← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
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This is a Global Player original podcast.
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They keep being surprised. They're surprised by the retaliation. They're surprised that the regime hasn't yet fallen. They truly don't understand the system. They don't understand what they're up against.
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For an American to say we're going to cause all this damage all over the world just to make that regime weaker is a pretty tough case to make. If I were an American diplomat, I don't know how I would be defending this.
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Very, very unusual, in fact, unprecedent in the last, you know, many decades for an American war to start with such little support.
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It's a mixed bag for China and Russia, but at the surface level, this is a humiliation for them.
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Not much is known about him. He's kind of mysterious. He's been in politics. He's very closely aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. I'm just going to say how horrified I am by the ongoing dehumanization of the Iranian people. Welcome, everybody, to the latest episode of the X Files. It is the second week now of the US Israel war on Iran, and we are going to discuss the knowns, the unknowns, and the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. It is pretty confusing and confounding. So, big questions. What is next? What about from Putin to the oil prices, from Cuba to China? What are all the other things that may be falling off this tree of war? So, first of all, hi, I'm Christiane here in London.
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And I'm Jamie Rubin here in New York.
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We're going to talk about the end game, which is still absolutely unapparent. But as we speak and as we record, here's one unintended consequence. Vladimir Putin. He is sitting pretty again. He has just congratulated recently as we record the new supreme leader, which is Mojtaba Khamenei. According to the Iranians, they have confirmed that he is the son of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Not only that, Putin is also getting a break from the United States because they are allowing some sort of temporary sanctions relief in order to allow other countries to take from Russia. Because guess what? This war is closing off the Straits of Hormoz. And as we speak, the price of oil has gone up to beyond a hundred dollars a barrel or a gallon or whatever it might be for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And Putin is sitting on a new oil price windfall. So what else could go wrong, Jamie?
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A
Right. Well, look, this is a war of unintended consequences. In terms of the administration. It's not unintended consequences for you and I, because much of what's happened is consistent with what we talked about, the risks of this war. But on the most important issue, the naming of a leader, I don't think that they could have more clearly said they are going to fight to the death of that regime, the United States, by picking the son of the killed leader, the son who watched his, I think if I'm correct, his wife and his mother die as well, in addition to his father. Whether you are religious or not religious, there's something called blood revenge. And I suspect that this new leader will have that. So President Trump didn't have any role in picking the new leader as he said he would. His talk of unconditional surrender is obviously ridiculous. And that's one of the tricks of trying to understand this war is try to not pay attention to every twist and turn of what the president says because it will make your head spin. We've never had a war in which the president of the United States hasn't clearly laid out to his country and his service members what the purpose of the war is made at least some case for it had some discussion in Congress. As you pointed out last week, none of that has happened. And meanwhile, if you're an average citizen in the United States or the world, you can't figure out what it is the president wants, you know, that he didn't want the leader son to be picked as the new leader. And we just have to focus on what's really happening, not what everybody at the White House says because it seems to have very little relationship to what's going on.
