Cash Patel and Alexis Wilkins

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Using the promo code WORLD at checkout. Fastgrowing trees.com code World. Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use the code WORLD to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions app ly. Welcome back to PodSay the World I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, uh, Donald Trump has launched a brand new regime change war of choice in Iran that has engulfed the Middle East. And thank God the administration is finally taking this seriously and putting our best foot forward to explain that mission to the world. Let's wat ch. Good afterno on. The 10113 meeting of the SA Security Council is called to ord er. I wasn't ready for that. I was not mentally prepared for that. Uh I don't know how I like the strange mix of things happening inside me. Uh Cassie. Oh my god. Just embarrassment, anxiety. Something it just triggers anxiety. Like actually. Because everything's making me anxious right now. Yeah, they made me anxious. And uh she she's not calming. No. You would think that that kind of uh you know, Balkan accent would kind of calm us down. No, no, it it didn't. Uh that was uh as you guys probably could tell Melania Trump, the first lady, uh who for some reason is presiding over a meeting of the UN Security Council. The New York Times pulled some key quotes from her speech. So Ben, she said she was there to promote. These are her own words. Uh, quote, peace or education, which of course this was just days after uh the US or Israel bombed a school in Iran. Uh quote, empathy for others transcending geography, religion, race, gender, because nothing says empathy like the Trump administration. I don't know. I guess this is just what they're doing at the UN these days. Can you imagine uh I mean and maybe she's on a roll from the you know blockbuster success of the Melania documentary paid for by Jeff Bezos at the expense of the Washington Post. Uh but can you imagine being like some diplomat who has to sit in the chair, you know, uh worked your whole life for this. You worked your whole life to be at the United Nations. It used to matter so much. You probably envisioned being in the security council as like the pinnacle of your career. And now you're there to talk about like transcendental empathy with Lonnie Trump. Yeah, or just yeah, uh just attack some random minority group or whatever the hell she's doing up there. I mean the trans people or something. It's um it's terrible. It's terrible. Well that's pretty bad out there, people. That's the theme for today. Uh we're gonna talk through all the latest on Iran. We're gonna start with um some excerpts from Trump's first press conference since the war started on Saturday, uh the latest casualty numbers in the region, what we've learned about the stunning security failure that led to six US. serv.ice members being killed in the administration's total lack of planning to help people, or Americans, I mean, uh cross stuck in the crossfire, sitting overseas. We'll explain how a comment from Marco Rubio has ignited a huge debate over the role Israel played in getting Trump to go to war. What role Vice President J.D. Vance played in the deliberations, and then Trump's outreach to Kurdish leaders, and why that has increased our fear of a civil war in Iran big time. uh in the process to choose the next one. Then we'll update you on all things Cuba and end with some fun stuff about PodSave the World fan favorite, Cash Patel and his girlfriend. Need that update, please. Levity at the end there. Oh God. A little something. And then I you did your interview. Yeah, I talked to uh Yasmeen Ansari, uh who was with us at Kirkham, obviously uh wonderful young member of Congress from Arizona, um, who's been a real progressive leader. Um she's also the only Iranian American Democrat in Congress, so she has a very unique uh vantage point on this. We talked about uh the information being provided to Congress or complete lack thereof, uh, and how Democrats are thinking about things and what their strategy is going forward. We talked about uh you know her kind of conflicting feelings, uh, about obviously being, you know, happy to see the demise of uh the Supreme Leader uh uh Khamenei, you know, her parents had to flee Iran. Um, but she has been, you know, strongly opposed to the war um as illegal and unconstitutional, and frankly, the U.S. not, you know, imposing a government uh by Donald Trump is probably not the best solution here. Um so we kind of unpacked all that. So it's a pretty powerful conversation um that also kind of gives you the Congress view on things. She's really smart and young and thoughtful and like has a real connection to diaspora. And so it's an important interview. I'm glad you did it. Uh also thanks everybody for watching, you know, this episode and all the bonus episodes we've been doing. We're trying to do a lot of coverage of this war because it really, really matters. When you subscribe to Pod Save the World, it makes a big difference. It helps people find us on YouTube. It helps the show go up the charts on Apple Podcasts. And it means that uh listeners will hear from people who are smart and decent, like Yasmeen and Sari and not John Bolton. Or like whoever is getting booked over on Fox News. By the way, Fox News is all it's like two thousand three one hundred percent propaganda for the war. I have to say, and and I'm not just saying this 'cause, you know, we're now like fully partnered with MS, but CNN's been pretty you know, the their diversity of opinion seems to be like having Dave Petraeus and Brett McGurk on. And Brett, you know, like it's not a lot of you know anti-war progressive voices popping up out there. So please do help us get this kind of information in front of people because you know we're we're seeing kind of like a an American media just not really meet this moment. Not meet the moment at all. It feels like 2003 all over again. I don't know if you caught there was like someone tweeted out the list of guests on one of the like the CBS News Sunday show post Barry Weiss, and it was like six war supporters, zero opponents. Yeah. What are we doing here? Nothing good. Learning nothing. Learning nothing. Okay, Ben. So um four days after launching this reckless, stupid war of choice uh with Iran, President Trump finally took questions from the media. Uh let's watch an excerpt. This is him sitting with Friedrich Mertz, the uh Chancellor of Germany. with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. Mr. President, what's the worst case scenario that you have planned for in Iran? I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. Uh we don't want that to happen. That would probably be the worst you go through this and then uh in five years you realize you put somebody in who is no better. Well most of the people we had in mind are dead. So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is uh is dead. And now uh we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So I guess you have a third wave coming and pretty soon we're not gonna know anybody. What about Crown Current's Reserve Poly? Is he an option at all in your mind? I guess he is. Some people like him and we haven't been thinking about too much about that. It would seem to me that somebody from within might maybe would be more appropriate. I've said that. Some of the European like Spain has been terrible. In fact I told uh Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. By the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition, but uh we gave away a lot of high end, but we have plenty, but we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we're using in this war. And we have uh an un really an unlimited supply. Guess we're in war with Spain now. So it it does seem like that the worst case scenario kind of occurred to him for the first time in the moment there. Um doesn't give me a lot of hope in their day after planning if uh Israel keeps killing the people Trump thought might take over in Iran. He's also lying about the unlimited ammunition. Like there's tons of reporting that we're running low on interceptor missiles and T LAMs and others. Ben let let's um let's carve off the Israel piece of this in a minute and get to that with the Rubio quote. What were your takeaways from this uh little mini press conference besides Reza Polovi just getting crushed there? Well Well i i the the he just keeps reinforcing the extent to which they have absolutely no plan or even expectation of what's gonna happen inside of Iran, you know? So one possibility which I always thought was insane and we've said this repeatedly was this Reza Pahlavi you know idea that basically the diaspora goes back and helps run a transition. Well, you know, he just got Maria Machado'd uh by Trump. I mean, the same way that he kind of dismissed her, he dismissed Pilabi. Frankly, she had a lot more of a democratic claim on being in Venezuela, but put that aside. Then, you know, I actually that's not even the worst case scenario. That's actually not a in a weird way, like just someone who's as bad status quo charges status quo could get worse he's not even contemplating and we'll get to this with the arming the you know separatists he's not even contemplating truly seems to not understand that that this could I'm not saying it will, but this could become an Iraq's level civil war that kills hundreds of thousands of people and is regional and leads to millions and millions of refugees. Like that's something that is possible. And he just doesn't seem to at all be uh concerned about that or even kind of aware of that possibility. Um, he also seems to not feel like we talked about this a little bit yesterday that there's nothing weight on his shoulders. Six Americans are dead. The global economy's like taking huge hits. There's all this uncertainty and he's just like yeah whatever he's kind of like low key in it. Like I it is weird. I'm sort of a two minds of this, like his tone seems weird and excessively chill there, given the stakes of what he's just started. Like his entire presidency is at stake. But also, he did hide from the media for like three days, which he never does, especially in big moments. So it does seem like maybe they were worried about going out. Yeah, that's true. And and you know, the kind of had to go out with Mertz in in town. So I don't know. There's just there's just no clarity or confidence of what the hell they cannot and this will lead into it. They can't agree on why they're at war. They can't agree on what they're at war to do. They can't agree on how long the war is going to last. This is truly profoundly unnerving. I mean, it's it's unnerving enough when the Trump administration is like that about some trade dispute. This is about a major war they just started with one of the larger countries in the world in in the middle of the Middle East. And and that like they literally can't stay on message over the course of a day. And the other side still shooting back. Um so a few just sort of like major updates just to quickly tick through. So uh on Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force bombed a meeting of Iran's so-called council of experts. It's the 88-member council that is reportedly voting on who will take over the Supreme Leader's place. Um, you would think that many experts in one place