Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
In this edition of One Decision In Brief, hosts Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's MI6, sit down to break down the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran and how the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are navigating the growing tensions. They also examine the recent military parade that honored both the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and President Donald Trump's birthday, and the political significance of military parades worldwide.
Episode produced by Situation Room Studios. Original music composed and produced by Leo Sidran.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Raffini: Hello and welcome to One Decision in Brief. I'm Christina Raffini joined today by of course our co-host Richard Dearlove. We're gonna talk about Iran and Israel, where this could go, the status of Iran's nuclear program and whether or not regime change is really possible. Plus Trump's military slash birthday parade here in DC and what the optics are for abroad. Let's get into it. Lots of celebrations in this city, in Washington this week, but before we get to that, do wanna talk to you about the slightly less cheery environment climate, what's going on in The Middle East right now between Israel and Iran. There are two messages coming out of the White House, the official message and then the reports that what they're saying isn't exactly what they mean. Because you've got this strike from Israel on Iran at a time when the White House and its chief US Envoy to the Mideast, Steve Witkoff, was expected to meet with Iranian officials in Amman on Sunday. The day before this Israeli strike, I got a note from the State Department with details of that meeting. So at least twenty four hours before, they were confident enough that it was going to happen that they were sending public statements to reporters saying this is happening in Amman on Sunday. Then we see these strikes, then we see the reciprocal strikes. And the White House is saying, of course, as it always does, Israel has a right to defend itself. But Marco Rubio went out after the Israeli strikes and very clearly said The US knew this was going to happen, but we did not participate and we did not necessarily approve of these strikes. Does that hold water with you? Is that really possible? Because you immediately had the Iranian foreign minister saying, Whatever Israel does, we don't believe that it's not without the help and approval of The United States.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Dearlove: Personally, it's strategic deception. Maybe the timing was not quite evident to The United States. But look, this is the conclusion of a twenty five year issue. It hasn't come out of the blue. And my understanding is that psychologically, at least, Washington had put a deadline on the negotiations in Oman, which was sixty days or something. And anybody who has negotiated with the Iranians would know they would tangle you in the detail. They would postpone. They would hesitate. And I think everybody ran out of patience. And Iran were ready to go, and they decided there was no point in waiting further. I'm pretty sure that the Americans would have given them support. I think Trump has chosen his words carefully, which is understandable, so that it doesn't look like an Israeli American assault on Iran. But no question in my mind that there must be complicit, for example, in relation to targeting information and other such stuff.
Raffini: The timing of it is interesting to me because I agree with most of what you just said. I think that is all true. However, a couple things spring to my mind is Trump really wants to be this guy who has these deals, right? We've got tariff deals. We've got trade deals. We've got Iran nuclear deals. So far, he's got no deals. So the fact that he's not able to get this one, I think he did want a victory here so that he could say he got a better deal than Obama, this JCPOA, the first Iran nuclear agreement, which he pulled out of and hated. The other thing that comes to mind is Netanyahu always hated any nuclear deal with Iran. He hated the JCPOA. He was one of the people who convinced Trump to pull out of it the first time around. Is it possible that he just didn't want them to get closer to a nuclear deal the second time around? Does you think that plays into it at all and went whether or not he really had the approval, at least on the timing, from the White House?
Dearlove: Yeah. I think you may be right. But I think the Trump deal was to force Iran to understand that they had no option but to end their nuclear program, which they didn't need. And I don't think they were being offered alternatives, and I would have been in the same position had I been responsible for those negotiations because this issue is so long running that there is no resolution. And had there been some sort of deal, I think the Iranians would have treated on it. Plus the fact is they've already got fissile material. So what are they gonna do? Are they gonna give that up as part of the deal? If you think about it, I think we had reached a point where an Israeli strike was inevitable. And in fact, when I was in San Diego last week, I actually said at the conference, the next issue in The Middle East is on what date the Israelis strike Iran. I didn't expect it to happen quite so quickly, but it look. For anybody who's been informed about this issue in detail for years and years and years, this was not a surprise. It wasn't a surprise at all. The timing may have been. And look, no deal except there was only one deal that Trump was asking for.
Raffini: The Saudis aren't real friends of the Iranians either. These two governments do not like each other. If you're Saudi, if you're Oman, if you're UAE, what do you do now? How do you keep this from spreading to other places? One of the reasons it's likely that Israel is taking this chance now is because over the past year, since the October seventh attacks, you've had these successive attacks on Iranian proxies, on Hezbollah, you've got what's going on in Gaza with Hamas. Iran is so weakened that it does hurt its ability to push back. Although we've seen there have been casualties in Israel this week, and the Israeli government said they knew that that was going to probably happen, but they calculated it was something that they had to take the risk and go ahead and do anyway. What do you do if you're one of these regional governments? And how concerned are you that this could end up with rockets at your doorstep as well?
Dearlove: Well, for a start, you don't lose control of your street. That's really important in the Arab world. There was supposedly been a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia with the visit round the region of the Iranian foreign minister several months ago. I always thought that that was skin deep, artificial. It didn't really change the ballgame in terms of the contest for superiority in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia Islam. And I think if you're in Saudi Arabia, you should include Egypt. You sit tight. You allow the Israelis to get on with it, and you're probably sitting there hoping that this is the end of the Iranian theocratic regime. They have been opposed to one another in a quite fundamental way for many years, and I think the problem for Iran is to behave in a way that doesn't pull The United States directly into the conflict militarily on Israel's side, because they do have the ordinance and the weapons to completely destroy the nuclear installations. And there's some question as to how much damage the Israelis can actually do with what they've got.
