00:00Well, let's discuss, because our next guest has some meaningful insight on this, given his background with the U.S.'s
00:06military intervention in Libya in 2011.
00:09Joining us now, I'm pleased to say, is Evo Daldir. He is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and
00:13a senior fellow at the Harvard Belfort Center.
00:17Fantastic to have you with us. And let's start exactly there.
00:20It's only been a few days since, of course, we saw this initial move into the Middle East by the
00:25U.S.
00:26But I wonder what you make of that possibility that this could end with U.S. forces again on the
00:32ground in Iran.
00:35Well, everything is possible because the president and his team really haven't laid out what it is that we're trying
00:42to do, why it is that we're trying to do it.
00:45The focus is on destroying Iranian military power. But to what end?
00:51War isn't about just violence. War is about achieving political ends through that violence.
00:59And that's the one thing that has been unclear.
01:02Is this because we want a different regime in Iran, in which case are we prepared to put boots on
01:09the ground in order to achieve that?
01:11If there is a different regime, are we going to help the new regime achieve its stability?
01:15Is this just to destroy the nuclear program, which just a few months ago the president and his administration said
01:23have been, quote, obliterated?
01:25Is it to defend Israel against a possible attack, in which case, why did we strike first?
01:32None of those fundamental questions have been answered.
01:36And I think that's why people are concerned, because they are seeing an escalation without end, including geographic escalation.
01:45And now we're starting to go after boats in the Indian Ocean and the Iranians are starting to shoot at
01:52NATO territory.
01:53Well, given that it isn't clear at this moment what the endgame is, I wonder how much difficulty that adds
02:00to trying to put a timeline to how long this conflict might last.
02:03Because we've heard from the president, you know, saying this could be four to five weeks.
02:07We heard from Secretary Hegsath saying that this isn't going to be Iraq in 2003.
02:13But, you know, with that ambiguity over what the endgame is, I mean, how can you even assign a timeline
02:20to when we might see an end here?
02:23Well, Katie, I think you put your finger on it.
02:26If you don't know what the goal is, every road will take you there.
02:30If the president goes on TV tonight and says we have achieved what we wanted to achieve, the leadership of
02:37Iran has been decimated, much of its nuclear capability is now buried firmly underground, its missile force has been degraded,
02:46its navy has been sunk, we're done.
02:49He can do that.
02:50At the same time, he can also say, no, we're not done.
02:53We're just going to continue because we want to have a new regime.
02:57We want to have a new leadership that is going to be working with us or we want the oil,
03:01which is what we wanted in Venezuela.
03:03Who knows?
03:04And that's the problem.
03:05We can't judge either the timeline or, more importantly, success because we don't know what the goal is.
03:10Well, it raises the question, too.
03:12And, I mean, we continue to get a lot of headlines from various administration officials.
03:15There were some headlines moving earlier this morning, Evo, that I am curious about.
03:19This idea that Trump wants to see, I guess, more of an organic uprising, if you will, from the people
03:24and that, I guess, to a certain extent, Israel and the U.S. would provide some type of support for
03:30that.
03:30But, of course, layered in that was this idea of potentially providing arms.
03:35They specifically singled out some members of the Kurdish community.
03:40And not to be, you know, flip about it, but it seems like we have historical precedent for arming groups
03:46that we think are on our side to fight for themselves.
03:49And I am curious if whether that should be an option on the table.
03:52Can it be a viable option for the U.S.?
03:55Well, here we're dealing with a country, Iran, that has created an infrastructure of control over the civilian population over
04:06the past 47 years.
04:08A very regime that is willing and has demonstrated its willingness just a few weeks ago of killing thousands of
04:16its own citizens in order to maintain control.
04:19The idea that somehow we're going to be dropping weapons and the people on the street will rise up or
04:26that we are going to arm the Kurds, which are less than 10 percent of the Iranian population and in
04:32some ways foster not an overthrow of the regime, but a civil war in Iran, strikes me as a strategy
04:42effort that is like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.
04:47This is not well thought through.
04:48This is not a strategy.
04:50This is just trying to figure out how we get from point A to point B.
04:53You're not going to have an uprising of the people of Iraq because they don't have the guns.
04:58Well, also who are.
05:00Yes.
05:00Well, with regards to that uprising, though, too, I mean, what do we know about the Iranian people, how they
05:05felt about the Khomeini regime?
05:07And I guess technically that regime, to some extent, is still in power.
05:10And those who truly did want to see a significant change in that leadership and a significant change, I guess,
05:17in the way the government actually operates.
05:20Do we have any sense that that was tilted more towards what the U.S.'s vision and Israel's vision, for
05:25that matter, would be for Iran?
05:27Well, I don't know what Israel and U.S. vision is for Iran other than not the current leadership.
05:32And, yes, the people in Iran no doubt have suffered gravely under this regime, don't like the regime, have expressed
05:42through protests and other ways their unhappiness with the regime.
05:45The problem is the regime has the guns, the regime has been in power, the regime is able to do
05:50what it wants to do, and bombing their nuclear and missile programs isn't going to change that, nor is the
05:58military going to put down their arms, nor are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which are sort of the core
06:05of the regime's capabilities, going to put their guns down, or the police are going to put their guns down,
06:11because if the people get those guns, they will be shot.
06:13So there is, again, not a real well-thought-through process here where we're going to know when it is
06:21we have achieved and what it is that we're trying to achieve.
06:24You can't go to war without knowing why it is that we're going to war.
06:29We only have about a minute left, and I do want to ask a little bit more about the nuclear
06:33program, because you take a look at what we're hearing from the administration,
06:36and they have pointed to the nuclear program as a reason why they took action now,
06:41that the negotiations that they were having with Iran, that, you know, the impression was that the country wasn't serious
06:47about reaching some sort of agreement here.
06:52And I wonder, you know, what you make of that reasoning, of that logic.
06:56Well, clearly the negotiations were in the very early stages.
07:00The Iranians were trying to maintain as much of the program as they possibly could, and we didn't get them
07:09immediately capitulating to the United States.
07:12They weren't, they're not the kind of country where they're just going to sit down and capitulate, which is apparently
07:18what Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner were hoping would be achieved.
07:22But we really didn't try either. We didn't really sit down and go into deep technical talks, the kind of
07:28talks that led to the 2015 nuclear deal that the president walked away from.
07:34And the Iranians were saying, listen, we're dealing with a president who has walked away from earlier deals we signed
07:40to him.
07:40How do we know that this deal is going to stick?
07:42It would take building time and trust in order to get to a final deal.
07:47That trust can't be built in a week. It will take much more time than the president was willing to
07:51give it.
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