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B
One of the things is basically we're indicating they are surprised, I think that Mujtaba was elected, whatever they call it, appointed, got the most votes in that assembly that actually appoints the new Ayatollah, the new so called supreme leader. But unfortunately, I think we need to start by saying quite a lot of what happened as of Saturday last week when the war was launched by Israel and the United States. It appears that that the US Is surprised by quite a lot of the developments. I spoke to the former head of Saudi intelligence a few days ago and he sort of in his rye and ironic and very wise owl kind of decades of intelligence way said, I am surprised by Trump's surprise. First on the retaliation by the Iranians. Let's get it straight. The Iranians said to all those in the Gulf, they even went and visited them before this war to explain what was going on it isn't random. The first layer of retaliation was against Israel. The second layer was against US Bases in these, you know, Gulf states. And the third layer would be other interests in, in the Gulf because they said we have no choice. What they didn't anticipate anybody was that it all happened so soon and so quickly. So there's that. And then on Mujtaba, let's be, let's, as you said, drill down. First and foremost, I was made aware by Karim Sajapur, who's a very, you know, well known Iran analyst, that a long time ago Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of this Islamic revolution, said in several writings that like monarchy, the Islamic system should not have an heir. There shouldn't be a succession through the same family. And indeed, so far there hasn't been. To be, to be fair, this is only the third supreme leader. There was Khomeini, Khamenei and now Khamenei. The Iranians immediately put out our new supreme leader will be called Khamenei. So there's a little bit of a middle finger. I think also he is, not much is known about him. He's kind of mysterious. He's been in politics. He's very closely, very closely aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He is considered a hardliner. He may have a pragmatic edge too, we don't know, but he's considered a hardliner. And I was told by Karim Sajapur that one of the most hardline, kind of North Korea style Iranians, last name Tayeb is his big power broker, is Khamenei's big power broker, who pushed him. And I'm just going to say that Karim is writing all about it in his latest edition for the Atlantic magazine. But just to know that this is no Trump. I want somebody nicer, somebody who'll be good to, you know, Israel and the United States. I don't know where this is going to go.
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A
Well, I think you're right and I think so far the pattern of the war has followed what one could have reasonably expected. And here I think it's important to distinguish between the military and the diplomatic. So I, as I said before, used to stand in front of the podium and defend America's uses of force all over the world. Most of the time I thought there was good justification. Sometimes I was concerned about it. I have to admit, admit right now, if I were an American diplomat, I don't know how I would be defending this. And I say that because the military is going about achieving military objectives. And I think they're being very clear. And if you watch the Defense Department carefully, you see all they're really promising is to degrade and reduce Iran's military capability. Whether that's missiles, whether that's an air force, whether that's a navy, whether that's headquarters, command and control, drones, etc. Their minds and ability to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Those are Iran's offensive capabilities. And so that's a war aim that the military can achieve, and it will achieve that, and it has achieved that. But at the end of that, not that much will have changed internationally in terms of the regime and its willingness to do damage to the world. And this is where President Trump's comments come in. The only thing that Americans can sort of get at is this regime is a threat, this regime is dangerous. We're going to change the regime, because that's what President Trump keeps promising. He can't get it through his position and the White House's position that that's not what a military operation can do. If it were going to do that, we would be seeing things happening that aren't happening. And when the administration is asked, what are you actually doing to promote regime change? You discover it's very. The Israelis are doing some things. They're hitting police stations, they're hitting Iran's Revolutionary Guard headquarters, they're hitting besieged sites. They're probably hitting some sites where the Kurdish rebels might be. But even there, let's take that as a good example. People said, regime change. Well, we'll arm the Kurds. Yeah, but, you know, they've just ruled that out.
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Exactly.
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And I think probably because of the Turkish president, who doesn't want to see the Kurds grow stronger. And so all I'm saying here is that as a diplomatic diplomat, to try to justify this, it would be extremely difficult to come up with something, because their nuclear program, which everyone agrees was a danger and everyone agrees was a threat, was set back. All we've done is weaken Iran's regime. And for an American to say we're going to cause all this damage all over the world just to make that regime weaker is a pretty tough case to make.