Raffini: But it seems to me like that's something Bibi wants. Like, he would probably be okay with that. It seems to me that as this relationship between Trump and Bibi, who once were so close, remember, when Bibi ran for president, he had pictures of him and Trump up on billboards all over Tel Aviv, trying to tout this special relationship and access he had to the president. They've had a rough couple goes and a rough couple months and reports are that relationship is not what it used to be. Does The US still have any influence over what Netanyahu does? And if he wants to pull The US into this combat, can't he just do just that essentially?
Dearlove: I don't think that's quite so easy. And I think there is still a degree of influence. Look, I think the Trump let's put it like this, Trump administration speaks with four tongue about this issue. And I don't think they will be displeased that there is now a severe threat to the Iranian regime. Look. The Middle East worked best when the rulers in Saudi Arabia and the rulers in Iran had good relations with the West. You know, it's a artificial historical creation, the borders, the nationalities, but it did actually function pretty well.
Raffini: Well, for us, maybe not necessarily for the people who live there, but for global stability perhaps.
Dearlove: Yes. But I mean, look at the catastrophic fate of the Iranian people under this Iranian regime. You know, 45% inflation, 24% interest rates, a leadership that gives itself the best apartments, the best of everything.
Raffini: Successive oppression of women. You are now, by the way, you are now banned from walking your dog in Tehran. This is new. This came out a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Women, life, freedom. That was the cry on the streets. Well, Netanyahu has tried to it's not the first time he's made this case, but he did try to appeal directly to the Iranian people saying, you know, our fight is not with you. Now is your chance to rise up and overthrow the regime. Easier said than done. I also wonder, you know, this nuclear program is so integral to the Ayatollah, to the IRGC, to the Iranian government's sense of self that I always fear that these kinds of actions in a country can backfire and cause nationalism and cause people to close ranks because you do get this us against them kind of mentality. Is there any concern that further pressure, further rockets, further assaults on Iran could cause more support of the government there, not less?
Dearlove: I think that's a danger, but I would stick my neck out in this case and say that this regime in Iran has gone too far, too savagely in the suppression of its own population, particularly Iranian women. And I think that that puts it in an almost irretrievable position. I would have said in the past, if you went back several years, that there was a sort of nationalist support in Iran for the nuclear program. I've got a feeling that we've gone really now beyond that point because the regime is so dreadful. But let's see how this plays out because they are in a position of extraordinary vulnerability. They have really no all their military response boils down to is firing ballistic missiles at Israel, some of which, yes, will kill civilians. They're certainly not hitting strategic military targets in Israel unless by chance. This looks pretty limp, pretty weak. They had talked about, you know, firing a thousand missiles. In response, they fired less than a 100, which showed the difficulty that they had in making a strategic response.
THE WASHINGTON MILITARY PARADE
Raffini: Alright. I wanna pivot a little bit to talk about what was happening in DC this week. We had the long anticipated, not very well attended, depending on how you're branding it, Trump birthday parade or two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the US military parade. It was quite controversial given the backdrop of everything that was happening in Los Angeles with these anti-ICE protesters, with Trump nationalizing the National Guard and sending the Marines to the streets of LA, which we don't really do here. There's a law called posse comitatus, which is basically the military does military stuff, the police do police stuff, and never the two shall meet unless someone is trying to overthrow the country. So the entire country was consumed with that. And then we get to the weekend and it's time for a military parade. What's your take? What is the view of all this from abroad?
Dearlove: We do it frequently. Okay. All in lots of dress uniform for coronations and state.
Raffini: And very fancy hats. Your military has very fancy hats.
Dearlove: It's part of our tradition. We've just had something called the Trooping of the Color, which is done annually where the guards' regiments troop their colors before the king, which is actually a splendid, extraordinary spectacle, and people love it. The tourists love it. And, you know, it's part of the identity of London and The UK. And the French on the have their incredible procession, which is very much more militaristic because it did include sort of tanks and missiles and things down the Champs-Élysées. That's pretty splendid. I've seen that. And you would think, wow. It's impressive with overflights of the air force and things. Okay. You know, there isn't a tradition for this in America, but I think you're all getting a bit steamed up about it. What's the big deal? I mean, so I read somewhere somebody saying, well, it had this sort of atmosphere of an American small town celebration. I think people enjoyed themselves. And look, as long as it wasn't the celebration of Trump's birthday, and it really was the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the and the armed forces in The States are so important. And, you know, we don't do things like you do where if you're in an airport, you know, you get an announcement saying, would veterans please board first? So you're very much more conscious in some ways of the presence socially in America of the military. So as a European, I have no problem with the military parade at all. But then I may not be typical.
Raffini: Alright. We'll stand by to stand by. Always a pleasure catching up with you. Stay tuned for, of course, our regularly scheduled episode this Thursday. It's gonna feature a conversation between Sir Richard Dearlove and Sir David Manning. Also, be sure to check out our YouTube page where you can find all kinds of interviews from world leaders, headline makers, topical commentaries, and much more. I'm Christina Raffini. Thanks so much for listening.