would know not to like gather in big groups, but uh here we are. Um we're gonna get to the supreme leader succession process later in a show, but it seems as safe to say this will delay it and quite possibly could lead to the like kind of chaos scenario you're talking about there if if Iran is never like has an uh an opportunity to figure out leadership structure going forward. Um Iranian state media now says that 175 people, most of them children, were killed by the US or Israel in a strike that hit a girls' school. Um, as a general matter, I'm like obviously a little skeptical of Iranian state media as a source, but the images and the videos from the strike are all over social media. The New York Times, a bunch about what did visual investigations. They confirmed this was a mass casualty incident of kids. Um, and the school itself was adjacent to an IRGC naval base. So you can understand how it happened, but it is horrific. Um, the Iranian Red Crescent says the Iranian death toll from the war is now up to 787 people. Forty people are dead in Lebanon, 12 in Israel, three in the UAE, two in Iraq, and one in Oman. The death toll for U.S. service members is up to six, uh, many more wounded. So these soldiers were all killed by an Iranian drone that struck a base in Kuwait. Um but according to CNN, these soldiers were working in a makeshift operations center that was described as a quote triple wide trailer with office space inside. So this drone hit with no warning, no siren, nothing to alert these folks to take cover. Um and Ben, the fact that like US service members were working in conditions like that, like in the line of fire is just indefensible, in my view. And also we should note that Pete Heggseth on Monday lied and said the facility they were at was fortified. It's a fucking trailer. Yeah. Like it's crazy. Well, th let's just focus on Pete Heggseth and how completely in over his head he is. Um first of all, in his effort to project his, you know, bottomless need to assert his masculinity, uh, you know, he keeps saying things like no more No more woke wars. And again, that that that's how you get schools blown up, right? Like if we're gonna have a multi week bombing campaign, maybe you know periodically over years in Iran, uh the reason you have rules of engagement is to not kill thousands of civilians. So fuck you, P Tag Seth. Uh like just cause you need to show off for people because uh you know, I don't know what happened to you in high school, but put that that aside. Then, yeah, the fortified comment, these were not even though we've already fought this is our you know not our first war with Iran um in the Trump administration, you would think that they'd have plans. They have better plans to like have civilians go to shelters in Israel than they seem to have for some of the guys on these bases, even though we knew they were gonna be targets. But the fortified comment, too, is so chilling, Tommy, because he's gonna lie to us over and over the over and again. He doesn't care if it's just an outright lie. And we're gonna be looking to this man to tell us about US casualties, about the cost of the war, about the progress of the war, and you just know that he's just gonna he'll just say whatever he feels like he needs to say, you know? Yep. And and and so that's it's both horrible that they didn't, you know, put secure our our troops as well as they should have. But it it's also harrowing that just kind of reinforces that, you know, we can't trust anything now that the I mean, I know the Pentagon's had some you know moments in the past, but this is this is a whole new ball. This is worse. Um also the the fighting has escalated between Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon, including in Beirut. Uh Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister says the IDF is gonna seize more territory in Lebanon to deal with that threat, so another coming attraction. Let me just stop there. Because again, like one of the things you hear more and more of is that Israel is cre creating less chaos and there's gonna be territorial expansion. Yeah. And by that, it's the West Bank, it's southern Lebanon, and it's southern Syria. So people, you know, can call me names for pointing this out. I'm just saying watch this. Like let's watch whether they try to take actual physical territory in Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank while this war is and hold it. Um and then US embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been shut down. Uh, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was hit by an Iranian drone on Monday. The American consulate in Dubai was hit by a drone on Tuesday. Uh does make you worry that Iran might have found a hole in the air defenses. Um, because that's, you know, it's pretty late in the game for that to start getting more and more effective. State has also evacuated non-essential staff and their families from six countries in the Middle East. And the State Department has advised Americans to immediately depart 14 Middle Eastern countries, but they are providing them no support. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressing Americans stranded abroad earlier on Tuesday. Americans who are in the Middle East and in need of assistance. It is very important. And I ask this of the networks as well. It is important for you to please put both the website and the phone numbers on your screens because we need people, we need to know where you are. We need to know we need to have contact information for Americans that need assistance. So the plan is to beg the media to put a number up on the screen. Um when Trump was asking why wasn't there an evacuation plan, Trump said, well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most. I could ask Marco, but I thought we were gonna have a situation where we're going to be attacked. They were go it's it's like gibberish from there. So um I don't know Ben like these guys yeah look hypocrisy is what it is at this point, but these guys spent years demagoguing Benghazi. Action porn movies about Benghazi because they love you know reliving it. And now we've got like embassy. I mean, th this is shut down American diplomacy across the entire region. Like people can't go to work because the d the the the embassies and consults are getting bombed. Uh there are uh thousands upon thousands of people stranded in the region and the State Department can't provide them any services because the State Department has been fucking broken and doged by them and is run by a guy who's also the national archivist and national security advisor of the United States. I think he lost the archivist job. Oh shit. But the point is it like when you doge agencies, they can't perform basic services like helping Americans who are stuck in a war zone because your idiot president started a war. Yeah, Marco's like, we need the fake news media to report this. Delta.com. That's how you're getting home. That's your plan. United.com. With all the the airports shut down. I mean, this this is a degree of incompetence that actually matters. Like people have family. I know plenty of people who've got family that's stuck in places like Dubai or wherever. People you know who just terrified. Yeah. And and the US government is doing nothing for them. And the US government is the reason they're terrified. It's because the US started a war while they were there. And also in Pakistan, I think twenty two people have been killed in protests over the country. Thousands came out in support of the Iranian regime. Uh they've stormed American embassies and and consulates in all parts across the country. So it's very scary. This is something we went through during the Arab Spring. I mean a lot of these could get worse. These these diplomatic facilities in Pakistan in in particular are um hairy. It's a hairy post. Uh it's also been it's like it's very hard to quantify the cost of these wars in real time financially, but a few numbers to try to sort start that process. So there was a report put out by the Andaloo News Agency that estimated that just in the first day, Operation Epic Fury cost $779 million. So they did this by trying to total up the cost of the weapons that were dropping on places or the weapon systems where they cost to operate. For example, the USS Gerald Ford cost about $6.5 million per day to operate. Uh, oil prices as of this recording are up about 10% since last Friday. That is obviously a lot. It is still nothing compared to what will happen if Ron actually closes the Strait of Hormuz. Um, along those lines, Trump posted this weird message saying he directed the US government to provide political risk insurance for all maritime trade through the Persian coast. If your mom is stuck in the Middle East, you're fucked. But you know, let's get some political risk insurance to some hedge fund guy that has a trade on some energy. Well he also said the US will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. So can you imagine the cost of escorting every tanker through the Strait of Hormuz? And then again, as we mentioned yesterday, like this has just been hugely disruptive to commerce all across the Middle East, especially places like Dubai. Um Amazon said that three of its facilities in the UAE and Bahrain have been damaged by drone attacks. Uh that has messed with AWS data centers, banks in the Emirates uh are having to work around low staffing. So like the the economic fallout is just beginning. Oh, it's gonna be billions upon billions and billions of dollars. And and look, again, the the Gulf is going to change their security paradigm. I mean, there's no way they're that, I mean, they they won't do it tomorrow, but this kind of reliance on the United States to be the shield around us so that we can have our prosperous, um, secure, you know, existence is been shattered by this war. Uh the lack of regard that the United States has for these countries, that that it's like, Oh, we'll start the war, you're gonna get bombed, we're gonna prioritize missile defense for Israel, uh not you. Uh I mean And then what? What's the plan? I'm the the pod started you know you we've had highs and lows. Like I'm like hello people who voted for Donald Trump like I don't think drill is this what the fuck you wanted? I mean or i or go go find some this is insane what is happening. Put your phone on speaker, run down the street, find someone in a red hat. What is going on here, people? Did you I saw Tom Cotton on TV saying that Iran has posed an imminent risk to the United States for 47 years? That's that's where we're at. That's where we're at. That's only defense they can make of this . The world is brought to you by Surf Shark. You ever look up one mildly specific thing online and then suddenly you're bombarded with ads? Yes. All the time. 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You follow this very easy step-by-step instruction guide to make an impression. You send it back. Remy then crafts and ships your custom fit night guard and you get it back and you start protecting your teeth. It's super easy. It's fast. I have uh not only updated it when I've gotten dental work. They also will send you a new one every six months if you just want a clean, fresh night guard. So protect your teeth with Remy by using the code WORD to get 50% off your new night guard. That's 50% off at shop R E-M I dot com slash World with code world. Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode . Well, let's get into this sort of question of how this war started. So uh since you and I talked yesterday, this clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio talking about why the US went to war with Iran has exploded onto the US. Yeah. So let's watch Rubio then let's sort of unpack it and talk about it. I don't understand what the confusion is. Let me explain it to you, and I'll do it once again as clearly as possible. Perhaps you'll report it that way. There's two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. If we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the President made the very wise decision. He we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act. Alright so I'm gonna try to unpack this in the kind of most charitable, like measured way I can, because I know this is like a very sensitive piece of this conversation. But so what Rubio was trying to claim there is that the U.S. knew Israel was going to target Iran, which would lead to a retaliation by the Iranians against U.S. bases in the region. Therefore the U.S. had to strike Iran first as a preemptive defensive effort, apparently telling Netanyahu not to start a war was not an option, right? So th this line of spin from Rubio evolved from an even more ridiculous claim that we saw over the weekend that was made during a White House briefing call for reporters where an official said the war started because there was an imminent threat of a preemptive Iranian attack on US bases in the Middle East that would have led to mass casualties. Rubio is clarifying that that imminent threat was actually the Iranian response to an Israel. The Israelis struck first, right? Somehow the US and Israel are never the aggressor in these situations. Um Rubio's quote is being widely taken as confirmation that the US went to war because of Israel. This is not like a far-left thing, it's not a far right thing. It is everywhere. And of course, you know, the usual suspects um are basically telling people who take Rubio's words at face value that that makes you an anti-Semite. But I think we should just like look at the totality of the evidence. Um so there's that quote we played from Rubio. Uh Tom Cotton said something nearly identical on Fox. Tom Cotton said Israel faced an existential risk and they were prepared to strike Iran alone. If that happened, Iran was very likely to target our troops. That may address the question of why now. So you know, Cotton has definitely got the talking points there. Um, the New York Times said that in February, Netanyahu spent three hours persuading Trump to go to war in like whatever his eighth visit to the Oval Office um since uh Trump took office. And then as we mentioned yesterday, Netanyahu put out a statement after the war started bragging about how he's been waiting for this moment for forty years and a partner like Donald Trump. So Ben, I as I've said before, like I think there are Oh you you forgot Mike Johnson. What did Mike Johnson say? Israel was determined to act with us or without us, so ergo we had to join because we would have gotten drawn in. So Mike Johnson, speaker of the house, also said the same thing as Ruby on Cobb. Got it. Good addition. Thank you. So again, like I I get trying to be charitable here. Like I've said before, I still believe that I think this is about Trump's ego, right? He loves the adulation, he loves to be told Lindsey Graham, this, you know, fluffing him like whatever, telling him he's a historic figure. For the people not watching on YouTube, there's a little sorry. Sorry, there's doing the six-seven thing on his balls. Um, but I I do think like it is two reasons in my mind: ego, and then like the pressure from Netanyahu, because Rubio conceded, like the answer to why did this start on Saturday is because we knew the Israelis were gonna act. And like bigger picture, if you say, well, there's still this threat from the Iranians, I just do think you have to be honest that there is no imminent nuclear threat. It's not one that's that's months or even over a year away, right? It's buried under the ground. There is no imminent threat to the US from uh Iran's ballistic missiles. That is like a twenty thirty five timeline, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency. And the protesters Trump said that he was going to save with a military strike are all dead and they've been dead for a while now. Um as are the three people he wanted to lead around apparently.. Right. Right And then the three after them and three after them. Yeah. So like even this new spin that Iran could produce so many conventional weapons that they created a conventional umbrella to protect their nuclear program, Rubio says in that same press event that they were a year away from that threshold. So again, like I'm trying to be charitable. I get the sensitivity, but like this war started on Saturday because the Israelis wanted it to. Yes. How do you argue that I I'm I th this who else supported it too? I mean we've talked about this. You cannot like Lindsey Graham and is the Israeli government are kind of some of the only individuals like you know, I don't know John Bolton. Do you buy this report? Do you see the Washington Post said that Muhammad bin Salman was calling to lobby to go to war? I do not buy that report. It's only they've reported it. I did not hear that. I've been I've been talking to people in the Gulf from before this war. Um Egypt was against this publicly and they don't really do things without checking with the Saudis first. That felt like somebody else wanting to kind of spread this around, right? And the Saudis denied it immediately and pretty vocally too. I have anyone who listens to this podcast knows I'm not like some big fan of the Saudis, but if you look at what Saudi Arabia's done in the last few years, Ma Muhammad bin Salman did a rapprochement with the Iranian government. He wanted stability. Like he why would he do a rapprochement with them, you know, brokered by China and then turn around and be like, you know what I want? I want to like topple regime with no plan for what comes after for and have my you know the the veneer of security that I've created in this country shattered by Iranian drones and have Aramco Saudi Aramco fields oilfields on fire and no, I I just don't believe that. So I I'm not saying I'm not blaming Israel entirely at all. This is Donald Trump's fault. Nor is it absolving Iran of the bullshit they do. Yeah. But like, and I actually want to be very clear about this, because like this is so when he said this yesterday, at first my reaction was, I can't believe he said that. It's like the classic gaff where you say the truth. Like everybody else has been spinning and Rubio is actually telling the truth. And and then I thought they'd clean it up, which they did today. But yesterday, they tweeted out Rubio's comment from the White House rapid response account. Did you did you see that? No. Like like I mean so this was not something they were like h hiding. Um it it just it's what everybody has been seeing. Like why why is d BB Nanyao come to visit Donald Trump seven times? Right? He he w the the last time, the twelve day war, he got Trump into that one by the Israel actually started bombing and then was like, come along, guys, like you better get involved here. You know? So it's been very evident that Israel wants this. They have not concealed the fact that they want to do it. Um and uh the the thing that is the so maddening is that Trump can say no. Like absent from any of these comments by tough guys like Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio is the notion that if BB comes to Trump or any president of the United States, because he came to Obama wanted to bomb Iran? I'm sure he came to Biden, wanted him to bomb Iran. Obama said no. Biden said no. Like George W. Bush said no to them. And this guy started the Iraq War. And and Donald Trump can say no. I'm not going to do this. No, by the way, I'm not going to support you doing it either right now because it puts our people at risk. That is an an option that is available to them that has been taken by every US president not named Donald Trump in the twenty first century. Yeah. A and and and and so it's not some fate accompli. And I just want to say, like, if you wanna call us all anti-Semites for just pointing out the reality that this is at least a part of what happened, it's not again not the whole reason, then that term means nothing anymore. Like it's it's so dangerous to do that because like if people are like I'm watching this and I've got a video of the Prime Minister of Israel saying he's wanted to do this for four years and finally got Donald Trump to do it. And then if I like repeat those words out loud, I get called an anti-Semite, then the term means nothing. And also you should read the Israeli press and how critical they are and Yahoo and things and like you realize how silly it is. Yes, I like again, I'm I'm aware of the sensitivity. It it matters. I get it. But like just the most cynical people in Washington DC are lobbying this attack and calling people anti-Semites when you just point out what Rubio said. And I think look, I think what Rubio said was um the truth on some level. Certainly is the truth about the timing and also is going to do extraordinary and lasting damage to um support for Israel within the MAGA world because now it is going to be taken as an article of faith that we are at war with Iran because of Israel and everything the bad that comes after will be tagged with Iran. Also, one other thing I wanted to run by you, Ben. So I have a really good friend who um occasionally will like geek out and like forward articles and be like, what do you think of this? So he forwarded me this um piece from the free press. I want to read you a little bit that's sort of like talking about what the free press is arguing. This person in the free press is up bed is the real reason for the war. These are all quotes. America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese Ford based outside of East Asia. Then it goes on to talk about like Chinese weapon sales to Iran, like Iranian adoption of Chinese technology. That is like a little skeptical. The picture that emerges from all of this is of a Chinese forward base, a linchpin of the country's naval architecture, cyber efforts, an economic belt and road influence program, every element of the Chinese power projection and empire building, positioned at the throat of the global oil supply, armed with weapons designed to penetrate advanced American defenses and kill American sailors, and embedded in a strategic architecture whose explicit purpose is to constrain American military freedom in any future conflict over Taiwan. And I was like, look at first blush, like if this if this war was about China, I think the administration would say that because that would be like the most popular thing you could probably say politically, like war with Iran on to take out the Chinese, like that would be a winner. Um this criticism of uh Iran for buying Chinese tech is probably because we've sanctioned them and refused are they gonna buy our tech what? And then finally um uh this idea that this is like a forward operate like I I I think if anything, this war with Iran is weakening our ability to