← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
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- [00:03]
Christiane Amanpour
This is a Global player original podcast,
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Jamie Rubin
8pm Eastern time Tuesday. Deadline that Trump has given Iran with that open the straight, he said they are very, very, very scared. It's getting out of sort of control, out of hand. What is Trump's goal? One day he says we've decimated them, the next day he says we have to keep going.
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Christiane Amanpour
It's very, very clear if we go after civilian infrastructure, that will be considered a war crime.
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Jamie Rubin
Talking about bomb bombing them back to the stone age, which really, really caused a huge amount of anxiety and revulsion. Dudes, we have a 2,500-year-history compared to your 250-year-old history. Sorry, Jamie, but those are the facts. You know, it's an affront. Hi everyone. It is that time of the week again, the X Files with me, Christian Amanpour and Jamie Rubin. Honestly, we thought perhaps maybe after Easter we would have something different to talk bad, at least a little bit. But Trump just went all out all weekend. And then of course there was that, you know, the, the, the pilots who were shot down but rescued and all the rest of it. So we're going to be talking about Iran. So let's get started. Jamie, the latest today as we record, and you never know about these so called diplomatic moves for a ceasefire, for a cessation of hostilities, for a comprehensive agreement, whatever it might be. But the latest is that both sides, Iran and the United States, appear to be studying a something that's been put forth by Pakistan, which as we know is one of the mediators. I don't know what it is, but others have been saying that if it sounds like a complete surrender by Iran, it's a no go. And Trump has also made that threat. Jamie, can I just read this threat that he made on Easter Sunday? He must have just woken up. It was somewhere around 8am in the United States. Open the yes for straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. And then the P Resistance. Praise be to Allah. Honestly, honestly, I don't get it. And it's just too weird and it's quite terrifying given he's the leader of the world's superpower.
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Christiane Amanpour
Look, the President presumably is feeling a bit cocky because of this dramatic rescue of the two pilots. These pilots were rescued in a dramatic operation that tends to, you know, juice up the President. And maybe that justifies in his mind saying these crazy things in a tweet, but it's not the way to get the negotiations done. And it's again, shows you what the problem here is. The leader of the United States is talking in a way that is infuriating to his own countrymen, many of us, and also to the Iranians, who need to decide whether to end this war, too. If this peace plan is a ceasefire, that's going to be a ceasefire in place, which the Iranians may not, except
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Jamie Rubin
unless they keep the strait open while they're hammering out, sorry, closed while they're hammering out some type of deal. But the Iranians up until now have talked about a ceasefire as something that would disadvantage them because they say it would give the US Time to bolster ground forces, for instance, to, you know, 45 days, you can get a lot of ships with a lot of troops on it to the region, and they are actually bolstering some of their ground forces. But I will say, Jamie, since we last spoke, Trump also had that addressed to the nation on Wednesday night. And he basically, honestly, we were all, I was in New York, I was sitting there on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what he was going to say. Is it escalation? Is it trying to get out? What is it? It ended up being a really big nothing, I think, except for he said a few things. Bomb them back to the Stone Age where they belong. That actually caused a lot of angst, certainly amongst many members of the diaspora and many people inside ir. Then he said, and I don't know what you think about this, Jamie, but he said, oh, we don't need the straights. Doesn't matter. It'll open, open up on its own. It's not for us anyway. It's for other countries. You guys deal with it. That was, that was about the straight of Hormuz and then about the nukes. Jamie, again, I was really, really quite, quite surprised because he said, he talked about the, remember the 400 kilos of highly enriched uranium, which apparently everybody thinks we should, you know, you should get out, he said, called it nuclear dust. Says that anyway is buried too far underground. It's not an issue. And if it is an issue in the future, we'll just bomb them to hell again, which to me is the Israeli doctrine of mowing the lawn. That is you commit yourself forever to a forever war footing.
