00:08Joining me now to discuss the escalating conflict in the Middle East is the former CIA director
00:13and retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus. General, thank you so much for joining us here
00:19on Euronews. Good to be with you. Now, let me start by asking you, given what you've seen
00:24over the past three days in terms of the U.S.-Israeli military attacks against Iran,
00:32what is President Trump's endgame here, and is he fulfilling his objectives so far?
00:38Well, there's a number of objectives for the military campaign. Among those are certainly
00:44degrading the missile capabilities that Iran has been trying to reconstitute, which pose such a
00:51threat to the region and specifically to Israel, and we've seen that manifest itself tragically.
00:58In addition, it is to ensure that any leftover nuclear capability is destroyed. And we heard
01:06from the International Atomic Energy Agency just a few days ago that there may be a stockpile of 60%
01:13rich uranium in tunnels under Isfahan, that facility, which was struck during the 12-day air campaign,
01:21but where that might have survived. And then, of course, there's the effort to dramatically
01:27degrade the capabilities of the regime, of the regime forces, the regime leaders. And there have
01:34been numerous very important individuals who have been killed by precision. In this regard, then the
01:40effort continues and is now expanding to go after headquarters, storage sites, other weapons facilities,
01:51even the manufacturing facilities for the short and long-range missiles, drone launch points, and even the
01:58ships of Iran as well. Whether what the President first laid out in his very first speech, which suggested
02:06regime change as one of the options, suggested regime change as one of the options. And that's the real
02:11question, I think. He has since sought to focus at a little bit on the U.S. and Israel creating
02:20the conditions
02:20for regime change that would be capitalized upon by the Iranian people. The challenge there, of course,
02:30is that most of the times that you have a situation like this, the guys with the most guns and
02:38the most
02:38willingness to be brutal prevail. And in this situation, of course, the Iranian regime forces,
02:46which total nearly a million when you add them all up, they are armed. They are brutal. They've shown
02:53that repeatedly over many decades, not to mention just the last two months when they put down the
02:59enormous demonstrations by killing probably tens of thousands of citizens and imprisoning
03:07tens of thousands more. So the question is, is there someone who can break apart from that,
03:13who has real capability, real weapons with large numbers and leadership capacity that can mobilize the
03:20people and together take on the regime? And unfortunately, I don't think that is the base case right now.
03:28You mentioned that's not the case right now because we do know that although the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
03:33has been killed, the Islamic regime is very much still on its feet. There is an interim leadership
03:41council and vows to appoint another supreme leader quite swiftly. Do you mean to say that toppling the
03:49regime will not be possible through this military intervention that will need to come from within,
03:55or do you think that this will help create the conditions for a toppling of the regime from within
04:00Iran? Well, with the president and also then our secretary of defense and also chairman of the joint
04:05chiefs, what they have noted is that this will create the conditions that could be capitalized on if there
04:12is the kind of development that I have outlined. But I'm not sure that that is the base case at
04:18this point.
04:19Again, you have nearly a million men under arms who have a demonstrated capacity to be brutal and kill
04:28people if they demonstrate against them. Do you think we could potentially see a situation similar to
04:33what we saw in Venezuela where the head, the figurehead of the regime is removed, but we potentially see a
04:41slightly softened, more moderate version of that same regime come into force? Is that something
04:47President Donald Trump could contemplate accepting? I think the answer to that is yes. And I think that
04:54it is possible. It's conceivable. I don't know that it is the most likely outcome. Keep in mind that,
05:01as you noted, there is an interim council right now led by the president, the senior judicial official,
05:06and a cleric that are taking the place of the supreme leader. The assembly of experts will gather
05:13the conclave, if you will, that will select the next supreme leader. In the past, there's only been
05:20one case of that in the past. But generally, as you look at the candidates for this, they tend to
05:26be
05:27pretty hard line ideologues, similar to the most recent supreme leader. And you've seen already
05:35defiance by the foreign minister. He's the one person who has spoken publicly on this.
05:41So again, I think we have to be cautious about our hopes that a pragmatic figure could emerge.
05:46It's by no means impossible. Kareem Sajipour, the great Iranian analyst here in the United States,
05:52has noted that it used to be that the regime was comprised of 80% true believers, true ideologues,
05:59hardliners, and 20% charlatans are called. They're just basically opportunists trying to get what they
06:06can by being part of the regime. But now it's 20% hardliners and 80% charlatans. So the possibility
06:14is there, certainly, that someone could emerge who might say, look, Mr. President, you're right.