fight a war with China pretty substantially, as we've talked about with the you know, dwindling supply of Tomahawk missiles and others. But I was just I wanted to get your blind reaction to this article and I mean where this is coming from. I literally I'd never heard this argument before I was gonna say first of all, like I've had to follow this Iran issue as if you as close as anything else in my life, you know, for the last uh twelve years, and I've never heard that argument made. Like I I I mean it's bonkers. Uh I mean I I mean and the two things I say about it are number one Every other country, you know, you know, like we uh some you know we as we talked about, some of these Europeans and like Mark Carney are seemingly unable to find a voice on this thing. But let's just take the actual swing regions of the world, the global south, like I guarantee you that th this wor war is terrifying them and is gonna drive them closer to China. And then also the I idea that the Chinese were gonna like project power through Iran, it's just not actually the people that are super um apocal apocalyptic about the spreading influence of China, they focus more on this kind of belt road through the Indian Ocean down to Africa and then into Latin America. I could actually I heard a lot more arguments that Chinese uh presence and influence in Venezuela was uh d d dangerous than this. Do they do they sell, do they buy a bunch of oil from Iran? Yeah. Do they sell their tech there? Yeah, because they're they're sanctioned. We're Iran's not gonna sell it anywhere else. But no, I I think that's a garbage rationale. Very surprising article. Um uh the other like really interesting political story about the deliberations around going to war with Iran uh are is the role JD.. Vance played. So J.D. Vance is the vice president. He famously wrote in Otbed with the headline Trump's best foreign policy, not starting any wars. That one aged well. Uh but the New York Times and now several other outlets have reported that Vance actually pushed Trump to start a bigger war with Iran. So remember, there were reports that Trump might order like a limited strike to pressure the Iranians into making a deal. Vance reportedly convinced Trump to go, uh quote, go big and go fast. So, uh that was remarkable to me, Ben. I mean, it should not be it should not surprise anyone that JD Vance is completely full of shit and he's, you know, kind of like upended all his beliefs. But I do think politically, like he now owns whatever disaster comes out of this just as much as Trump, as does Marco Rubio. And like, I don't know, like if things in Iran go the way that they think they're gonna go, it does open up a pretty big lane for a like actually anti-war, anti-interventionist MAGA voice in twenty twenty eight. I don't be. It could be Thomas Massey or somebody. Could be Tucker Carlson. Could be it could be Tucker Carlson. Actually. Now w yeah, cause the point the one thing I'd say about this is that you saw the classic uh great report. Uh someone close to the vice president told us that he was against us, uh, you know, uh, but then said go big. But he won't comment. But it was such a clearly sanctioned leak, you know. You can tell these sanctions. Here's the thing. He can precisely because he cannot publicly say anything bad about Trump or else he's gonna be kneecapped. He's gonna own this just as much as Trump. And the same is true of Rubio because you know, up to to to the moment that the next Republican nominee is is is uh nominated, they have to kiss Trump's ass and can't say that that Trump did anything wrong. So it's not like you can go out and say like I was against this and this is a mistake. Like don't Donald Trump would you know, eviscerate him if he does that. So he owns this as he should. And the far right of the Republican Party is uh in revolt. It's not just Tucker Carlson who is apoplectic over the war. Nick Fuentes is going nuts calling Trump a joke. Megan Kelly has been pretty critical. A lot of like kind of MAGA influencer types. Like there is a there is a very early body of concern about what's happening in Iran that you did not see around Venezuela, or at least not to this extent. Trevor Burrus No, no. And it's and it's real because it's it's tapping into something that the the MAGA MAGA voters like uh like we've talked about the fact that they're anti-war, um, but some of them are veterans who fought in multiple tours and felt completely betrayed by their government, right? And and and so it's emotional too. It's not just you know, this is not just like a checklist. They're right to be pissed. They're allied to. Uh there's been a lot of TikTok stories about how the war came together. Just for for non-nerds, a TikTok story is kind of like when the White House press office brings you in and they do like a behind the scenes blow-by-blow of how something happened. Couple little anecdotes from the Financial Times version that I just jumped out of me. So the FT says that the traffic cameras in Tehran got hacked by the Massad and those images were being transmitted to Israel and that's how they were tracking government leaders, including knowing that the Supreme Leader was going to be like at that office when they bombed it at the time. So it's sort of interesting to learn. They also apparently were able to disable uh cell phone towers in the area so no one could call in a warning. And then interestingly then, so the FT said the Israelis knew of Hamine's movements via the SIGINT channel, but that the CIA had a human source. So interesting if true, also, you know, maybe don't leak that uh while the war is in like day four, guys. But you know, that's the thing I felt I have to say, look, it's interesting, you know, what a surprise. Uh the Mossad and the CIA have good intelligence. But the I mean, we were l like chuckling about the fact that the CIA was doing this giant victory lap over identifying the location of Khamenei in his office. But it it points to like a bigger point. Like Trump clearly like loves this initial round of uh you know the way the American media chooses to cover wars, which is like I find these stories grotesque, to tell you the truth. And I that's uh I'm not criticizing the journalists. Like they like you, you know, you have to I'm kind of criticizing that the the people that went out to do these TikToks, you know. Like it's two guys that did some TikToks back in the day. I I know, but like the I don't know that but not like this. I mean, uh honestly, like we did on like bin Laden operation, um Afghanistan. A lot of it was just like look, the the the TikTok story is a first draft of history. Yeah. It's trying to explain your thinking, how you came to an argument. I I agree with you that there is a version of it that is like preening Aaron Powell I guess what I'm getting at is that um here's what I'm trying to say so you're I I'll mend what I say. There's the TikTok stories are part of like just how you tell a story out of a communications office. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that they seem to have put more thought into the TikTok stories than about their strategy. Oh, absolutely. be like, here are the intricate details of how we like turned off traffic lights and had a human source and found the Supreme Leader and killed them. And then if you ask that same uh spokesperson uh what is the objective of this military operation, they can't answer the question. And so it it like the what like Trump loves this part of the war. You know, it seems like. Yeah. He's taken 19 calls from random reporters. Like including like uh some Rachel Bade's substack. Like he's like so far down the call she's he it seem It's not helping him. He's putting out competing messages. He sounds incoherent all over the place. They've completely abandoned the like rise up you know regime change message. Although let's let's get to that. So um we've talked about how like we we're concerned that this could you know spill into a civil war, that Iran could split, that you could see like ethnic or sectarian fighting. Um you've mentioned uh the Baluch separatists who are Sunni Muslims who primarily live on the border of Pakistan and have a a separatist kind of like violent uh wing. Uh then there's about 10% of the Iranian population is Kurdish, I believe. Um according to Axios, uh Trump called several Kurdish leaders in Iraq uh either on Sunday or Monday. The Wall Street Journal confirmed that reporting and then said that Trump is willing to provide support to groups in Iran who are willing to take up arms against the Iranian regime. I assume that means weapons or, else that support is not worth anything. And then an Israeli outlet called Israel Chayum, which is owned by Miriam Adelson, ran a piece with the headline, quote, The American Israeli plan, chaos will push for a coup against revolutionary guards. So it seems like um the Trump administration and the Netanyahu gang, they're not just like kind of unconcerned about civil war in Iran, but they might be activ actively contributing to it, starting by supporting these um these groups like the Kurds. And then again, like so what they're asking is these little ethnic minority groups to go to battle against the IRGC, which is according to the FT, about 190,000 strong and they're heavily armed. They have their own intelligence component, they have their own navy, they have their own air force, they have their own economic interests, they have their own relationship with terror groups like Hezbollah. And then you have the Basij Militia, which is a civilian paramilitary force that ranges from like hundreds of thousands of members in size to over a million. And depending on which analyst you believe, you know, it's like the the they can look, they can um they're they're controlled by the IRGC, but sort of more loosely. And so it's just it's hard to think of um a worse yes scenario for average Iranian civilians than like this faction of Kurds trying to do battle with the IRGC and everybody else that's just stuck in the middle. This is the single worst possible idea that you could pursue. And I really mean that. And that like I'm we're gonna be wrong about some things we predict. Nobody knows everything that's gonna happen. I I do know that this is a bad idea. Um you have um you know uh uh like personal The Kurds have long standing ties to Israel and there have been plenty of reports that the Israelis have used Kurds for you know certain operations inside of Iran in the past. The Bluchistan separatist, that's a real separatist movement that has clashed violently with Iranian security forces and that crosses the border into Pakistan in the same way as do the Kurds. That the Kurds crossed the border into Iraq. Yep. And so what you could get is a situation. If you are arming Kurdish and then potentially Baluch separatists, you are not just causing a a potential civil war like in Lebanon or in Syria or in Iraq, where it became a sectarian conflict, and you know how violent those can get, you are potentially making it a regional sectarian war, where all of a sudden the Iraqis and the and the Turks are like, do we have to go back into northern you know Iraq to fight our the Kurds in this country? And then Pakistan comes in to fight the Baluch separatists. And then suddenly what Pakistan and Turkey are involved in the Iran civil war. This is a nightmare scenario and it's not the way to do this. Yeah, it's um it it I I could not believe when I read that. Why is Donald Trump calling Kurdish? Anybody knows this. It's crazy. But but unless the strategy is chaos. And again, like the cynical view of the Israeli strategy is make it violent chaos, then we have regional hegemony because everybody else is kind of consumed with their own problems. As in Lebanon. Ben, before we take a break, just two great ways to support progressive independent media. First of all, everyone should subscribe to your Substack. Yes. Tell them where to find it. So please check me out on SubSec. Notes on the stories we tells the name of the SubStack, but you can just look up Ben Rhodes on the Subsect. You are prolific. You're also publishing stuff on the New York Times. I have a New York Times piece that came out yesterday too. So Ben never sleeps. Also, uh please if you really want to help what we're doing here at Crooked Media and you want to support progressive independent media, please consider becoming a friend of the pod and join our subscription community. 