← The Find Out Podcast
The Find Out Podcast
Even Experts Can't Explain WTF Trump Is Doing In Iran
00:49:23
We sat down with Gregg Carlston live from Riyadh (Middle East correspondent, The Economist), and Andrew Miller (former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs) who spoke to us to try and make sense of the region’s reaction to the invasion.
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Find out podcast. Thanks for bearing with us last week as we didn't have an episode as we were doing our live State of the Union show from Washington, D.C. which thanks to everybody who watched that and Luke and my hands, if you watched it, still hurt. Oh, you're still hurt. Mine's, mine's recovered. So, I mean, I guess maybe there's a, there's a little bit of a benefit.
- [00:18]
B
What did you guys do with your hands that led them to hurt together? I don't.
- [00:23]
A
Every time someone subscribed, including Rich himself, to our YouTube channel, we did high fives. No, no, you got to keep it. We did high fives. And after the 50th, we had 50, our hands were getting a little rough. But, but now we're back to our show and we're joined by a very special guest today. Obviously, the only topic that anyone's talking about is the new Iran war, which the United States started this weekend. And we are joined by Greg Carlstrom, who is a Middle east correspondent with the Economist. So, Greg, thank you very much for joining us.
- [00:55]
C
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
- [00:57]
A
So Greg is actually in Riyadh, so he is right in the thick of everything. But I want to go to the beginning. Like, do you have a sense, what is the United States plan and goal with this, with this military intervention, which I think most of us in the United States are kind of looking at each other, trying to wonder what the urgency is, and we're wondering if you could shed some light on that for us or not.
- [01:22]
C
I don't, I don't have a sense. I mean, the short answer is no, I can't shed any light on that. We have heard just about every explanation that you can think of from Donald Trump over the past three days. If you go back to Saturday morning, our time here, when the war started, Trump put out this video message, this eight minute statement on, on social media, and he talked about wanting to, he said, raise Iran's ballistic missile program, annihilate its navy. And then he called on the Iranian security forces to lay down their arms. He said they should stop fighting and that the Iranian people should rise up and take over your government. He said, so it was a call for regime change. It was a call for popular unrest in Iran and regime change. Since then, he's also said, maybe this can all be over in two or three days and I'll make a deal with the regime. We've got some guys in mind who might be able to take over now that the Supreme Leader has been killed. Actually, no. It turns out those guys were also killed in those airstrikes on Saturday. So we can't rely on them. I mean, the objective of this and the timeline of this is constantly changing. He said, maybe it's two or three days, maybe it's four or five weeks. There's no clear answer that there's a
- [02:38]
B
striking poll, snap text poll that the Washington Post did this morning that reflects exactly what you just described and how it's showing up in the public, where they asked people, what do you think the Trump administration's main goal of US military action in Iran is? The top answer was 14% of respondents. Only 14%, nobody knows. Show power and take control, which is.
- [03:01]
A
That's.
- [03:02]
B
That's nothing. Second answer, unsure of goals. 13% of people were just like. And everything else, change the regime. Help Iranian. Iranians. Stopping the nuclear program, money and oil, the Epstein files and protecting the U.S. and other allies. These are all like 7 to 9% each. People, people have no fucking clue what's happening. While jets are getting shot down by our. By our allies. I'm like, who's in charge of this? And while we're actually losing American lives now, and Lord knows how expensive this whole thing has already become and how expensive it will be if it drags on for four to five weeks, I feel. Or longer. I feel like maybe Pete Hegseth was wrong when he said that we didn't have. We weren't entitled to any of this information in his press conference this morning. Who, who are you to ask us what we're going to do in Iran? He said that. He said that in his press conference.
- [03:55]
D
Who.
- [03:56]
B
Who are you to ask what we're going to do? Like, as if we're going to tell you and the enemies what we're going to do. Absolutely no accountability. And, and not even attempting to make an explanation for. For why we're doing this.
- [04:09]
C
No, I was going to say, I think if there is an explanation for this, I think Trump wants to be able to say Iran has been a problem for going on 50 years. Right. It's been a headache for. Yeah, right. Every president since Jimmy Carter has had to deal with this regime that chanced death to America, that took hostages at the embassy in 1979, that has sponsored militias across the region. I mean, he laid out this litany of grievances in his, his initial statement. And I think he just wants to be able to say, nobody else fixed this. I fixed it. Which is very Trumpy. Right. I alone can solve this problem that no other politician can solve. But what does fixing it mean? I mean, there's a whole range of possible scenarios there, not all of which are good in the long run for Iran or for the Middle east or for the world. And we just don't know which one of those he has in mind.