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B
And certainly the American people are not on board. I mean, by a really substantial majority, I think it's at least 60% right now, they're against this war, which is very unusual, because generally, when America first launches any war, it generally, A, has made the case to the people, and B, gets, you know, people, you know, sort of conglomerate in a nationalist fervor and they're, they're behind. It's very, very unusual, in fact, unprecedented in the last, you know, many decades for an American war to start with such little support, which, which is, and now with the rising oil prices which Trump keeps batting away, I don't really get it. But a couple of things I think are interesting signals because again, they keep being surprised. They're surprised by the retaliation, they're surprised that the regime hasn't yet fallen. It takes me back to when, and we've said it over and again. Witkoff expressed Trump's frustration that before the war started, let's say 10 days ago now, that it had not caused the, the buildup itself caused the capitulation of Iranians at the negotiating table. So in other words, they truly don't understand the system. They don't understand what they're up against. Maybe Israel understands it more, but certainly this administration and its public interlocutors and so called negotiators do not understand. So here's a signal that I found interesting over the weekend. The so called more moderate, less hardline, not a muller, a civilian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a doctor, he took to the airwaves and apologized to the Gulf states for hitting their infrastructure and their targets outside US Bases. He said that wouldn't happen again. And Turkey and Azerbaijan and anyone else that's seen stray missiles, that wouldn't happen again. Trump immediately said, oh, you see, they're surrendering, they're crying uncle. The IRGC silence Peseshkian and came out and said, sorry, no, no, that's not our plan. And boom, more missiles go to the Gulf states and elsewhere. So all I'm saying is Israel and America's hope so far to, to reign in and, and try to collapse the hardliners in favor of those who might be willing and more pragmatic to talk to the US or even in favor of a toppling of the regime. So far the opposite has happened and the, and the IRGC is still very much calling the shots. So that's a pretty big unintended consequence.
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Absolutely. Look, the, you mentioned the oil prices and I think we have to get to that because that's a very real and powerful political effect. The American people, as you said, didn't rally around the flag. And I think partly because the case wasn't made, partly because it's very, very hard to make a case for us conducting an air campaign against the Iranian regime after President Trump said he obliterated their nuclear capability. Whether he did or not, doesn't matter. The public thought that was taken care of and it was for a while. So you have a situation where things that matter to the public, the price of gas, the price of oil, the Straits of Hormuz is now going to return to the center of geopolitical discussion. We're going to have to talk about whether oil can be shipped, whether gas can be shipped liquefied national gas, whether commerce can take place in that part of the world. Remember, President Trump has been quite close to the Saudi leaders, the UAE leaders, the other Gulf states. They clearly didn't want this to happen. But once the Iranians retaliated, and here we need to point out some of the realities as well, is the Iranians have created an anti Iranian coalition by attacking the Gulf states, by attacking bases that European countries consider part of their general remit. And so now Britain and Germany and France and others are joining in what I would call a reluctant alliance to defend themselves. Because the British Prime Minister, we talked about this a little bit, but it's worth remembering. I find it always interesting having lived there and you know this very well, they need a legal reason to use force. And he tried. I understand there were many meetings. They couldn't come up with one. And of course, the United States didn't help them very much by doing anything that's based on international law here. Instead, they just said we can and we will and we should. And it was a long term threat that we're dealing with now. In the end, that's what President Trump and his administration will have to rely on someday. Somehow Iran was going to threaten us. And we took, took the bull by the horns and dealt with it now because no other president would. And the only country that really agrees with that, I'm sorry to say, because of the perception is Israel. In a way, the United States air force and military capabilities are now serving a purpose the Israelis need, which is the missiles the Iranians had could hit Iraq, Israel. Now, the missiles the Iranians had couldn't hit the United states. That was 10 years away. So weakening that capability, weakening Iran's military is a good thing for the state of Israel and the people of Israel, but it's not something that should have generated the use of massive military power by the United States unless we get something from it. And I'm sorry to say I haven't seen that yet. At the costs we're paying, and frankly,
