Iran at "full-scale war" with US and allies, Iran's president declares

talking about President Trump's foreign policy. And I do want to stick with that topic here as we are now at 902 on the East Coast and 602 on the West Coast. Take a look at this here as Iran's president saying this weekend that his country is in a full scale war with the U. S. Israel and Europe. The remarks by President Massoud possess key in were published on the website of the country's

Supreme Leader, Khamenei. He says in part, quote, we are in a full-scale war with the U.S., Israel and Europe. They don't want our country to remain stable. Now, this was just a portion of this and is a much larger statement that was made. Now, I want to pop this up on your p as well. A live look over remarks come just ahead o

Benjamin Netanyahu's meet there in florida tomorrow also quoted as saying this his country's deadly war back in the 19 eighties t what this means. I do wan to bring in a friend of the show.

We do have Javed Ali, Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a former senior U.S. government counterterrorism official. Thank you so much for taking the time, as always,

to be here with us.

Josh, nice to be with you and happy holidays.

Happy holidays. And I did want to ask you here first, we saw that quote of course translated there and essentially it translates to quote unquote, full scale war. What do you make of that?

And what does Iran's president mean that there is a full scale war with the US and allies?

So Josh, really interesting set of developments with the statement by the Iranian president. And if the translation is accurate and if the term or the phrase really is full scale war, clearly Iran is not mobilized for that, at least not yet in terms of going on some kind of offensive campaign against its neighbors in the region or even Israel a little further afield.

And certainly Iran cannot touch the United States directly from a, from a quote-unquote war perspective. So why make this kind of aggressive and bold comment now? As you mentioned at the top of the segment, it could be a way to send a message to, for the meeting tomorrow between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think they'll just, if anything, shrug it off because clearly Iran

is in a much weaker position than both the U.S. and Israel. But the fact that the statement was published on the Supreme Leader's website, I find that to be pretty fascinating because in recent, or in other times in modern history, when you had an Iranian president and the supreme leader, whether Ayatollah Khamenei or Khamenei, sometimes there have been daylight between those statements from the president and the supreme leader in terms of Iran's foreign policy.

And it's always been directed by the supreme leader. So the fact you have this really bold and aggressive statement by the president posted on the Supreme Leader's website tells me that they're in lockstep, at least in terms of the messaging, but I'm not sure there's an actual realistic or operational threat, at least right now. And again, you're looking at that translated statement right there. As you said, you know, it's loosely translated, but as of right now it says full scale war. And we've also seen other translations that say total war, which is just kind of a, another way to refer to it. Now, does this differ

in any way from what we've heard from Iran's president's previous rhetoric about the U.S.? Because we know there's been tension there. That's, that's nothing new, but are these statements that he's made new, but are these statements that he's made that are this powerful previously? Yeah, there have been other Iranian presidents in going back previous years and decades

who also made similarly belligerent statements, but almost always those statements haven't really been backed up by threats. And at the end of the day, the Supreme Leader is the one who calls the shots for Iranian national security policy.

The Islamic Revolutionary, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps reports to him, the intelligence and security services report to him. They don't report to the president. So when the Iranian presidents make these statements, they're more for at the political level, but they're not really an indicator of the actual national security direction or policy of Iran. Because like I said, those decisions and the sort of organizations in Iran that carry out these national security missions.

They are under the control of the Supreme Leader, not the president. It's not quite clear where the nuclear talks stand between the U.S. and Iran. Do you think that a statement like this has any sort of impact overall on those talks

if they are still kind of ongoing behind the scenes?

Yeah, there hasn't been a lot of media reporting about the state of any resumed US, Iran nuclear negotiations, even if they're not doing it face to face, but through intermediaries or proxies since the summertime. Maybe there was some early indications of that, but at least the past few months, it doesn't seem like there's been much momentum. And going back to the summer with Israel's 12-day war, and then as we all remember, the

U.S. involvement with the series of strikes against the three key Iranian nuclear facilities, it's not clear what the status of Iran's nuclear program is. Is it truly set back years, if not longer? And those are the statements made by President Trump and other senior U.S. officials. Or have they quietly been working to rebuild some aspect of their nuclear program? Probably not on the weapons side, but at least enriching fuel or preserving the fuel that wasn't struck during the campaign in the summertime.

So these are all questions that are not clear to any of us on the outside looking in, and it doesn't look like there's a lot of momentum on the nuclear talks right now. What is the significance of mentioning in his statement there the situation that took place back decades ago between Iran and Iraq and saying that this is is worse than that. What is the significance there? Yeah, that that is another interesting comment. Uh, and if your viewers remember some perhaps stone, if they're younger, the Iran Iraq

war was a terrible, terrible war for both sides. Estimated casualties of probably, um, at least a million on the Iranian side over that eight year war on probably a half a million on the Iraqi side over that eight-year war, and probably a half a million on the Iraqi side. And again, we may not know the actual numbers, but both countries suffered greatly in terms of the loss of manpower.

The front lines of the war actually didn't move that far on either side of the Iran-Iraq border, but it was basically trench warfare, kind of to a degree what we're seeing in Russia-Ukraine, although obviously not with the modern technology that's been going on. So the human cost of that war was terrible. I don't think that that has been the case with even what Israel managed to inflict on Iran over the summertime.

So that seems to be more perhaps the statement of what's going on now being worse than the Iran-Iraq war. Maybe that's just more to kind of mobilize domestic political sentiment in Iran and to get the Iranian public to sort of rise up and sort of rally around the flag.

But in terms of the cost of the war, I mean, that was much was a much, much worse going back 45 years ago or almost 50 years ago now versus what occurred over the summertime. I want to go back to the statement here made by Iran's president. We know that President Trump tends to response to things like that on Truth Social and maybe during interviews. I have a feeling he'll be asked about the comment today

by reporters who meet with him there at Mar-a-Lago as he's meeting with Vladimir Zelensky. But as far as any sort of escalation, does a statement like this potentially lead to any kind of escalation in tensions between two sides,

talking of course about the US and Iran?

Well, the tensions between the US and Iran and Iran and Israel are already very, very high. I don't think there's really been a de-escalation even since the summertime. So based on these very provocative and belligerent statements by the Iranian president on the Supreme Leader's website like we talked about earlier, President Trump may respond to it with similarly forceful language.

He's obviously done that in the past, but I don't think it's going to lead to an actual military showdown between the US and Iran. And I would also have to believe both on the Israeli and the US side for months there has been, I would have to assume, a relatively significant intelligence collection and analysis enterprise geared towards looking at what is the state of Iran post the campaign from the summertime.

And if there are any indicators that Iran truly is mobilizing to be more aggressive or take offensive action in the region or against Israel or against U.S. interests, I would have to believe my former colleagues in the intelligence committee are looking for signs for that. And that would also be relayed to President Trump when he needs to know those insights. So again, I have to think the US has a pretty good sense as to what's going on with Iran's sort of maneuvers or steps towards mobilization.

But the rhetoric right now seems to be just that rhetoric alone. All right, Javed Ali, thank you so much as always for taking the time to be here with us and breaking it down. Anything we missed, anything you wanna make sure

to add here before I let you go?

Yeah, I think the timing again of these, or the Iranian president's statements is probably designed to have some impact on the discussions tomorrow between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump. Maybe a warning that if there is an attempt to restart a military campaign against Iran,

like what we saw over the summer, that Iran is likewise prepared to respond. But that's an assumption on my part, not clear if that's actually the motivation. All right, Javed Ali, thank you again for being here with us.

We definitely appreciate it as always. We definitely appreciate it as always.

All right, thanks, Josh.