- [04:57]
A
And everybody, we also have a second guest here because this, this show or this, this war is so complex and so big. We wanted to have a Middle east correspondent. We also wanted to have somebody from the political world. So we have Andrew Miller, who is a senior fellow at center for American Progress and had the very, very easy job at the State Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli Palestinian affairs. Clearly a joke. So, Andrew, thank you for joining us.
- [05:21]
D
My pleasure.
- [05:22]
A
So, Andrew, we just asked Greg about Donald Trump's why he's doing this and why America is doing this. You obviously were in the State Department in the previous administration, so you're, you're privy to a lot of intel on this. You obviously worked on Middle Eastern affairs quite a bit. Do you have any sense of why on earth we are doing this now?
- [05:40]
D
No, not there. From a national security, from a foreign policy perspective, there is no rationale for why it's being done now. The situation on Friday before Saturday's attack was virtually indistinguishable from the day after the 12 day war last year ended. So it was a constant. You can't explain change in posture, a change in action by what is a constant. And while I don't have, you know, access to the same material I used to have, nothing that has been coming from members of Congress who do have access to that information suggests that there is anything, you know, credible. And the claims that Iran is close to developing an ICBM is laughable for those of us who were, who were tracking this, who knew where they were. It really, it's preposterous. And even the, I mean, even the, the, just the comments and the language that's used to describe the nature of the problem, it just is, Steve, Stephen Wyckoff saying, you know, they're, you know, they're one week away from having industrial, industrial grade missile making material or something like. What are you even talking about? I mean, it's, there is, are there, what is industrial grade? Is there an artisanal nuclear weapon? It doesn't even, it doesn't even make sense. But it's, you know, he, he's probably referring to the highly enriched uranium. And what we did know is, you know, Iran has probably still has about 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium at the 60 level. And based on the centrifuge capacity Iran had before the 12 day war, they theoretically could have turned that into 90% uranium, which would be weapons grade, in one to two weeks. Now, that's just the fuel. That is not all the way to a bomb. You still have to develop a design. And some of the estimates that went public were very short. Now, they could do it in as little as three or four months. That would be more or less like. That would be even more primitive than. I hate to call it primitive because of the vast destruction they did. More primitive than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you're talking about something that would be miniaturized to put on a missile well over, you know, a year away. So this idea of Earth, it's entirely fabricated. The echoes of Iraq are so strong here, you feel that it almost must be a play or some type of, you know, some type of satire.
- [08:27]
A
It's really like the worst sequel ever, right?
- [08:29]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if anyone was going to come up with it, it would be these gu.
- [08:34]
E
I have a theory, and I'm. I. The only reason I don't subscribe to it is because it's too coherent. And I just can't imagine the Trump administration actually doing this. But I want to get both of your takes on the theory, which is I looking at the heels of this revolution that's going on that obviously is not going well for the existing regime. It would make sense for the United States military at this point to put additional pressure on to, at minimum, destabilize the country to the point where the regime has even, even greater chance of toppling for the downstream effect of negatively impacting some of our adversaries, like China and Russia and North Korea and things like that. That, to me, is the only coherent thing I could come up with. But does that ring true as a possibility, or is that just not reflective
- [09:14]
C
of what you guys are seeing? I think this was a moment of opportunity for Trump. He saw a moment of weakness. You're right that the regime in the wake of those protests earlier this year, was reeling politically. It lost a lot of remaining popular legitimacy inside of Iran because it massacred thousands and thousands and thousands of peaceful protesters. It's also muddling through years of economic crisis. Currency lost half of its value last year. Inflation is in the double digits. People are unhappy about that. And it's militarily weakened in the wake of the war with Israel last summer. Its air defenses haven't been rebuilt. Its capabilities are not what they once were. So I think the Trump administration looked at this situation and just saw an opportunity. You know, the boot is on the neck and this is an opportunity to press America's advantage.
- [10:06]
D
I think that's, I think that's right. I mean, it's, and that is part of the motivation. I would just add two things. One, I would expect to see Trump pull a Venezuela at some point and throw the opposition under the bus. So the idea that he's genuinely concerned about the freedom of the Iranian people who richly deserve their freedom after decades of tyranny and oppression, I think, unfortunately is just, is illusory. And if there is an opportunity to cut with someone in the regime, he will do it and he'll find a way to enrich himself and his family and friends. The second point is, you know, while it is, it's absolutely true that the regime is at its weakest and the probability of toppling it now is higher than ever before, that doesn't mean that what's going to come next is going to be any better. And that's one of the lessons that we've learned, and I subscribe to the theory of my former boss, Phil Gordon, that, you know, we've, we've basically tried regime change through every conceivable formula and it always turns out badly. And I think we need to recognize that Germany and Japan are the anomalies. It's not the Middle east that's the anomaly. It's very, very difficult to use military force to put into place a democratic government that is going to be sustained. It's extremely difficult. And it's more likely that you will either see complete state failure or that you'll see an adversarial, even more adversarial regime develop. So it's, it's very plausible. That's what's motivating them. And certainly for some members of the administration, they do see this as the moment to go after the, the understandably hated Islamic Republic. But ultimately it's strategically, strategically ill conceived.