- [04:59]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, that's exactly right. It does seem to me that when it comes to the nuclear issue, the president is going to have to accept that unless he's prepared to lift sanctions on Iran, that that material is going to stay there and the best way to make sure that it is not enriched to the further degree and thus turned into a nuclear weapon is for the United States to keep an eye on it, for the world to keep an eye on it. And my guess is the best we're going to get out of that is some commitment from the Iranians to allow inspectors to go in and out, to make sure that it's not being moved or discovered and transferred or further enriched. And that information is what we would need if decide we have to go in again. Because remember, the whole issue of Iran started way back in the Clinton administration, which I worked for, about whether Iran was going to go nuclear. And the worst outcome of this crisis today is the fact that Iranian leaders realize, and they realize this now, that they made a mistake, that they shouldn't have been a threshold power, which is what they were, a country that could quickly become a nuclear power, say in a matter of months. But they should have gone all the way, because had they gone all the way, they would be in the position that North Korea is a rogue state. Yes. A country that people weren't going to do business with. Yes. But not going to be attacked like this. And so that nuclear material will now be the focus of everyone's attention for a long, long time to come. Ideally, we're going to get it out as part of some grand negotiation. But I don't see these two parties coming to peace terms that allow for a full resolution of this nuclear issue anytime soon.
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Jamie Rubin
So somebody you and I know, Javad Zarif, who was the former foreign minister of Iran under Rouhani and who was the lead negotiator for the Iranians, sitting across the table from John Kerry, Secretary of State for the United States, negotiating for two years, by the way, this Iran nuclear deal. He is the first. First Iranian, yes. He's a former. No, he doesn't have much weight. He put out a peace proposal plan and he wrote it for Foreign affairs magazine. He basically says Tehran should accept strict limits on its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormone in return for the US and the world lifting sanctions and for the US Paying compensation for what's happened. He also said, and I found this interesting, Jamie, that inside Iran, it may be, as he put it, psychologically satisfying for those who want to keep going, you know, war to war because they believe they're winning at the moment, at least they have the world by the short and curlies. That's not what Zarif said. That's what I'm saying. But he said, Zarif, that it will only lead to more civilian and infrastructure destruction of Iran. And he said Iran would be Better off if the conflict ends sooner rather than later and that Iran should offer a non aggression pact and economic initiations including letting American oil companies into the Iranian oil sector. So that's pretty bold. I think it's been roundly criticized left and right inside Iran, but it's pretty bold.
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Christiane Amanpour
Absolutely. Look, Zarif is putting forward the most plausible long term resolution of the US Iranian conflict. I can imagine that nobody in the Israeli government would even consider any of this. Their view, and increasingly the view of what I call the former neocons is this is our chance to end the regime. There's nothing the Israelis want less than to have a resolution of the U. S Iranian relationship along the lines that Zarif suggested. But I don't actually think that kind of long term negotiation is possible in the midst of this war. The best that I think we can get at this point is a decision from President Trump to basically say I've done what I can militarily. I can force the Iranians to not enrich their uranium. I can pressure them not to close the Strait of Hormuz by threatening to start the war again. That's his basic leverage unless he goes to full scale escalation. And that's the question that we're going to learn a lot about in the next 24 hours. Because this is the question of whether we go to attack lacking power infrastructure, I.e. electrical plants, or before we get to
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Jamie Rubin
there because it's a big one. I know there's a lot to say about that, but I just wanted to add what the Iranians are saying now, mindful of this deadline. So the President Rouhani, who was president when Zarif was foreign minister, also considered a moderate or reformist and wanted to do this nuclear deal. He has also urged Iran to find quote, an honorable end of the war. So he said this is the quote, realization of Israel's dream to drag America and others into war against Iran. So you can see that there is a sector, not a dominant sector right now because the hardliners are pretty much in control and they're all pumped up about shooting down an F15 and by the way, an A10. I think they're called Warthogs, but they're the low flying Gatling gun aircraft, shooting down one of those and shooting down two pilots, both of whom were incredibly well and professionally rescued. So I do think that's interesting. And now let's talk about this 8pm Eastern Time Tuesday deadline that Trump has given Iran with that, you know, open the fucking straight he said, and he forgot the G. He did fucking apostrophe. I don't know what the heck that's meant to mean, but let's just say exactly what he said. It will be power plants and bridge day all in one, that is bombing all those.
