← Interrupted by Matt Jones
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- [00:00]
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Matt Jones
This is interrupted by Matt Jones on.
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Greg Carlstrom
NewsRadio 840 WHAS now here's Matt Jones.
- [01:25]
Matt Jones
Welcome everybody. It is episode eight of the Matt Jones show, which now has a new name. We've decided to make this show called Interrupted by Matt Jones. It was suggested a lot because apparently people say I interrupt much when I do an interview here later on you can listen and decide if I interrupt. I think I probably do, but I like the name of it. You guys have been great supporters of it so far. If you're hearing this for the first time, go and subscribe. We have had everybody on, from sports people to political people, and we will have a lot more. It's been a lot of fun today. You know, the news in the last week has been all over the place and I think it's easy sometimes for people to not really know what's going on, especially when it comes to these overseas things. I think unfortunately we've gotten to the point that all political news is seen through the construct of do you like Donald Trump or not? I that's really unhelpful because you can like Donald Trump and disagree with things he does or you can dislike him and think some of the things he does can still be positive. And I think that gets forgotten a lot. But in order to have your own opinions, you actually have to know what's going on. And I don't know about a lot of people listening, but I probably know less about the Middle east than just about anything in life. When I was growing up, you learn about American history, you might even learn European history. There's really. The rest of the world is kind of unknown to a lot of Americans. I studied Russian politics when I was in college, and I got to know Russia pretty well. As I got older, I tried to read about Asia, but there's still Africa. And the Middle east is something I just don't know a ton about. But the Middle east is in the news all the time. You hear all the names of the countries, but you don't really understand. At least I don't all of the history and the background and why things are how they are. So with all that's happened with Iran and Israel, our decisions to bomb there, obviously you can't have gone anywhere without hearing about Israel and Palestine. I found myself keep trying to keep up with it, having opinions, but also feeling a little uneducated about those opinions because I don't really know the history of it very well. And I suspect that there's a lot of you all that are very similar in that regard. So I decided I'm going to bring somebody on who can talk about what's going on, but also kind of give it some context. I was talking to a person who was worried that the world was going to end, and they asked me like a very simple question. They said, so why do Iran and Israel hate each other? And I went, I don't really know. Actually, I should. I've just always assumed my entire life that they do, but why do they, right? I know that Iran had a revolution in 1979, but I don't really know the history of that and I don't know how that affects Israel. So I decided to bring on someone who could help with all that. Someone. So, as many of you know, I'm a dork. And I read the Economist sometimes in Reds games. If you're watching this on YouTube, I have a Reds hat on. So imagine me sitting at a 2022 Reds baseball game when they stink, reading the Economist. It's a dorky picture, but that's what I do. And I saw Greg Carlstrom is a reporter that covers the Middle East. Saw him. He's got great hair, like not Billy level hair, but he's got like, great hair. And so I thought we'd have him on to kind of do all that. And so for the first time ever, we're going to talk to Greg. So let's welcome him. All right. So in this complicated issue, I decided to bring on somebody that knows more about it than a random guy in Kentucky. And so I brought an expert, Greg Carlstrom. He is the Middle east correspondent for the Economist. That's one of the magazines that I will take to Cincinnati Reds games and read during it and then get made fun of for taking a magazine to a baseball game. Greg is in Dubai. Before I ask you a serious question, Never been to Dubai. Everyone says once you go to Dubai, you won't want to live anywhere else. Is that true or false?
- [06:11]
Greg Carlstrom
I'm not sure it's true. Honestly. For a few years it's true. For a few years it's very easy, it's very comfortable. At a certain point, you know, it's 120 degrees outside right now. So at a certain point, just for that reason, you might want to go somewhere else.
- [06:25]
Matt Jones
Yeah, well, okay, fair enough. I can appreciate that. I hear though, it has everything. At some point I'll end up there. Greg, you, you have been in a Middle EAS correspondent for long time, written books on the area. So I want to ask you, I want to approach this like my average listener, which is when I was growing up. I know, I feel like I'm educated about a lot of things, but I know the Middle east less than anything because I don't think it's taught at least where I grew up in sort of Middle America. So let's start with this. This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I actually think it's what a lot of people would, would have Iran and Israel as a starting point. Why don't they get along? Just what is the, what is the base reason this is such a long term conflict, if you were to say.