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B
according to the US And Israel, even the number of Iranian missiles being fired in retaliation is diminishing. But that doesn't mean, to say the grip of the regime is. I mean, it's certainly been weakened. There's no doubt about it. Obviously, the US And Israel are far superior military powers, but the asymmetry of Iran's response is kind of key, I suppose. And I will say I've been talking to, you know, people in places in the Gulf and a couple of things. All of them tell me. I mean, the Omani foreign minister came to the US and went on the Sunday programs to say it publicly, but even now I'm hearing that they really thought, knew that a negotiated deal was at hand. It might have taken one or two more meetings. This is the Witkoff Kushner Omani indirect talks with the Iranians before this war. They believed that it was happening. Israel wanted to go earlier because it didn't believe it, it didn't want it. And also, I think it felt that Iran would, you know, keep digging and burying these kind of military things that Israel doesn't like, and the window would close for it to act. So there's that. Here's a question. I think the most optimistic, quote, unquote, strategy, certainly by Israel and maybe by the United States as well, is to bomb hard enough and long enough so that cracks appear. It looks like the regime is going to fall, and that will spur significant defections both inside with the military and the IRGC and outside with diplomats and other key people. You know, none of that has happened yet. That's also a hope that Reza Pahlavi, the, The, the exiled leader of the opposition is thinking, and he told me that, but as yet, we haven't seen that. And I'm just wondering whether it, it might happen. I mean, I know we're in a different era, certainly of technology and of, of military prowess, but it took eight years for Iran, you know, and, and Iraq to end their war, which Iraq had invaded against what it thought was a much weaker Iran at the time, at the dawn of the Islamic Republic revolution, it took eight years. And I was told by Sir John Sawyers, MI6 former chief, former, you know, national security advisor, UN ambassador for the Brits, that it's considered that Iran has something like 1 million men, and they are all men up to that number under arms in various different aspects of the military, paramilitary security apparatus. And now with Trump suggesting that maybe they might send in commandos to seize the enriched uranium, you remember, that they said had been obliterated and entombed. I don't know what you think of that. You think there's any chance of ground operations?
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I think It's a very good question because it's been a couple of weeks now, and there is no sign of the cracking of the regime that the administration was hoping for. I've been talking to some people about this. Once President Trump opened that door, you start to imagine what could they do that would be worth doing? Because they're not going to send in enough forces to overthrow the regime. That would be hundreds of thousands. We're not going to do that. So what could they do? Well, one is they could have helped in the Kurdish region, arm and train the Kurds. They've now ruled that out. You mentioned the uranium enrichment. That's a pretty big operation to take out the enriched uranium that's buried underground and as a result of bombing. There's one thing I can think of that would be showing the new era and the true imperialism of the United States, which is a phrase I thought I'd never utter, and that would be to go seize Kharg Island.
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Okay, so explain where it is. It's in the Persian Gulf, just. Just off the coast of. Of the southern Iranian coast there.
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Exactly. That's where.
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And it's an oil terminal.
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It's a place where Iran's ability to produce and export oil comes from. If that place is working, Iran can produce and export oil. If it's not working, you can't. Could the United States send in a force to seize Iranian oil facilities like Carg Island? That's a doable military operation. It would frankly fit with the kind of crazy town President Trump's view of American foreign policy. Remember in Syria, in Iraq, in Venezuela, he keeps talking about how we should own the oil, we should take the oil. Because he comes from the era of the 70s and 80s when he thinks owning oil is somehow a signal of your strength. But that would be a dramatic step. That would be the United States reverting to the 19th century, really. We're going to go in and take their oil.
