IRAN: Trump pledges support for protesters as demonstrations hit 2-week mark

All right, you're watching live now. I'm Austin Westphal. Let's talk about Iran. Protests sweeping across Iran are nearing the two-week mark, with the country's government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations,

despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world. The Associated Press says, with the internet down in the country and phone lines also cut off,

gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But they do know that the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people and over 2,300 others detained. That's according to the US-based human rights activists news agency. This was posted earlier today. President Trump saying, Iran is looking at freedom, perhaps like never before.

The USA stands ready to help. Hal Kempfer still here with me. He's the host of the Strat Podcast and a retired Marine Intelligence Officer. Hal, Iranian state TV is reporting security force casualties, but they're also portraying control over the nation.

How would you describe the scale of what you've been tracking in Tehran?

Well, Austin, from what I can tell, this is huge. It's in 100 cities all across the country. And if you don't think it's big, keep in mind they shut off not just the internet, but as you mentioned, they shut off the phone lines, which tells you that they are trying to squelch just how big this is. Experts who've been looking at this for some time,

who've been looking, who have seen a number of other protests, remember the protests where it was against religious police because the death of a young woman who didn't wear a hijab correctly, or they didn't feel wore a hijab correctly.

We're all kind of wondering, would this thing take off? Well, it was suppressed and the people were repressed, but the anger from that never went away. This is different though. This is all that anger plus an economy that is literally falling apart.

There's tremendous problems. The central bank has stopped releasing what are sometimes called cheap US dollars. Remember, they are sanctioned and they're banned from doing certain things in the global economy. The central bank had been subsidizing these cheap dollars, which allowed the, you know, the store owners, the small businesses, the bazaars to keep operating. And when they cut that off because they couldn't support it any longer

because there was just uncontrolled rampant inflation throughout Iran, the bazaars literally shut down. They shut the stores, the store owners had to close and the economy hasn't ground to a halt, but it has slowed down to the point that people are looking around saying,

look, there's just no way they can do this. And this falls on the heels of seeing the regime was completely unable to deal with the Israelis in the 12 day war. That was embarrassing for the regime because Israelis basically were flying at will

anywhere in the country and bombing whatever they want. Then the US came in and bombed those nuclear sites. And so there's been a distinct lack of confidence in the Iranian regime. And of course the Iranians have also watched Syria, the big other country that was a Shiite extremist partner, if you will, in the Middle East

and Assad is gone and that country's completely changed over and so this has a different feel to it and it is big.

And we saw another operation in Syria today, by the way, striking ISIS targets. Going back to the president's post here, he says the USA stands ready to help. How could the USA help in this situation, Hal?

Well, that's a very good question. It's one thing when you're doing a B-2 strike against specific targets like these nuclear weapons targets, that's a very clear cause and effect type of a strike mission. This one is very difficult. And according to multiple reports

that when Prime Minister Netanyahu came over and he was talking to President Trump recently, part of that discussion was that the Israelis wanted to go after the missiles and some other targets in Iran, and the President Trump said, no, don't do that.

And the reason that he told him not to do that was because he said, look, if you go after those targets, you're going to, you know, spur nationalism, Iranian nationalism, and you're gonna actually entrench nationalism in support of the government.

And I'm pretty sure the President Trump had intelligence at the time, the confidence in the government was waning and dropping rapidly amongst the Iranian people. And so the Israelis could get, you know, and the short-term outcome would be

they'd hit some targets. The long-term would be that it would probably forestall what we're seeing now. And I have a sense that we probably had an idea that this was coming. You know, we do a lot of economic analysis,

we do a lot of financial analysis. So we're able to probably see something like this was on the horizon. And so it's good to say he supports the protesters, the threat certainly bolsters what the protesters are trying to do. But to actually do something kinetic, you know, strike missions per se, would be very

difficult. What do you hit? And then of course, you want to avoid any collateral damage where you're killing civilians. So it's good to say this. It's certainly the protesters, you know, take heart when they hear that the president

of the United States is behind them 110%. They know that the president will order missions to Iran because they just saw it happen in June. But on the other hand, what you hit and how you hit it would be a very difficult one. I have no doubt that there are those in US Central Command

and elsewhere that are looking at this right now saying, what could we possibly do? And then of course, what are the results? What is the outcome? Would we achieve the desired end state? Could it be something where we actually hit them

and then set back the protest movement? So there's a lot of ifs and a lot of things

you gotta work through on that. During the 12 day war, the U.S. struck that Bordeaux site with its B2s. Does the reaction, let's rewind to this past summer for a moment here because when people hear about Iran and the U.S. friction building between the two countries, it does spook people and it does make people's mind wander to, well, what if things escalate between the two countries? Remind us the last time the U.S. struck Iran this past summer, how did Tehran respond to

that?

