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The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Middle East Tensions: The Realities Behind the Headlines
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- [00:00]
Lisa Booth
This is an iHeart podcast and here.
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Ryan Seacrest
We have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform.
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Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Please don't touch the exhibit folks.
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- [02:38]
Lisa Booth
Welcome to The Truth with Lisa Booth, where we cut through the noise and get to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today we're diving into the escalating tensions in the Middle east with a guest who brings a lot of experience, Vice Admiral John W. Miller, who is a former commander of U.S. naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. fifth Fleet. He spent a lot of his career in the Middle east working in and around it. So he knows a lot about these issues. So we're going to dig into all of it. Will the United States be dragged into it? Does Iran actually have or how close are they to obtaining nuclear weapons, particularly after intelligence failures of the past, looking at Iraq, when the Iraq Survey Group ended up finding no active WMDs, no nuclear weapons programs at the time of the invasion back then, or no significant chemical and biological weapons stockpile. So what to make of this preemptive strike from Israel to Iran? How close is Iran to actually becoming a nuclear power? Also, is Iran a paper tiger? I don't know about you, but I've been surprised by how weak Iran really is. So I'll ask the vice admiral if he's surprised by what we are seeing happen and then also what happens if there's regime change. I mean, Israel is taking out a lot of Iran's leaders. What would be next for Iran? What sort of instability could we see? And most importantly, what will the United States involvement, if anything, be in all of this? So obviously there's a lot to unpack, a lot to dig into. And who better than someone who has spent his life's work working in the Middle east and on these issues? So stay tuned for Vice Admiral John W. Miller. Well, Vice Admiral John Miller, it's great to have you on the show. You're my friend's dad. But you also are very esteemed and have spent so much of your career in the Middle East. So lucky to to have you as a friend to be able to, to, you know, get your expertise in times like these. So I appreciate you making the time, sir.
- [04:41]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Great to be with you, Lisa.
- [04:43]
Lisa Booth
You know, I think we're all pretty surprised by what we have. I mean, I guess, you know, we've seen the lead up Obviously with the October 7th terror attacks, clearly Iran, you know, behind that with Hamas being its proxy. But just by what has escalated in such a short period of time, have you been surprised by the amount of damage Israel has been able to inflict in such a short period of time? And I guess, how would you assess the damage that has been done so far?
- [05:16]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
The Israelis have been very successful. I'm not surprised that they've been so successful because you could see this coming over the last several months. And if you go back to the direct attacks and exchanges that the Iranians and the Israelis had last year, so direct attacks from Iran into Israel in April of 24 and then again in October of 24, in the, in the interim, the Israelis have been very busy taking out the proxy states that provided a great deal of the military power that the Iranians rely on. So the takedown of Hezbollah with, with very little ramifications or, or damage done on the Israeli side, really a masterful piece of work, including a lot of spy craft that got the, the bombs into the pagers and that sort of thing. And then the eventual takedown of Nasrallah. Look at the way that they took down Syria and, and separated Iran from Syria. And then obviously the work that the Israelis have done over the, the last several months or years really in, in Gaza has, has taken away the military power of Hamas. So all that drills down to Iran being reliant strictly on their own military power, which has never been all that impressive. They do have a lot of missiles. They have obviously some long, longer range ballistic missiles that are able to get to Israel, but they don't have an unlimited supply of those. They're not terribly accurate. We've seen that. And they, the Israelis at the start of this particular operation did a lot of work taking out the command and control and then what was left of Israeli or Iranian air defense systems. And so I'm not surprised that it's gone well for the Israelis. And I think it's going to continue to go well. And every day that this goes on, it's a little better for the Israelis and a little worse for the Iranians and particularly for their nuclear power, their nuclear weapons program.
- [07:27]
Lisa Booth
Is Iran a paper tiger? I think a lot of people seem surprised by the weakness of the country and sort of anticipated that it had, you know, stronger capabilities.