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And maybe it is because they haven't gone in, but they have, in another word, and essentially taken Venezuela's oil operations anyway. They say in partnership. We've got to end this first segment right now. Summing up there is, you know, a week of war with still no coherent end game in sight. I would just say one thing, because I have to. The tragedy of the first day's operations. America, they say from the Pentagon, was operating in southern Iran. And all the investigations that the New York Times and others have done using video, using, you know, geolocating anything, except being on the ground there the journalists. And now a video of a US Tomahawk missile points to the US Being responsible for the killing of those schoolgirls and at Minab in, in, in the south when they were apparently going Iranian military base. So this is, this is very sad. They're real people being killed. When we come back, we'll talk about, as we suggested, what China's getting out of this, what Russia's getting out of this. Will Cuba be next? All right, we're back. This is our second segment and we're going to talk about a little bit more of, of, you know, the unintended consequences. I think first to say, just personally, observationally, you know, either the Israelis or the Brits or not, nope, the Brits are not in there. Either the Israelis or the US Struck targets that are not necessarily military. I understand that they struck the state TV because they consider that a hub of, of propaganda. And actually Iran is pumping out a huge amount of D.C. disinformation from its state TV. It also struck the Azadi Sports Arena. And just personally, I'd like to say my uncles and his, his, his company built both of those buildings. So, you know, it's just a little weird and confusing all of this in that regard. And then, Jamie, the desalination plant, that's a huge issue. We know how really reliant on desalination are all those Gulf states which are on a salty water. Iran, too, is running out of water. You know, I don't know about Israel and where it gets its desalination, but certainly tens and tens of millions of people in that region, if they start a war on the desalination plants, that could be, I mean, horrendous. Apparently they can't exist for more than, you know, a number of days or weeks without the desalination plants that they have in operation right now. That's whole populations in the Persian Gulf region.
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A
Right. And, and I think that crossing that line of destroying the capabilities for people to get food and water, this case water, shows you the desperation of the situation, the fact that this isn't what you would call a normal war, if there is such a thing. The Iranians somehow think that by making the world worse for everybody in the region and same with that, they will somehow bluff each other down and that force each other down. If I understand correctly, the Iranian strategy, it's, I think it's called Operation Madman or something like that. It is, actually, and that is to try to show that the war is bad for everybody for as long as possible until the US Quits and this is where it's weird, because the US can quit at any time since it is demonstrating that it's not doing what is necessary to overthrow the regime. And since it will become clear in weeks, I'm even more certain now that the country is not going to quickly revolt against the regime. It may happen. This may have weakened the regime in a serious way, but it's not going to happen quick enough for this administration who wants everything to happen quickly. That's the way this war ends. When the president decides, okay, the damage is too much oil prices, chaos, the public's against it. It's not good for the economy. The economic damage is so bad, I can't get much more military success. I'm going to declare victory. And he can do that any day now.
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Well, he can he. Because has he not boxed himself in with this latest declaration of. He's demanding. What did he say? Total surrender?
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Unconditional.
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Unconditional surrender. Yeah, that.
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I don't believe that stuff. I mean, if I don't, I try. I could be wrong, but my experience tells me you have to look at what's really going on. You have to ignore the bluff and bluster that comes out of the White House every day on every subject, some true, some not true, some diversionary, whatever it is, and say, what are the realities? The reality is that all that the US Military can do and promise to do and achieve is a weakening of their military capabilities, not overthrow the regime. There's nothing in the middle there. And I agree with you, he'll have to explain away the regime is still there. But I'm confident he'll find a way to do that because he'll just move on.
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B
Yes, but he's also sort of already publicly held out a hand. I mean, you know, for the Iranian people, it's catastrophic. Because he said in this past week, variously, you know, A, there are people there who we would want to deal with maybe, but actually a lot of them are being killed. B, I can work with a religious leader. I work with a lot of religious leaders all over the world. C, he has said that he doesn't really care or doesn't have a. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what he said about democracy for Iran. So he's already set himself up to deal with any kind of. If there's any. If he really believes there's a pragmatist who's going to emerge to do business with the usa. I doubt it. If it's Khomeini in the way that. That Trump wants, because there's blood spilled all over his family now. And I think that in this highly fanatical, religious Shiite martyr situation, it's going to be tough to find a friendly in there after this.
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There is something else going on, which is the broader geopolitical context, and that may affect the president. He's going to have a summit with Xi Jinping, with China. China has deeply invested in Iran, deeply militarily, economically and politically. Let's remember. Do you remember under the Biden administration how China bragged to the world that they were now the diplomatic leader because they hosted a meeting between the Saudis and the Iranians to restore diplomatic relations? That looks kind of weird right now. So the Chinese have a very deep interest in this war stopping. And my bet is that in the run up to that meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping, their leader, that President Trump is going to want to be able to remember. His only worldview that we understand is the three big guys, Putin, Xi and Trump, sit around a table and decide stuff. I think he's going to be wanting to be able to say to the Chinese president, all right, I'll stop this war if you give me X, Y or Z and try to trade it.
