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00:00Amos, what moment are we in right now? How tense are these negotiations?
00:06Well, the moment that we're in is very serious, as the president said,
00:10because I think that we're gearing and rolling towards a war that I'm not even sure the president wants to
00:17do.
00:18But yet the momentum is in that direction.
00:22As far as the negotiations, I'm still not sure if these negotiations are for real.
00:28I think they began as a sham negotiation, meaning we weren't ready.
00:32The president went off script and promised action in Iran and got himself stuck in a,
00:38am I going to be like Obama with a red line or not with the protesters?
00:42And so suddenly there was this momentum towards go to war.
00:45But you then realize, well, I don't have the forces actually on the ground in the region to do anything
00:50because I moved them all out to go to Venezuela.
00:53So now I got to get more forces and I need more time.
00:57The Gulf is split between those who really want to go to war
01:00and those who are very, very concerned about it because they think it's not going to go well.
01:04So he gets the mixed messaging from, from the Gulf.
01:07The Israelis are pushing him to do it, obviously.
01:09And so the buildup starts and he needs to be able to tell the Europeans and the Middle East folks,
01:15look, I tried to do a negotiation.
01:16If we go to war, he has to be able to check a box that says, I didn't, it wasn't
01:20my first option.
01:20I tried, the Iranians screwed up.
01:22He's aided by the fact that the Iranians always rise to the moment to screw up every situation that you're
01:28in.
01:29They literally mess everything up.
01:30They have no idea what the world is like.
01:32They live in some wacko bubble of threatening U.S. forces when they're trying to do a negotiation.
01:38How difficult is it to negotiate with the Iranians?
01:40Well, it's not even direct negotiations.
01:42They have this ridiculous theater of we can't sit face-to-face and we do it through the Omanis.
01:48Despite the fact 10 years ago they sat face-to-face for months with Wendy Sherman and John Kerry and
01:54so on.
01:55And it's the same people, by the way.
01:56It's Arachi, who was then the deputy.
01:58So it's very complicated.
02:00I think the Iranian system is going through a moment where the supreme leader is the crazy old man
02:07who throws out tweets that mess up what everybody else in the Iranian system is doing
02:11because he's disconnected from the system.
02:14Well, it's existential for the Iranian regime, which is why the question for them is,
02:18would it be better to have a deal at the negotiating table or to shore up their place in Iranian
02:24society?
02:25Is it better almost for the U.S. to strike them?
02:28Look, the distance between the Iranian society and the government has never been bigger.
02:33I mean, these people just massacred.
02:34I don't know if the numbers are floating around.
02:37But thousands of people were killed by their own government, which is not missiles, not nuclear.
02:43That's the impetus for this war, right?
02:44Remember, we did not talk about missiles or nuclear as the reason to go to this conflict
02:49because there is no real imminent threat from those two issues, right?
02:53They were, quote-unquote, obliterated, the nuclear program six months ago.
02:57But they still have a goal to make a nuclear weapon.
02:59Our DNI assessment says they are barreling towards intercontinental ballistic missiles
03:03and they are still funding the proxies around the region.
03:05Those are the three red lines of the administration.
03:07There's no doubt the Iranian threat to the region in December and today are the same from that perspective.
03:15As the president said, the nuclear program was set back years, not months.
03:20And the missile program is the one that is really of concern.
03:24But that wasn't what led us here, Anne-Marie.
03:27It was the protesters.
03:28Help is on the way.
03:30And so now the decision is, what kind of war do you go to?
03:33And I think this is a critical point that people are missing.
03:36There are three basic options here on this war.
03:38One is a slightly more limited strike that takes out missile depots, missile storage, launchers,
03:46and maybe another strike at the nuclear for symbolic purposes.
03:50But you leave the regime intact, but weakened, very weakened.
03:54Most of the Gulfies prefer this option.
03:57The other one is a much more significant attack, which they have the preparation for at CENCOM,
04:03and Central Command, which is a regime collapse or change.
04:07And that's where the two options are.
04:09You don't know in advance if you're going to get regime collapse or regime change.
04:13Regime change is when you know who comes next and you know that you can figure this out.
04:17Think Venezuela and Del C, right?
04:19You know who's coming.
04:21Regime collapses, you have no idea.
04:24And as one major Gulf country said to me at the leadership level,
04:28if they're going to, we'd hate the Iranians, but if they end up with Libya,
04:33they leave us with Libya next door, that's a real problem for all of us.
