00:00What do you give the odds of these talks succeeding in any kind of near-term timeline?
00:04I don't see any big breakthrough in the near term.
00:07I think his analysis is correct.
00:10I think to lower the expectations is smart.
00:13If you have the vice president there, that's usually when you sign the deal.
00:16So I think they're doing this in the right way.
00:19You know, Ron is notorious for being dilatory in its tactics,
00:24you know, trying to get to a deal but then pulling the rug out at the last minute.
00:27And then when you do get a deal, it's trust but verify, and it's very hard to trust them.
00:32And I think that's a big issue.
00:34I'm curious.
00:34We've been following this, as Eric said, everything's changing hour by hour.
00:38I'm curious for you, as chairman emeritus of the Foreign Affairs Committee,
00:40are you getting the information that you need about the diplomatic objectives
00:43and how these talks are unfolding?
00:44Are you, like us, kind of fumbling a bit here trying to figure out who's doing what and who's running
00:48point?
00:48I mean, it could be better.
00:49I mean, even in the prior administration, I would get calls from the Secretary of State.
00:54I think on this one—
00:55You're talking about a Democratic administration.
00:56Right.
00:57I mean, they've been very close to the vest on this.
01:00And I understand that.
01:02But it's also important to reach out to Congress.
01:04We're under Article I, a separate but equal branch of government.
01:07And so I've been to Islamabad.
01:09He's right.
01:10It's a very long ways away.
01:12And it's a very different part of the world.
01:14I do applaud Pakistan, though, for stepping up and being an intermediary between the two parties.
01:20I'm not very sanguine under this regime in Iran that you're going to have anything in the short term.
01:27I applaud the president for not hitting, you know, civilian infrastructure.
01:31That's almost an act of, you know, of war crime, to be honest with you.
01:37And so I think this is the right path.
01:40I know the markets have responded very well to this.
01:45I don't think it's in any best interest to see this drag on, you know, the war drag on, if
01:50you will, when they see rising gas prices.
01:52There's a lot of pressure, actually, on the White House to get this thing resolved.
01:56But I don't know.
01:57And I think Iran knows that, too.
01:59And I always am very skeptical.
02:01I think they're always trying to play us.
02:04But to that point, as we've talked about, the reason this administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement the
02:09first time is, they said, because Iran couldn't be trusted.
02:11And even if they entered a deal, it wasn't worth the piece of paper it was written on.
02:15Those facts on the ground have not innately changed.
02:18No.
02:19Are they going to be able to get a better deal this time around?
02:22Well, the JCPOA would have legalized a nuclear bomb in Iran today.
02:27That's what we were saying back when we opposed that.
02:31You know, look, as long as this regime is in power, you're going to have this problem.
02:36And we've had this problem since 1979.
02:39Every president since then has said no nuclear warhead in Iran.
02:45But no president's really done anything.
02:47They tried the JCPOA.
02:49President Trump's first president to actually act and hit Iran where it hurts.
02:55But I think I do think in the early days of this, when the Ayatollah was with his cabinet underground
03:01and they were annihilated and taken out, there was a hope that there could be a regime change at that
03:06point in time.
03:07But the fact is, it didn't happen.
03:10And I don't know if the American people have the appetite to stay in long term to finish that job
03:16or whether we hand that off to Israel and let Mossad try to do that.
03:19I don't know.
03:20But as long as this regime is in power, we're going to have this problem.
03:23Let me ask you about that because there's a big piece in the Times about the state of the new
03:26supreme leader grievously injured, getting a lot of medical care from a very small group of physicians.
03:32People are passing notes to get to him because they're worried about giving them the indication of where he might
03:36be.
03:37But what you're talking about raises this point of who does the U.S. need to talk to if its
03:42objectives here are to get some sort of regime change or to really change Iran.
03:45Was that a colossal misstep, do you think, by this administration killing those who could have been perhaps partners in
03:52trying to change the course in Iran?
03:54Well, after the 12 day war, they didn't they didn't step up and they were not willing negotiating partners.
03:59Now they're no longer on this in this world.