- [07:44]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
What they have had historically since the revolution is a lot of asymmetric capability. So these, they use proxies, third parties, they engage in terrorist type activities. The bombing of the Marine barracks, the bombing of Khobar Towers, the invention of the IED that was used so prolifically throughout Iraq against American troops. So they always seem to be a large military pilot power really since the revolution. You know, they fought a long war with Iraq and Iraq turned out to be more of a paper tiger than anybody would have expected once we got engaged with the Iraqis. But they, they, the two countries fought for eight consecutive years and basically fought to a standstill. So I would say Iran has not never possessed a great military power. They had some air defenses that they received in recent years from the Russians, the S300 system. The Israelis destroyed all of those after the October Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel. So their air defenses were left to things that they could kind of cluje together. They've never had a significant air force of, of any sort of capability. They don't have a navy that's, that is effective in a way that we would consider navies to be effective, to be able to operate over the Horiz out at sea in the blue water. But they do have a lot of asymmetric capability. You know, they have thousands of little speedboats that they put either RPGs on or they put 50 caliber weapons on. But the Iranians have, have also realized they're not a great military power. And so they've steered away from direct confrontation until April of last year, when they directly confronted the Israelis. That was a mistake.
- [09:41]
Lisa Booth
I think a lot of people are wondering how close Iran is to becoming a nuclear power. We all remember back to the Iraq days when the Iraq Survey group found that there were no active WMDs in Iraq, there were no nuclear weapons programs at the time of the invasion, that there was no significant chemical or biological weapons stockpiles, and they found some old degraded munitions from before the 1991 Gulf War. So questions about how good is the intelligence about how close Iran is to becoming a nuclear power? You know, were these preemptive strikes necessary? So I guess what do we know about Iran in terms of being a nuclear power or how close they are to becoming one, particularly given, you know, some of the intelligence failures of the past.
- [10:33]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Lisa Given our, our history with Iraqi wmd, I think it's right for everybody to be a little bit skeptical about what's going on in Iran and trying to understand, okay, do they really have a capability? Iran and Iraq are different in a lot of different ways. Iraq really wanted Saddam Hussein, wanted people to think that he had weapons of mass destruction, that he had the ability or was developing the ability to build nuclear weapons, that he had chemical and biological weapons. Even his own military, senior military personnel thought that the country had chemical and biological weapons. They all thought that they were in a different division than the one that they happen to be running. So Iran is a lot different in that regard. One of the reasons, I think, that makes the attack that the Israelis are in the middle of right now A good idea is there are many things that we don't know. The Iranians have gone to great trouble to hide their program. And in some ways they've tried to hide it in plain sight where they have acquiesced through the jcpoa, which was never a good agreement, to international inspections. To a certain extent they share data, to a certain extent we know Mossad has been able to penetrate all levels of the Iranian government. And so they can fill in a lot of the blanks. Mossad has been able to fill in a lot of the blanks in terms of what the Iranians really have. And then there are also parts of the program that we know about because the Iranians are making the declarations. And so when you look at nuclear enrichment, the Iranians are a signer of the Non Proliferation Treaty. And if you're a signer of the Non Proliferation Treaty, you agree not to enrich to the point where you can make nuclear weapons. They're in violation of that. They've said they're in violation of that. They've said they're going to, to, to, to pull out of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, but they haven't done so yet. But they're enriching. If you need enrichment to about 5%, we'll say of, of uranium to be able to use a nuclear power plant or to be able to use nuclear medicine. But if you, once you go above 5%, now you're getting towards the 90% that you need to make nuclear weapons. The Iranians have admitted that they have material that's in excess of 60% enriched. And so we know enough about the program to know that it's, it's a danger to, not just to the Israelis, but to the entire free world. And we know enough about the program to know that there are probably some unknowns that would be dangerous to assume away as insignificant.
- [13:29]
Lisa Booth
Can Israel take out Iran's nuclear capabilities unilaterally? You know, I know I've read and heard a lot about how, you know, Iran has hardened facilities like nuclear sites like Fordo buried deep underground that you sort of need advanced bunker busting munitions that Israel just does not have, they don't possess them. So can Israel unilaterally take out Iran's nuclear capabilities or do they need the United States and other powers?