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That's simply safe.com slash crooked world. There's no safe like simply safe . Alright, Ben, so the the Supreme Leader is dead. Um as we mentioned at the top, uh Tuesday the Israelis bombed the meeting where there was supposed to be a vote to replace him, so there might be a leadership vacuum for a bit, although as we were recording, there's a bunch of like people are tweeting about one report. There's reports about the Supreme Leader's son uh being named Supreme Leader Hamine's son being named Supreme Leader, which is something that is kind of of one the very likely scenarios 'cause uh the perception for a long time with Khamenei was trying to kind of grease the skids for his son, who's a hardliner, who's very close to the RGC, so this would not be a reformist guy. But who knows? He could have been killed in that strike or we just don't know. It's not confirmed yet. But if he is the person, just that is a reinforcement of a hard line and he'll obviously be targeted for assassination too. Yeah. And I think I already was targeted for assassination by these realists. So let's talk for a minute about who uh uh Ayatollah Hamene was the pr in the process to pick his replacement. So Hamene was 86, as we've said, he uh he'd been in power for almost 37 years, but his legacy went back to nineteen seventy-nine in the Islamic Revolution because he came to power uh in eighty nine, but had served two terms as Iran's president. So um what comes next will be only the second leadership change in Iran's post-revolution history, which is pretty incredible if you think about it. Um, Havini was a a truly awful person, uh, and I think by every conceivable measure, a failure as a leader. I mean, he wasted billions of dollars on a nuclear program that never got him a nuke. He wasted billions of dollars supporting proxy forces like Hezbollah that did not keep him or his country safe. Uh and I think the economists kind of succinctly put it when they said he was the man who quote, kept Iranians isolated from the world for more than three decades, who ruined their economy and who, when they dared to speak out against his misrule, ordered them slaughtered by the thousands. Well said. But in Iran's system, the supreme leader is everything. You're a representative from God, the commander of the armed forces, the final decider in politic So the next Supreme Leader will be chosen by a group called the Assembly of Experts. That is that uh group of 88 clerics uh who apparently were meeting today and bombed. So not sure what that means for the process going forward, but I guess we'll find out. Again, you you mentioned one option, the current Supreme Leader's or ex-Spreme Leader's son. There's a bunch of speculation out there. I was going to tech through a bunch of names, and then I realized like no one knows who we're talking about. And also Trump seems to think they're all getting killed for the case. Yeah, yeah. That guy. That poor guy. He gets he gets sort of the Larry Johnny's name gets pushed out there, right? If the Israelis start like taking out people. Well he's kinda like the guy who's like in the uh But uh look, I I think the one point about Kamine, you know, because a lot's been said about what a creepy is, and you said it well, i is that there were alternatives, in the sense that this was not a monolithic system and periodically at multiple points in the history of the Islamic Republic, there have been presidents even of the Islamic Republic who wanted to move in a different direction. By the way, I I used to get all this shit, people be like, there's no such thing as a moderate. No, there are. There are people that are more moderate than you know, fucking Kamene, Hamene or uh Qasim Sulomani, the head of the RGC. And Hamine would not let them do that. You know, he or he'd always keep it on such a short lease that he couldn't truly explore what it would be like to open things up a bit inside the country or to try to have a more meaningful detente with uh the West. So I I I I I you know, he was someone who had different alternatives available to him, even within the system they constructed. Point is that you know, I I I know most Iranians who don't like the Islamic Republic just wanted to go away and I get that. But he could have chosen to have a like a a le like a less extreme version of the Islamic Republic and he wouldn't even do that. Yeah. And and now he's you know, now he's met his end. Yeah, uh Twitter would get very offended if you ever pointed out that there might be differing political views in Iran. It's um there's just a different thing. Yeah. Well, I mean th there's Rahani, the the the president that that Obama was dealing with. But then there was the Green Movement, right? Which those were people uh Moosevi, who was the Green uh candidate in the two thousand nine election, was from within the system. Like, you know, the gre th they they weren't like coming coming to overthrow the government, they were running through the process, you know. And and so there were these political figures available who could have uh led to a different type of Islamic Republic. Yeah. He always wanted he always chose the hardest line. And then you have uh Akhmadinejad who I think the Israelis just bombed him for sport? I mean, I honestly if they if they did kill him, that's strange and kind of twisted because he's not an active politician. Do you think it was possible concern that he could be a future leader and they wanted to take him out, or it's just like straight vengeance. I feel and the guy defending that guy, he was a creep and a Holocaust denier. But like near as I can tell, he's been like, you know, tweeting about American sports and like uh I don't think he's an active politician. So i I I said to you it'd be like if someone did a regime change here and and look killed Dan Quayle. What did Dan do? But it does it it does just make it feel like vengeance and that's not a good way to do these things. It does make it seem like uh blood sport. Um although I always will think of that SNL skit where they talk about him looking like a fly Jake Jones. Anyway, uh anything else on uh around before we go to Cuba ? Uh no, I mean we'll we'll we'll stay on top of this. Uh i I I would just say that we'll try to do our best to be as straight as we can without being like hyperbolically negative um or you know rosy and today's just one of those days where it just doesn't feel very good. So that could maybe would have a better day tomorrow. But like on um honestly just like w n these are not good indicators. That's pretty unsettling. Uh, and thank you for watching. And thank you again for subscribing to Pod Save the World on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. All right, let's turn to Cuba, Ben. Because um, friend of the show, Lindy Graham kind of set the stage for our conversation today. Uh, in this brief excerpt from his Fox News interview. Let's watch. Cuba's next. They're gonna fall. This communist dictatorship in Cuba. Their days are numbered. How many martinis do you think you had before that hit? I mean it's just uh extraordinary. Like the man's whole MO is to just get seemingly completely hammered and just scream about bombing different countries. Something's deeply wrong with that guy. So we have discussed uh several times previously the, humanitarian situation in Cuba. It isn't just dire. It's beyond dire. The US had blocked all foreign oil shipments to Cuba. Then last week they amended the policy to allow US companies to send fuel to businesses in Cuba. It sounds like the idea is to help private companies while somehow end running the government to promote capitalism or something something. I I don't get how that would work in practice. And the thing is is the i you know, the stated strategy, right, is that you're trying to help the private sector. But how do you get it to them? The people who will be able to take advantage of this in Cuba are the people who have some means and connections. So the people that are starving are not going to benefit from this at all. So this feels more like a messaging exercise uh than some actual rational policy to alleviate the humanitarian crisis that the United States is creating Yeah. Uh last week Trump said the US is holding talks with Cuba and said, quote, maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba. Uh he also said Cuba is to put it mildly a failed nation. It's really right now a nation in deep trouble and they want our help. Uh end quote. So Axios reported that Marco Rubio has been talking with Raul Castro's grandson about God knows what, I guess, transition. Um, but what brings us uh that all brings us to this crazy story from last week about a boat battle between 10 would-be liberators of Cuba and a Cuban border patrol boat. Um, this went down last Wednesday. This is a speed boat with 10 guys on it uh of Cuban descent, two of whom are American citizens, took off from Florida to Cuba. They reportedly brought with them high-powered rifles, nearly 13,000 rounds of ammo, Starlink satellite kits, a drone, and then a bunch more combat gear. The Wall Street Journal says their goal was to quote, infiltrate the island little by little and spark a rebellion against a bankrupt regime. According to the Cuban authorities, the patrol boat approached a speedboat, whereupon the men on the speedboat opened fire. And in the end, uh three men were killed and seven were wounded. One Cuban soldier was injured. According to the journal, uh quote, relatives of the men said that the men lacked military training and capabilities and that they had unrealistic expectations, end quote, uh, you don't say. Um, so Ben, the coverage of this like little kind of Timo Cuba regime change operation um makes it sound like these guys were very naive. They did something very stupid and they probably did it on their own, but you never know. It does bring back memories of like the Oationper Mongoose CIA, you know, executed paramilitary bullshit we used to do. Like the CIA funded lots of efforts to fuck with the Cubans that were short of the Bay of Pigs is the kind of like short answer here. Um and then there's some speculation in these articles that Cuban intelligence was onto these guys because this patrol boat intercepted them like kind of in the