04:02But there is a line of session in Iran and that's taking place.
04:06Their foreign minister seems to be the one that really the sort of the point of contact for this negotiation.
04:13But they have you know, they're going to continue to, you know, as long as this regime's in power, we're
04:18going to have this problem.
04:18And so, I mean, they've been a source of torture and agony and terror in the Middle East since 1979.
04:27And until that regime is gone, it's going to be hard to have peace in the Middle East.
04:31It's going to be hard, as Jared Kushner goes there, who is the architect of the Abraham Accords, to have
04:37normalization between Saudis and the Arab world and Israel.
04:42We were getting so close to that.
04:44That's when October 7th happened.
04:46When those talks of normalization were going on, Iran saw that it lit up its proxies.
04:52And that's why we had October 7th.
04:54But given David's question and the fact that to your point, that regime did not fall, it is still there
04:59and possibly a hardened form.
05:01Is the Iran we have now potentially more dangerous and unpredictable than the Iran we had before this conflict started?
05:08I mean, possibly their nuclear, their military industrial complex has been severely degraded.
05:14And that's the good news.
05:15The bad news is the regime still continues to move forward.
05:19And I think you're going to continue to have that problem of trusting them.
05:24And it's a very fanatical.
05:25This is not Venezuela and a decapitation of Venezuela.
05:29That was a beautiful military operation.
05:32This one, far more difficult.
05:35It's a larger country.
05:36It's hard to effectuate regime change without troops on the ground, which I would not recommend.
05:41I think we put our troops in the ground there.
05:44They become magnets for the jihadists.
05:46We saw that in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years.
05:49I don't think that would be a good idea.
05:51I do think Israel, though, with Mossad, remember, they can carry out political assassinations.
05:57Congress has made that illegal.
05:58They can do things we can't.
06:00And I think maybe they're perhaps in a better position to try to effectuate that.
06:05It's very complicated, though.
06:07Increasingly, when we talk about Iran, we're talking about China and the degree which China is advantaged by this war
06:11continuing.
06:12I'm curious, if the president were to call you up and ask for your counsel ahead of his trip to
06:15China, what you would say?
06:17What are the objectives he should have in making that meeting, having that meeting with President Xi that's been postponed
06:22once already?
06:23I would lay conditions.
06:24I mean, the meeting itself is a concession of any president to meet with Chairman Xi, who is perhaps our
06:31greatest adversary in the world right now, the great power of competition.
06:35And I would lay conditions.
06:36First, I would say, hey, stop assisting Iran in the region.
06:40I would say the same thing to Mr. Putin.
06:43Stop providing drone technology.
06:45Stop providing targeting information on our military.
06:49I would say the same thing to Chairman Xi.
06:51I'm not going to meet and have a detente-like meeting if you're going to continue to arm Iran with
06:58your software that helps with your drone technologies.
07:02That should be an absolute precondition to any meeting.
07:05We've only got about 30 seconds before we have to let you go.
07:07But I do want to ask you about the cabinet shuffling we're seeing and the changes in leadership in the
07:12president's inner court.
07:13Do you think this is a positive thing or do you think this is a sign of disarray and chaos
07:17in the White House?
07:17Well, some was due to, I think, you know, malpractice on the part of the cabinet members.
07:24I mean, the Labor Secretary had some really gross violations going on.
07:29I think Kristi Noem is a colleague of mine.
07:31I respect her.
07:32But, you know, what they did with Bovino and how they handled that situation, you know, I was a little
07:40surprised by the Attorney General, Pam Bondi's firing.
07:44There's a piece, though, that came out in Politico today that talks about this very issue.
07:48He has a limited window on confirmations.
07:52So there are a few more of these firings in the queue, as I understand it.
07:57And so the advice was, look, if you're going to do this, do it now while you have time to
08:02get confirmations done before the midterms.
08:05Otherwise, don't do it.
08:06Who's next?
08:06Do you want a preview?
08:07You have information that we don't?
08:08I'm not going to.
08:09Save for the dinner.
08:10You can read Politico.
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