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00:00I spoke with former Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week, and it's funny, David Sanger of the New York
00:04Times did Yeoman's work, kind of categorizing or cataloging how many different rationales for this war we've gotten from the
00:09administration. I think he put a dozen in his article in the Times this morning. I started there with the
00:13former Secretary of State. I said, look, we've heard from the President, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Defense,
00:18Secretary of State, all these different rationales. I'm just curious of how he sees the motivations here, the rationales for
00:23this war. Let's take a listen.
00:25I'm curious at this point what your understanding is of the case this administration has made for the U.S.
00:31going to war against Iran.
00:33Look, the case keeps shifting, but the first thing to say is this from my perspective. Once our men, women
00:38in uniform are engaged in an operation or in a war, my first thought is for their safety and for
00:45their success, irrespective of what I think about how we got there or even where this is going.
00:51So that's primarily what I'm thinking of. But having said that, we've heard, you know, number shifting rationales. But I
00:58think it's important to take into account that we've got to be able to hold multiple truths in our head
01:02at the same time.
01:04Is it a good thing that this ayatollah is gone? Yes. Terrible tyrant. Is it a good thing, potentially, at
01:12least, that Iran's nuclear program is, I guess, re-obliterated because apparently it was obliterated last June, but maybe not
01:18so much because they had to re-obliterate it?
01:21Or its missile program diminished or its Navy sunk? Yes. But to do that and to take on the extraordinary
01:35risks that go with it without having made the case with the American people,
01:41with citing imminent threats that apparently didn't exist, I think that's problematic and the chances of unintended consequences taking hold
01:51in any situation like this are very real, very serious for our partners and allies in the region and for
01:59ourselves and, of course, for the Iranian people.
02:01I think a big question that everyone has is, OK, have we done regime change in Iran or just ayatollah
02:09change, which is the way it looks right now?
02:11The Supreme Leader, who's been killed, of course, warned in the run-up to this that if there were U
02:16.S. strikes, the U.S. risked a wider regional war.
02:21How has what's played out over these last few days, how does that compare to what you expected would happen
02:25here?
02:26I imagine in your old jobs there were planning meetings and war games in which you kind of tried to
02:30figure out what might happen here.
02:31As we see this war widen, is that in keeping with what you expected when you heard the Supreme Leader
02:36warn of that?
02:36Well, look, it's certainly something that should have been anticipated.
02:39And what's one of the striking features so far is that Iran has launched far more missiles and far more
02:46drones at the Arab countries in the Gulf and in the region than it has even at Israel, disproportionately so.
02:53And in part, that's because we have bases and a presence there.
02:57But they've gone beyond that.
02:58They've gone at infrastructure that these countries have, the oil infrastructure.
03:01They want to try to inflict so much pain that we can't sustain the effort.
03:07And that's something that should have been anticipated.
03:10And, David, I think we're looking at a couple of things going forward in terms of where does this go
03:14and how does this end.
03:16And it seems to me that there are two critical factors to look at, markets and munitions, markets, where are
03:24the oil markets, where's the stock market, where's the bond market?
03:27I know President Trump is very attentive to those.
03:29And if they go in a southerly direction and stay that way, or in the case of oil, in a
03:35northerly direction, that's going to be possibly a limiting factor.
03:38Then, munitions.
03:40There's really a race on to figure out who expends their munitions first and fastest.
03:46Do the Iranians put us in a position where we've used up a lot of interceptors to deal with defense
03:54or even our offensive missiles to take out their launchers?
03:59Or, conversely, do they run out and we still have what we need?
04:03Again, I don't know the numbers here.
04:05I'm not privy to that.
04:06But it is something we have to be very, very attentive to because these things are not in infinite supply.
04:10Do you see an off-ramp anywhere at this point?
04:14I do in the sense that, one, as I said, I think the off-ramp will be governed by this
04:20question of munitions and markets.
04:22And then what is that off-ramp?
04:23I think the president may simply declare victory.
04:27He'll say, got rid of the Ayatollah.
04:30We diminished or degraded or destroyed their nuclear program.
04:34Again, we did the same thing to the missile program.
04:38We did the same thing to the Navy.
04:39And as to the regime, well, over to the Iranian people.
04:43Good luck to them.
04:44Hope they succeed.
04:46And if they don't, it's their fault.
04:47If they do, we'll take the credit.
04:50How Iran responds to that remains to be seen.
04:53And for the regime, survival is success.
04:56Right now, the expectation seems to be, at least as has been reported, that the Ayatollah Sun is his successor.
05:06He's very tied into the IRGC.
05:09And so you may have a situation where, much as we want, and everyone should want to see a change
05:14in that regime, we have, you know, regime change without regime change.
05:20Status quo.
05:20Status quo.
05:21And even potentially, even worse, because it may simply ultimately reinforce the IRGC, the military, the specialized military.
05:31And part of the problem with these things is that it's very hard to produce regime change from outside.
05:38You can't bomb your way to it.
05:39We've had a lot of experience with that and not such good experience over the last 20 years.
05:44It's even not so likely to come from the streets, even with extraordinarily courageous Iranian people.
05:50It's more likely to come from kind of within the palace.
05:53Is it too late for there to be a diplomatic solution or to have those conversations at this point?
05:57No, I think it's never too late for diplomacy.
06:00The question is, is there a good moment?
06:03Is this the right moment for it?
06:05I would hope so, because on one level, the Iranians have never been weaker, at least not in recent memory,
06:11militarily, politically at home, diplomatically abroad.
06:17And so and their proxies are for the most part gone or vastly diminished.
06:23So that's why I was hopeful before this this action started that maybe they actually would get a renewed nuclear
06:30deal because Iran was had a very weak hand to play.
