This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. On the Adventures of Curiosity Cove podcast, when peanut butter disappears from school, Ella, Scout, and Layla launch a full detective mission. Their search leads them back in time to meet a brilliant inventor whose curiosity changed the world. In this Black History Month adventure, asking questions, thinking creatively, can lead to amazing discoveries. Listen to Adventures of Curiosity Cove every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, we're very lucky to be joined this morning for instant analysis from Dr. Treata Parsi, who, of course, is alongside a great friend of the show. He is with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. So great to see you, sir. Good to be with you. So just your first reaction to the launching of this joint Israeli-U.S. regime change war against the Iranian government. I mean, obviously, this is absolutely terrible. It's a violation of international law. It's a violation of U.S. law. There's not been a vote. There's not been a debate. In fact, there's a vote scheduled for Tuesday. It appears as if he almost wanted to start it before the vote. So instead of that war powers vote becoming a turrent, it became a deadline for him. But also, I think it's, you know, I have to admit that I was wrong. I don't know if you remember, I wrote that piece in August of last year, predicting that the Israelis would start the war again. And I thought that it would happen sometime before the end of December of last year. Of all the scenarios that I considered, the one that I found to be the least likely is one in which the United States would be fully on board. I was more worried that the Israelis would start something and drag the U.S. into it or something along those ways. But the fact that the U.S. would be fully on board and take the lead on it is something. I just thought that Trump would have enough of a care of the opinion in his own MAGA base to realize the political downside. It's not talking about any type of a moral consideration on his end, obviously, but a political consideration. But even that seems to have been completely set aside in order for him to do this. Well, in fairness to you, you know, when you look at the landscape, you see the political people have to realize this is a disaster. The military people realize it's a disaster. Our allies in the region outside of Israel did not want this war. Our allies in Europe, I mean, they're all, you know, issuing supportive statements now, but they also were not eager for this war. So what was the piece that we were all missing in terms of looking at this analysis in this landscape? I mean, I was obviously, and I know you were too, deeply concerned we would end up in this war with Iran. But if you just look at it from a strategic perspective and all of these different pieces, there is something about it that seems to not add up. I think, I mean, it's a great question. And I want to say that, you know, I don't think I have the full answer in any way, shape or form. But I think there's a couple of things we can point to. First is the sugar high from Venezuela. The fact that that operation went as smoothly as it did, at least from a military standpoint, not a single American casualty seems to really have cemented a view in Trump's mind that he is, you know, he's operating in a different dimension. that everyone who's told him, you can't move the embassy to Jerusalem, you can't give Golan to the Israelis, you can't kill Soleimani, you can't bomb Fordow, you can't do all of these things, that all of them have always been wrong, that he has managed to do it and there has not been any real repercussions, which of course is not entirely true. And that as a result, he's just gotten some sort of a superhuman view of himself in which he has again taken the advice by others about the dangers of this with a tremendous amount of salt and skepticism. Because what we have in the situation is not one in which there were a lot of people in the White House pushing for this. The main person pushing for this was Trump. And the other people pushing for it were outside of the government, or at least of the administration. They were in the Senate. They were the pro-Israeli crowd. It was the Israeli government. But it was not a lot of people inside the government that was doing this. all of these leaks has come out almost on a daily basis in mainstream media with military personnel declaring all the kind of challenges that they're faced with this are all there to kind of push him back or at least win more time. And I think it reflects again on the difficulty from their standpoint to actually do this in a successful way with a degree of expectation that Trump now seems to have based on a couple of operations that went much better than most people had expected. I think that's one element of it. The other element is, and I mentioned this on the show before, the Israelis in the December 29th meeting really managed to give Trump the impression that the Iranians are much weaker than they are. And that he has this amazing once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to get rid of this regime. We heard that in his speech talking about how this has been going on for 47 years, you know, but he is the person who has this opportunity. There's never been a better opportunity than this. And we saw that in the way that Witkoff declared that, you know, Trump was frustrated that the Iranians had not surrendered