- [07:12]
Greg Carlstrom
I mean, it's a good question. And it's a question that, that honestly a lot of people in Iran have been asking of late. They're not natural enemies, right? These are countries that are, you know, thousand miles away from each other. They don't share a border, they don't have a territorial dispute. It's not like Israel and the Palestinians where there is a dispute over land over, you know, who owns what bit of that land. Or even countries like Lebanon and Syria that border Israel, where they've, you know, they've invaded each other and they fought wars over the years. You understand why they're enemies, Iran, there's no natural dispute there. And in fact, until 1979, Israel and Iran were not enemies. Actually, they had a pretty close relationship, Israel and Iran. They sold weapons to one another. Israel bought oil from Iran. What changed was in 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That's when the Shah, the monarch, the king who had ruled previously, was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini, who of course, famously, you know, in America, everybody's going to know. The, the ethnicity crisis, the hostage crisis in 1979.
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Matt Jones
I always heard, and you tell me if I'm wrong. The, the Shah, was that an American placed leader? That's what people say. Is that true?
- [08:34]
Greg Carlstrom
So there was a, essentially a coup in 1953 that was organized by the CIA, a guy named Kermit Roosevelt who worked for the CIA, working together with the British. There was a whole dispute involving bp, the oil company, and their rights to oil in Iran and the royalties they would receive from it. And so there was a very popular Iranian Prime Minister who basically wanted Iran to get more money from, from Iran's own oil. The British didn't like this prime minister because it would have meant less money for them. And so they, working together with the CIA, overthrew this prime minister. And that has been, you know, that after that, obviously that was a source of anger in Iran. That was something that many Iranians blamed the US For. Rightly, they were angry at the US and you can sort of draw a line from that coup to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which brought this religious clerical regime to power that's still in power today, and that what percentage of.
- [09:34]
Matt Jones
Iranians do you think support? Like I often wonder, because people would say, well, Americans think this and they don't. And I don't know if they realize that 50% of America does not agree with a lot of what Trump says. What percentage of Iranians do you think support the regime that is in place now?
- [09:54]
Greg Carlstrom
Listen, it's really hard to generalize, right? Especially because it's not a country where you can poll people about this. You can't call people up on the phone and ask them, do you support the regime or not? People are not going to be honest because they're afraid of who's listening. But I think what's become clear, you know, not just over the past few years, but for probably about 15, 20 years now, is that the regime is not popular with many Iranians. There has been wave after wave after wave of popular protest. You had in 2009 what was called the Green Revolution. It was a protest movement over a stolen election, a rigged election. The regime smashed that very brutally, quashed those protests. You had a movement a few years ago, back in 2022, that started after a young woman was arrested by the police, taken to a police station for wearing what they call improper hijab. Her hair was showing, basically. She was arrested and she died. She was killed by the police. Her murder started a mass protest movement across the country. Again, the regime brutally crushed that protest movement. This has been going on for many years. There is deep, deep anger at the regime for the religious rules that it imposes on people, for the way it has mismanaged the economy, for all sorts of other things. People obviously don't have an alternative. It's not a. It's not really a democratic system. But, you know, we've seen again, sort of wave after wave of popular protest.
- [11:25]
Matt Jones
A lot of what we hear is that then when the Islamic fundamentalists took over, that they had sort of a get Israel out of the Middle East. Is that, is that true? Is that really where it starts? Is then Iran is almost becomes an aggressor towards Israel, or do you see it a different way?
- [11:46]
Greg Carlstrom
Yeah, I mean, they made that a pillar of this new regime. Right. Hostility towards Israel, hostility towards America, hostility towards the West. That is part of the, like, the core identity of this regime. You can't separate it from the Islamic Republic. And so what did they start doing? They started arming and funding militias across the Middle east, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, which went on to fight several wars against Israel. They supported Hamas in Gaza, various other groups in the region. And they started building both a missile program to build missiles that had the capability to reach Israel, as we've seen over the past two weeks, and building a nuclear program that sort of slowly, slowly, slowly was moving towards being able to build a nuclear bomb.