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Christiane Amanpour
This is. We're at the point of escalate or negotiate. Meanwhile, this negotiation is taking place through the Pakistanis. Those are details as to who controls them. But the ceasefire in place seems to me the most likely outcome of that. If they don't negotiate, Donald Trump has to decide whether to escalate. And this escalation will be an answer to a big, big question. I think we've all heard the stories about the extent to which the Saudi and UAE and the Qatari government, for a variety of reasons, has their hooks into the United States president. The point here is they don't want escalation. If Iran is attacked, its power plants are attacked, its electrical facilities are attacked, which would be a war crime. And we can get back to that. The Iranians have made clear they're going to do the same thing to the Gulf Arabs, and that will have permanent damage to their economies. Take one simple example. When the Israel, the Iranians attacked one gas facility in Qatar. It's going to cost them billions and billions of dollars to repair and years, many, many years. So the Gulf Arab states do not want this to escalate to what you might call a power plant war, an energy war in the region. If President Trump does that, I think all bets are off at that point. The Iranians are likely to attack the Qataris, the Gulf Arabs, Saudi oil fields, and the whole regional infrastructure is going to be permanently damaged, if not destroyed. To a large degree, that will change the current conflict from one in which the Israelis and the United States appear to have an advantage to one where everybody loses big time. And I don't think the Arabs want that. That's why I kind of doubt that's what Trump is going to do. And the most important point here, Christiane, is the war criminal issue. There are Air Force generals, including the top generals in our government, who've been trained for their entire lives not to conduct airstrikes on civilian infrastructure. It's a simple war crime. It's not complicated. There aren't a lot of elaborate explanations for this. It's very, very clear if we go after civilian infrastructure, that will be considered a war crime. But more important, Christian, think about it. He said he started this war to help the Iranian people. Help is on the way. Well, help in the form of destroying their electrical infrastructure is not help on the way.
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Jamie Rubin
And you know, there's pictures all over the press now. Iranians, you know, by that bridge, which is from Tehran to Karaj, a town outside this new bridge. And everybody's looking at it because it's just been bombed in half. And people are saying, you know, that's, that's our bridge. You know, we want to go back and forth and just that's the bridge that we use, that's the road that we use. And then of course, the Israelis will say, no, no, no, it's dual use. And that was for, you know, transporting weapons or whatever. And they'll say the same thing about power plants and the scientific centers. You know, that Pasteur Institute, myself and all my friends and family members, we used to go there for years to get our vaccinations. And now they're saying it's a nascent chemical weapons thing. What do you remember about any chemical weapon issue? Because obviously Iraq, there were chemical weapon issues.
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Christiane Amanpour
Every biological expert knows that to turn a health facility into a biological weapons facility is not that complicated. It because it's about controlling diseases and diseases, meaning that these facilities are all plausibly dual use if you want to remove all the legal constraints that you have in the world. And I think there are Israeli officials and American officials now who apparently advise the President they can come up with excuses for each particular airstrike. This particular bridge maybe would help, you know, transport ballistic missiles or that particular power plant is funding is fueling a facility that that could one day make weapons of mass destruction. You can come up with a lot of excuses, but in the end, our Air Force lawyers and our American Air Force generals have been trained to make a very simple calculation. Are you causing civilian harm in proportion to the military gain? And so they're not going to easily go into a full scale power war. And it will be a real test of the generals in our system, them, as to whether they're going to allow the political leaders who they have sworn, you know, to uphold the Constitution, not a particular president, where they're going to allow them to be ordered into conducting what I think almost every legal expert will regard as war crimes if we do this in a big way. My guess is if we do this, they'll find selective targets to keep trying to threaten a higher and higher response. But remember, Iran then gets to attack its selective targets in Qatar, in the uae, in Saudi Arabia. And when the Saudi oil fields were struck once, many, many, many years ago, it caused a crisis within the Saudi government when they realized how vulnerable their energy facilities are. So we're going to find out how beholden President Trump is to the Arab countries, whether he's going to follow their lead. They are dead set against escalation of this war to be a power war, a war against power facilities, electric facilities.