- [12:04]
B
Well, Andrew, it's funny that you point out Germany and Japan. I spent a good amount of time looking at these parallels yesterday and over the weekend specifically for that reason. It's like, what is, what is effective nation building even look like? And you know, you look at the Marshall Plan where we spent equivalent to $150 billion over a seven year period with massive international support. We grew Germany and Japan from scratch using local people, local institutions, rebuilding everything with, with the local populations. And that was after we completely eviscerated all local opposition, the exact. And we also had good leaders to shepherd that process. None of those conditions are true today. And so, best case scenario, you take a country like Iran, and I mean, we know how, I don't know if you call it factionalized, but we know how divisive the groups are in the Middle east and how long they've been fighting each other. That alone makes it incredibly difficult to solve for. You can't just take out one because there's 12 others, and they're all looking for that power vacuum. And, Greg, you tweeted this morning, Trump should have seen this coming. He said the biggest surprise of this so far was that Iran retaliated against other Arab countries in the region. Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Trump actually said, we were surprised that, that Iran attacked these, these countries despite Iran warning this is exactly how we will respond, and it will destabilize the whole region if you, if you do something like this. And they just went for it anyway. So, unfortunately, the pipe dream of rebuilding, you know, a thriving Middle east that's going to be an ally for us 50 years in the future is probably not something that's going to happen under Trump.
- [14:00]
C
Yeah, I mean, and he shouldn't have been surprised. You didn't need an intelligence briefing to know that Iran was going to do this. You could have picked up a newspaper. You could have looked at Twitter. I mean, they have spent months since that war in June threatening to do exactly what they're doing now to, to rain missiles and drones down on the Gulf countries. This is their strategy. They're very clearly telegraphed strategy of, if you attack us, we are going to expand the conflict, we are going to draw in other countries in the region, and we are going to hope that they take so much damage that they come and essentially beg the Trump administration. We can't take it anymore. We can't endure this anymore. You need to stop the war. Iran made it very clear that's what they were going to do. And lo and behold, they're doing it.
- [14:41]
A
Hey, Greg, what are you hearing from our allies there? Because obviously they've, they've hit Saudi Arabia, like, all the countries that, that Rich mentioned. Are they standing firm? Are they already getting uneasy? Like, what's the, what's the sort of feeling over there with our allies at the moment?
- [14:59]
C
So I think there's been an interesting shift over the past few days where the Gulf countries, before the war, they didn't want it to happen. They lobbied the Trump administration not to attack Iran, they tried to push for a nuclear deal, for a diplomatic solution, because they were worried about exactly this sort of retaliation, and they were worried about possible state collapse, about Iran falling apart, and then, you know, having a mess in a country of 90 million people basically on their doorstep. So that was their position until Saturday, until the war started. It started. And Iran immediately began attacking not just the American bases or the American troops in Gulf countries, but attacking all sorts of civilian infrastructure in these countries. Airports, hotels, residential towers. On Monday, there were strikes on an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia and a natural gas facility in Qatar, which both suspended operations temporarily, which has sent energy prices surging over the past couple of days. All of this is happening, and all of this is. It's infuriating to the Gulf states. Their view of it is we tried to help Iran prevent a war. We tried to lobby for a diplomatic solution here, and Iran is thanking us for that by bombing us, by. By shutting our airports, by raining missiles on our hotels and residential neighborhoods. And so there's a level of anger now, and there is this debate taking place in the Gulf about what do we do next. There are some people advocating for, we still need to push for diplomacy. We need to end this before things get out of control and the cost mounts. There are other officials in this region who are now arguing we've been dragged into the war anyway, against our will, but we are now part of it. And so we need to take sides. We can't stay on the sidelines and just push for diplomacy. We need to get involved. Whether that's by letting the United States use bases in our countries to attack Iran or by directly getting involved ourselves. I don't think there's any consensus on what to do yet. And the Gulf likes to act when it can as a bloc, not just individual countries, but to act as six countries working together. But there is this really interesting debate now that you wouldn't have expected a few days ago.
- [17:08]
A
And I heard some reports, I'm wondering if you can confirm or deny this, that these, the Saudis were actually, including the Crown Prince mbs, were pushing Trump to actually intervene. Do you have any information on whether that. That was a conversation that took place and is that something? Because obviously the Iranians and the Saudis are, are. Have been enemies for a long time. One is Shia, which are the. The Iranians, and, and I believe the Saudis are Sunnis. This is where I start to get a little weak on this stuff. But I'm getting a head nod from Andrew, so I got it right. So sorry, Greg. So have you heard anything confirming or denying that that MBS was pushing Trump to intervene?