06:33So there I think there is a possibility of doing that, whether the new whatever the new regime is or
06:38the continuation of the existing regime is is ready to do that, wants to do that to be determined.
06:43And it also depends on what the what the Trump administration wants to do.
06:46And I imagine Israel is going to have a say in this as well.
06:49We've had other second and third order consequences here at the very time when when Russia is really reaching a
06:55weak point because of its dependence on oil to fuel its war economy.
07:00Its revenues, the government's revenues are down almost 20 percent, in large part because the price of oil has gone
07:06down.
07:07It's having more trouble exploiting oil because of sanctions and restrictions that we put on technology.
07:13That's been a huge and growing factor.
07:15And the thing to do now, ideally, would be to squeeze the shadow fleet that they have that's going around
07:20the world.
07:21And that's the one thing that's able to keep them going at the very time when that's possible and that
07:26that might force Putin to finally cut a deal on Ukraine.
07:30They get a lifeline and the lifeline is the price of oil is going up and the value of that
07:34shadow fleet oil is going up and people will need it and want to buy it.
07:38The Europeans, in turn, having moved away from Russian gas, are now more dependent on the Middle East.
07:44And if that gets tied up, if the Straits of Hormuz remain problematic, that's going to put a lot of
07:50pressure on them.
07:51I want to wrap up with where this leaves us, where this leaves the world.
07:55And Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada spoke recently and he said this is just another example of what he's
07:59talked about before, this rupture in the global order.
08:02That's happened on two counts here.
08:04There have been two failures, the first of which was the multilateral institutions that we've relied on weren't able to
08:09constrain Iran effectively.
08:10That's one.
08:10And the second is you have the U.S. and Israel now going it together without the consent of the
08:16U.N. or other multilateral institutions.
08:17Do you agree with him as he talks about the way that that hegemony, the global order, has changed?
08:23Look, we're very much at an inflection point in the global order, in the rules-based order that we spent
08:2980 years building up.
08:30And that was premised on one, I think, profound insight, and that was enlightened self-interest, the notion that the
08:41success and strength of others would be our own as well.
08:44And we were able to build a system that avoided other countries ganging up against us, as is usually the
08:50case when one country rises above the others.
08:54We had new markets for all the stuff we wanted to sell.
08:57We had new partners to deal with different conflicts, different problems.
09:01We had new allies to deter aggression, especially with NATO.
09:05And now that system is being put in the, for now at least, in the dustbin and being replaced with,
09:12there are different versions of this.
09:13Some people believe that the president's engaged in going back to a kind of spheres of influence world where the
09:17Russians do what they want in their part of the world.
09:19The Chinese do what they want, except maybe on the economic issues in their part.
09:24And we do what we want to do in our part, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.
09:27And then you've got these problematic areas that are dealt with by force.
09:35That's a profound thing, and that's what's happening.
09:42I think at the same time, and this is what's maybe most frustrating of all in the Middle East, is
09:51that there's also an extraordinary opportunity.
09:54If, very big if, this does produce some kind of real change in Iran, then you have the prospect of
10:01a region that heads in a very different direction, that is integrated with its people, it's moving back and forth,
10:10its economies integrated, greater success, greater prosperity for folks.
10:16But there remains one catch to that vision, besides how Iran resolves, and that's the question of Israelis and Palestinians.
10:23The truly big vision right now would be to actually resolve that question, not to try to put it under
10:31the rug yet again.
10:33The bottom line is this.
10:35There are roughly 7 million Jews in Israel.
10:38There are about 2 million Arabs, 5 million Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza.
10:43No one is going anywhere, despite the efforts of some on both sides to make that happen.
10:49And so, tell me how this ends.
10:51I don't see how this ends without some kind of genuine political accommodation that realizes the rights of Palestinians.
10:59This is the moment for that big vision, because that brings with it something incredibly powerful.
11:03Normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and then potentially other countries will follow suit from Qatar to Indonesia.
11:09And then if the Iranian problem is diminished, and Iran really has to face a choice between being a pariah
11:17gadfly or mending its ways, I think that's the most likely way we're actually going to see real change.
11:25Unfortunately, tragically, given the trauma on all sides after October 7th, on the Israeli side and among Palestinians, it's awfully
11:32hard to get there.
11:33But that's where you need people of vision to try to move things in that direction.
11:37There is actually an opportunity to do that.
11:41I worry that that opportunity will not be seized.
11:45And we're going to just see a continuation among Israelis and Palestinians.
11:49And also, Iran is, again, likely in this moment, if I had to bet, again, we're replacing one Ayatollah for
11:56another.
11:57And the nature of the regime in this moment doesn't seem likely to change.
12:00I hope I'm pleasantly surprised and the Iranians get the leadership that they deserve.
12:04But the jury is very much out on that.
12:06Last question is what this war in Iran means for President Trump's other ambitions, be that Cuba, be that Greenland,
12:14continued project in Venezuela.
12:16How do you think about what this may or may not lead to?
12:19Well, in some ways, Iran's the outlier because these other areas that you just mentioned are all within what would
12:27be our so-called sphere of influence.
12:28And that's why I said before what we're seeing is at least one of the shifts I think we're seeing
12:35is the president seems to see the world in terms of these spheres of influence.
12:38And anything within our sphere, we should, in one way or another, control.
12:42And there's kind of a very 19th century view that actually controlling the territory is the most important thing, never
12:50mind that there's absolutely no need to do that.
12:52I mean, in the case of Greenland, simply asking would have gotten the right answer in terms of putting more
12:59military forces there or striking deals on their raw materials.
13:03But that world, the spheres of influence world, where the big guys on the block, and it is guys in
13:10this view, get to do what they want in their area, that's the way things were for much of the
13:15latter part of the 19th century.
13:17But it didn't end well.
13:17We ultimately end up with World War I.
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