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Jamie Rubin
You know, last time, the abcake is what you're talking about. That, that, that, that, that, that facility that was bought or that was attacked by the Iran, maybe by drones. But you remember the Saudis expected Trump, because it was Trump 1.0 to come in and help, and he didn't. And they were quite shocked, I think, that there, there was no help from Donald Trump. And then on the other thing, on the war crimes, you know, as I said, the papers now online full of images, including residential buildings that have been really hit. I've seen my own hairdresser showed me her own niece's apartment in Tehran. Now, the niece is not irgc. The niece is not some weird, you know, Ayatollah loving, whoever she is one of those people who believes in, you know, freedom. And they were after, apparently somebody, they attacked that somebody in this building that she also had an apartment, and her apartment is just destroyed. I mean, just like blown out. And that's what's happening apparently, to quite a few people who are in or near any of these target zones. People are saying, you know, we're just in some areas, we actually don't have electricity. We're just sitting in the dark. We don't know quite what to do. Others quoted by the New York Times are saying, and I'll read it, Iran is being destroyed in front of our very eyes. So even though there are some who say, and I quote, that this bombing, this war is like chemotherapy, like, you know, it'll, it'll save us in the end, there are a lot of people who are getting very, very scared about this and whether or not they call it war crimes individuals, certainly the government of Iran is jumping on that bandwagon, saying that any such thing would be war crimes. They are very, very, very scared. It's, it's, it's, it's getting out of sort of control, out of hand. And particularly people don't quite understand you, and I don't understand much less the people on the receiving end. What is Trump's goal? One day he says we've decimated them, the next day he says we have to keep going. What is the goal? How does he declare victory?
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Christiane Amanpour
Well, we, we don't know the answer to that. I don't think he knows the answer to that. The problem here is he thinks he can bluff his way into a deal because that's what President Trump knows how to do, is to make deals. I certainly think he's capable of declaring victory at any time by saying, as the military and Marco Rubio keep talking about, we're reducing their conventional military capabilities, their ballistic missiles, their navy is now effectively gone, their Air force, their ability to build ballistic missiles for the future, their infrastructure for its military capability, all of that has been reduced substantially. But in return, we've got this new situation where the Gulf, the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, is now under the control of the irgc. The we always worried about this problem, but now they've shown how easy it is to shut it down. So the world's economy is now going to rest on the knife edge of the views of the irgc.
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Jamie Rubin
It's let's take a break because I was sitting next to a pretty prominent Trump supporter at dinner the other night in the United States. And, and I'll tell you how they thinking about this when we come back. You know, this situation seems to, in our view, anyway, my view, have caught both Israel and the United States by surprise. Israel, that the regime didn't collapse immediately after the killing of Khamenei in his top layer. And Trump, because they didn't expect this amount of retaliation and most particularly either weren't told or didn't compute or ignored the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz and how it was under Iran control. And Iran said that it would use this asset as leverage if it was attacked. So Iran said it. So I was sitting at a dinner in Florida MAGA country with a very prominent Trump supporter. And I said, well, I don't understand this strain of Hormuz. Everybody knows that this is a valuable asset. And this person says to me, well, of course they knew this. Of course they did. And I'm like, well, why are we in this bind then? Either they knew it was going to be used but didn't realize how tightly or how it would affect or I don't know. What do you think, Jamie? Because it's nuts. That part is nuts.