- [17:44]
C
Right. So the backdrop. You're exactly right. The Saudis have hated the Iranians for many, many years. They see them as the wellspring of instability in this region. But over the past few years, before the war, the Saudis have also really invested in rapprochement with Iran. They've tried to get on better terms with the regime because they wanted to avoid exactly the situation that we're in now. Now, my understanding of what happened in the run up to the war, it's a little bit different than what was reported. The Saudis initially were staunchly opposed to it, and they told Trump as much. By about the beginning of February, I think it became clear to the Saudis and to everyone else that the war was starting to look inevitable. Trump wasn't sending this volume of troops to the region, aircraft carriers, destroyers, warplanes, all of this. He wasn't sending it if he wasn't going to use it. And so the Saudis started tempering their criticism and their opposition because they wanted to have input into, if you're going to do this, we want to have a voice, we want to have a say. And just saying, no, don't do it is not a good way to have input. So it's a bit more nuanced. I don't think they were aggressively lobbying for Trump to do it, but at some point, they also stopped opposing it in the way that they initially had.
- [18:59]
A
And I'm going to ask Andrew, actually, both of you this question. I always talk to Andrew first. What is the likelihood that the other Arab nations that are theoretically on our side get involved? I mean, obviously, like, letting people use. Letting us use their bases is probably the baseline of support of which they could do. The. The British have already agreed to let us do that for defensive measures, whatever that means, which is probably just some cover for him at home. But, like, is there a. Is there a possibility of Saudi or Jordanian troops on the ground along with American forces in Iran?
- [19:32]
D
I do not think that Trump wants to deploy American forces to Iran. And there are no Arab forces that have an expeditionary military capacity at the scale that would be required to make a difference in Iran? You know, one of the few countries that probably could do anything would be the uae, but it would be so small. It would be like putting an insect up against a giant. I mean, they're very good pound for pound, but it's a small country compared to a country of almost 100 million and without the US enablement of an expeditionary capacity, it's just not going to, it's not going to happen at all, and it's certainly not going to make a difference. And I do think that Trump is enamored of air power at this point, and he believes that air power and Special Forces are this magic elixir and he can use it to solve any problem. I know, I kind of joke to myself, I feel like I'm in a Tom Clancy novel where any problem in the world, you just take a few CIA officers and a few Special Forces and some planes, and they're incredibly good. And what they can do, they do better than anyone else. But there's just a limit to what can be done done from the air. There's a limit to what can be done with such a small force on the ground. So could some Arab countries be helpful? Yes, on the margins. But as we saw with the unfortunate friendly fire incident with the three F15s, I mean, there is a capacity issue with many of our air partners. Some of them have improved over the years, but there still is a major gap. And, you know, the United States, historically, when contemplating military action in the Middle east, the type of support they want from our Middle Eastern allies is symbolic, financial and logistical, primarily access to airspace. And that does make a difference, the ability to sustain this, particularly if, for instance, the Ford, the carrier strike group in the Mediterranean, they're over their, you know, they're over their service limit for this tour. They're going to have to leave the next couple of weeks. So that is no longer going to be an option. If the Saudis, if the, you know, if the Saudis, if the Emiratis, if the Qataris are saying, go ahead, you know, you know, feel free to use our, your bases in our countries however you see fit, that could help to substitute for what we're probably going to lose as assets rope, rotate back to the United States.
- [22:20]
A
So I want to ask about the, the shooting of the, of the three F15s in Kuwait, which I think the Kuwaiti government has admitted that that was a mistake. It was friendly fire. Now, friendly fire happens in war zones. I mean, I think there's the most famous cases. I think it was Pat lynch, the former NFL player in Afghanistan, originally thought he was killed by the Taliban, and it turned out it was a friendly fire incident. But, you know, we've launched sorties over Kuwait for almost 40 years now. How, how does the, how does the connection get so screwed up that they didn't fi. They didn't shoot down one F15, they shot down three. Now luckily all the pilots survived. They were able to eject. But you know, we obviously do not have a lot of confidence in the Trump administration to get the details right on these things. And then when you see with these three jets, which cost $90 million a piece by the way, get shot down and potentially put these men's lives and women lives at risk. How does, how does this lack of coordination happen in something of this scale? Andrew, I'm going to ask you first.