- [12:36]
Matt Jones
I think what's hard in America, anytime Trump gets involved in anything, is it becomes a referendum on him and not a referendum on the issue itself. So I do my best to always see the other side of stories. I have a hard time seeing the quote, unquote, other side of Iranians leadership. You have just said to me, death. They sort of have the death to America, death to Israel, that their people are brutally, you know, repressed. And I've heard of many atrocities, you know, funded Hezbollah, funded Hamas. Is there anything redeemable about the group? Or is it just one of these things that objectively the world would be better off if they were not in charge of the country.
- [13:22]
Greg Carlstrom
Listen, I think objectively the world would be better off. And I think many, many Iranians feel that way. I mean, it's not just my view or your view. That is the view of many Iranians. I think the question is just how do you get there?
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Matt Jones
Yes.
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Greg Carlstrom
And how messy does it get sort of on the way there? And the concern for many people in Iran is that, okay, I want the regime gone. I want, you know, a more open, more representative political system that doesn't impose all of these restrictions on me. But what is that system? There's not really an organized political opposition inside of Iran or outside of Iran. So people are nervous that if you try to bring down the regime, there's going to be chaos like we saw, like we saw in Iraq in 2003, like we've seen in Libya, like we've seen in so many places across the region. That's the, that's the fear again, even for Iranians who really hate the regime. That's the fear they have.
- [14:15]
Matt Jones
Okay, so for as long as I can remember, there was talk about Iran trying to get a nuclear weapon, trying to create nuclear level attacks. Obama signed an accord that was a treaty of some sort. Again, as objectively as possible. Was it working and did it? Was it accomplishing? I know Trump pulled out of it, but before that, was that something that the world considered to be working?
- [14:45]
Greg Carlstrom
It was working. And that's the assessment of everybody who signed that treaty, including the United States. Every assessment that the State Department or US intelligence agencies had before Trump pulled out was that it was doing what it was supposed to, which was to limit how much uranium Iran could enrich and to what level Iran could enrich it. So you need to enrich it to 90% purity to have something that you can use to make a nuclear bomb. The, the jcpoa, as it was called, that nuclear agreement limited Iran to 3.67% purity, which is what you need for a nuclear reactor, for, for civilian uses, nuclear power. And every few months, the UN's nuclear agency, which is very well regarded, it's one of the few bits of the UN that is know very well regarded and very technocratic and does its job well, they would go in, they would inspect Iran's nuclear facilities, they would report on exactly how much uranium it had and how far it was enriched and Iran was complying with the deal. Now, the criticism of the deal was that it didn't do a lot of other things. Right. It didn't put limits on some of the other parts of research that you would do if you were looking to eventually build a bomb. It didn't limit those enough. It allowed Iran to keep developing new centrifuges, which are the machines that you use to spin the uranium really fast to enrich it. There were some valid criticisms of the deal that way. It also didn't limit at all Iran's missile program or its support for proxies for militias in the Middle East. And that's why a lot of countries in this region, countries like Saudi Arabia and the uae, didn't like the deal, because it didn't limit this other stuff. But was it doing what it was supposed to do, limiting their nuclear program? It was, until Trump withdrew from it.
- [16:37]
Matt Jones
Talking to Greg Carlstrom, Middle east correspondent for the Economist. Okay, so Trump pulls out of it. Explain to me how we get to the point in 2025 where Israel believes it is now time to take action. Let's say before Trump gets involved with the initial attacks, et cetera. Was there a triggering point or was it just they were waiting the right moment.
- [17:05]
Greg Carlstrom
So what happens is, after Trump withdraws from the deal in 2018, Iran starts violating parts of the deal. They say, well, America's out of it. We're going to get out of it as well. So they start enriching uranium to higher levels. Eventually, they enrich it to 60%, which is very close to weapons grade and doesn't have any civilian use. If you're at 60, the only thing you can do with that is enrich it a bit further to 90, and then use that.
- [17:31]
Matt Jones
And nobody disputes that. Right. Like they, they did that.