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Christiane Amanpour
I don't think they predicted the ability of Iran to turn on and off the Strait of Hormuz to this extent. I think the great tragedy here, and this is what we need to remember, sometimes intelligence organizations can be extremely good at individual technical assignments. And the Israelis, Mossad are particularly good at that. Whether it was the pagers in Lebanon or the ability to kill individual Iranians today. And I guess One of the IRGC intelligence people was killed in the last 24 hours. They're extremely good at that, but it doesn't mean they make good judgments. In the end, Mossad actually came to the Israeli prime Minister who came to Trump and said, now is the moment to overthrow the regime. We believe we have a plan by attacking these 45 top leaders that will crush the top leadership and the people will rise up and they will get rid of the Iranian regime forever. A grand miscalculation. I need people to remember this. The same thing happened on October 7th. The intelligence organizations didn't predict that the Palestinians would. Could take a couple thousand people and just rush through these gates, these electronic fences, and slaughter Israelis. So you can be extremely good at individual acts. You can be extremely competent, technically, you can be great spy masters of individual spies. But that doesn't mean you make good judgments. Two of the grandest miscalculations of Mossad in the recent era are one October 7th, which they didn't predict they weren't ready for, or else that would never have happened because it was easily protected against, or that the Iranian people were going to overthrow the regime if you just killed the top 20 people. This was grand judgment failure by a often brilliant intelligence organization. So I think the same thing happened here. Nobody wanted to hear about the consequences. They thought this was going to be quick and easy the way it was.
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Jamie Rubin
Well, remember, he said three days, he
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Christiane Amanpour
predicted three days, and now here we are weeks into this war, and there's no obvious end to it unless Trump just declares victory.
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Jamie Rubin
So, you know, there's always a chance that after all this is said and done, the people will come out again and these, These, the Ayatollah's days will be numbered. I just would like to say on behalf of the political prisoners that there is a big crackdown. Somebody who I've interviewed before, Democratic activist Nassreen Sotoudeh, a lawyer who's represented, represented a lot of those women who've been, you know, jailed. She has been rearrested. She was on furlough for medical and other causes, as we said. The Nobel laureate Nargis Mohammedi is, according to her family and according to the Nobel Committee, in dire, dire health straits. She has a bad heart. She has, essentially, she's quite weak. And it said that she had a heart attack in prison. And there's no, no known help. Medical help has been sent to her. So the regime is definitely cracking down even now on, on some of these democracy activists and in Europe, Jamie, in response to Trump, you know, essentially, again, brutalizing his allies and insulting them and saying, why don't you go and open it, you cowards? Not to mention, of course, there was no consultation. They might have told him, the Iranians will hold you by the straight of horn. Mos short and curlies. I really do like that expression. Now Macron is pushing back on Trump and maybe some of the others are as well. He essentially said, stop talking, just stop. You're talking too much in public. And it's. You don't know what you're talking about is essentially what he said. So I think that's interesting. And I wonder, Jamie, whether it's time to have an intervention. You know, like, they all went to him when he pissed all over poor President Zelensky, and maybe they should go now and say, donald, it's time to cool it and let's have a proper way out of this. That's a win win instead of us and you losing.
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Christiane Amanpour
Right. I think the difference here was that was about Ukraine and the Europeans. Yeah, but the Zelensky example was about Ukraine. And they weren't actually asking Trump to do anything hard. They were just asking him to stop doing some terrible things like supporting Putin. And they weren't even asking him to buy weapons. They were just asking him to sell weapons to Europeans to give to Ukraine. This is going to be asking him to do something hard. And what I mean by that is he called for the regime to be overthrown. He said help is on the way. He said he was going to help the Iranian people. He actually presumably believed that. I don't know. And now he's going to be asked to take a victory in place, which means the status quo anti go back to where we were before with the Strait of Hormuz now much more under Iran's control, and no obvious way to prevent that in the future without a massive naval operation that nobody wants to conduct and the nuclear material stuck in the ground, and all that he will have done would be reduced Iran's conventional forces. This is not an easy thing to ask. So I think what they're doing is just trying to stay away from him. Macron is wrong if he thinks Trump is going to shut up, because that's not going to happen. I think what they're doing is trying to plan for what to do when the war ends and leave it to the United States to figure out how to end the war, because they know they don't have enough influence on him to Stop the war. The only thing that will stop it that I think is still plausible is the business community, the supporters of President Trump, saying that the damage being done economically and politically to the Republican presidency is now too great. You can declare victory, and we'll figure out what to do with the Strait of Hormuz later, and that will be a grand negotiation again. But. But it's not obvious what to do if he escalates and then the. And then the Iranian regime escalates. So we're at a very critical moment in this war. Escalate or negotiate.
