00:05Muzyka
00:08Joining me now to discuss the escalating conflict in the Middle East
00:11is the former CIA Director and retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus.
00:17General, thank you so much for joining us here on Euronews.
00:20Good to be with you.
00:21Now, let me start by asking you, given what you've seen over the past three days
00:26in 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.
00:42Among those are certainly degrading the missile capabilities that Iran has been trying to reconstitute,
00:50which pose such a threat to the region and specifically to Israel.
00:55And we've seen that manifest itself tragically.
00:58In 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
01:11that there may be a stockpile of 60% rich uranium in tunnels under Esfahan, that facility,
01:17which was struck during the 12-day air campaign, but where that might have survived.
01:24And then, of course, there's the effort to dramatically degrade the capabilities of the regime,
01:31of the regime forces, the regime leaders.
01:33And there have been numerous very important individuals who have been killed by precision.
01:38In this regard, then, the effort continues and is now expanding to go after headquarters,
01:46storage sites, other weapons facilities, even the manufacturing facilities for the short- and long-range missiles,
01:56drone launch points, and even the ships of Iran as well.
02:01Whether what the president first laid out in his very first speech,
02:06which suggested regime change as one of the options,
02:10and 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
02:20for regime 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,
02:35the guys with 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,
02:50they are armed, they are brutal, they've shown that repeatedly over many decades,
02:55not to mention just the last two months when they put down the enormous demonstrations
03:01by 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,
03:13who has real capability, real weapons with large numbers and leadership capacity
03:18that 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
03:33has been killed, the Islamic regime is very much still on its feet.
03:39There is an interim leadership council and vows to appoint another supreme leader quite swiftly.
03:46Do you mean to say that toppling the regime will not be possible through this military intervention
03:53that will need to 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,
04:06what they have noted is that this will create the conditions that could be capitalized on
04:12if there is the kind of development that I have outlined.
04:15But I am not sure that that is the base case at this point.
04:19Again, you have nearly a million men under arms who have a demonstrated capacity to be brutal
04:27and kill people if they demonstrate against them.
04:30Do you think we could potentially see a situation similar to what we saw in Venezuela,
04:35where the head, the figurehead of the regime is removed,
04:39but we potentially see a slightly softened, more moderate version of that same regime come into force?
04:47Is that something President Donald Trump could contemplate accepting?
04:51I think the answer to that is yes, and 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,
05:04the senior judicial 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 hard-line ideologues,
05:29similar to the most 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 Sadjapur, the great Iranian analyst here in the United States, has noted that
05:52it used to be that the regime was comprised of 80 percent true believers, true ideologues,
05:59hardliners, 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,
06:18look, Mr. President, you're right.
06:21What the nuclear program and the arming of proxies and our killing of Americans and Arabs and Israelis has brought
06:29us 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 in order to scare off the
08:25U.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 the defensive capacities of the U.S.,
09:04including 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 and then the host nations in
09:21the region
09:21whose air and ballistic missile defenses are always integrated 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 that Iran is not going to limit its
09:43targets
09:44to 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?
10:20My 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.
10:55I 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
11:10when the decision was made to fire the entire Iraqi military
11:14without telling them how we were going to enable them to provide for themselves and their families.
11:19And then when we fired the entire bath 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,
11:45because the top levels clearly were gone or in the deck of cards to be pursued.
11:51Okay. General, thank you so much for your time and for joining us on your own.
11:54Good to be with you. Thank you.
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