- [23:18]
D
It's truly mind boggling because the legitimate target obviously in this case would have been Iranian aircraft. But we have complete air supremacy in Iran. There's no Iranian plane that's getting anywhere. As soon as it takes off, it's probably going to be taken down by some type of US Munition or Israeli jet in the area. But you're absolutely right, this is, this is standard operating procedure. The United States has been flying missions in large volumes for the better part of two decades. You know, more than two decades, and there still needs to be coordination taking place. They need to exchange codes, they need to provide a heads up. There needs to be a recognition that things have to be programmed properly. And the failure to do that necessary communication is, I mean, it's an incompetence that I really. Friendly fire incidents do happen and they are unfortunately inevitable. But normally it's a friendly fire incident on the ground in forest and mountain terrain where it's difficult to flying in the air. It really, it's hard to understand how this could happen, only that there was a huge breakdown in the normal coordination process that takes place as a matter of course in daily operations. I mean, using Kuwaiti aerospace that many of the, the US Aircraft that are taking off from Al U Dade fly across Kuwaiti airspace. This is not a, a rare occurrence. It just, it truly is, it is alarming. And you know, for people who have family members or friends in the, in the U.S. armed services who were deployed over there, this does not instill confidence. You're not going to feel comfortable that, you know, and most likely, you know, the actual officers in the military, they're doing what they need to do. But there was some breakdown in the communication and there may have been some coordination. It's, it's just, it's emblematic of a malfunctioning institution of a malfunctioning system.
- [25:43]
A
Yeah. And I just, you know, Greg, I want to get your thoughts on this in a second, but like I have friends that were stationed in Kuwait during the second Gulf War we had, you know, part of the Gulf War one was to liberate the Kuwaitis. I mean, it's just mind blowing. That 3F15, the most advanced tech, some of the most advanced technology that we've got, is being shot down probably by our own anti aircraft batteries in, in Kuwait. So, Greg, are you here? What are you hearing about this situation from your sources on the ground there? Does this sound like this was just Trump administration lack of coordination or something else?
- [26:17]
C
I think it also just speaks to how unfamiliar this region is with conflict. I mean, the Gulf for a long time has been a place where nothing happens, where compared to the rest of the Middle east, things are quiet, there's chaos somewhere else, but the Gulf is relatively stable. And so America, for a long time has been pushing the Gulf countries to improve their air defenses, to integrate their air defenses with one another in anticipation that someday there would be a conflict with Iran and there would be missiles and drones zooming overhead and they would need to be prepared. And a lot of American officials, not political figures even, but nonpartisan career civil servants or people like that, they've been frustrated over the years with the refusal or the lack of interest in the Gulf in taking this seriously, this feeling that nothing is ever going to happen, so we don't have to work too hard on this, we don't have to take it seriously. And now all of a sudden you have a situation where in the last three days the whole region has been plunged into a war. You have hundreds of missiles and drones being fired every day now at Gulf countries that are not used to this, they're not Israel, they haven't lived with this for decades where they have a well honed system for air defense. They're suddenly fighting a war for the first time in decades and they're not prepared for it. I mean, it's not just with this. I mean, 15 years ago, when the US was involved in the air campaign in Libya to try and overthrow the Gaddafi regime, there were stories of Gulf countries that joined the American coalition there that were flying to Libya to conduct sorties and ran out of fuel on the way there because they didn't calculate properly how much fuel they would need to get to Libya. And so this is just not a region where you have, for the most part, battle hardened, experienced militaries that know how to do this stuff.
- [28:04]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's very obvious. And I want to go back to another point because a lot of Americans, I think, are concerned about this, about this option of ground troops, because Trump did say, I think this morning or yesterday, he's not afraid. He didn't say he was going to do it or he said, I don't have a trigger. There was some phrase he used to that basically said he wasn't afraid of ground troops. And if you look back over history, regime change by air is almost impossible. So how is, how do they plan to overthrow a government of 90 million people? I mean, at least I know that number. Ted Cruz I know doesn't know how many people are there. But, you know, a lot of the Republicans don't know what we're bombing. But, you know, how, how does regime change, regime change happen if we don't put troops on the ground, we just continue to bomb from above. Is that a strategy that could work in Iran, Greg, I'll go to you first, then go to Andrew.
- [28:56]
C
I mean, it's not a strategy. I think it's a hope, maybe on the part of the Trump administration. It's not a strategy. I think the, the idea is if you destabilize this regime enough, it will eventually buckle and you will eventually end up in a situation where it loses control of parts of the country where Iranians feel emboldened to come out and demonstrate because the security forces can't repress them as they usually do. And somehow, magically, that will lead to a wonderful new government taking power in Iran. And it's that middle piece, that magical thing that's supposed to happen that they can't quite work out. I mean, you can, from the air destabilize a regime that is very much possible. You can assassinate the leaders and then the replacements for those leaders and then their replacements, and you can keep working your way down that chain, and you can blow up headquarters of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guard and the security forces, you can make it harder for them to exercise control over the country. All of those things can be done without a single boot on the ground. You can do it from the air. But then what is your theory of change after that? Who is going to actually take power in Iran? You have a very disorganized, fragmented opposition. It's a country where there's a history of insurgency in parts of the country, ethnic insurgencies, Kurds in the northwest, ethnic Arabs in the southwest, for example, that back in 1979, the last time there was a regime change in Iran fought insurgencies against the state. So, you know, you have the possibility of the state fracturing, and then you're still going to have a chunk of the population that is loyal to the old regime. So how do you change it? What do you replace it with? These are the questions that nobody has been able to answer. And I think even if you put boots on the ground, you're not answering those questions.