06:21What the nuclear program and the arming of proxies and our killing of Americans and Arabs and Israelis
06:28has brought us is ruin. And we see the error of our ways and we want to sail straight. We
06:35want to get
06:35along with our neighbors and those in the region and with you. And we're willing to give up our
06:42aspirations in all these cases. That would obviously be a very dramatic departure.
06:47In terms of what we could expect to see next in terms of the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign in Iran,
06:55do you think that this could extend into a prolonged war? We saw the war secretary,
07:02Pete Hegseth, today refusing to rule out potentially troops on the ground. Do you think
07:08that this could evolve into something more dangerous, more spiraling than the U.S. maybe originally intended?
07:14No, I think the president and the secretary and others have been very clear that we're not going
07:19to put boots on the ground. And frankly, I think that as the days go by, while noting that there
07:25is
07:25still a very real possibility of additional casualties, again, those in host nations,
07:30those in Israel, those of American forces and others, that over time, there will be a degradation of
07:36the ability of Iran to retaliate, will continue to reduce their missile stocks, the launchers,
07:44the short range missiles, and even the drones. So I think they will be hard pressed to maintain even
07:51remotely what the pace has been by Iran so far. And there's been so much damage to the command
07:57control facilities and indeed the commanders themselves that this is all quite decentralized now,
08:02but it appears that they plan for this. Yet we are seeing quite a relentless response from Iran.
08:09We've seen unmanned vehicles, drones flying towards the EU island state of Cyprus, for example.
08:16Do you think they've been preparing for this, that the response is intentionally relentless
08:23in order to scare off the U.S.? Because we are seeing talk of...
08:27Well, they're not going to scare off the U.S., so put that aside. They have retaliated, as I noted,
08:33and I do think that they did prepare for the eventuality that there may not be central command
08:38and control, and they have a deck of targets that they are executing. We'll see if that pattern
08:44continues. It's premature to assess based on that. But no, our focus is on what they have that they can
08:53use to retaliate. We are seeing, General, also European nations talking about potentially supporting
09:00the defensive capacities of the U.S., including the U.K. Do you think President Trump is expecting
09:07the support of its European allies here and is counting on them to support this operation in some way?
09:14I think the plan that was conceived was essentially the U.S. and Israel, and then the host nations
09:20in the region, whose air and ballistic missile defenses are always integrated into those of
09:26the U.S. and Israel. I don't think there was an assumption made that the Europeans would join in.
09:32It would have been good if they had, at least for defensive purposes from the very beginning,
09:38because it's very clear, it should have been clear at the outset that Iran is not going to limit its
09:43targets to just U.S. bases, Israel and so forth. It's going after civilian targets, airfields,
09:51ports and so forth in the Gulf states and beyond and reaching as far as Cyprus, as you noted.
09:59So I think from a purely defensive standpoint, that would have been wise from the beginning.
10:04The question now is whether or not they go on the offensive and start contributing to taking down
10:10the retaliatory capabilities of the U.S. and Israel.
10:14Is that something that you can foresee happening? European nations joining in a more offensive
10:19capacity? My understanding is that that has been discussed. I don't know that I'd predict what the
10:24outcome would be, but the fact that it's just being discussed, I think, indicates that it's certainly a
10:29possibility. Very briefly, just to close off. Do you believe that the U.S. has the lessons learned from
10:36its experience in Iraq in mind here when we know that Saddam Hussein's government and administration
10:42was completely wiped out by the U.S., leaving the country essentially not functioning? Is that something
10:50you feel that the U.S. administration is bearing in mind as it continues with this campaign?
10:54Well, very much so. I think they've been explicitly clear about that. I'd just also note that it was not
11:01just that the regime was toppled, is that we then took some catastrophically bad decisions. I was part
11:07of the invasion force, and we were cut off at the knees when the decision was made to fire the
11:12entire
11:12Iraqi military without telling them how we were going to enable them to provide for themselves and
11:18their families. And then when we fired the entire Ba'ath Party down to level four, the level at which
11:24was tens of thousands of bureaucrats, many Western educated, that we needed and were already using
11:31to help us in a country that we didn't sufficiently understand. So we could have very quickly, I think,
11:39brought back major elements of it and had sort of a Venezuela light, if you will, because the top
11:46levels clearly were gone or in the deck of cards to be pursued.
11:50Okay. General, thank you so much for your time and for joining us on U.S. Good to be with
11:54you. Thank you.
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