- [13:58]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
There's a presumption, I think, that we can make that. The Israelis would have started the job if they weren't confident that by themselves they can finish the job. And one of the things that's really not well known about Israeli Defense Force is they're not interested in having allies fight with them and for them. So they, they don't seek out American troops or air power to, to, to, to do their work. They do seek out capability. You know, they seek out the ability to buy the weapons and to buy the, the airplanes to get foreign aid. We give them a great deal of foreign aid, as I think everyone knows. But they're not interested in having somebody else fight for them. They're interested in Israelis defending Israel. And, and so I don't think that they would have undertaken this endeavor had they not been confident that they could finish the job without intervention from someone else. In other words, there's a lot of talk about these bunker busters and the US has them and do we, do we loan them B2 bombers with bunker busters or do we rent them or do we go in and do it for them? I don't think that's the Israeli plan, but I'm not sure exactly what their plan is and I think we'll find out over the next couple of days because I think most of the effort that regards neutralizing the entire nuclear weapons program in Iran is yet to come. There are other ways to be successful in a place like Fordo, which as you mentioned, it's deep, it's hardened, it's a very difficult target for the Israelis to get at with bombs. It can be done without bunker busting bombs. You just need a lot of them. But there are other ways. And the Israelis have shown since the attack of October 7th an enormous level of ingenuity in terms of how they employ their forces. And I go back to the major incident with Hezbollah where virtually the entire leadership structure of Hezbollah is taken out in a matter of minutes because all of their pagers and their, their cell phones start blowing up. And so it may be that the Israeli plan is not to take out a place like Fordo outside to inside, but maybe inside to outside. I wouldn't be surprised to see that. And so I think the Israelis have the capability to finish the job. It's very important that they do so.
- [16:39]
Lisa Booth
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- [21:52]
Lisa Booth
How do you compare Mossad to like the CIA or some? I mean it seems like some of the stuff that they've been doing is like, you know, 007, like movie stuff where, you know, you see it and you're like, oh, yeah, that's not real. And then you're like, oh, wow, maybe it is.
- [22:10]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, the great thing about clandestine organizations is you don't really know what they're capable of doing. So I think it's difficult to do a comparison between an organization like the CIA, which has enormous capability, obviously, in an organization like Mossad, which has an enormous capability. And they were. I mean, think about this in terms of an intelligence coup. They built a drone factory in Iran and they used that location to launch drones that took out air defense systems, they took out leadership, they took out certain parts of the communications infrastructure in Iran, all from Iran. And this was all built in Iran by Israelis without the Iranians having any knowledge whatsoever. So rather than try to compare which one is better because neither one is good to have mad at you, I think it's sufficient to say Mossad is an extraordinarily capable intelligence organization. And they've proven that over the last two years in ways that are like what you would see in a movie or are like what you might see on TV and say, well, that's not real, that can't be done. And they've done it.
- [23:25]
Lisa Booth
I wonder too, because Israel probably benefits more from kind of like bragging about those things or getting it out in the open, right? Because, you know, considering the fact that Israel is the size of New Jersey and faced by enemies that seek its destruction, it's to its benefit to sort of boast or, you know what I mean, to. To kind of have that bravado versus the United States. It's probably to our benefit to like, for the CIA likely to sort of keep undercover some of the things it's doing, I would imagine. Do you think that's fair?
- [23:56]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it's a great point. They do use Mossad, unlike the way we use CIA, as a deterrent. And so they do a lot of clandestine things where they wouldn't necessarily have to take the credit and attribute the actions that occurred to the Mossad, but they are oftentimes eager to do so because it is a deterrent to other nations around them. And, and when you look at the geography of Israel, they are a country that is. The only non unfriendly nation that they have a border with is the ocean. It's the Mediterranean Sea. The rest of the country is surrounded by, by nations that are not friendly for the most part, with the exception of Jordan, to the Israelis and So I think they see it as an advantage to them to say, we're Mossad, and here are the things that we can do. And if we're willing to talk about those things, imagine what we can do that we're not willing to talk about. And that is a very different mindset than the CIA and a lot of other intelligence agencies use. But I think it's a very powerful tool that the Israelis have used to very good effect.
