00:00I want to just pick up where we left off with Dan and the killing of this latest figure in
00:06Iran.
00:07Where does that leave the country in terms of leadership right now?
00:13Tim, obviously, it's a pretty big news.
00:16Ali Lurijani is a figure that anybody who's been watching Iran knows has had one or another political senior political
00:23role for pretty much as long as the Islamic Republic has been in Iran, 47 years.
00:28And he most recently returned as the head of the Supreme National Security Council back in August of last year
00:35with his sole job as trying to sort of coordinate best policies right after the 12-day war.
00:42And now he's gone, most likely, although I haven't seen Iranian official confirmation, but he's probably gone.
00:49And I don't think we should underestimate what that means.
00:53It's pretty significant, at least a psychological blow.
00:55But I wouldn't be surprised if he's quickly replaced.
00:58I mean, the regime is still able to put people in senior positions, at least for now.
01:04Whether that means that those are the best people they have or whether it just suggests that they want to
01:10show continuity, which is obviously very important for him, again, from a psychological point of view, to show that they're
01:15not on their way out.
01:17Alex, you know, Tim just turned to me.
01:19He says it sounds like whack-a-mole.
01:20And it does.
01:21It feels like as soon as they are.
01:22You've reminded us the regime is not one person and that as soon as someone's out, they find somebody else.
01:27But having said that, not everybody is interchangeable and not everybody is a supreme leader.
01:34So I just, you know, I guess I keep wondering, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a video statement
01:40that his military is, quote,
01:42quote, undermining this regime, meaning Iran, in the hope of giving the Iranian people a chance to remove it.
01:47Is it true?
01:48Has the regime been undermined?
01:50And is this what Iranians want?
01:53Well, Carol, there's no way to deny the fact that the regime is undermined massively.
01:59Certainly, there's never been under such amount of attack in its history.
02:03And I would also say, Carol, no doubt in my mind that the people of Iran, by and large, really
02:10want to see the end of this regime.
02:11Obviously, from their point of view, they want the regime to fall with minimum casualties, minimum damage to the country's
02:18infrastructure.
02:20But the Islamic Republic, in the eyes of many, are, you know, a political system that brought one crisis or
02:27disaster upon the nation after another, going back to 1979.
02:30I mean, they made a host of bad decisions.
02:33You could go back to the taking over the U.S. embassy in November of 1979, provoking Saddam Hussein to
02:39attack Iran in September of 80, and I can go on.
02:42Look, the regime is weak.
02:44It's not on its way out just yet.
02:46Yet the big question, and I think that might answer partly what you were asking me, Carol, it's not just
02:52that the figures, all of them have to go.
02:55The question is, does Israel and the United States perhaps have it in them to accept so-called pragmatic figures
03:02from within the regime emerge as possible candidates to take over?
03:06That kind of tallies nicely with what President Trump has been suggesting a number of times over the course of
03:12this war.
03:12Who are, are there any of those figures that we know about?
03:15Have those figures been identified, Alex?
03:17Are there any names of people who might be pragmatic and acceptable to the United States and Israel?
03:25Well, that's a big question, Mark.
03:27I mean, I can give you names, Tim.
03:28Let me give you a former president, Hassan Rouhani.
03:31For some, he might be just pragmatic enough to be able to change course, take the country in a different
03:36direction.
03:37Many others would oppose him, say, well, that's not going to solve much.
03:40He's been part of this system from day one.
03:42So why go through all this trouble just to have someone like him in place?
03:45So really, I guess it comes down to how much appetite you have, if you are U.S., if you
03:50are Israel, for this war to continue to get to a point where you say, I've eliminated all of them.
03:56Or you say, well, I don't want to stay here for months and years.
03:59I want to have somebody who is sensible enough to compromise, and I will then call it a day and
04:06move on.
04:07You know, Alex, one of the things that we keep talking about as we look at this war now in
04:11its third week, and it's something that, you know, President Trump said earlier, he talked about the war in Iran.
04:18He said that everybody in the world should be thankful, and that if he and his administration had not taken
04:23all the steps it has in Iran, including withdrawing the U.S. from the landmark 2015 accord to curb Iran's
04:29nuclear program during his first term,
04:31that, in his words, an, quote, unbelievable nuclear holocaust would have taken place.
04:36Is he right?
04:38Is this something that actually changes the trajectory of the region, of perhaps Iran's role with the world?
04:47Carol, that's a great question.
04:49I mean, that was certainly the motive.
04:51That's how the president has tried to sort of, if you will, sell this to the American public.
04:57But is it a sell, or is it maybe right?
05:02It depends.
05:03Look, if the regime collapses, in the sense that we can say Islamic Republic is no longer here, is no
05:08longer relevant, Iran has moved on, the region will move on,
05:11then I would say that's pretty, I mean, to end something that's been with us for 50 years in less
05:15than a month, that, you know,
05:16I know the world is going through an energy crisis, but it's still a significant success.
05:20But if the remnants of this regime stay, with their thousands of drones and so forth, and act like spoil
05:26is going forward, then the question becomes, was this the wisest way to do it?
05:31Why the timing?
05:33Why rush into something?
05:34And all sorts of questions can be then asked.
05:36But obviously, it's too early to judge.
05:37Let's see what, how long more this war goes on, and what, you know, what any political transformation major might
05:44come out of it.
05:45You know, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over the war with Iran.
05:50He claimed that Israel had misled President Trump into believing that the regime in Tehran posted an imminent threat.
05:57He said, Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.
06:01It's clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
06:05Those are the words of Joe Kent.
06:07Is he right that this country posed no imminent threat to the U.S.?
06:13Look, I certainly, as an open source analyst, did not see any Iranian intentions to attack the United States anytime
06:20soon.
06:20They just didn't have that capacity.
06:24But the point is, obviously, the Israelis sit in a very different part of the world, so they have a
06:28very different perspective.
06:29They are much closer, and the regime in Tehran, for decades, vowed to destroy them.
06:34So they have a very different sort of sense of threat when it came to the Islamic Republic.
06:40Another way of looking at this, Tim, is the Islamic Republic did not do itself any favors going back to
06:451979 and not sort of looking for ways to, you know, if you will, mend ties with the United States
06:50after hostage crisis of 79.
06:53So, again, it depends how you measure hostility.
06:56The intent was never certainly to be a friend or partner of the United States.
07:00Ali Khamenei, the last Supreme Leader, openly talked about, you know, getting the United States out of the region.
07:05So, but did I see an Iranian effort on the way to attack the United States?
07:11As I said, I certainly, in my position, did not see that.
07:14But I also didn't see them wanting to be friends with the United States, if that makes sense.
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