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Greg Carlstrom
They did that. I mean, again, the U.N. there are reports where the U.N. has gone in and counted up how much of that uranium there is, and they had about 900 pounds of it enriched to that level, which is enough that if you enrich it a little further, you can make 10 nuclear bombs with that amount of enriched uranium. That's all documented. So they're doing that. The Israelis say they have intelligence that Iran was also working on some of the other stuff that you, you have to do to make a bomb. The triggering mechanisms, for example, that cause that uranium to actually explode to start a fissile reaction. That is contested a bit. The Israelis say they have that intelligence. They haven't shared it in public. They have shared it with their allies. And there are some conflicting assessments even within the US about sort of how urgent that threat was.
- [18:21]
Matt Jones
But they were Tulsi Gabbard saying it's not. Is that kind of where that comes from?
- [18:28]
Greg Carlstrom
Exactly. Exactly. Tulsi Gabbard, I think it was back in March, was testifying before Congress and she said, you know, basically Iran is still about a year away from being able to make a bomb if they decided to. The Israeli assessment was that if they decided to make one, they could have done so in a matter of weeks. So the timeline was disputed, but nobody was disputing that Iran was continually making progress towards being able to make a bomb. It was just a question of, you know, when do they make the political decision to actually take that last step and put it all together.
- [19:01]
Matt Jones
Okay, so that, that, that's, that's helpful. Do you. So Israel decides to, to, to make an attack now? I want to go to Israel for a second with Netanyahu. That's a figure most Americans, you say, hey, name a leader of a foreign country, they're going to be able to name like Putin, Kim Jong Un, and then probably Netanyahu is very obviously very well known. I'll ask you the same question about him I did. The person, the Ayatollah in, in Iran, how popular is he in Israel? I mean, he is all, most of us in America know, as an Israeli leader, is he very popular there or is he a Trump like figure there?
- [19:41]
Greg Carlstrom
He's a very unpopular figure. I wouldn't even say he's a Trump like figure. He's probably Trump, at least everybody.
- [19:48]
Matt Jones
Like, he was not. He's not very popular.
- [19:52]
Greg Carlstrom
I mean, it's funny because I think he's, he's very popular in America. I think if Netanyahu moved to America, you know, he could, he could easily win the Senate seat in Florida or something, but in Israel he's not. And I think there's, there's a few main reasons why. One is that he's just been in power for a long time. His first term in office was in the 1990s. And then he's basically been in power almost uninterrupted now since 2009, a decade and a half. I think anybody gets a little sick of their leaders after that long. But I think two other things that, you know, particular things. One is that he's a very divisive politician, right? He's very good at sort of finding schisms within Israeli society, playing secular people off, religious people, playing people who live in the big cities off of people who live in, in, you know, sort of the peripheral areas. He's very good at playing on that and sort of exacerbating the divisions in Israeli society. And then I think the most recent thing Is he was the prime minister on October 7, right. He was the man in charge when Israel suffered the worst massacre in its history, the biggest security lapse in 50 years. He presided over that. And he hasn't really taken responsibility for what happened on that day and for all of the failures that led up to it. The army chief, the guy who was in charge of the army on that day, he's resigned. The heads of Israel's security services either have resigned or they've promised once the war is over, they're going to resign. Netanyahu hasn't done that. He's blocked efforts to set up a commission of inquiry to investigate what happened. He's the only person in Israel who acts as if I had nothing to do with this. I was running the country, but I had nothing to do with this.
- [21:36]
Matt Jones
And help me understand something about the Israeli like, so on September 11th, when America was attack America for a little short period of time, rallied around George W. Bush. There wasn't the, why is it his fault? There was like, hey, I mean, he had 90% approval for a little while before. Why, why was, you think that went more blame in Israel, Whereas we were more kind of rally around the flag, rally around the leader.
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Greg Carlstrom
I think some of it was, you know, George W. Bush at that point. He'd been the president for what, about eight months since he'd been. Yeah, that's inaugurated. You know, imagine Bush had been in power for 15 years when 9, 11 happened. He wouldn't be able to say, well, you know, I didn't see the intelligence, or I, you know, I couldn't have seen this coming. He could plausibly say that in 2001, but Netanyahu couldn't say that. And Netanyahu made it a policy for many, many years to keep Hamas in power in Gaza, to allow Hamas to hold power there because he thought that was useful to have the Palestinians divided. Where you have, you know, this extremist group running Gaza and then a different government running the west bank, sort of divide and rule, keep the Palestinians split, keep them weak. That was Netanyahu's policy. It obviously blew up in his face, blew up in Israelis faces, led to this massacre. So there's a specific reason too, why people hold him accountable, because he's part of why Hamas was there.
