00:00Let's deepen our analysis and bring in Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington.
00:04Barbara, thanks for joining us as always here on Friends 24.
00:07I'd appreciate your take on who is Mojtaba Khomeini.
00:11Very much a chip off the old block, as I understand it.
00:15Yeah, thanks for having me.
00:17He is someone who has been at his father's side and helping his father for a very long time.
00:24We focused on him back in 2019 as a potential successor.
00:28He is very, very close to the security services, to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and reportedly played a significant
00:38role in crushing the so-called Green Movement in 2009, when Iran had fraud-tainted presidential elections.
00:48So he is not a liberal reformer by any means.
00:52But he, of course, as your correspondent mentioned, has a target on his back from the United States and Israel.
00:59And a friend of mine on social media said that the betting sites are already saying he has only a
01:067% chance of surviving.
01:09So he's not appeared in public, and perhaps that's wise under the circumstances.
01:14And no surprise, of course, that Donald Trump wouldn't approve of this appointment.
01:18I mean, why would he?
01:21Well, Donald Trump has decided he is the person who has the right to choose the next leader of Iran.
01:28I doubt that is going to be the case.
01:31And it is, frankly, I think that that statement by Trump that Moshe Bahamini was, quote-unquote, unacceptable to Trump,
01:39was one of the reasons that the Iranian Assembly of Experts decided to choose Moshe Bahamini, just to show defiance
01:48and to stick their finger in Trump's eye.
01:50I should say that there have been some interesting developments just recently, and I was looking on social media.
01:56Apparently, Donald Trump is beginning, it looks like, to get tired of this war.
02:01He told, let me see if I can find it here, a correspondent for CBS News in a phone interview,
02:13I think the war is very complete, pretty much.
02:16They have no Navy, no communications.
02:18They've got no air force.
02:20He said the U.S. is very far ahead of his initial four- to five-week time frame.
02:25So I think the skyrocketing price of oil, the collapse of the stock market, the increasing casualties all over the
02:34region,
02:34the Iranian ability to continue to hit infrastructure in the GCC countries as well as to hit Israel, is beginning
02:43to sober our president up.
02:45Indeed.
02:45And perhaps a sign that there really is no plan behind the madness that's been unleashed.
02:52No, there never was a plan.
02:54This was something that appealed to Trump.
02:58He was, of course, spooled up by Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel,
03:02who has been trying to get an American president to bomb Iran for nearly two decades.
03:08But beyond that, Trump felt that he had the opportunity.
03:13He had moved his armada from the shore of Venezuela to the Persian Gulf,
03:19and that the Iranian people would somehow rise up and remove this dreaded dictatorship.
03:26But, of course, he didn't understand very much about the Iranian system or the ability of Iranians who do not
03:34have the guns to move against those who do.
03:37So, a massive miscalculation on the part of Donald Trump, yet another one.
03:42And it looks like it will hopefully end soon with what is at best a Pyrrhic victory by the United
03:49States and Israel.
03:50Barbara, there's been a discussion, this is coming from the Kremlin sources,
03:54discussion between Putin and Trump on the issues regarding to the Iran war.
04:00Putin has a grand plan, apparently, and one can only imagine that Russia and Putin would benefit greatly from that.
04:06From the perspective of the new Khomeini, what is he likely to be looking for?
04:10Is it just a continuation of what is happening?
04:14It's to survive, for the regime to survive.
04:17For Iran not to have to capitulate to Trump's demands for unconditional surrender,
04:23for the US to call a halt before Iran does.
04:26In terms of what that would mean, in terms of what Iran would be left with afterwards,
04:31do we have any sense of what that could be?
04:34Well, obviously, the country has sustained enormous damage to its military and civilian infrastructure.
04:41Life will be far more miserable, and it was already terrible for 90 million Iranians.
04:47But that is of less concern to the Islamic Republic than the perpetuation of this strange form of government that
04:56it's had for 47 years.
04:58And whatever happens to the majority of Iranians, I can assure you that those who are in charge
05:03will manage to monopolize whatever resources are left for themselves.
05:08It is the ordinary people, as always, who are the victims in times like this, Barbara, isn't it?
05:13And your comments there really illustrating that completely.
05:17There's no sense, then, that this is going to make the Middle East into a safer place, a more peaceful
05:23place, a more prosperous place.
05:25Oh, my Lord, no.
05:27I mean, there's so many delusions.
05:29You know, you would think after two U.S. military interventions in the Middle East that have turned out so
05:35badly that we would have learned our lesson.
05:38But clearly, Donald Trump does not learn the lessons of history, and he thinks he can just change the subject
05:44every day and somehow we'll all forget.
05:46Well, we have midterm elections coming in the United States in November, and I can assure you that most Americans
05:52will not forget.
05:53In terms of how Americans are viewing this, I mean, clearly, Trump campaigning on Make America Great Again, America First,
06:02not getting involved in forever wars abroad.
06:04And here we are.
06:06Yeah, I mean, it was the only thing that I thought was admirable about his campaign.
06:11And he obviously was somehow imbued with hubris and thought that this would be, you know, a dynamic strike to
06:22change the course of history in the Middle East.
06:25And those of us who've lived in the region, who've followed the region for decades, know that this is a
06:31very complicated part of the world and that it is often plagued by instability, that it usually gets worse before
06:38it gets better.
06:39And that if you don't deal with the root causes of the instability in the region, such as the Palestinian
06:45issue, you can't have peace in the Middle East.
06:50Barbara Slavin, thank you, as always, for joining us here in France.
06:53We appreciate your time and your analysis.
06:55Barbara Slavin, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.
06:59Thanks again, Barbara.
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