- [30:47]
D
No, I think that's exactly right. And it's certainly not a strategy, but it is consistent across both Trump administrations. I would put this in the category of let's break stuff and see what happens. And unfortunately that has often been their approach to foreign policy, not just in the Middle east, but, but globally. And while that may occasionally produce profit in the private sector in Silicon Valley, in, in other places, that is not a way to, you know, run, to run a foreign policy. It's actually, unfortunately, it aligns with President Obama saying don't do stupid shit. Right? Well, it turns out breaking stuff without a strategy for what that class, that constitutes doing stupid. Because you, you do. As in the immortal words of, of Colin Powell, despite the role he played in the Iraq war, you know, once you break it, you, you own it. And there is a true, we are going to own this. Even if he walks away. This is going to follow us around, it's going to follow around our partners, our allies, it's going to follow us around internationally. And they are not prepared for any of those scenarios. They're not even prepared for the most imminent and the most obvious initial decision point, which is, okay, if it does come down, what's next? Let alone how is this regime going to be, how's this new government going to be able to function? Who's going to support it? How is it going to be integrated into the region? How? There are so many other more complicated, even more complex, not even complicated, but even more time intensive questions that need to be addressed. And they can't even just answer this initial, this initial precondition of you need someone who's going to, to govern. And it's, There is a parallel here with, I think with Gaza where you have a gov, where you technically have a government now but you don't, you don't have a bureaucracy around it. So unless, you know, whatever you think of the individuals who are on the National National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, and many of them are capable and do have clean. They can't run Gaza themselves. They need, they need bureaucrats, they need police officers, they need all of these people, there's just as I think Greg put it extremely well, there's just a part missing in this logic, this causal process. And unfortunately those two, the impetus and the outcome don't magically align most of the time. And that's what makes this such a gamble. It would be a gamble even if you, you had a coherent theory for how this was going to work. They don't even start with that.
- [33:44]
A
Yeah, it's, I mean, I, I heard today, he said, Trump said that, oh, well, maybe this will last two or three days, or maybe this will last four to five weeks, like two to three days. Like, I mean, we, yes, the Ayatollah is dead, which when you consider all things equal is a good thing. We've also lost four American lives and we've also lost three fifteens less, which is less important, but still it matters. So if we're only doing two to three days, which essentially means we killed the Ayatollah, we killed a couple people in the line of succession. The Ayatollah, by the way, was 86 years old. So they've clearly been thinking about the succession for a long time. So if we were to just pack up and leave tomorrow after a few thousand strikes in the Ayatollah dead, does anything change? Greg, I want to ask you first.
- [34:33]
C
Obviously someone new will, will take power in Iran. We don't know who that's going to be yet. And I think there's a lot of infighting right now. I mean, there's a, there's a process spelled out in the Constitution of Iran where if the supreme leader dies, there's an interim three man council that takes power for a period and then after that there's what's called the assembly of Experts, which is a larger body that votes on the new supreme leader. So this triumvirate has taken power already. It's not clear if they're able to meet in person because there are ongoing American and Israeli strikes meant to assassinate Iranian leaders. So, you know, they probably should be meeting on Zoom rather than doing it face to face right now. It's also not clear if they're actually in charge. I mean, one of the members of this council is the President, Masoud Pizzaskian, who has spent the better part of the past year telling anybody who will listen to, hey, I don't have much power here, actually, the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guard and a whole bunch of other guys, they're the ones who run the country. You know, I just work here, essentially. He's not one of the guys on this ruling council. I don't think he has much more power today. I think there are other figures within the regime, people like Ali La Rajani, who's a longtime regime Apparatchik Mohammad Kolibaf, who's the speaker of Parliament. I think these are the guys who are actually wielding power behind the scenes and vying to perhaps, if not fill Khamenei's shoes because they're not clerics, but perhaps find a figurehead to be the next supreme leader and then be the guys wielding power behind the scenes. I mean, that's what they have in mind. But who is going to win that competition? We don't know. And will that person be any more amenable to American interests than Ali Khamenei was? We also don't know the answer to that. And if the answer is no, then from an American perspective, this whole thing was kind of pointless.
