00:00I see that you worked under the Bush administration and you bring a wealth of expertise to the
00:06conversation that we're having today. I'm going to start off by asking you whether you think
00:10and believe that this is a war of choice or a war of necessity for the U.S.
00:17Well, look, Iran has been killing Americans for many, many years. They've been seeking to obtain
00:20a nuclear weapon for many years. They've been a supporter of Hezbollah, Hamas,
00:25Palestinian Islamic Jihad for decades. In a lot of ways, this war has long been coming.
00:30Whether it was a war of choice or necessity right at the exact moment is something historians will
00:35debate for a long time. But the reality is that Iran has been at war with the U.S. for
00:39the better part
00:40of multiple decades. We simply haven't been at war with them. This war has now been brought to them.
00:46Okay. The administration has offered various war objectives, including destroying Iran's missile
00:52capabilities, wiping out the Navy, preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and ensuring it
00:57cannot continue to support allies' armed groups. Can they get that done in the next few days, do you
01:03think? Or is this going to take weeks, possibly even months? Yeah. I mean, I think this is a long
01:08-term
01:08operation, to your point. I mean, the president said it himself that he anticipated initially that
01:13this effort would take four weeks. You know, he said it's going a little faster than expected, so
01:17maybe he anticipates it to go a little bit longer, but his initial bid was four weeks. I think that's
01:21probably a reasonable thing from the air. The question is, is what do you do about some of
01:25the nuclear elements that are deeper in tunnels that we know that we haven't reached with a
01:29massive ordnance penetrator that may not even be reachable with that? Are these really going to put
01:32a small, limited number of elite forces on the ground or use proxy forces in the country to go
01:38after those material? And then how do you really decimate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards? They're a huge
01:43force. The Quds Force is an elite force. They know how to hide. It's a very hard thing to do.
01:50Yeah, it is a hard thing to do, which again brings me to my next question, which is what do
01:56you make
01:56of President Trump suggesting that he has openness potentially to cut a deal with a more quote-unquote
02:03friendly leadership in Iran? How does that work out if you juxtapose it with this appetite for
02:10regime change? Well, this is the challenge. You've got to figure out what that friendly leadership looks
02:15like, right? It's obviously not going to be any of the immediate clerics that we're talking about
02:19unless the administration's already been in conversations with somebody. It's hard to see
02:22who in this regime structure might be that moderate party that would agree to give up nuclear weapons,
02:28give up nuclear enrichment, give up their support of terrorist groups and the like. That seems hard
02:32to imagine. So then you're talking about outside groups or folks within. There's talk about the U.S.
02:38disarming the Kurdish groups in the north. We'll see if any of that's accurate. But the truth is,
02:43you have to have somebody, a figure or a group of figures that can actually take the government and
02:47take charge and then deal with the fact that the Revolutionary Guards are still there and may go
02:51into a insurgency posture like we saw in Iraq. That's a very difficult problem to solve and one
02:56that without forces on the ground. We saw what happened in Iraq with a huge number of U.S. forces
03:00on the
03:00ground. Trying to do that all from the air or through covert action is not an easy thing again.
03:05So a lot of the problem here, to your point, is the strategic question of how you actually set up
03:10a succession that's successful, a replacement government and the like, particularly when you're
03:14saying you don't want regime change or you want it brought on by the people, you're not going to do
03:18it yourself. Well, then how do you get the regime you want? It's just hard to understand how that
03:22exactly happens. Yeah. And I know that there's going to be a Congress vote later today, but it's
03:27unlikely to go against the president, given the Republicans have a majority. But if you look at all of the
03:34polls, it would suggest that the U.S. public does not endorse a U.S.-Iran war. They are in majority
03:42opposed to it. And as you see, the number of casualties beginning to mount, I believe it is
03:47six servicemen now who have lost their lives. Three American fighter jets were lost, shot down
03:52in friendly fire in Kuwait. I just wonder how long the American public will have the appetite to stomach
04:01a sustained conflict if it is going to take weeks. Well, look, I think there's a question
04:06about leadership, right? If the president leans forward and says, this is what I expect to happen,
04:11this is how I want to run, I think it's going to be very hard for members of the Congress
04:14to go
04:14against that. You just pointed out there's going to be a vote. It will get some collection of Democrats
04:19and Republicans that will be bipartisan, but it won't ultimately succeed. It won't get a majority in
04:24the Senate. It might get a majority in the House. It will be close. But it won't be enough even
04:28to
04:28sustain. Even if it passes the Senate and the House, the president would veto it. It wouldn't
04:32pass. And so as the leader, the president can bring the country with him, even if it is unpopular.
04:37But over time, the thing about President Trump is he cares a lot about what the American people think.
04:41And if he starts to see a loss of public support, his ability to support the war may decay.
04:46But right now he seems committed to the course. He seems focused on it. He seems like he's going to
04:50drive forward regardless of where the poll numbers look. But to your point, that may not last forever.
04:56Yeah, well, let me ask you this. What do you think is more important to the U.S. administration
05:02here, achieving those defined or semi-defined war objectives in Iran or maintaining a lid on gas
05:10prices and oil prices at the pump for U.S. consumers? Well, I think it's both. I think the reality
05:16is the president is coming up on a midterm election. He needs to try and maintain control
05:20of Congress. So that's going to matter to him, oil prices and gas prices at the pump,
05:25other types of inflation. So those things are all going to matter. You can't deny
05:28with an election coming up in November that that's going to matter. At the same time,
05:32the president has begun this course. He's committed to this course. Whether these are the right
05:35objectives or not, this has been an evolving set of objectives. From the first day, the president
05:40listed out, here are the objectives. Then you had the Secretary of Defense give out a few other ones.
05:43The president's come back. Marco Rubio set out different ones. So the question of why we're
05:47at war and what the goal of the war has changed over time. And so we'll see that continue to
05:52take
05:52shape over the next few days and weeks. But at the end of the day, what the president said early
05:56on
05:57before this conflict even started was he was going to send help to the Iranian people. That help was
06:01on the way. And if this regime doesn't ultimately go down by whatever force, President Trump's going
06:06to have a lot of explaining to do, both to his base about why he picked this conflict and to
06:10the
06:10rest of the American public about why we got in this and what the result is.
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