00:00We're going to get more analysis on the situation in Iran and in particular the United States strategy in all
00:07of this.
00:07For that we can bring in Ray Take, who's a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on
00:13Foreign Relations.
00:13Thank you very much for speaking to us on France 24.
00:17I'd like to start by asking you, in terms of the Trump administration's objectives,
00:22the president has vowed to destroy Iran's missile program, its navy, and deny the regime nuclear weapons.
00:29But, you know, back in January, Trump was threatening strikes after the regime's crackdown on protesters.
00:36Do you think Trump wants regime change? What's really the strategy here?
00:42He also mentioned addressing Iran's proxies in the four steps that he would like to complete.
00:50Whether that will be successful is hard to see.
00:53The objectives of the president seems to be changing.
00:57He is less grandiose in terms of wanting to change the Iranian regime, at least of the latest iteration.
01:04And Secretary of Defense Pete Hexett has similarly said that this is not necessarily the objective of the United States.
01:10But this is something that is being improvised.
01:14So at this point, the objectives are a little more defined and concrete, although still rather ambitious.
01:22Well, Trump has also left open the possibility of a more extensive U.S. military involvement, you know, not ruling
01:29out boots on the ground.
01:31If you wouldn't mind, Ray Takei, just stay on the line with us here because we're going to play a
01:36report that kind of looks at the dividing opinions over this,
01:40which is even within Trump's MAGA camp and that places the president in a risky political position as the midterm
01:47elections approach.
01:48Take a look at this.
01:50The option is on the table and making headlines.
01:54U.S. President Donald Trump won't rule out sending U.S. troops into Iran if necessary and is planning for
02:00a protracted war.
02:01Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.
02:10We'll do it.
02:11Whatever somebody said today, they said, oh, well, the president wants to do it really quickly.
02:16After that, he'll get bored.
02:17I don't get bored.
02:19But the deaths of U.S. soldiers and footage of fighter jets in free fall are drawing a lot of
02:24attention, even inside the MAGA movement.
02:27These longtime Trump supporters sound off on the right wing broadcast channel, Real America's Voice.
02:33Some stand behind their president.
02:36We would have a nuclear holocaust throughout the Middle East.
02:41This government is trying to stop and I just don't see how anyone could be against that.
02:47Others aren't so supportive.
02:49I'm not happy about the whole thing.
02:51I don't think this was in America's interest.
02:53He was the no more endless wars candidate in 2016 and 2024 particularly.
02:59And this looks like an open betrayal of the base.
03:01Indeed, Trump often said he would end wars during his presidential campaign.
03:05He will start a war.
03:06I'm not going to start a war.
03:07I'm going to stop wars.
03:08When interviewed, some Trump voters questioned the war.
03:11Thousands of American lives.
03:14That MAGA has become MAGA.
03:17Make Israel great again.
03:19I had friends of mine that I lost while I served over there.
03:23I don't want anybody to have to go through that again.
03:26I don't want my son to have to possibly go through that.
03:30Parallels with the long Iraq war, which killed almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers and over 100,000 civilians, are
03:36all too present.
03:36In a press conference, the U.S. defense secretary tried to offer reassurance.
03:41This is not Iraq.
03:43This is not endless.
03:44Our generation knows better and so does this president.
03:48Just before its start, only 27% of Americans supported intervention in Iran.
03:53With just eight months before the midterm elections, President Trump has made a risky political bet.
04:00All right.
04:00Well, Ray Take, it's good to have your reaction on this.
04:04How do you think that this war in Iran fits into Donald Trump's America First policy?
04:11Well, seemingly it contradicts it.
04:13But honestly, America First is whatever Trump says at the moment.
04:17And a large number of Republican voters will support it.
04:21And I think his support base among the Republicans is still rather strong.
04:25I would say that the president and his administrations have not done a very good job in trying to explain
04:31what the reason for this intervention is.
04:34Why was it so urgent?
04:36Why did it have to take so long?
04:38And do they have actually an exit strategy or an off ramp?
04:41The president has suggested four to five weeks of more bombing.
04:44I don't know if the United States has the munitions to support that.
04:48And it's certainly drawing resources from other arenas that are more urgent.
04:53This is an administration.
04:54And indeed, many in America believe that China is the most important threat the United States has.
05:00And now you begin to see concentration of large amount of American naval power in the Gulf.
05:04In the meantime, in Europe, Ukraine is still being attacked by the Russian Federation.
05:10And some of the munitions that would be the least sold to the Europeans by the United States to give
05:15to Ukrainian struggle are not probably being met.