yet because he had the wrong expectation that they were so much weaker than they actually are and that surrender was in the cars. I think a fundamental misunderstanding on Trump's end is that he thought the more aircraft carriers he brings to the Persian Gulf or to the Indian Ocean, the scarier the Iranians will be, and eventually they will cave. Not understanding that what the Iranian theocracy fears far more than the aircraft carriers is capitulation and surrender. They believe they can survive a war. And frankly they may not be wrong about that particularly if the US is not going in with ground troops There a high likelihood that they will survive this but they cannot survive a capitulation or a surrender because their support base inside of the country has already shrunk The people that are left supporting this theocracy are even more important to the theocracy at this point because they have lost so much other support. And the people who are left tend to be the most hard line. And they will never forgive a surrender, but they can definitely live with a war that is lost as long as it is fought. And this is that fundamental psychological misunderstanding on Trump's side in which he felt that he could just scare them into surrender. I sort of hate to ask you about this because you're such a sophisticated and dignified person. But what about the Epstein files? You know, I mean, clearly, Trump, there are things in there that have been hidden from the American public. We know that they have not been forthcoming in following the law that Trump signed into law that requires the fulsome release. We know he's moved Ghislaine Maxwell to this club fed prison. And we know that very likely whatever is contained in those files, Israel likely has access to and does have full knowledge of. And of course, we know that Donald Trump himself had a close personal friendship with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of many years. I mean, could that be a potential factor at play here as well? It absolutely could be because we don't have access to all of those files. And as you have reported on the show as well, a lot of the stuff that actually contains Trump's name was not released. So we don't know what exactly is in those files. So I think what we can say is that clearly there is some missing factors that would explain how we got to this point. Could Epstein be one of them? Absolutely. You cannot rule it out and you cannot also assertively or conclusively say that it was the factor. But to completely dismiss the idea that this has something to do with it, I think would be problematic because there's no evidence to exclude it. There's also no smoking gun evidence at this point that says this is the reason why this is happening. Let me ask you about a few conflicting reports that we're getting, you know, understanding that as war unfolds, there's all sorts of misinformation and lies and propaganda and things to sort through. So the Israelis are claiming that they believe they successfully assassinated Ayatollah Khamenei. Khamenei. He, on the other hand, the Iranians are saying he's going to come out shortly and make a speech. So first, let's just talk about, you know, the possibility that he certainly was targeted, the possibility that he could have been assassinated. How significant do you believe that would be and what would be some of the fallout from that targeting? Undoubtedly, it would be tremendously significant if he were to be assassinated. What would follow, however, is actually a little bit more difficult to predict. First of all, there's a significant risk that the administration is well aware of that this will actually put a fire throughout the region because there are Shia populations in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Saudi, in Bahrain, in the UAE, in Pakistan, who view Khamenei as a religious figure and as a religious leader because he is a grand ayatollah or a marjah-i-tahaneed. So this is something that I know in the summer they were very concerned about, whether they have now completely dismissed that or not remains to be seen. The Israeli argument has been that it is necessary to kill him to essentially kill an era, an era of the Islamic Republic. It's symbolic in its value. Now, what would follow? I would presume that the Iranians already have decided the secession at this point. In fact, they've declared that they decided the secession for several key posts, about five lines down. And that would be very odd if they were to do that, but not having done that for the Supreme Leader. Could it erupt into protests on the streets in the sense that some people would think that this is an opportunity that absolutely also could happen? What we have seen so far, and I think this is an important point to keep in mind, we've not seen any such protest. I spoke to someone in Tehran just before this show. No scenes yet of people celebrating this in a large or in a significant number at all. In fact, one thing that has happened that probably will make it more difficult for that type of sentiment to grow, is that you had this bombing of this girl's school in Hormuzgan province in Iran, in which about 50 or so children were killed. Now, in a war, unfortunately, these things do happen. Statistically, if this were to go on for a month, it would almost certainly have happened. The fact that it happened on the first day, I think, is very significant. This is different if it had happened on day 21 after a large