middle of nowhere during the day with a fuel shortage, et cetera. I don't know. Curious what you made of all that. And then second, like uh Rubio talking to Castro's grandson, is that the right channel? So first of all, I I entirely believable that these guys did this. Um and look, you know, it's they're pre replicating, I mean, uh Fidel and Raoul Castro landed in a small boat, the grandma at Cuba and there were like seven guys. Now they were a little bit more ideologically coherent than these people. Um not saying I w agreed with that ideology, but they they had a plan. Um there's a lot of this. There's a lot of this kind of sabotage operations. There's a history of Operation Mongoose. There are a lot of uh groups um down in Miami that would like to overthrow the Cuban government. Uh and I don't put it past uh Tommy th some Trump associates kind of you know, maybe saying, Oh, great idea. I mean, we had this in Venezuela. Funning it on the side. Where they were yeah, the guys at Mar a Lago were meeting with like ex special forces guys who tried to do a coup in Venezuela and got arrested. I uh the Cuban uh intelligence is deeply embedded in these Miami networks. I uh that was my sense when I I mean I used to tell people in Miami, like, you know, the some of the Cubans would joke with me that the US democracy funding was funding some of their intelligence because they'd so thoroughly penetrated all these Miami dissident groups, you know. It sounded like these guys were talking politics out of Versailles, which is like a fake Well, yeah, and no, and I and I believe siding with uh but I I believe that the Cubans have these groups pretty penetrated too. In terms of the outreach, I negotiated for you know three and a half years with uh Alejandro Castro, Raul Castro's son. I will say that Raul Castro and his family are more pragmatic than the hardliners. And in fact, they got sidelined in part because they did the opening with us in the Obama administration. In fact, kind of had opposed it in in in a lot of ways. And that a lot of the hardliners after Trump yanked the rug on them said, oh, see what you did? Like, you know, we never should have trusted the Americans. And so you got much more hardline people kind of running Cuba. And it's not Diaz Canal who's the president. There's kind of like a a collection of hardliners. Um so the idea, Raul still has a lot of power and he's still the ultimate kind of supreme leader, as it were. He's in deep in his 90s. So that's one destination to go, but what are you negotiating? Because what Trump is totally wrong about is friendly takeover, the this the this is a regime deeply committed to its own survival. They're negotiating to try to survive, not to have a friendly takeover. I mean, this guy's and just the idea that we're talking about the the regime change in Venezuela, Cuba, and and Iran in within like uh uh the first quarter of this year is is insane. And and clearly it's just Trump's ego wanting to be like, I've finally slayed all these dragons, but it man, it's gonna create a lot of instability. Yeah, and and the person running the policy in every instance is Marco Rubio. And the people doing the negotiations in every instance are just Steve Wickoff and Jared Kushner. And it's like, you know what, we gave Kushner and Wickoff love for basically pressuring the Israelis to agree to a ceasefire and getting the hostages out. Like that was a good thing. That ceasefire, as we've discussed many times, is a joke. But like let's look at the rest of the Witkoff Kushner record. How's it going in Ukraine? Right? Remember when we're gonna end that war in 24 hours? It's now been well over a year. Uh the negotiations with Iran had not only been failures, but like halfway through the Israelis end up bombing. Like I I maybe we should send some pros. Maybe some people who actually know about Iran and its nuclear program. Or when I went to Cuba um to negotiate, I was with Ricardo Zuniga, who was on this podcast last week. You could all hear it for yourself. Like guy had been deep. He'd lived and served in uh Cuba as a human rights officer for the US. So I mean, you don't get a sense that they are I mean Marco Rubio has never been to Cuba. I mean, and this is something I think people don't understand. Like he he obviously comes from a Cuban family, but he's never been to Cuba, right? I don't think he understands um the dynamics as well as he thinks he does. Well well also Trump like Trump thinks that everyone thinks like him and negotiates like him. And again, the dumbest bullshit we've all had to read for the last however many years is that like you gotta think differently, you gotta think, shake things up, you gotta treat it like a real estate deal. What are they gonna get? What are we gonna get? And like these guys don't understand the role of like beliefs and ideology, something bigger than yourself, right? Because for Trump it is all transactional, it's all selfish, it's all about himself, and not for these guys. Um, all right, Ben finally, we want to lighten it up a bit with about some of the latest news about uh FBI director Kash Patel and his country singing sensation girlfriend Alexis Wilkins. Uh you guys might remember our coverage of Cash Hotel's trip to the Olympics, where Cash chugged beer with the men's hockey team. It was a universally beloved segment. Um, as predicted, we've since learned that Trump was not happy about Cash's behavior. Uh, according to NBC News, Trump told Patel that he did not like the images of him chugging beer in that jersey, looking like a stupid goober. Uh, nor did he like Patel using a government plane to fly to Milan, so feel free to fire the guy. Um, and then our masochistic producer Michael spent an hour watching a Twitter QA that Alexis Wilkins did where she I don't she's that could be fun. I mean that could actually be fun. Was it fun? No, he says no it was not fun. She just talks to herself and takes questions is, the gist? Yeah. Yeah. He says yep. Uh she was asked about the Olympics trip and what happened. Here's Alexis' answer. What do you think Elon Doge's opinion would be on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to drink beer with hockey players. So I really am not gonna dip too much into this because this is kind of my my whole point, but what I will say is the bureau has long been in charge of providing security for the Olympics. And they have? That's what was happening. So I think that we should be probably more concerned with the fact that, you know, the Democrats were trying to spend millions of dollars to see if mice can be transgender and the fact that that has stopped clears it up, right? I I just I I I just this is the dumbest fucking fascism in human history, people. Like I mean I knew that the American version of fascism was gonna be stupid, but between like from the the spectrum of Melania Trump at the UN Security Council through the insane management of this war to that person like saying those words out loud. The FBI does not provide the fucking security at the Olympics. Like Cash Patel certainly doesn't. I mean, they may be part of like a whole collective effort. The transgender mice. If Philip Robert could have imagined that, we would have written some very different books. Uh Ben, but l look, we're not done with Alexis because the New York Times wrote this big profile of Alexis Wilkins, Catch's girlfriend. The story is it's one of those pieces of reporting that is so funny in just like a really dry way. Um so it describes her as I love those. I love those. I love those of those. So the some some this was a master of the of the genre. It describes her as quote, uh one of the best protected country singers in the United States because Cash has put an FBI SWAT team on duty to protect her at all times. Uh, here's a couple more lines from the story. Uh this is all verbatim. Last April, agents and two SEVs stood guard outside a senior center in Ronald Reagan's boyhood home of Dixon, Illinois, while she sang for a few dozen young conservatives. I like that one. Uh and this is a quote from someone I would say she is an amateur, maybe an aspiring country music artist, said the longtime country music critic Kyle Corneos of Saving Country Music. com on the national anthem, I'd probably give her a 7.5 on a 10 scale, he said. So she's a C. And this is my favorite part, Ben. So uh Miss Wilkins, the daughter of a financial specialist in the aerospace industry, her mother, and a global consumer products executive for Gillette, her father, had lived in London and Switzerland and for a time attended elementary school at College du Le Mont in Geneva. She's originally from the Boston suburb of Weymouth, but likes to emphasize her time living in Arkansas. Quote, they are just some things that limousine liberal will never understand from the coasts, she recently w rote you know the thing about this that drives me nuts is uh people may not know this about me, Tommy. But my father's from uh Rosenberg, Texas and is one of uh like forty two first cousins, I think almost all of whom are still in Texas. They live in I'm not even gonna say because in this case, but they live in like rural parts of Texas. Um so I was raised on like Willie Nelson, Wayland Jennings, right on like Outlaw Country, Jerry Jeff Walker, you know, like some fucking legends. All right. Like some goddamn legends. Um and and and people that actually didn't have to d be this kind of sanitized right wing version of country music. So in addition to to her being kind of full of it and being a ridiculous way for us to be spending tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money. I'm offended by this version of country music. That it it's just this kind of soft, you know, turning point USA like propaganda, you know, bullshit propaganda music. Yeah. Like like go listen to some fucking Willie Nelson and Whelan Jennings and then learn about some country music. Oh, and then come back to me. I'd rather have let's have some SWAT teams protecting Willie, because he's still out there doing it. He is. He's still out there on the road. We are still we got Willie Nelson. We can get fucking high after this show. Those edibles drink or whatever. I don't know. I mean let's do that, right? Amen. Get in high with Willie Nelson. Amen. Like, like then rather than listening to this garbage. Yeah, I don't think Willie Nelson was supporting uh everything the FBI director said. And unless you think we're being too mean to Alexis Wilkins and she's just a random civilian, I just want to point out that uh beginning a day after Alex Predi's murder by ICE up in Minnesota, she called him a domestic terrorist, an idiot, and a vigilante. So this is a person who's very much operating in the kind of like nasty MAGA media space, and is what it is. Yeah, it is what it is, unfortunately. Anyway, uh, so that's that. Uh, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, you're gonna hear Ben's interview with Congresswoman Yasmin and Sari. They're gonna talk about Iran, the diaspora, uh possible war powers, votes, what Congress can do to actually stop this insane regime change war of choice. So stick around for that . This episode is presented by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. No matter where you live or how much money you make, you deserve to get the health care you need when you need it. One in four people across the country have