- [25:19]
Lisa Booth
You know, President Trump tweeted, or I guess posted on X to leave Iran. Why? Why do you think he did that? What do you think's coming? I guess. What does that signal to you?
- [25:30]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
I think it's. It's just another way to increase the fog of war. And, and you can expect the Iranians, with the loss of infrastructure that they have and particularly the loss of their leadership, especially those that are involved in air defense, there's a lot of confusion in Iran. It's difficult to communicate from one place to another. I think President Trump is keenly interested in the Israelis being successful, as he should be. I think we all should be. And I think he saw this as an opportunity to add to the chaos. It's important to note that people were already leaving Tehran before the President posted this on Truth Social. I think his particular posting has accelerated people's desire to leave Tehran. And having Tehran under threat really goes back to the Iraq Iran war, where people often refer to it as the battle of two cities. And this is where they were launching missiles from Iran into Baghdad, and for the most part, launching some missiles, but flying airplanes from Baghdad into Tehran. So there's a history that's not all that distant. It's within the lifespan of a lot of people that live in Tehran of remembering a capital under siege. And I think this just adds to that chaos and confusion and gives the Israelis a better opportunity to complete this operation quickly and while being successful, minimizing the overall loss of life.
- [27:09]
Lisa Booth
Who are Iran's friends? You know, are any countries coming to Iran's rescue?
- [27:16]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, I don't think there's anybody coming to Iran's rescue that really is useful to. To the Iranians or to anyone else. So in terms of. Of who they rely on, you know, a lot of times people will refer to Hezbollah as Iran's second strike capability. That's no longer true. And, And, And Hezbollah has been largely neutralized for now as a. As a military force, and you can see that they're not involved. The. Not a nation that appears to continue to support Iran are the Houthis. And that's not a surprise, because the Iranians give the Houthis the capabilities that they're using to make themselves, you know, infamous in the world of maritime transportation and the ability to keep the sea lanes open. Other than that, their proxies are gone. Syria's gone. Assad, Hezbollah has gone in Lebanon, Hamas has gone in Gaza. And so if you look at nation states that might support them, they're not nation states that are particularly useful to them. The Russians are very busy trying not to get, you know, defeated completely militarily, and in the Ukraine. So they're not going to be terribly useful. The Chinese are not going to get involved in any way and are likely only to be involved in some sort of a diplomatic way, because they see the activities that are going on right now as a threat to the oil that they get out of Iran at a. At a great discount. There's no use in having a country like North Korea or Venezuela as friends, other than they can foment some sort of mischief in various different parts of the world that. That people find unhelpful. But when. When Ayatollah wakes up in the morning, his list of friends is very short. It doesn't go far beyond any international boundaries, and it's getting shorter every day.
- [29:16]
Lisa Booth
You know, how pivotal President Trump obviously worked on the Abraham Accords during his first administration, and then recently had what has been deemed as a successful visit to the Middle east, most recently with some of these Gulf states making economic inroads as well. You know, he had that great line, the future of the Middle east is commerce, not chaos. How, you know, how does that trip sort of lay the groundwork for what is happening now? And also the Abraham Accords previously, you know, do you think the future of the Middle east could be commerce, not chaos? Or do they want commerce or do they want chaos? Or, you know, sort of. What. What's your assessment of all that? As someone who's, you know, worked and spent a lot of time on the Middle East.
- [30:01]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
I think that the Arab states, and especially the Arab states that the President visited, are keenly interested in stability. They're keenly interested in commerce over chaos. They do a very good job of really taking care of their population. So these are monarchs. They're not elected, they're not democracies. They're not likely to be so anytime soon, but they take care of. These monarchs are monarchs that take care of their people in terms of education, infrastructure, you know, the ability to work and to grow and to thrive are all priorities. For these monarchies because they want that stability and they want to be able to be part of the global economy to make money and make their countries and their people more prosperous. I don't think that's true with Iran. They really do thrive under chaos. The regime does. I think most of the Iranian people would much rather see a different regime and have, have a peaceful Iran that's part of the community of nations.