- [23:05]
Matt Jones
All right, so the attack occurs. Israel thinks Iran is about to have the weapon, the Americans getting involved. We've heard separate things in America about some of the administration for it, some against it. At some point, Trump makes the decision to be involved. There's a lot of people who do what I do that were. Are his fans who were against it. Now, a lot of the Republicans have kind of rallied for it, but it's still sort of an unpopular decision in a lot of America. What do you think was the thing that made, from what you hear and your reporting that made the Trump administration decide, or at least Trump. Yes, we're getting involved. Critics would say we do what Israel says. Do you agree with that or is there something else?
- [23:50]
Greg Carlstrom
I think if I had to point to one thing, I'd point to Fox News, Honestly, I would say, yeah. I mean, my, my understanding of it was that on Thursday, when Trump sort of gave the final go ahead for Israel, June 12, the day before the war started, Trump gave Israel the final go ahead to launch its war in Iran. He had some reservations about it, I think he wasn't sure, you know, this Netanyahu guy, like, I don't entirely trust him. I don't know if this is going to go well. But he gives Israel his blessing to do it. He wakes up Friday morning, June 13, and he sees this morning.
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Matt Jones
Yeah, they were. It was very, you know, did he want credit? Is that it? Part. Do you want to be part of the win?
- [24:33]
Greg Carlstrom
I think it was. I mean, everyone is saying, you know, Israel has killed the top leadership of the Iranian army. They have neutralized Iran's air defenses. Spectacular success. And suddenly the messaging from President Trump starts to change. He's much more supportive of it. He almost makes out like this whole thing was my idea. And I think over the coming days, he warms to the idea of an American strike on Iran, even though, as you said, so many people in his own coalition, in his own base were against that. You know, Tucker Carlson was against that. Steve Bannon was against that. Very high profile people in Trump world were against it. But I think his calculation was, this is going well and if we can do this in a limited way, I can bring those people along.
- [25:18]
Matt Jones
Yeah. And he brought. And a lot of them did, not all of them, but it got really popular after he did it more than it was before. Okay, so now I guess the question is, did it work? He said initially, universal success. Yesterday there were some leaks that it didn't work. Interesting enough, I heard one senator say, these leaks are awful. We're gonna have to find them. And they're also false, which I find an interesting dichotomy. How are they both leaks and false? Did it. What do you think? I mean, what are you hearing? Did it work? Did they get Rid of Iran's ability to produce nuclear weapons.
- [25:58]
Greg Carlstrom
We don't know, I think, is the, the honest answer to that. I mean, I think when, when Trump initially came out, you know, sort of moments after this happened and said, we've obliterated Iran's nuclear program, that was premature. There was no real assessment of the damage. At the same time, this, this leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency. It's one preliminary report from one intelligence agency, and it's marked as being right out of many.
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Matt Jones
There's a bunch of them.
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Greg Carlstrom
Yeah, exactly. There's more than a dozen of them. This is just one. And they mark it as low confidence, which means the people who are writing this assessment don't really believe it. They, they don't have enough information yet to say confidently this is what happened. They're saying, based on some sketchy, you know, satellite imagery and a few other things that we've heard, maybe this happened. But we, we don't have confidence. So I wouldn't place much stock in that either. I think the, the reality is it's very hard to assess from satellite photos, looking down at what happened to a facility that's hundreds of feet underground. We don't know exactly what happened. The assessments are going to take weeks, and we may not have an independent picture of what happened unless the UN's nuclear agency is able to go in and inspect these facilities again, which it did on a regular basis before the war. If they're allowed to go back in, they might be able to tell us, you know, this is actually what happened. But otherwise it gets very political. Right. Trump wants everyone to think that this was a swimming success. He has critics who want everyone to think that this was a complete failure. And I wouldn't place much stock in what any of them have to say right now.