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B
So he goes in then with a slightly upper hand, Trump, because he's not done so well on the tariff battle with China.
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Exactly. This is one where, let's face it, China and Russia were allied with Iran. Not as a.
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Remember when they had that famous resistance on the balcony.
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Exactly. They had a meeting of all those leaders from all those countries and. And China and Russia now have been diplomatically and sort of strategically humiliated. Their friend is being wiped out their military by the United States and they can't do a thing about it.
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It.
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Now, Russia gained some advantages here, and I really think we need to talk about that.
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We did.
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We did a little bit at the beginning, but. But Russia also, there's disadvantages as well because Russia was getting drones from Iran. They were getting support from Iran. Iran is another country like Venezuela. And that the. And Iraq, going back to the Iraq War, that the. Moscow had a relationship and now the United States is saying none of that matters. It's. Maybe Iran may be close to you geographically, but we decide what goes. All of these things are humiliations to
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President Putin, except, as I said, he's jumping up and down because he's filling his pockets right now, lining it with the spike in oil prices.
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A
It's a mixed bag, Christiana. I think that's what's Very hard to decipher is for China and Russia, it cuts both ways. So China is weaker. But on the other hand, the United States is now bogged down in the Middle east, which is what the Chinese have wanted all along. Let the United States get, get bogged down in the Middle east and we can meanwhile control what goes on in Asia. And militarily, we are bogged down.
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B
I mean, huge proportions. Right. Huge amounts of American military assets, planes and ships and all the rest of it.
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A
Exactly. And, and that's one of these very, very strange things. It's a mixed bag for China and Russia, but at the surface level, this is a humiliation for them. I guess what I'm getting at is I used to be able to stand before the world as a represented the United States and try to distinguish our leadership in the world from the behavior of a, of a real politic power who just did what was good for it and tried to have some principles that we sought. It didn't always work, but at least we tried. I couldn't say that. Now.
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B
Do you think it's rogue?
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I mean, rogue is a strong, it
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B
is a strong word.
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A
That's why I'm saying I would have a hard, hard, hard time. I wouldn't want to be an American diplomat right now trying to defend this and build alliances for the future, which we need to be able to confront. The real threats, real threats, Russia and China.
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B
I mean, it's only got one ally here that's with it, and that's Israel. It has no UN, no Congress, no, none of that. No public support at home. Certainly it was considered that some of the Gulf states would be only too happy to see Iran desperately weakened. But because of what's going on right now, I was told by, you know, pretty senior business person and anyway from that region that very connected with the leadership that they will have a serious debate after this as to the value of hosting American bases, not just because they're targets, but because America hasn't sent any, you know, defensive shield to its allies, only to Israel. It's allies which are paying the cost for hosting America's bases there. So far not helping those countries. It's in fact hurting. So I actually think that's kind of interesting. And you were talking about Turkey and the Kurds. As we record yet another Iranian missile was heading towards Turkish airspace. Maybe it's about the Kurds and that because Turkey, you know, they want to make sure that that doesn't happen and Trump has ruled that out. And listen, Jamie, in a sort of what's the sequel. Venezuela first, Iran second. Now everybody's talking about Cuba. What is actually happening vis the administration and the Cuban regime?
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A
Well, it's interesting you asked that because some days I look at what's going on right now, and I think Trump as President Trump has now become a neocon. He hated the neocons. They started the Iraq war. But if you're a neocon, your three targets in the world right now are Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, because you believe that those are either communist or rogue states and the United States should use its power to stop them. So Marco Rubio, the super neocon in the administration, has had his eyes on Cuba. And if the president turns off this war, I suspect he may aim for Cuba and that'll be a lot easier to manage.
