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 degrading the missile capabilities that Iran
00:48has been trying to reconstitute, which pose such a threat to the region and specifically to Israel.
00:55And we've seen that manifest itself tragically. In addition, it is to ensure that any leftover nuclear capability is destroyed.
01:05And we heard from the International Atomic Energy Agency just a few days ago that there may be a stockpile
01:12of 60 percent rich uranium in tunnels under Esfahan, 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 degrade the capabilities of the
01:30regime, of the regime forces, the regime leaders.
01:32And there have been numerous very important individuals who have been killed by precision.
01:38And in this regard, then the effort continues and is now expanding to go after headquarters, storage sites, other weapons
01:50facilities, even the manufacturing facilities for the short and long range missiles, drone launch points, and even the ships of
01:59Iran as well.
02:01Whether what the president first laid out in his very first speech, which suggested regime change as one of the
02:09options, that's the real question, I think.
02:12He has since sought to focus that a little bit on the U.S. and Israel creating the conditions for
02:22regime change that would be capitalized upon by the Iranian people.
02:29The challenge there, of course, is that most of the times that you have a situation like this, the guys
02:36with the most guns and the most willingness to be brutal prevail.
02:41And in this situation, of course, the Iranian regime forces, which total nearly a million when you add them all
02:49up, they are armed.
02:51They are brutal. They've shown that repeatedly over many decades, not to mention just the last two months when they
02:58put down the enormous demonstrations by killing probably tens of thousands of citizens and imprisoning tens of thousands more.
03:08So the question is, is there someone who can break apart from that, who has real capability, real weapons with
03:16large numbers and leadership capacity that can mobilize the people and together take on the regime?
03:24And 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 has been
03:34killed, the Islamic regime is very much still on its feet.
03:39There is a interim leadership council and vows to appoint another supreme leader quite swiftly.
03:47Do you mean to say that toppling the regime will not be possible through this military intervention that will need
03:54to come from within?
03:55Or do you think that this will help create the conditions for toppling of the regime from within Iran?
04:00Well, with the president and also then our secretary of defense and also chairman of the Joint Chiefs, what they
04:06have noted is that this will create the conditions that could be capitalized on if there is the kind of
04:13development that I have outlined.
04:15But I am not sure that that is the base case at this point.
04:29Do you think we could potentially see a situation similar to what we saw in Venezuela, where the head, the
04:37figurehead of the regime is removed, but we potentially see a slightly softened, more moderate version of that same regime
04:46come into force?
04:47Is that something President Donald Trump could contemplate accepting?
04:52I think the answer to that is yes.
04:53And I think that it is possible.
04:56It's conceivable.
04:57I don't know that it is the most likely outcome.
05:00Keep in mind that, as you noted, there is an interim council right now led by the president, the senior
05:05judicial official and a cleric that are taking the place of the supreme leader.
05:11The assembly of experts will gather the conclave, if you will, that will select the next supreme leader.
05:17In the past, there's only been one case of that in the past.
05:21But generally, as you look at the candidates for this, they tend to be pretty hardline ideologues, similar to the
05:31most recent supreme leader.
05:33And you've seen already defiance by the foreign minister.
05:37He'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.
05:48Kareem Saadjipur, the great Iranian analyst here in the United States, has noted that it used to be that the
05:54regime was comprised of 80 percent true believers, true ideologues, hardliners, and 20 percent charlatans, they're called.
06:03They're just basically opportunists trying to get what they can by being part of the regime.
06:08But now it's 20 percent hardliners and 80 percent charlatans.
06:13So the possibility is there, certainly, that someone could emerge who might say, look, Mr. President, you're right.
06:21And what the nuclear program and the arming of proxies and our killing of Americans and Arabs and Israelis has
06:29brought us is ruin.
06:31And we see the error of our ways and we want to sail straight.
06:35We want to get along with our neighbors and those in the region and with you.
06:40And we're willing to give up our aspirations in all these cases.
06:44That 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?
07:00We saw the war secretary, Pete Hegseth, today refusing to rule out potentially troops on the ground.
07:07Do you think that 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 to put
07:19boots on the ground.
07:21And frankly, I think that as the days go by, while noting that there is still a very real possibility
07:26of additional casualties,
07:28again, those in host nations, those in Israel, those of American forces and others,
07:33that over time there will be a degradation of the ability of Iran to retaliate,
07:39will continue to reduce their missile stocks, the launchers, the short-range missiles, and even the drones.
07:47So I think they will be hard-pressed to maintain even remotely what the pace has been by Iran so
07:54far.
07:54And there's been so much damage to the command control facilities and indeed the commanders themselves
08:00that this is all quite decentralized now, but it appears that they plan for this.
08:05Yet 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
08:22in order to scare off the U.S.?
08:25Because we are seeing talk of...
08:27Well, they're not going to scare off the U.S., so put that aside.
08:30They have retaliated, as I noted, and I do think that they did prepare for the eventuality
08:36that there may not be central command and control, and they have a deck of targets that they are executing.
08:43We'll see if that pattern continues.
08:44It's premature to assess based on that.
08:48But no, our focus is on what they have that they can use to retaliate.
08:54We are seeing, General, also European nations talking about potentially supporting
09:00the defensive capacities of the U.S., including the U.K.
09:05Do you think President Trump is expecting the support of its European allies here
09:10and 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,
09:19and then the host nations in the region whose air and ballistic missile defenses are always
09:24integrated into those of the U.S. and Israel.
09:28I 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,
09:40that Iran is not going to limit its targets to just U.S. bases, Israel, and so forth.
09:48It's going after civilian targets, airfields, ports, and so forth in the Gulf states and beyond,
09:55and 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.
10:03The 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 capacity?
10:19My understanding is that that has been discussed.
10:22I don't know that I'd predict what the outcome would be,
10:25but the fact that it's just being discussed, I think, indicates that it's certainly a possibility.
10:30Very briefly, just to close off, do you believe that the U.S. has the lessons learned from its experience
10:37in Iraq
10:37in mind here when we know that Saddam Hussein's government and administration was completely wiped out
10:44by the U.S., leaving the country essentially not functioning?
10:49Is that something you 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.
10:59I'd just also note that it was not just that the regime was toppled,
11:03it's that we then took some catastrophically bad decisions.
11:07I was part of the invasion force, and we were cut off at the knees when the decision was made
11:11to fire the entire Iraqi military without telling them how we were going to enable them
11:17to provide for themselves and their families.
11:19And then when we fired the entire Ba'ath Party down to level four,
11:24the level at which it was tens of thousands of bureaucrats, many Western educated,
11:28that we needed and were already using to help us in a country that we didn't sufficiently understand.
11:36So it wasn't, we could have very quickly, I think, brought back major elements of it
11:42and had sort of a Venezuela light, if you will, because the top levels clearly were gone
11:48or in the deck of cards to be pursued.
11:51Okay. General, thank you so much for your time and for joining us on U.S.
11:54Good to be with you. Thank you.
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