- [27:33]
Matt Jones
Yeah, I kind of agree with that. Okay, so we're talking to Greg Carlstrom, Middle east reporter for the Economist. Let me, I'm going to ask you to give me both, like, best possible and worst possible scenario. Every single person I talk to about this Iran strike is, I don't care if they were for it or adamantly against it, is worried about, okay, but what's next? Like, even the people for it are very nervous about what's next. So give me, Greg, best case scenario. If you're only looking at American interest, what's the best case scenario of what happens next? And then on the other side, looking at American interest or even world interest, what's the, the worst case scenario? So what, what are the range of Possible outcomes of what's next.
- [28:23]
Greg Carlstrom
So I think best case scenario from an American perspective is you want this to be over, right? You want this to be a one off strike that doesn't require any more American military involvement. I think there's not a whole lot that we can agree on as a country at this point. But probably one thing is that we don't want to do any more sort of forever wars in the Middle East. Right. So how do you get there? The way that you get there at this point is with a deal. You want to have some kind of agreement with Iran, a much stronger version of that original nuclear agreement where they agree to not just limit, but I think give up parts of their nuclear program. Parts of it probably have already been destroyed either by American strikes or Israeli strikes. So there's almost less to negotiate over now. Maybe it's easier to negotiate that deal, but you want them to give up bits of what's left and to impose very tight restrictions on their ability to try and rebuild that program. And if they do that, they get some relief from economic sanctions, they get some benefits, they get to be not so isolated in return. If you do that, then I think you don't have to worry about future conflict. Then you have an agreement that Iran, you would hope would abide by now because they don't want to go through this experience of getting attacked anymore. If Donald Trump is the one who makes the agreement, I think it's likely to be longer lasting because the Republican Party is not going to oppose it the way they did the original agreement that Barack Obama signed back in 2015. It'll have more bipartisan support. And if that holds, hopefully you take the issue of Iran's nuclear program off the table and we don't have to deal with this again. That's, I think, the best case outcome here.
- [30:03]
Matt Jones
All right, so worst case outcome, I mean, I remember hearing people worried, oh no, Iran could attack economic ships, they could close that canal. I mean, they, they, they probably can't shoot weapons that can reach anywhere close to us, but they could attack one of our bases. Are those things at all likely? Are they just doomsday or scenarios or the fact that they really haven't done anything yet suggests that's not going to happen.
- [30:31]
Greg Carlstrom
I think they haven't been too likely yet, but there's a point at which they start to become likely. Right. So I think the worst case scenario is that Iran doesn't want to negotiate a deal. They don't emerge from this war intimidated, they don't emerge yeah, you know, they, they emerge thinking, actually, you know what, the only way we prevent this from happening in the future, we need to build a nuclear bomb. Because if we have a nuclear bomb, we can deter Israel, we can deter America. Nobody's going to attack us if we go nuclear. So they start trying to rebuild their program. America then gets drawn into. It's not going to be sort of Iraq in 2003. I don't think the fear is a big invasion with tens of thousands of troops going in, but it's something more like Iraq in the 90s where America had a no fly zone. America periodically was carrying out bombing raids. America was trying to contain Saddam Hussein's Iraq in, in the 1990s. Maybe it turns into something like that, an open ended conflict with Iran. Iran at that point starts doing some of this crazier stuff. In retaliation. They can attack oil fields in Saudi Arabia, which they've done before. They can attack cities like Dubai or Doha in the Gulf. They can attack American bases. Maybe they start thinking about blocking the, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, which is the waterway that a lot of the world's oil has to go through. If they do that, oil prices shoot up. And again, they've done that before. They did that in the 1980s. So maybe they start doing these things that have real consequences for America and for America's allies in the region. And then America has to deal with that. Right. If Iran tries to blockade the strait, the US Navy is going to be the one that has to go and try to reopen it and this becomes a bigger conflict.
- [32:17]
Matt Jones
All right, last question on Iran. And then I want to go quickly before I have to let you go to the Gaza situation. Do. If I'm an everyday American and I'm driving around on WH or listening on podcast and thinking, how is this going to affect my life beyond people yelling at each other on television? Do you think there is a way it will affect their life in the short term or. No.