come to a Planned Parenthood Health Center for care. But in a politically motivated attempt to block patients from using their Medicaid insurance to get essential care at Planned Parenthood, the Trump administration and its backers in Congress passed a law to defund Planned Parenthood. As many as 200 Planned parenthood health centers could close. That means cancers will go undetected, STIs will go untreated, and patients won't get the birth control or abortion care they need to plan their families and their futures. But Planned Parenthood is not backing down. They're still showing up for patients, providing essential care, and making sure that everyone can get the life-saving, life-changing services they need. Alongside people like you and me, Planned Parenthood fights every day to build a future we deserve, one where everyone can get the care they need, no matter who they are or where they live. Planned Parenthood is an unbelievably important organization that is providing health care to countless people in places where they otherwise just would not be able to get it. These politicized tax on Planned Parenthood means people are going to die. Cancers will go undetected. Women will not be able to get the care they need. It is an outrage. So if you can support Planned Parenthood, please do. Donate now to support Planned Parenthood at planned parenthood.org/slash def end . All right, we are very pleased uh to be joined again uh by congresswoman Yasmin Ansari, who represents Arizona's third district. She's also the only Iranian American Democrat in Congress, and one of the younger members of Congress, member of the Progressive Caucus, friend of the pod. Uh thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. All right. I want to get to to your uh reactions personally, you know, from various vantage points, but but before even getting to that, uh I'm just curious, as a member of Congress, how are you being kept informed about this war? You know, how did you learn about it? Have you been briefed? Are there uh upcoming briefings? Do you feel like you're getting the information you need? We have not been briefed about this war at all. Today, right after we are chatting today, we will have our very first classified briefing by Secretary Rubio and Heg Seth and others. The briefings, you know, this is these are open to every single member of Congress. They're typically just one hour long. In my experience, when we've had them before, always after the fact, that was the case in the Venezuela incident as well. They do everything they can to run out the clock, leave very little time for questions, and you'll have a line of members lined up to ask questions. I've tried to ask questions every single time and typically you, you know, there's room for two people and time is up. So it's it's always insufficient. Um, and of course, it's it's already an issue that it happens days, if not a week after an attack takes place. Um, and that's pretty much it. I mean, even you know, the most senior level officials in in the uh in Congress, including the gang of eight, were informed very last minute. And I know we're unsatisfied with the level of briefing that they got, and have publicly said that there was no uh Aaron Powell That's pretty extraordinary, actually. But do do you do any of the Republicans grumble about this privately? I mean it's just an incredible disregard for the United States Congress and hypothetically the Republicans uh who control the House could insist on more information. I don't know. Privately I have heard grumblings not just about this issue, but in general the way the Trump administration operates and in general the way that they don't take Congress seriously. I mean Trump has openly made comments saying that, you know, Congress is essentially working for him. And he knows that. Mike Johnson is working for him. He always has. Look, just in the last couple of weeks, we've had a number of days canceled with no explanation. This is exactly what happened last summer when debates around the Epstein files were taking place and Mike Johnson shut down Congress a week early before we already had a one-month August, you know, recess. It's been happening this week as well. We're only in session for two days. Last week, a day was canceled. And again, no explanation when we're talking about matters of war. So, you know, it this continues to be a Congress led. I I will blame Mike Johnson, you know, to a massive extent here because he has just completely abdicated his leadership, abdicated the role of Congress, you know, tells his members to act accordingly. And you see very few members speak up publicly about it because they still remain terrified of the retaliation that Donald Trump shows those who do speak up. And we've seen that. Aaron Powell Well, uh we we're gonna talk about the war now, but uh what you just described is another reason why the midterm elections are so absolutely essential. Because we essentially have a dictatorial government now that is starting wars and not even telling the people's representatives about them. So um now I I I want to get your reaction. So you you have a totally unique vantage point on this situation as a member of Congress. You um come from uh a family that uh had to flee this regime. Um you um you you spoken out very powerfully about the women life freedom movement and and when Khamenei was killed, the Supreme Leader, uh, you know, you you you were very strong in kind of condemning the evil legacy that he represented. At the same time, um you've taken and knowing you a very principled position that despite those feelings about the regime, um, you know, the US and Israel bombing it kind of in with no plan, uh is not uh the right course of action. Uh and so you've been kind of strongly opposed to that course of action. I know there's a lot there, but let's just begin with how have you personally tried to process this as both a you know member of Congress and obviously someone who cares deeply about this situation um uh for lots of reasons. Thank you for the question. You know, for the audience, you know, I'll share. My parents fled the regime in the 70s, and they were very, very anti-Islamic revolution. This is actually something that is relatively rare. At the time, the revolution was very popular, but my family was always against the Islamic Republic before it became obvious that they were violent, theocratic, murderous dictators. My grandfather was a monarchist, he served in elected leadership at the city council level in Iran. He was imprisoned when the revolution took place. I've had cousins who have been beheaded by the Islamic Republic. So I say all this information to say that I despise the Islamic Republic, just like the vast majority of Iranians inside and outside of the country for good reason. They just slaughtered up to potentially tens of thousands of people. And it's true that they are left alone and that there's really, you know, it's very difficult to overthrow a regime, you know, unarmed and against such a tyrannical group of individuals who quite frankly will do whatever it takes to survive. That being said, I think multiple things can be true at one time. I'm a U.S. Congresswoman concerned about the Constitution of the United States that Donald Trump has been shredding since he took office last year. Donald Trump did not have the constitutional authority to start a war with Iran without coming to Congress first and without making a case to the American people. It is wonderful that Khamenei has been murdered. And I understand the very complex feelings. You'll see a lot of Iranians celebrating that as it should be celebrated And all of these things have happened. And now, you know, what I think about a lot, and what I've been talking to Iranians, both inside and outside of the country, about is what is the plan for what comes next. What my concern is, is that Donald Trump, just as he's demonstrated here in the United States that he does not care about democracy, that he doesn't have a plan, that he moves around from issue to issue, that I'm concerned about the future of Iran now. You've taken out the Supreme Leader, schools are being bombed. Now there's reporting coming out, and a piece soon in the Atlantic that hundreds of millions of dollars are being funneled to Kurdish separatist groups in Iraq, which could then cause a civil war in the country. The MEK, which used to be a which is a cult terrorist group, is part of that We're hearing also from Donald Trump about, you know, making deals with somebody else in the regime. I just worry that Donald Trump, based on everything he has said and exhibited so far does not have a real plan that will lead to actual stability and democracy for the Iranian people, which is which is honestly what I want at the end of the day. I don't want to see American troops harmed. I'm worried about the Americans who are in the Middle East right now. I'm getting outreach from constituents whose family members are stuck in Dubai and the State Department is telling them we have no way to help you or get you out. I mean, this is a catastrophic situation that was clearly done with no plan for either the safety of Americans or the safety of Iranian civilians as well. That's a very powerful answer. And I want to just kind of follow up on this point about the lack of plan or and some of the concerning things we're seeing. Because um you know already you've seen Trump give these kind of shifting rationales like uh this is for freedom and the Iranian people should rise up or uh I just want to do Venezuela and find someone in the regime, essentially. Um that's a mixed message, right? If you're an Iranian, do you choose to rise up? Uh but then what? Do you do th does Trump have your back or not? And then this reporting, I mean, it's kind of the worst possible strategy. Arming ethnic minority groups, uh, whether they be Kurdish, and that seems where it's starting, there's uh blu a baluk separatist, um, potentially air I mean that we've looked at Syria and Lebanon, right? Look at Iraq. Um and I my question when you talk to you you mentioned maybe being in touch with people in the country or people who are very happy that the Supreme Leader's gone. Are they aware of these risks and how do they think they can be avoided? Like if like do you have a sense that people, particularly inside of Iran, but but even some of the people who are very active outside, have any have their own plan about how this is gonna end well? Because I honestly truly cannot find it. You know, I I I don't mean to be so pessimistic, but I just can't see the pathway to something that is not either really violent or really repressive. I think like any population, you know, Iranians are in a monolith. There's a wide range of views, right now. I think there's what the the most common thread that I have heard is a mix of hope for the first time ever. You know, I guess you know there's no doubt that getting rid of the upper echelon of the Islamic Republic is a massive wit, a massive win, and considered something to be hopeful about. But I think that's coupled with fear and a sense of anxiety about the future, you know, especially as bombs are falling, especially as news comes out about you know the arming of groups. Because a big fear that Iranians have, and something most Iranians do not want, is the the separation, uh the end of int territorial