- [28:01]
Jamie Rubin
Yeah, which we've actually been saying for a while, but this is actually right now, very, very critical. Trump, you know, you said, you know, he started all this by wanting to come to the rescue of the Iranian people. Now, not a word about the Iranian people by either Israel or Trump. And not only that, in his last speech, he said, well, we never talked about regime change. We never called for regime change. That's a lie. He said, though, what we have is a changed regime. He even talked about a new regime. President. Honestly, it's just so weird. It's so weird. Of course, there isn't any new regime president. There's no regime change. In fact, the hardliners have been empowered. Again, this could all change somewhere down the line, but right now, this is where we are. I want to just quickly ask you something before going to NATO, because this war crimes thing really bugs me, having covered a lot of war crimes and being in the courts where they have been tried and adjudicated. You remember there was a group of Americans, former servicemen in the intelligence and other people, servicemen and women, who put out a video and warned active duty and their commanders do not follow illegal orders. If they do this, and if they are ordered to do this, what do they do? Because that would be following illegal orders.
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Christiane Amanpour
Well, this is a really, really good question, Christiane, and I don't know the answer to this, but I do know that at the top of our military, there are Air Force generals and including generals who are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who've been brought up to believe that bombing infrastructure, electrical supplies for civilians is a war crime. And when you're asked to do something like that, this came up first in the context, remember, of Venezuela, about attacking individual, you know, fishermen. Fishermen, whoever they were on the sea. And this will be much, much bigger than that. And so I would certainly hope, if we are in this terrible situation where such an order is given, that we start to see resignations for the first time. Our military is a profoundly moral institution. At its top. These are people who've gone through extraordinary efforts to try to marry law and the use of force, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. They've been trained to understand when a war crime is and when it isn't. And as I, I just can't find any nuance here. I, I look for it because I want to avoid this grand moment where very, very senior generals are going to have to say to themselves, are they going to be part of something that forever will go down in history as the United States? These are people who believe, you know, you can disagree with them and say that we made terrible mistakes in previous wars, but they honestly believe they were following the lawful orders. These would not be lawful orders. So I don't know what they're going to do. I hope they push back, and I certainly hope we don't even come to the moment where President Trump issues that order. I hope this is another, you know, Trump chickening out. Taco, I guess they call it in the markets. And maybe this negotiation that's going on with Pacific Pakistan will give them some breathing space to give them some more time to come to some temporary ceasefire. But we're at a pretty crucial moment in the war. I agree with you.
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Jamie Rubin
In the meantime, you know, far from these people resigning, Hegseth is pushing people out who may not agree with him. For instance, the army chief was just fired in the middle of a war. Apparently that is unprecedented as well. And just to go back to the war crime is issue, you know, we were talking about bombing them back to the Stone Age, which really, really caused a huge amount of anxiety and revulsion. And I said on the air, dudes, we have a 2,500year history compared to your 2,50-year-old history. Sorry, Jamie, but those are the facts. You know, we were civilized before you were even a, you know, a gleam in anybody's eye as an independent Republic of the United States. So it's, it's a, it's an front, but also it is Vietnam era talk. This is Curtis LeMay who talked about bombing the Viet Cong and whoever else and everybody else back to the Stone Age. And you know, when they say that, and we were talking about the chemotherapy that some people have said this war is chemotherapy in order to cure Iran of the evil of the regime. Well, do you remember in Vietnam, we have to destroy the village in order to save it. So this is very ugly language that goes back to what, not an American victory even, but a massive American Defeat. It's just bizarre. And one last thing I'll say here on this. Trump and his aides and his military, you know, chest beaters, the civilians are talking about, this is a war for Jesus Christ. They're invoking God in this war. And poor old Pope Leo, the first ever American Pope, has had to smash back at that or slap that down. Used his Easter homily to do that. So if any in the Christian community in the United States who believe this is Armageddon, this is somehow for Jesus. As Hegseth keeps saying, the Pope has given you your answer. Shall we just take another break and come back with our recommendations? Hey, Jamie. President Trump, when they got the second downed crew member from the. I guess the F15, said, we got him. Isn't that what Obama said when they got Osama?