number of leaders of the state apparatus had been assassinated. And then this happened. It would happen in a different context then. But this happened on the first day, before any of those other people of any significance had been killed. And I think that also puts an impression in the minds of most Iranians what this actually is, what the cost of this is. that this is not some of these romanticized views of war that is now being spewned by some exiled pretenders to a throne or pretenders to power who are portraying this as if this would be some sort of an honorable war while they're themselves sitting in Maryland and enjoying their daily lives. So I think that in and of itself has had and will have a psychological impact on what the fallout will be if you start seeing that key people within the state apparatus are killed. The other thing that I think is also very important to keep in mind here is that by all accounts that I've spoken to, the supreme leader is seen by many as an obstacle inside of Iran. For those who actually want to strike back much harder, who believe that the Iranians committed a mistake by responding so politely to previous attacks, to Israeli attacks, waited for too long in this strategy called strategic patience, they view Khamenei as an obstacle for what they would want to have done, which is strike back harder or even go for a nuclear weapon. And for those who wanted to have a much more aggressive diplomatic approach, we would have included direct negotiations with Trump himself, which I think could have made a difference in all of this if it had been done earlier. They also see him as an obstacle because he's been too adamant about not taking that step. If he is taken out and there's a different leader or taking power or if it's a council, etc., it also means that some of those questions will be revisited. And Iran may go in a very different direction, one that perhaps is not at all to the liking of the United States. I saw you engaging online with some potential reports that jailed dissidents, jailed dissident leaders in Iran had also been targeted. You know, what do you make of those potential reports? And what can we say, you know, based on, again, early reporting about what has been hit and what was ultimately targeted about what the goals of this war actually are from the U.S. and Israeli perspective based on where they are attempting to strike? I'm really trying to wrap my head around that. But we do know, for instance, that they did try to target the house, the empty house of the former president Ahmadinejad. He was not there and they did not hit that house They hit a house about two blocks or two houses down the street But they also appear to have tried to hit the house that the dissident politician Mirose Mousavi who was the person who won the elections in 2009 and would have been president who was a reformist had it not been for the election fraud in which Ahmadinejad took power again He's been in house arrest now since 2009 for about 17 years. That house was also targeted. It seems to be an effort to eliminate all elements of this system, whether they're dissidents, whether they're reformists, whether they're in power right now. And that would be more in line with what I think the Israelis would want, which is to have a complete power vacuum at the top, which makes it far more likely that you will have a civil war or that you would have essentially a complete, not just regime collapse and implosion, but state collapse. I'm not so sure if that really is what the administration wants. I certainly would believe that they would recognize that this is not in the interest of the United States to see that level of instability. And whether each and every target is coordinated between the two sides, I have no insight into. I could definitely see if this was just an Israeli war that they would do this. The U.S. being involved in it raises some question marks in my head. And what do we know so far about the Iranian counterattacks, which have been widespread U.S. bases throughout the region and, of course, directly targeting Israel as well? Obviously, they also control the Straits of Hormuz, which are incredibly key for shipping in general, but specifically for oil shipping. What do you make so far of what we know about the counterattacks and what Iranian capabilities may be? What we see from the counterattacks is that they happen very fast, which is about two hours into it rather than 12 to 18 hours last time. They were not taken by surprise. They're not at a very, very robust level in terms of a large number, but it's also very important to understand the attack so far by U.S. and Israel is not at all at the same level as it was during the Israel war of June of last year. Tonight, we may see something much, much more, but what we've seen so far has not at all been at the same intensity as we saw during the summer. And given the fact that the firepower is far, far greater right now, I think that in and of itself is interesting, Whether that is because they wanted to start slowly, whether they thought that perhaps the initial wave of attempts at decapitation would be successful, it's difficult to tell. But the Iranian response has also, in that sense, been very widespread, very fast, but also not as robust as it was before. We're not seeing the same number of missiles being hit at Israel, for instance, but we are seeing that they're targeting almost all of the bases, or at least almost all countries in the