integrity of the country. People want to keep Iran as Iran, as opposed to the country breaking up into different factions. And that's something that's very important to people from all backgrounds, but that's a real risk when you start arming different, you know, groups. Um and you know, but again, I will just say there's in this moment. There's people who are are happy about what Trump did, but my fear is that without a real plan, that will shift. And I have not seen that real plan. And I also just want to speak to, you know, all the different factions at play. There are, you know, during the protests a couple weeks ago, you saw people chanting uh the name of uh the former uh king, uh the crown prince, who does have a lot of support in Iran and outside of Iran. But if you look to Donald Trump's words, every time he's been asked, he does not back the crown prince. Just today he said, I don't, I think he seems like a nice guy, but you know, there may be someone inside the country. And so every like piece of evidence that you look at, and what he said, Donald Trump is looking either at finding someone within the current regime apparatus that he can work with, that he can cut a deal with and call it a win, which is not what Iranians want, or arm these different groups, cause chaos, and essentially have state collapse, which will lead to violence, not just in Iran, but in the region for years to come. Oh yeah. Years and years and years. I mean, this if this goes bad, it could go very bad. Yeah, and and his words about Reza Pahlavi are uh kind of like you know, how you talked about Maria Machado after you know uh taking out Maduro. Th this is not someone who's gonna expend a lot of effort to try to have a transition to some dem democratic entity or or even monarchical entity led by Rezi Pallabi in as far as I can see. So we have these potential war power votes uh in the House, you know, Rokan and Thomas Massey have this um resolution that is essentially about c you know f forcing a vote uh for uh a congressional authorization. Um what what are you what are the chances of that uh passing and and and if not, it seems like it might not, what what are the other things that that Congress can do to try to get some control over this, try to rein Trump in, uh, try to hold them at least accountable in terms of information? Uh what what what's kind of the game plan as you see it now? Well in the conversations I've been a part of with our entire caucus, I'm pleased to see that Democratic leadership is taking this vote very seriously. They are, you know, whipping on it and urging all members to vote for the war powers resolution because it's again even for those individuals who may support certain parts of the operation and that's a whole different debate. What this is very clearly is support of the Constitution and support of reigning in the president who has consistently shredded the constitution. A lot of us take this very seriously. And so, you know, I'll just say from my personal experience, even just from the last year, this is one of the top times I've seen a lot of alignment and a need, uh a desire from it, folks in our caucus to be united on this because we know there's already a couple of Republicans who uh will be joining us and feel strongly about this as well. So I'm cautiously optimistic. I also think the situation is developing so rapidly. We've had more Americans die. Now absolute chaos with the state department and an Americans stuck in the Middle East. I, you know, so I hope that those Democrats who were saying were thinking of not voting for it, recognize that now, and who knows what will happen in the next 24 hours as well. Um, so there's that, and then you know, the the DHS funding uh debate is still ongoing, and how that relates is Republicans are trying to now make the argument that because of the threats potentially to the homeland that they have caused with this reckless war, that they the dem Democrats need to get on board and fund uh DHS. And so there's a bill now to actually separate ICE from everything else in DHS. And we'll see if any Republicans support that. But there's leverage elsewhere. But again, I I genuinely hope I'm wrong. I really want when I'm going to the briefing today, I'm gonna be asking about you know the plan, especially as it pertains to the reports of arming these groups, because I think that's an absolutely horrific idea. And what the US actually should be doing if we're serious is working with a multilateral coalition, trying to have internationally monitored free and fair elections, actually supporting civil society groups on the ground, like providing internet access, actually creating the conditions for the Iranian people to have the future that they want to have, not one that the US or Israel imposes to on them. One more piece on Congress, uh d do you what about just getting basic information about, say, the costs of this war? We've heard nothing about the price tag. I I know a little bit of something about this. This is not cheap. I mean, these deployments, the munitions that are being spent, the very expensive missile defense systems being used. Um do you feel like there's any capacity to get transparent information about the the cost of all this? I absolutely think there is, and and we have to do that. I think in a world where people are seeing their health care ripped away, their food assistance ripped away, housing costs are out of control, there's a reason why only one in four Americans have indicated support for what Donald Trump has done. That is not surprising at all, but it's it's you know, it's a blow to the president. So I think we need to take that on more seriously and take on the message of cost because billions of dollars are going to be spent on a war, and there's no plan to end that war, no off-ramp that we have heard of. And meanwhile, Americans continue to struggle and be unable to afford anything, really. It's really shameful. And I think that it's going to cause real further racism of Americans against Iranians, against people from the Middle East. I mean, we haven't even gotten to talking about those unintended consequences that are bound to happen, especially as we're going into this in in a form that's not even popular. I mean, people don't even want to do this. So they're coming, people, Americans are not supporting this. So they're going to feel strongly about the individuals or whatever that they they they see as connected to the deaths of Americans. Yeah, boy. I had not really wrapped my mind around that. Um, but we've obviously seen that happen in the past. Um oh well, one more question b uh before you go. I I just wanna uh g 'cause I know you have a briefing, but I I just wanna give you the opportunity to to reflect on, you know, your parents flee this country. So you're obviously in this position where um you know you have egg uh their exile story and then your very American story, obviously. Um but uh what do you when you think about because I know you were so passionate about the women life freedom movement, you know, you're in your 30s. W when you think about an Iranian woman in their 30s who who's never known anything but the Islamic Republic uh and is now dealing with this, you know, they're in Tehran. They just, you know, wherever they are. Um I mean, what what what what do you want? I mean, how how do you how do you kind of put into words like I I I just imagine yes, mean that this must have just be such a wrenching time for you. You're under all these competing kind of pressures, obviously, but just more fundamentally on a human level. Um, what is kind of your message to that Iranian woman about what we want for her? Yeah, um I think about this all the time. You know, the only difference between me and and that woman that you're describing is that I was lucky enough to have been born in the United States. And lucky enough, um that's it. I mean, that's actually all it is, is the difference. Um and it is catastrophic what Iranian women in particular have had to face. I mean, there have been over a decade now of pro-democracy movements that have been shut down over and over again by this regime. I wrote my college essay about the green movement in 2009. And a hopeful, you know, vision for a future democratic Iran. The most recent massacre, you know, it's estimated that over 20,000 people were murdered. And so first I'll say I understand the the desperation and the calls for help. I do think that cut other countries should help Iranians. I absolutely think that. I mean I think there needs to be on a multilateral coalition that has a real plan to help Iranian people with self-determination and getting the future that they deserve, because it's a country of 90 million people, smart, educated, you know, talented individuals who could bring so much prosperity to the rest of the world. Um, and so much, you know, just so many positive things that it would be a huge, huge win for international security overall. So I, you know, I think for those women, keep speaking up and speaking out. And if there's ways to, you know, communicate with us, I think that our government, what we actually should be doing is supporting internet access, making sure that you can get on the internet and communicate to us, making sure that your civil society groups and human rights groups are uh supported. Right now, there's also thousands of people in Evim Prison, which is like the most notorious prison in Iran, some of the best and brightest minds. Those are the people that we need to get out to help create the future of Iran. I don't think it should be imposed from the outside. Um, but I will do, you know, anything I can. Look, despite being opposed to this administration and its lawlessness and its anti-democratic views here in the US, if I can be productive and do anything to support a plan to actually have a positive future for Iran, I will work with anyone to do that. And I uh am committed to that. So that's my message. Yeah. Well it's very powerful and and and I it's a reminder that we need to listen to those Iranians. You know, uh I mean I we didn't Afghans, we didn't listen to Iraqis, you know, we we didn't listen to Libyans in the country actually. We were mainly talking to diaspora Libyans. And not saying there's not a role for the diaspora, but I mean the people in the country know best what might help. And we had to find ways to to get their voices to us so that we're informed by them. Well look uh I know you have to run but thanks so much for joining us today and and uh we'll keep in touch. Thanks so much . Thanks to Congressman Natsari for joining the show and uh God knows when we'll talk to you guys next. Yeah. Thanks to Michael for listening to the hour of the Alexis uh you know Patel. Loves it. Whatever her name is. What happened to Liz Trust? She was in L A. No one was a little bit more. We couldn't book it booker. No. No, you guys didn't excited as excited as it was when I sent that text to LA. Oh, I guess we're to blame. Yeah, we are. I got it. Okay. Good to know. Got it. Well, talk to you soon. We'll see you probably before next week. Yeah, but unfortunat ely. Podsave World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonerjee. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed, and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. 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