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Christiane Amanpour
That's what we always say when something. I think the same thing we was said about killing Saddam Hussein, remember? Or capturing Saddam Hussein in the hole in the ground. That's kind of one of those quotes that presidents probably don't actually say, but the press secretaries always use them. But, yeah, we got him, we got him.
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Jamie Rubin
And probably it's the only area of agreement between Trump and Obama. In any event, here we are in our recommendations section. Who wants to go first?
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Christiane Amanpour
I'll go first. Look again, I tell you that I try in our recommendations to show you the other world that one can live in, because the one we're living in right now, this Iran war, is a very, very troubling one. So for some more alternative realities, I would recommend People Watch for All Mankind, which is this series on Apple TV about the travel in space. And what it does so well is do alternative histories, counterfactual histories, like what would happen if women were astronauts, what would happen if Ted Kennedy became president. I won't give it away, but, you know, there are other things like that. They're going to happen during, throughout the series, and it really does show you what the drama and the excitement and the thrill was connected with the travel to the moon and the way in which it changed our society and the way it could have changed our society had things been slightly different. Different. The pursuit of space travel still is a grand mission for our world and how it can bring people together in dramatic ways. Given what's going on right now in our own moon travel, it's a good time to watch.
- [35:53]
Jamie Rubin
Stop. Stop. You've either read my notes or you're reading my mind, because my recommendation is for everybody to tune in. Well, to, to look at the NASA live streams and all the rest of it, because the architect Artemis, going back to what you're talking about, is really capturing everybody's imagination. And it's going much, much further than any other, you know, spacecraft has gone past the moon and around the far side of the moon. And of course, obviously Pink Floyd was really prescient when they wrote dark side of the moon. This is the first time they, they've done this. And apparently they're getting into, and they're getting close to the side of the moon where the gravitational pull is even stronger. So I'm like worrying that they're going to get pulled onto the moon without, without, you know, being prepared for that, because they're not meant to be landing this time. But it really is giving everybody something phenomenal to focus on. I mean, those who are, you know, predisposed to want to focus on something else, others are being quite churlish. Why do we need another moonshot? Why do we need to go to the moon again? Why? I'll tell you why. Because it makes us feel good, that's why. And it's far away from the crazies on this earth. So that is my recommendation.
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Christiane Amanpour
And I remember early on in our marriage when you told me that you wanted to be the first journalist in space.
- [37:11]
Jamie Rubin
Well, I actually wanted to be the first woman on the moon and then the first journalist when they started to say journalists could go, but they haven't done it yet. You know, after Challenger exploded in the, in the, in the mid-80s, there wasn't that opportunity anymore. Maybe it'll happen and I, I'll have missed my time. I also want to recommend Bruce Springsteen in concert because you know what, he is putting his voice where his platform is. He is a powerful person with a huge, huge constituency and he is telling people to fight for democracy and fighting for truth and against all the lies that, that are happening and against all the wars that are happening. So I, I just admire him and I like his music.
- [37:55]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, he also represents a strand of American patriotism that's very, very, very hard for politicians to get around because it's so pure and it's so pro American at its core. But he is coming out and saying some powerful things.
- [38:11]
Jamie Rubin
All right, so that's it. Look, we are on time and we have said a lot. Hopefully some of its relevant and resonant and we'll see where Trump decides to take this next. So everybody, thank you very much for listening and watching this episode of the X Files with me and Jamie. And we'll be back as usual on Thursday with the bonus episode. That's the Q and A, where we always love to take your questions and we try to answer them. So you remember, you can always find us. Our handle is Amanpur Pod. Or you can email us@amanpur podlobal.com and as I say, don't forget that you can watch us as well as listen to us. And for free, you can always listen on Global Player. That's it. See you all on Thursday. Goodbye from London and goodbye from New York.
- [38:59]
Christiane Amanpour
This has been a Global Player original production.