- [32:42]
Greg Carlstrom
Probably not. I mean, there is, there is no risk that, you know, Iran is going to attack the US it doesn't have capabilities to do that. That's not something that anybody has to worry about. I think the way it affects people's lives is only if this becomes a bigger conflict in the Middle east because that means oil prices go up and that means driving around gets more expensive.
- [33:03]
Matt Jones
That's the, so that's the way maybe something happens that causes oil prices to go up. That's, that's kind of the most immediate.
- [33:10]
Greg Carlstrom
Worry for people, for Americans. I think it is. Yeah.
- [33:15]
Matt Jones
Okay, so let me switch really quick to the Israel, Palestine, Gaza. I, you know, the, I think the way people feel about this is a lot what news ends up on their TikTok feeds or on their like, I mean, literally what gets focused on sometimes I think drives the narrative. It's been fascinating to me to watch how much a cause that's existed for a long time about, you know, free Palestine, Gaza, all of that has become a more bipartisan issue in recent because of the Joe Rogan's, Theo Vaughn's, Tucker Carlson's, etc. It looks to me on the outside as someone who knows very little about it, that whatever people think about the October 7th, well, what could you think except it was awful. But about the Palestinian situation, that what I have seen about the food blockades and various things or blockades with Gaza seems awful. And not just awful from a humanitarian standpoint, which maybe it's always been, but awful from a How could we let this happen? How can this keep happening to these people and the world not step up? Am I missing something or is that a pretty universal view in your point, from people who really know what's going on?
- [34:37]
Greg Carlstrom
I'd say it's, it's universal, really. I mean, I'm, I'm struck by exactly what you're saying. In America, where this used to be a much more divisive issue and people were either staunchly pro Israel or staunchly pro Palestinian. But even a lot of the pro Israel people, or not a lot, but some of the pro Israel people that I know in the US who are revolted by what Israel is doing by its conduct in Gaza lately. That's the view there. That's the view in the Middle East. I mean, there are countries in this region, there are populations in this region that are actually more pro Israel than you would think, right? In, in places like the uae, in places like Lebanon, there are people that are very happy over the past 20 months watching Israel batter Hezbollah in Lebanon, watching it hit Iran and weaken Iran. But those people too horrified by what it's doing in Gaza. And that has actually cost Israel some of the support that it had in this region of late. So there's no, I mean, there's no defense for it. Right. In the Israeli government and people who.
- [35:41]
Matt Jones
And how is it not being stopped, though? I mean, I, I am again, I don't, I can't believe I'm quoting Theo Vaughn because oftentimes I've never really even been a fan, but I heard him on with Roe Con of the senator from California. And he said. He said something that I felt, which is, we are supposed to be the good guy. And I know that's simplistic. I know a lot of times in history we haven't been the good guy. But in general, America is supposed to be a force for good. How can we in the world not be stopping at least this part of it? This part of not of watching kids starve. Like, how are. How's it not. How's the world not stopping this?
- [36:24]
Greg Carlstrom
And the thing is, the world, I think what we've really discovered, you know, over the past year and a half, is the world can't stop it, right? The. The Europeans, Arab states, the U.N. they have all, for months and months and months now been condemning Israel calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling for more aid to be allowed into Gaza. And the Israeli government could care less about what any of them have to say. The one country that would make a difference is the United States. I mean, we are Israel's strongest supporter. We are the source of Israel's weapons, Israel's military aid, Israel's diplomatic support. If the US really put its foot down and said, you can't do this anymore, Israel would have to stop doing it. We saw that in Iran over the past couple of days. Donald Trump wanted a ceasefire in Iran. I'm not sure the Israeli prime minister was ready for one yet. But Trump told him it was happening and it happened. If Trump did that or if Joe Biden before him had done that, Israel would have changed its behavior.
- [37:23]
Matt Jones
Why don't they do it? Why didn't Joe Biden do it? Why doesn't Donald Trump do it? I mean, what. What is the case to allow this to keep happening? Because that's the part. I don't care how liberal or conservative you are. I don't understand what the case. I get Israel needing to defend itself. I get the idea of getting rid of Hamas. That seems like an awful organization. What is the case? Why are we not stopping it? What is the rational argument on the other side? What am I missing?