- [31:16]
Lisa Booth
Got to take a quick commercial break. More with Admiral Miller on the other side. Hey, guys, it's Lisa Booth. Most people wait until they get sick before they think about medication. But smart families, they're doing the opposite. They're being proactive and stocking up on essential medications from All Family Pharmacy. Whether it's ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, antibiotics, or just your regular prescriptions, All Family Pharmacy makes it easy to stay stocked and ready, order online, get your doctor's prescription included, and receive everything straight to your door. No more scrambling for appointments or finding out that the pharmacy is out of stock. This is the pharmacy for people who want to be ahead of the curve. No insurance, no problem. You choose what you need. Go to allfamilypharmacy.com and use code USA20 to get 20 off your order. Again, that's allfamilypharmacy.com with code USA20 to save 20% today. Stay ahead, stay protected, stay prepared with all family pharmacy.
- [32:12]
Unknown
You know, in the book of Genesis, God makes a promise to your offspring. I promise this land. Now, that promise is the foundation of Israel, a land the Jewish people have returned to after centuries of exile and bondage and even the horrors of the Holocaust. But that promise is still under threat, especially after October 7th. Now, Israel's safety today depends on the very brave men and women of the idf, the Israeli Defense Forces. Every citizen is required to serve. Your gift of $45 will help provide aid to soldiers and their families by helping to provide food and other bare necessities for these families and emergency supplies for soldiers. Now you can help secure their future. Honor those who are defending the holy land. Call now 888-488-IFCJ. That's 888-488-IFCj. Just go to their website. It's ifcj.org and you can give. Today, they are in desperate need of help.
- [33:12]
Ryan Seacrest
And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform.
- [33:17]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Please don't touch the exhibit, folks.
- [33:19]
Ryan Seacrest
It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history museum@public.com you can invest in almost everything, stocks, bonds, options and more. You can even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com disclosures Sonesta Travel.
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- [34:49]
Lisa Booth
My opinion is that President Trump's sort of the perfect president for this moment because he's a guy who, you know, obviously wants the United States to be like the superior power in the world. He doesn't mess around, he's willing to engage if needed, but he doesn't want some sort of drawn out nation building. He realizes the Middle east is different. Like they're never going to subscribe to democracy like we do here in the United States. You know, they're never going to be a constitutional Republican. So he's not really trying to impose our worldview on the Middle East. He's sort of just accepting the Middle east as, as they are. And you know, he obviously doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. So I think he's sort of the perfect person to be in charge right now. Like given the context of all those different things, sort of. What do you make of that assessment? And you know, I guess my opinion that he's very clear eyed versus in seeing the world versus kind of seeing it through, you know, rose colored glasses that don't really exist.
