't think they see escalation as a solution. I think they're going to put their efforts into trying to persuade the President to, to declare victory without going to the next level that I mentioned a few times. Without a ground invasion to get the nuclear weapon, nuclear material, without a ground invasion to take Carg island. Because if we do that, then the whole oil capability in the region is put at risk. And that's what's made Dubai and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and Qatar important. And if we put the whole oil export system under that kind of stress in a full on ground war, that will set back their economies for a long time. They remember, they thought they were the desert oases, countries Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha. These were the great places the world could come and trade and live and vacation that has been damaged severely by this war. And they just want to get back to that, is my impression. Okay, Yusuf, I believe I got that right on Facebook. Why do you think we haven't seen the new Ayatollah? Is it because he's been injured, disfigured, or as Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, claims?
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B
So obviously there's lots of speculation about it. Was he in the same compound that was bombed which killed his father, the former Supreme Leader, his mother, his wife, etc. He lost a lot of family members. The best we can tell from the Iranians that, yes, he was injured. He was injured on his leg, but they say he's doing just fine. They say, well, you can imagine why we're not bringing him out because of all this targeted assassinations and we are trying to keep him safe. It's unclear. We don't know. The only thing we know is that he came out with a statement last week that was read by somebody else on Iranian state media, and he double down on Iran's retaliation on the Straits of Hormuz and wanting to end this war, but not surrendering. And that's where they are right now.
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A
Great. And let me just add a point before we say goodbye. I think the fact that they chose him and the fact that the Israelis are now trying to persuade journalists that the idea of regime change isn't dead shows you how different this war turned out than what everyone planned. President Trump seemed to think he'd get someone to negotiate with after killing Ayatollah Khomeini. And instead he got the person who's the least likely to ever want to do business with President Trump, because President Trump and the Israeli government were responsible for killing his father. I think his wife and I think
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B
his mother, as I said.
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A
Yeah. And if they injured him, too, I mean, just imagine the blood revenge that person thinks. Whatever you think of him, any person would feel that sense of blood revenge. The Israelis, by bringing these Wall Street Journal reporters into their targeting system, I think are really fighting hard to keep alive the idea of regime change. President Trump has not been keeping it alive. He's been talking about other ways to end the war. He clearly miscalculated how, how bad this war would be for him politically with the MAGA coalition and economically with the American people. While the Israelis are pushing as hard as they can along with this group, which I would call former neocons Rubio Bolton, Elliott Abrams, the Wall Street Journal editorial board. They want to take advantage of this moment and push Donald Trump to be the kind of president that they always wanted, which is someone who's going to use American power aggressively and unilaterally around the world, regardless of what our allies think. And so the Israelis are trying to keep regime change alive. And I think it's going to be difficult because of the reason that you and I have talked about from the beginning. It's premised on the idea that the average Iranian is going to stand up in hundreds of thousands of men and women strong and stare down an angry regime that has seen all their friends, all their leaders, all their people killed from above in an air war, air wars, for whatever you think about them. And they've had some successes in the past, Kosovo being a great example, cannot change a regime unless you have something on the ground that's going to fight. And I just don't still see those Iranian people ready to stand up in this environment which has been so difficult for them to just get food, medicine, water, et cetera. So that calculation, yes, the regime is a lot weaker. And I'm sure these people are hiding all day long and it's difficult to organize, but they still have machine guns and they still have foot soldiers who will shoot their own people.
- [31:11]
B
It's very scary. And of course, for the Iranian people, Israel has started to say that it's going to expand its targets onto basically civilian infrastructure, electricity grid, those kinds of things, things that actually affect the people. People, you know, and, and that, and, and they just want to sow chaos. And it's, it's very scary for the people right now. Anyway, this changes so rapidly. There's always some new development. We'll be back on Tuesday with the next main episode of the X Files and we'll see what transpires between now and then. But thank you for listening to this Q and A bonus episode. If you have a question for us that you'd like us to answer next time, you can find us on all the major social media media platforms. As ever, our handle is amanpourpod. You can always email us@amanpourpodlobal.com As I said, next episode out Tuesday. And remember, you can always watch all of our episodes, the main ones and the bonus ones. You can listen for free on Global Player and you can watch them on YouTube, our YouTube channel. Just search Christiana Manpour presents the X Files. Right, Jamie, enjoy Costa Rica and see
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A
ya and enjoy the good weather and in London and goodbye from Costa Rica.
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B
Okay. Bye.
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A
This has been a global player original production.