05:17So this is a war of choice for reasons that the administration has not explicated.
05:24As you mentioned in your beginning, the president has had an evolving set of justifications from very ambitious goal of
05:30regime change to a less ambitious but equally grandiose effort to disable Iran's missiles forever, disable its proxy network forever,
05:40and end its nuclear program permanently.
05:42These are almost open-ended commitments.
05:47So if the Trump administration isn't hoping for, you know, regime change completely, could the president perhaps be hoping to
05:56see a similar situation to that in Venezuela in which, you know, the leader is kind of removed and there
06:03are officials installed that can act as yes men to Washington?
06:08I don't think the Venezuela option exists here.
06:10Iran is not a personalized dictatorship.
06:13It is an ideological system.
06:14The Islamic Republic has a cadre that's committed to the revolution and sustaining the revolutionary government, even in the aftermath
06:21of Ali Khamenei's passing.
06:23So the idea that the president can essentially transact an agreement with a revolutionary guard leader or a military leader
06:30and obtain his objectives through that means seems to me far-fetched.
06:37I think the successful case of Venezuela might have persuaded the president and his advisors to embark on this particular
06:45course of action, not fully appreciating that the differences between the two countries are rather vast and the similarities are
06:52extremely limited.
06:54Well, on that, how much does Ali Khamenei's death really change?
06:58I mean, he could be replaced by someone even more hostile to the United States, right?
07:03He certainly is going to be replaced by someone younger and someone equally hostile, especially in this environment.
07:09It is hard to see any leadership coming out of the Islamic Republic at this point, having been attacked twice
07:16in eight months, having its leadership decapitated many members of the military and generals and scientists or others subject to
07:24targeted assassination.
07:25It is hard to see somebody coming from that particular system and getting on top of it who is likely
07:32to accommodate the United States, given everything that has happened and everything that is happening.
07:36This conflict is not over.
07:38The president, as I said, suggested it will go on for another month.
07:41That's a lot of bombing and that's a lot of targets.
07:45Today, the Assembly of Expert building, as your reporting indicated, was destroyed.
07:49I'm not quite sure if that institution had any military purposes.
07:53It was a way of convening to decide the parliamentary and political procedures of the country.
07:58So as we're running out of military target, you may see the you may see even targeting economic assets such
08:06as oil refineries and others and so forth.
08:10The Republican House Speaker on Monday, Mike Johnson, suggested that the U.S. had to strike Iran because Israel was
08:18going to do so with or without the U.S.'s support.
08:21What do you make of that statement?
08:23Does this allow us to believe that Israel is leading U.S. policy on the Middle East?
08:28I think it was also a statement made by Secretary Rubio, namely that this was an urgent threat because Israel
08:34was going to strike and the United States was going to be targeted by Iranian retaliation.
08:39That seems like a torture and argumentative stand.
08:44I don't believe an Israeli prime minister would have embarked on this course of action without American approbation.
08:51Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been wanting to bomb Iran for a long time, and he has done so only
08:57during the President Trump's second term because previous American presidents, including first term Trump, dissuaded him from that particular action.
09:06I don't see the Israelis doing this without American red line, without American green pass.
09:12And so what can we imagine might come next? I mean, negotiations on Iran's nuclear or missile programs now seem
09:20like a thing of the past.
09:24Well, first of all, I'm not sure if anybody is looking for an off ramp.
09:29I wouldn't necessarily exclude the possibility of talks.
09:32I think the Iranian regime may be willing to reengage in diplomacy just to stop the war, just to stop
09:39the fact that they're being bombed and given the disparity of power, they're likely to suffer more.
09:44The other possibility is that this conflict is out of hand.
09:47And if the Iranian missiles managed to kill a large number of American servicemen or, for instance, if they managed
09:53to penetrate Israel and hit a hospital, a school or a retirement home, then the Israeli prime minister would be
10:03energized and obligated by the politics of the country to retaliate.
10:06So there's a real chance that this could get out of hand, especially as Iran has expanded its target list
10:12to include most of the Gulf states and elsewhere.
10:16If there are substantial American casualties and there's been six, seven fatalities already, I think a president like Donald Trump,
10:24who puts much premium on appearing strong and projecting power, would be more inclined toward escalating the conflict as opposed
10:33to using that as an off ramp.
10:34So we could be potentially in a more dangerous position.
10:38The German chancellor is coming to Washington today.
10:40And perhaps he is trying to persuade the president to apply a different course of action, but we'll see.
10:47All right, Ray Takei, thank you very much for your analysis.
10:50As a reminder, you're a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations.
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