GCC. Iraqi air bases operated by the U.S. have been attacked. We saw that there was an attack that appears to have gone towards the base in Kuwait, but the missile was deflected because of the air defense system and landed at the airport in Kuwait. And Kuwait is, of course, a very small country. We've seen attacks. Similar things seem to have happened in Dubai in which the Palm neighborhood in Dubai was hit. And we've seen attacks in Qatar. We've seen attack in Bahrain. In Bahrain, we saw some very strange images of Bahrainis cheering once they saw that the drone actually did hit the U.S. base where the Fifth Fleet is. And what that was, it was actually a drone. It was not a missile. It was one of the same rather slow-moving drones that the Iranians have been selling the Russians, that Russians have been using in Ukraine. And it's just very surprising that that drone would have been able to get through all the air defense systems at the U.S. naval base in Bahrain. Whether that is because the air defense systems were overwhelmed or something else, I don't know. But it was actually very surprising to see that a drone would make its way into the otherwise very fortified American base there. Yeah, I mean, also remarkable to hear the celebration, as you said, from the Bahrainis who were filming that. You know, what did you make of that? And obviously, all of the U.S. allies in the region have already put out supportive statements. We've seen Western Europe, you know, once again, embarrassingly coming along and almost across the board supporting these aggressive illegal strikes from the U.S. and Israel. Mark Carney, who just gave, you know, a great speech about how we're turning the page, blah, blah, blah. You know, he he lines right up behind the U.S. in this illegal war as well. But what is the sentiment among people in the region, do you suspect, you know, beyond the top leadership? Let me ask you, but I do want to, I can't resist to comment on Carney and what he just said. Mindful of the fact that he gave a speech that was widely celebrated at Davos in which he famously said that we're taking the sign down, mentioned very clearly that we knew that international law was invariably implemented based on the identity of the attacker and the identity of the victim. And here we have a perfect case of that in which this is, as you pointed out, a clear violation of international law. But Carney, the Finnish prime minister who also wrote this article about values-based realism, could not even get themselves to even get close to a condemnation or even actually using the term international law. So when Carney says that the rules-based order essentially is over with, we're taking down the sign, Many of us, perhaps a bit of a wishful thinking, believe that perhaps this would mean that he's going to do a re-embrace of international law rather than a rules-based system because law is much firmer. Instead, we're seeing that he's not even using the word international law. At the first instance in which his new little thesis would have been tested, he utterly, utterly failed. And so did the vast majority of European leaders, save the exception of Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, and Spain. The same group who incidentally also stood firmly on the side of international law when it came to the genocide in Gaza. Now, when it comes to the regional states, this is part of the reason why they were so against this in the first place. They knew that they would be victimized in this. They have to, of course, from their standpoint, come up with very, very strong condemnations. These are at the end of the day attacks on their soil. And the Iranian response is, this is not meant to attack you. This is meant to attack bases that are being used directly or indirectly to attack our soul. The end result of all of this may very well end up being that rather than having American bases on your soul providing you with security, it actually may end up becoming the opposite. That the very principle is negated. That you're actually at a greater risk of being attacked precisely because you have these bases on your soul. And very importantly, in this case, as well as the case of the past summer, the United States vacated all of those bases before it attacked. Both the personnel have been moved out and most of the equipment have been moved out, which then raises the question, what's the point of these bases? If they were supposed to defend these regions these states against Iran and now when you having a war you actually vacating them What in it for these states Yeah Well finally you know it hard to see what the off ramp could be for the U given that Trump just came out and said hey we aiming for regime change here And anything short of that, you know, based on his own metric of success would be would be a failure. However, there are, again, some reports out that they reached out, the U.S. reached out to Iran looking for already some sort of a negotiated ceasefire. There are also reports that the Iranians have reached out and offered some sort of concessions in exchange for a ceasefire. I have no idea whether either of those reports are accurate at this point. But my question for you is, you know, do you see some potential near-term off-ramp that could, you know, keep this—it's already a regional war, but keep it from escalating into an even broader and lengthier disaster? I could. Let me first say, I think the most likely scenario is either that Trump continues