- [35:54]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, he certainly brings a different approach to international relations than, than what we've seen in the past. And, and it is a business approach. And he's been very clear with the Iranians. When you lay out the timeline, he gets into office, he gives the Iranians 60 days to make a deal in terms of the, their nuclear weapons program with a bottom line very simple, that they cannot become a nuclear power, they can't have a nuclear weapon, and it's unacceptable. And on day 61, the Israelis are bombing the Iranian nuclear weapons facilities that they're using to be able to make a bomb. So he's very clear on that. And nobody should be surprised or, and nobody should really, really object to what's happening only because it was all laid out very clearly. And you know, if this, then that, and, and so from that standpoint, he has been very clear. I do think that that business approach has a lot of sway in the world Now. I find it particularly interesting how it plays off the Chinese, who do take a more whole of government approach to foreign affairs than the Western countries typically have done. And so, you know, he sees things in the Middle east as more of a, you know, kind of a straight up business deal, but he also sees things that way with his engagements in the rest of the world. And you get into the whole debate about tariffs and those sort of economic moves as the way that President Trump has chosen to put forward to the world. Not only our foreign policy, but our foreign and economic policy wrapped up into one, but more skewed towards the economic side. I certainly think that pays a certain dividend in the Middle east where, where there's interest. And if you look at the Middle east today, you go to the capitals of the Emirates or Qatar or Saudi Arabia, they are different places than they 10, 15, 20 years ago and far different places than they were a half a century ago. These are modern capitals with great infrastructure, airports and roads and schools and hospitals and all of those things that make for good societies. I think they share a vision of the world that is similar to the vision that President Trump has. And you see that play out today in what's happening by the fact that the Arab countries by and large have chosen to stay on the sideline while this fight between Israel and Iran goes on. The end goal of that, I think, in President Trump's mind, and I think he's onto something here, is that this is how you get long term peace and stability. You solve these problems one way or the other, and, and then we can all move together peacefully and, and concentrate on making everyone's lives better. And so I think at the end of this, you're looking at a situation not to say that we don't have to deal with the Palestinian issue, it does have to be dealt with, but that sort of sets the table for, for events like the Abraham Accord to grow and to become treaties and. Or agreements that other countries are more likely to join in on as a way ahead for the future.
- [39:35]
Lisa Booth
What happens to the Iranian regime if it collapses? What does the future of Iran look like after that happens? Like, who would take charge? Is there concern that it would be even more volatile than it is now, if it's even possible, or. You know what I mean? Like, what does that, what does regime change, if that is a byproduct of the regime getting taken out, look like?
- [39:59]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, that's a great question, and sort of a caveat to start with is we want to be a little bit careful about what we wish for. So the Israelis have made it clear that they're not after regime change. They're after the nuclear weapons program. Having said that, there are a number of things that Israelis have done that might lead one to believe that they're not telling the truth, the whole truth or nothing. But.
- [40:24]
Lisa Booth
Yeah, like taking out the leader, you know?
- [40:26]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, taking out everybody but the leader.
- [40:28]
Ryan Seacrest
Right.
- [40:29]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
So he, he has no friends. You know, he holds a meeting and nobody else shows up because they're all dead. You know, they get a new army chief establishment.
- [40:37]
Lisa Booth
Not a lot of job stability, huh?
- [40:40]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Yeah, opportunity, but not stability.
- [40:42]
Ryan Seacrest
Exactly.
- [40:44]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
That's, that's all true. On the other hand, go back to 1979, the Shah really was a, was a terrible dictator. He was more along the lines of Saddam Hussein than, than probably Western history likes to record. And, and so the Iranians were, were sick of the regime and they wanted, they wanted a new one. And lo and behold, they got one that's worse than the one that they had. And, and so because of the way the, the regime is structured today, should the Ayatollah get killed in the course of this conflict, it's not clear who takes over and, and, and, and who is in charge of Iran. And what we must remember is that it's a big country, 80 million people, you know, a couple times the size of Texas. It has enormous petroleum reserves that are important to the world. And so an unstable, chaotic, ungoverned Iran is not in anybody's interest. And all of these error gc, the Revolutionary Guard boats, that they have the ability to, to launch drones, to, to be terrorists, not only in the region, but all around the world because there are Iranians everywhere, irgc, everywhere. That's not a picture that, that necessarily benefits the Israelis. The nuclear power program or the rest of the world. And so I think a good solution, if you're looking at this from Israel standpoint or from the US Standpoint, is that the Israelis capitulate or the Iranians capitulate on their nuclear weapons program. The regime stays in power long enough for stability, and then over the longer term, in the next five to 10 years, we see some regime change and, and a better regime. But I don't think a collapse of the regime in the near term is in anybody's interest.
- [42:52]
Lisa Booth
Before we go, I think a lot of people are wondering kind of like what the United States. I know you had mentioned earlier that Israel wouldn't have done this without believing it can kind of like accomplish its goals unilaterally. And that's kind of how it typically does things, I guess, is there, you know, could the United States get drawn into this? You know, I think a lot of people are concerned about, you know, being involved in another sort of Middle Eastern war, given past history, like, what's the likelihood of that? I imagine Iran right now probably doesn't really want to get the United States involved, but sort of what's the likelihood of that? And kind of like, what are you looking for in sort of the coming days and weeks as you kind of watch how this all goes down?