- [36:23]
D
I mean, if we've taken one lesson from the last 20 to 30 years, that should be humility in these cases that we don't actually have the understanding of the politics and the socio cultural environments, or at least the vast majority of people who are making the decisions in the United States on these issues do not. And even when they do, there is a large part of what's taking place that is not transparent, that is not, that is not visible. And you shouldn't be too certain in how things are going to play out. It's, you know, it's easier. With that said, it's easier to foresee a scenario where the person who replaces Khomeini is either basically cut from the same cloth and more or less a continuation of his, of his, of his term of power or someone who arguably is even more disruptive. I mean, it should be remembered that Maine is the one who really put the brakes on developing a nuclear weapon. Now, he often opposed cutting deals, but he was pretty consistent over the past nearly, you know, 25 years that Iran should not develop a nuclear weapon, that we shouldn't fatwa. And he largely enforced enforce that. And it's not only possible because there are diversity of views on that issue, but if you're looking at it from Iran's perspective, from this regime's perspective, what faith do you have that in the absence of some new form of protection, you're going to stop the United States, you're going to stop Israel from doing this every several months, you know, very, you're either going to, you need to try something new. It's either you, you cut a deal and you hope that in cutting a deal that maybe you forestall it and that is possible, or you try to improve your defenses. And there is this, this fear that exists and is constantly discussed in foreign policy. Circles that one of the unintended consequences of US Policy over the last several decades is that we have created. We've created an incentive for countries to develop nuclear weapons because we don't attack countries with nuclear weap. While those who give up their nuclear weapons, not only are they insecure, their leaders tend to meet a very, very bad end. And, you know, that is going to be factored into their calculus. And while it may have been rational in any given instance to. To take action, you have to think about the long term. And this is part of the problem where I think for many Americans, they may in the short term look at this and say, oh, this is great. We know we finally got the Ayatollah, and certainly no tears shed for him. And it's deeply regrettable that four American service members made the ultimate sacrifice. But if it ends there, maybe that's a price worth paying. Even if that is the case, though, you're going to have this long tail. And what you may discover is that what appears as a snapshot in time now to have been a relatively clean operation, but could plant the seeds of a much bigger problem later. And I think you could say that about the strikes last summer where many people, including people, you know, including some Democrats, including some people would identify as left the center, would have said, well, we didn't support Trump joining the 12 day war, but look, they did such a great job. Now we don't have this problem, and yet we're, you know, here we are eight months later and we're in war again. So kind means everything in understanding the implications.
- [40:21]
A
You know, if only there had been some sort of deal in place to keep Iran from enriching uranium to 90. If only we had that, guys only had that. It would be a great thing. Yeah. Which be a shame if somebody, like, ripped that up and, you know, tossed it out the window. Yeah. And look where we are now. Look how successful that was. I got one question that we got to wrap for both of you. And Greg, I'm gonna start with you. What's the most likely outcome that you see right now from this war, escalation, conflict, whatever we want to call it?
- [40:55]
C
I. I wish I had the answer to that. I'd be placing a large bet on Polymarket or something. Right.
- [41:01]
B
Immediately.
- [41:03]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:04]
C
It's really hard to. It's hard to say. I mean, I. I think Trump has set the bar so high for himself here that it's difficult for him to settle for. You know, we're going to do two or three days of war and then make a nuclear deal and go home. I mean, if anyone could do it, if anyone could do that about face and turn around and say the war was a success, and, you know, I got the best deal since the Treaty of Westphalia, it would be Donald Trump. But I just think he has set expectations so high. I think Israel has very high expectations. And I think increasingly the Gulf states at this point feel like we didn't want this to happen in the first place. But exactly what Andrew said, sort of, you broke it, you buy it at this point. I mean, the United States has caused this problem, and the Gulf doesn't want to now live with this extremely cornered, hostile Iranian regime just a couple of hundred kilometers away. And so they might not want America to wrap this up in two days if it comes to a very inconclusive, unsatisfying end. So my instinct is that this is going to drag on for a while. This is going to be closer to the four or five weeks than the, the two, three days of Trump's timelines. But how it ends, I mean, who takes power in Iran, what Iran looks like, I don't even want to hazard a guess, honestly.