- [37:54]
Greg Carlstrom
I mean, whatever you're missing, I'm missing it, too. I haven't gotten a rational argument from people. I think when Biden was the president speaking to some of the people who worked for him, the sense that I got was Joe Biden had this idea in his head of Israel 50 years ago, right? This was still 1973 for Joe Biden. Israel was this plucky little country surrounded by much bigger Arab enemies that was fighting an existential war in 1973, the. The Yom Kippur War. And he never quite adjusted his. His mental image of Israel to a country that is now much stronger, a country that is now doing awful things, things to a population under its control in Gaza, indefensible things. And he just. He wasn't willing to, you know, in his mind, he has this romantic view of Israel, and he just wasn't willing to apply pressure. So I think that was part of it for him. I think for Donald Trump, I think he's lost interest in it lately. I think after he was elected, during the transition between November and January, he actually was very engaged on Gaza. He pushed Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. And that ceasefire took effect on January 19, the day before Trump was inaugurated. It happened because Donald Trump pressured the Israeli government. In March, Israel abandoned that ceasefire. Netanyahu decided he was leaving it, and he was going to resume the war. And by then, I think Trump had lost interest in the issue. I mean, there were trade wars and tariffs and all sorts of other things going on. And without sustained pressure from the U.S. netanyahu did what he wanted to do. If Trump gets interested again, if he, you know, after the war in Iran, after the ceasefire in Iran, if he decides, okay, I want a bigger peace in the region, start by pushing the Israelis to end the war in Gaza, then you can start talking about, you know, deals between maybe Israel and Syria making peace, recognizing each other, maybe Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel. Those things start to become possible. But Trump needs to start by putting pressure on the Israelis to end the war in Gaza.
- [39:57]
Matt Jones
It's so weird to me, because I'm not a Trump fan, as people who listen to this show or know me are, but it does seem like, because he has this unique ability to keep the Republican Party, kind of have them lockstep, that if he wanted to, he actually could be what he always says he is, which is this transformative peace figure in the Middle east in a way that a Democrat never could and that maybe other Republicans wouldn't. He actually has the unique ability to do something that very few people could do. Do you agree with that?
- [40:38]
Greg Carlstrom
Look at what he did last month in May in the Middle east, right? America had been bombing the Houthis in Yemen for about two months. Trump, all of a sudden, one day, out of the blue, ends that bombing campaign. It hasn't succeeded, right? The Houthis are still there. They're still in power. They're still firing missiles at Israel a few times a week. But Trump says, you know what, we don't want to do this anymore. Israel, you guys are on your own. You deal with the Houthis if you want to, you bomb them, but you know they're not going to hurt us anymore. So problem solved. The Republican Party got behind that. Imagine if any other president had said, essentially, we're leaving Israel to its own devices. You guys fight your own battles.
- [41:17]
Matt Jones
It's true.
- [41:18]
Greg Carlstrom
That would have been a huge political issue. Then after that, Trump goes on his hostage envoy, his envoy for hostages who are detained overseas starts negotiating directly with Hamas, which is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.S. no president for decades has talked to Hamas. You're not allowed to do that. Trump does it. He gets a hostage released who is an American citizen, Israeli dual citizen, hostage comes home again. Everybody gets behind that. If Barack Obama or Joe Biden or anyone else had been negotiating directly with Hamas behind the back of the Israelis, the Republican Party would have gone ballistic. He can do these things that you're absolutely right. No other president can do.
- [41:59]
Matt Jones
Well, it was, it's a shame that it does that, but it is a unique opportunity. Sometimes it has to be like, you know, a Democrat that does welfare reform or it might have to be a Republican that one day does gun control. Like it almost has to be somebody in the, in the, in the party that they're in to do it. Greg, thank you very much. I know you do these high level interviews with people on, on details, but sometimes I think it's hard for the average citizen to just get the basics and I appreciating you dumbing it down for us here to do it.
- [42:32]
Greg Carlstrom
Not at all. And thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
- [42:35]
Matt Jones
Greg Carlstrom, Middle east reporter for the Economist.