- [43:38]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
I don't think there's any appetite within the United States or within the region from the Arab states or the Israelis for the US to be involved. So I don't think there's a lot of appetite for the US to be directly involved. And I don't expect that to happen because I don't think the Israelis are going to need for it to happen in order to finish the job here. I think what the Iranians are looking for is US intervention in terms of a ceasefire and in terms of the ability to go back to the negotiating table. But we've been negotiating the nuclear weapons program with Iran basically for the entire century without any success. And so I don't think this is the time nor the opportunity to just go back to the table for the US to say, okay, let's have a ceasefire and let's talk about this in a productive way, because the Iranians aren't going to have that epiphany until it's too late. So I expect that the Israelis will continue to do their work. I expect that at the end of the day, they're going to be successful, and the US Won't have to get involved until the nuclear weapons program has had the kind of setback at least a decade that the Israelis and the rest of the world need. And then there's an opportunity to negotiate a better future, not only for the region, but also for the Iranians, so that they don't live under this regime that is replete with all sorts of sanctions that make everyday life in Iran a very difficult proposition.
- [45:23]
Lisa Booth
Do you think the Iranian people will rise up right now, or what's sort of the possibility of an uprising?
- [45:33]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, I think there'll be some uprisings. I think there'll be some. There's always this level of discontent that's sort of just below the surface. Whether or not it's coordinated enough to end up with an overthrow of the regime like we saw in 1979, I don't know, and I don't think so. But there will be disturbances in Iran. I expect that. They're already happening to a certain extent, and the Iranians are trying to keep a lid on that, both in terms of what's happening and what we know about it. But it is something that the Iranians are going to have to deal with and we're going to have to be aware of. But I don't think they rise up and overthrow the government. That said, the longer this goes on, we saw some footage the other day of a oil storage facility on the outskirts of Tehran that was on fire. So when. When there isn't enough fuel to be able to have people get to and from work, when they. When they can't, you know, they can't cook in their homes because there isn't any fuel available. You know, the more difficult life becomes as the war drags on, the more unhappy the people are going to be. Not with the Israelis so much as with the regime. And. And so from that standpoint, it isn't in the best interest of the regime to stand up and say, hey, we will open the doors. You could, you know, the IAEA can come in, the US can come in, and they can look at our program. We won't enrich. Here's all the stuff we have enriched. You know, they've got to give it up, but they've got to give it up completely in a way that everybody believes it, because in the long term, the survival of the regime is at stake. And I think that the Ayatollah is probably already feeling that pressure.
- [47:34]
Lisa Booth
Fair enough. And then where'd Fozzie come from?
- [47:37]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Well, it's a Muppet. And somebody said, that's what I look like when I was 22 or 23, and I didn't know what that meant. So I said no. And you know, once you say no to a call sign, that's it.
- [47:49]
Lisa Booth
Because I know you go by Vice Admiral John W. Fozzie Miller and I've always called you Fozzie, so I never knew where that came from. So. All right.
- [47:57]
Ryan Seacrest
Well, that's good.
- [47:58]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
Yes. There you go.
- [48:00]
Lisa Booth
Thank you so much for your expertise and your time on this. Really appreciate you breaking it down for all of us.
- [48:06]
Vice Admiral John W. Miller
You bet. Lisa, pleasure speaking with you as always.
- [48:08]
Lisa Booth
That was Vice Admiral John W. Fozzie Miller. Appreciate him for making the time to come on the show. Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday. But you can listen throughout the week. Until next time.
- [48:22]
Ryan Seacrest
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Vice Admiral John W. Miller
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Lisa Booth
And feels like hmm.
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Vice Admiral John W. Miller
All right, that could go on for a while.
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Cindy Crawford
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Ryan Seacrest
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- [50:57]
Lisa Booth
This is an iHeart podcast.