this until he gets some sort of a regime implosion and he declares victory, but also washes his hands of whatever follows. And this has been very clear in the internal conversations that no one wants to take responsibility for what happens to Iran afterwards. And this is the big difference between regime change and regime collapse. In the regime change, you're actually actively trying to install a new government and their track record becomes your track record. In regime collapse or implosion, all you're doing is getting rid of the existing one and then you say that you have nothing to do with whatever comes afterwards. So I can see that scenario in the sense that if this goes on for a time and if they manage to kill a lot of the different leaders of the current system, that there would be some sort of an implosion. And then he would declare victory, even though, you know, he would have instability, potentially civil war, all of these different kinds of things. The other scenario is that the Iranians continue to strike back. They outlast Trump. This becomes very costly for the U.S. Casualty rates, inflation, global ore markets are destabilized, all of these different things. And then the pressure on Trump internationally from the American public, from his own base starts to become so strong that he looks for an exit. And then he may actually take the deal that was on the table, the deal that is way better than what Obama managed to secure and that Trump nevertheless rejected. And then he may take that and then suddenly declare that a victory and say that thanks to my bombing campaign, we achieved this, even though the Omani foreign minister made very clear that this is already on the table and you are rejecting it. You're going for a war of choice. There is that other scenario as well. I don't find it to be as likely, but it's very difficult to put any numbers on it, which is that after a couple of rounds, both sides feel that they can go back to the negotiating table with their faces having been saved. And they may actually be able to go back to the same agreement as existed before, the same offer on the table. But both of them can say that, you know, now we got it because of this exchange. Trump can claim that he bombed them, that he was very successful. The Iranians can claim that they struck back, they were very successful, and they did come to some sort of agreement. The reason why I think that's going to be difficult, though, is that at this point, we've always said that there's no trust between the U.S. and Iran, but there's never, ever been less trust than there is now. And as a result, even if they were to come to some form of agreement, it does seem to me extremely difficult that the deal actually would be implemented, that it would endure, that it would be anything more than essentially a ceasefire with a pretense of having a deal beyond that. Yeah. Well, because Israel is certainly not going to be satisfied with that either. Absolutely not. Their interest is very different in all of this. Yeah. And to your point on the trust, once again, we see the U.S. using diplomacy as a ruse. You have the reports. Israelis are bragging about how this has been in the works for months, that the date was set weeks ago. You know, CNN is out reporting about some, you know, biblical justification reason related to Amalek that they chose this date in particular. So, you know, hard to trust a country when they're constantly using negotiations and diplomacy as a ruse to launch new wars. If I could say just one thing on that. I think the Israelis have an interest to really push that narrative that this was a ruse from the outset, that this was already planned, because they do want to destroy America's credibility as a diplomatic force, as a negotiator, because they were against these negotiations in the first place. And the more you push the narrative that this was a lie from the outset, the more easily you can avoid any future negotiations. I'm not convinced that it really was. I think there were elements, I think there was some sincerity, but ultimately Trump fell for the type of pressure that he has proven himself to be far too susceptible towards. That doesn't mean that this wasn't a ruse at some point. This doesn't mean that this is in any way, shape or form forgivable or that it is not illegal. But I think we have to recognize nothing would serve the Israeli interests more than to completely destroy America's credibility as a negotiating partner, because that would avoid all of these headaches that the Israelis have had that at various points in the United States have actually looked for diplomatic exit routes. Yeah. Well, Trump is certainly making it easy for them to make that case. Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, Dr. Parsi, thank you so much for your analysis. And I hope we'll get to speak again with you in the future because there certainly will be a lot to talk about. Thank you so much. On the Adventures of Curiosity Cove podcast, when peanut butter disappears from school, Ella, Scout and Layla launch a full detective mission. Their search leads them back in time to meet a brilliant inventor whose curiosity changed the world. And this Black History Month adventure, asking questions, thinking creatively, can lead to amazing discoveries. Listen to Adventures of Curiosity Cove every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse College, The students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