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B
And president has been saying, actually, well, you know, we're having a lot of talks and I mean, I can't tell whether they're trying to negotiate with the Cubans, take them over, do what? I don't know. But anyway, we will be back with our recommendations after this. Okay, we're back with our recommendations. Viewers, listeners to last week's will remember that Jamie and I spoke a bit about the diaspora, the diaspora and its hatred to a lot of people, including myself. Jamie did a fine job of defending me. So I was very interested to see two articles written just in these last few days about the rifts in the diaspora, about the complicated feelings certainly among so many people who have, you know, left Iran and are living abroad, who want nothing more than to see the collapse of this regime, however it happens and how it's being perceived also in Iran, who also want to see the end of this regime, but now are on the receiving end of a very, very terrifying bombing campaign, as my friends and people who I'm talking to there tell me. So for my recommendations this week, it'll be Reza Aslan, who is an Iranian American author. He's just written a New York Times column. Basically, the headline in the paper is Iranian Dream of an American Savior. And so he's talking about the historic sort of looking to the America, to America to help. But the historic problems with that going back to the. You remember the coup of 1953 where they deposed a democratic prime minister and brought back the Shah. And in the New York magazine Intelligence column by Nargis Bajogli, I think that's how she says her name. She's also written a similar article about this incredible player, which is the diaspora in all its huge polarization. Jamie, what do you've got so to.
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A
To survive in this strange world, I go back to the past and I'm going to cheat and do two things. But one of them is a book called Effingers. It's a narrative fiction about a German Jewish family through the 1800s and all the way up till World War II, and how they lived in Germany and how they worked hard and made a life for themselves and succeeded in this period prior to World War II, the rise of the Nazi regime, and it's three generations and all that went through. And at the same time, I've been watching an old show called the Foresight Saga up, which is a famous Masterpiece Theater piece with all the actors you now see. This is about 20 years old now, but it's on Netflix, and it's about the same period in Britain. And so you're seeing these two cultures, two countries who are living this incredibly successful rise, and then they go to war. And the war part, I don't get to. And I avoid, because I just want to live in a world where things are getting better, knowing even so that they're going to come to a crashing halt, because right now it's hard to see how the world is getting better. And it's a. It's a way for me to have cognizant dissonance, I guess is the word, but allows me to get through the day while analyzing my government's misbehavior.
- [36:42]
B
And I'm just going to say how horrified I am by the ongoing dehumanization of the Iranian people. The head of cpac, that's a, you know, conservative Christian group, essentially said, well, you know, they would have been under the burqa anyway. Well, first of all, we don't have burqas in Iran. We have a chador. Burqa is Afghan. But to say that about young girls, no matter what kind of country. And then Trump ends the week by telling reporters aboard Air Force One, you know, let me just, let me just read this. I'm just horrified. Iranians are among the most evil people ever. They cut babies, heads off, chop women in half. Not sure where that comes from, but that's certainly what everybody was saying about Hamas on October 7th. And I do think that's certainly in this case about Iran. Just why, why do that about the Iranian people? You don't have. You're saying you don't have a war with the Iranian people. You're calling them noble. Netanyahu's calling them the honorable or noble or whatever, hoping they'll rise up. So I find that stuff ignorant and offensive and counterproductive. Yeah.
- [37:51]
A
Very, very painful. Very.
- [37:52]
B
Yeah. And painful. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Of course. We will be back later this week with the bonus Q A episode where we love to answer your questions. Don't forget, you can reach us on all our social platforms. We're at amanpourpod and you can reach us by emailing us as well. You can listen for free on globalplayer.com and you can always watch us on YouTube by going to Christiana Manpur presents the X Files. Okay, bye. Bye. See you all soon.
- [38:21]
A
Goodbye. From New York, This has been a global player original production.