- [42:22]
D
Yeah, I think one of the challenges is the preferences of the Israelis and the Gulf are diametrically opposed, where I think contrary to, contrary to, you know, the, the prevailing opinion. You know, I don't think Netanyahu actually has fantasies about, about the Shah's son returning to power. I think what he really wants is an Iran that is so badly weakened that it ceases to exist as a state. And that is the worst possible outcome in many respects for the Gulf, because that will be the equivalent of having a Somalia or, you know, across the Persian Gulf, while they're trying to maintain an environment of financial stability and political stability to conduct business, how the Trump administration tries to, to manage that. And it's. It's very possible that Trump's desire to get out will be the soonest. And then for their own different reasons, Israel and the Gulf will be pushing for a longer campaign. But what they want to get out of it is going to look completely, completely different. And then there's a question of the Gulf is not in a position to do anything unilaterally. The Israelis could. And is Trump willing to rein them in? You know, it will depend, I suppose, on what he is able to achieve as he walks out of this. But, you know, I think Greg's absolutely right, trying to predict what is going to come out of this. I mean, it's. You could see the continuation of the regime. That's certainly very possible. You could see a modified version where the IRGC assumes a more public and a more legally official role in governance, where they're not just, you know, the actual, the de facto, they're the de jure power. You could see a scenario, scenario where you do have some faction that is willing to, to moderate their behavior somewhat with Trump. But it's, it's so contingent and so variable. This is precisely what makes this entire war so foolish because you would only agree to enter into this situation where you have such varying outcomes and such a high risk if you had no choice. But they have blundered their way into this war and have selected, decided to initiate a war that is not a clear winner. I mean, very few wars are clear winners. But you can't even make the argument, I think, logically and in an intellectually honest way that it would be a clear winter. So it's quite tragic.
- [45:07]
B
Do we have 10 seconds or a follow up question?
- [45:09]
A
Yes, go for it.
- [45:11]
B
Related to that, I know that one of the big reasons why we didn't want to get into this in the first place, I think even this was from Dan Cain, was that there was no viable opposition leader or opposition group who could fill in that power void, who we could quickly rally behind. Is that consistent with, with what you guys have seen, or is there any person who could potentially help lead Iran out of this to that better place that you sort of alluded to?
- [45:38]
D
I don't, I'm not. I think the Iranian opposition is highly fragmented. The Islamic Republic has been very effective at keeping their, the opposition divided against each other, which is part of the reason it's lasted as long as it has. That doesn't preclude the possibility that they could find a way to establish bridges and form some type of nucleus of a, of a governing movement. But one, that takes time. And two, we need to acknowledge that our intervention skews the incentives for local actors, and it doesn't necessarily skew them in a favorable direction. When the United States becomes involved opposition, you know, the opposition actors often play to us and we become the center of attention rather than the people that they're supposed to serve being the center of attention. So it becomes, you know, the equivalent of, you know, the equivalent of, of a poison pill where the United States is going to play a role and bring its resources. But in so doing, the United States disfigures what needs to be an organic environment where authentically domestic actors are working together and building these relationships that can exist, that can function and that can persist past heavy American involvement. There's a reason that oppositions or previously opposition movements have held together for a short period of time while the US Was there to kind of force them together. And as soon as the US Pulls out, they immediately because they're made out of sand. And that is part of the challenge in this, that we may have made it arguably harder for the opposition to reach that type of consensus or a modus vivendi, even if we made it more likely that the regime would fall.
- [47:40]
A
And Greg, do you, are you seeing the same things or do you have is there any more hope on your side, or are we about the same page?
- [47:47]
C
I wish I could offer you some hope, but I've been covering the region for like 15 years and that sort of beats the hope out of you, unfortunately. No, I, I don't think there's anyone from the internal opposition in Iran. I think the idea of the Shah's son coming back half a century later is a fantasy. Not even sure he wants to do it sometimes. I mean, he has a comfortable life in Potomac, Maryland. I'm not sure he wants to give that up and go back to be the leader of a devastated, economically ruined Iran at this point. So I think if there's anyone who's going to take power, the most likely candidate is going to be someone from within the regime who might be a bit more pragmatic on certain things. But, but this is not the sweeping change that most Iranians want and Iranians deserve.
- [48:30]
A
Well, we've certainly stepped in it, that's for sure. So with that, obviously there's going to be a lot of news coming out in the next few days. But I want to thank Greg Carlstrom from the Economist and Andrew Miller from Center for American Progress for joining us. I really appreciate this. I've learned a lot in this and I hope our listeners do, too. Obviously, it's a very complex situation. So we appreciate you guys. We'll have to have you maybe back on in a few weeks when this is still going on and see what the hell if we've gotten any clearer, which I doubt. But I want to thank you guys. Like, obviously Americans are, are quite confused about why we were doing this, and I think you helped to shed some light on all of this. So thank you very much for all of this, guys. We really appreciate it. And for our listeners, thanks for watching. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, be sure to get a subscription, get some merch. I'm not going to hawk it too much because it feels weird to do that during a show about a war. So with that, thank you, Greg. Thank you, Andrew. We'll be back on Thursday, everybody. Have a great week, and we'll talk soon.