04:37Isn't there a third option, and not to put you on the spot,
04:40but the Biden administration did nothing when it came to Iran and just dragged on talks for four years?
04:45The Biden administration said we're willing to renegotiate going back into the JCPOA
04:50that the Trump administration had left,
04:52but we're not going to go in as just re-signing the same document.
04:56The Iranians did not want to negotiate.
04:58Then October 7 happened.
05:00Remember, we were doing the normalization with Saudi Arabia.
05:03We were really weeks away from that when October 7 happened.
05:07The Iranians then chose to do a 300-projectile attack on Israel from its sovereign territory
05:13with the 100 ballistic missiles and 200 UAVs,
05:15and they did that attack twice, in April and October of 2024.
05:19The United States then gave the green light and talked with the Israelis
05:22about taking out the missile defense and weakening the Iranians.
05:27The Iranian proxies are weakened across the board.
05:31So you can say do nothing, but in reality it was continuing the sanctions pressure
05:36and not getting into the JCPOA was a major decision.
05:41If you go back to the elections of 2020, everybody said,
05:45every expert, Middle East expert said,
05:46Joe Biden's going to get elected and go right back into the JCPOA.
05:49And it did not happen.
05:51Because he put Bob Malley in, head of the Iranian affairs.
05:53Maybe, but the person who makes the decision is not Rob Malley.
05:56He was the president, and he said no.
05:58I just want to fit this in because we're talking about this and talking about ballistic missiles
06:02and a lot of the weaponry of the past, at least as this is very quickly moving.
06:07And we're talking about new weapons of war, which include a lot of technologically fused instruments.
06:14How does the use of artificial intelligence and the U.S.'s preeminence in that sphere
06:20change this discussion and, frankly, change all discussions going forward
06:24when it comes to some military negotiations?
06:28So I think this is a key point.
06:30When Emery's talking about sort of their building out their missile capacity and so on,
06:34Iran is a relic.
06:36It's literally a relic.
06:38So what if it has a bunch of missiles that we can put some use?
06:42We don't want them to have it for sure.
06:44We don't want them to give them to the Houthis, into Hezbollah, and so on.
06:47But when you talk about advanced weaponry, the capability of fusing intelligence superiority
06:54with satellite superiority, with AI and drones, the Iranians can do the drones for Russia,
07:01but the Russia-Ukraine war is also a relic.
07:04The advantages that the United States has, the advantages that Israel has in the region,
07:09including total air superiority from Israel all the way to Tehran,
07:17this is not really a threat.
07:20It's a menace.
07:21It's a nuisance.
07:23It's dangerous.
07:24But it's not an existential threat.
07:26It's a nuclear program would be.
07:28And every president of the United States, every single one, Democrat and Republican,
07:32has said we will not allow them to have a nuclear program,
07:36which is why I supported what President Trump did by attacking those sites.
07:40If you're going to keep doing those programs, that's a real threat.
07:45But the rest, we're going to an era of such technological advancement,
07:49whether or not the Pentagon can get out of its own way with AI.
07:53So we should be able – I did.
07:55I'm sorry.
07:56What are your thoughts?
07:58I really hope that both the company and the Pentagon can go back to having this conversation
08:05in classified settings and in private and not in front of the whole world.
08:10And I also really hope that this is not corporate against corporate playing out in government contracts.
08:19What are you implying?
08:20I'm implying that there's another AI company that may not be so happy with Antropic getting this kind of advantage.
08:28Do you think that's had some influence to bring us to this moment?
08:32I think 12 months ago I would have said no way.
08:34I think that watching the last 12 months where the government decides M&As, decides corporate activity,
08:44it's not a big leap.
08:47And it's understandable – I also understand why corporations would have this kind of a fight at the Pentagon
08:52because the government is the ultimate arbiter now in major corporate decisions, right?
08:58Not on every one, but on major ones, if you're going to buy a news channel or not.
09:01It's the White House that decides who gets to own it or not.
09:04So why – it's not that big of a leap to say if the president and the White House decides
09:10who does major M&A,
09:13why is it such a big leap to think this is not exactly about Pentagon versus Antropic?
09:19Antropic and the government seem not to be that far when it comes to what their requirements are.
09:26So they should have been able to reach a deal.
09:28It's just a weird kind of a – I don't understand this at all.
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