Well, what Tehran did was they launched all those missiles and drones towards Israel. And then of course they responded by hitting Qatar, hitting the air base at Qatar, which as you may recall, last June, I was in that part of the world.

I actually went through the airport in Qatar en route to where I was going. And so that was, that kind of struck close to home, so to speak. I just wasn't there when the missiles actually struck, but they actually struck a US base in there. And we have a number of bases over there.

And those bases are, you know, they're vulnerable to strike. So that is something that we have to take into consideration and certainly the Iranians have shown a willingness to do that. Although all the information at the time, it almost sounded as if it had been kind of orchestrated

that Iran would respond and they would strike these things so that they could say they responded and then it wouldn't escalate beyond that. And it was rather an interesting period where Iran responded to our strikes in such a way. But I don't know what happened in this case.

And frankly, one of the things that's really different about the protests, which kind of goes to the calculus, there are protesters that's been reported widely, who are saying death to Khamenei, death to the Supreme Leader of Iran. That's something we haven't really heard much

in previous protests. I think that's what changes it. And President Trump has alluded to the fact during that 12 day war period, he said, we could have struck Khomeini, but we decided not to. I think Khomeini certainly hears that.

And there are reports that are out there, not from the most substantial, why we consider the core news organizations, but there are reports that maybe Khomeini has been looking at possibly finding a way to depart Iran, to leave or to do something.

And I don't rule that out. I just, I haven't seen that get picked up by the mainstream media outlets. I expect to carry a story like that. But sometimes you see those things out there and then the next day, boom, they are in the mainstream.

So we'll see what happens. So that idea would be similar to what we saw with Assad. Very similar. In fact, almost identical.

In fact, Russia came up as a place he might go. We have a short soundbite from the Supreme Leader. It's translated. Let's listen real quick.

People came and did damage to their own buildings, ruining their own streets in order to make the president of another country happy.

And that's really been one of his main points, is that this is, and some of what's been happening with these protesters is they're doing this in an effort to appease President Trump. Maney has framed protesters as, again, pleasing the White House. State media has used language like terrorists to describe some of these protesters. Is there any way, Hal, to know how much weight that type of rhetoric actually carries domestically within the Iranian public?

Well, I can say this. With the protesters, I think that rhetoric carries zero weight. They're protesting for reasons that have nothing to do with President Trump. And I don't think any of the Iranian protesters are out there saying, hey, let's go out there and we're gonna make President Trump happy

if we're doing this. That is not their motivation. Their motivation is very fundamental. It's very domestic, it's very close to home. They don't like this, you know, this theocratic autocracy that has crushed

their spirit so many times. They don't like this police state that this autocracy depends upon. But there's also the bigger issue, which is if you can't get the economy to function, if people can't make money so they can put food on the table at night, at that point, the government has completely failed. And then in the background, as you may recall, Tehran, that big capital city, is literally running out of water.

Their water management has been so bad over the many, many years, over the decades, along with drought and some climate change issues, that they're literally looking at having to move the capital of Iran to another city because Tehran can't support the water needs

of the capital of Iran. All of these things are crushing blows to the current regime. That's what's got the protesters out there. That's what they're angry about. And of course, Khomeini is desperate

to try and divert attention. And frankly, to say that they're angry about. And of course, Khomeini is desperate to try and divert attention. And frankly, to say that they're out there to try and appease President Trump, if you're familiar with the culture and everything else, it's almost laughable. But he's really trying to do that

to come up with some sort of explanation as to why does my entire population, why are they all out there on the streets? And of course, he's probably a little bit miffed that many of them are calling for his death. So that's what he's trying to do to divert. But we shouldn't pay too much attention to that.

We've been talking about the internet connectivity thing. You know, Iran cut off internet, according to reports. They also cut off international calls. There are reports that the outage was attributed to the government interfering with these mediums. Hal, is there a reliable way to determine casualties and arrests? Is there a reliable way to track any of this stuff when the state is imposing communication blackouts?

You know, what's interesting is, and of course this is one of the things that the Iranian regime is very upset about, is Israeli intelligence has completely permeated their society. They've got quite an intelligence network in place, and we saw that in June, what they were able to pull off. And therefore, the intelligence, if you will, ground truth of what's going on, it will get back.

That does not rely on the internet or regular cell phone service or anything like that. That information will get back, that does not rely on the internet or regular cell, regular cell, telephone service or anything like that. That information will get back. Now, how that gets disseminated out into the open source world, okay, if it comes through intelligence sources,

that happens all the time. Various countries gather information, they put stuff, they, you know, there's relationships with journalists and things where they will let them know things. And certainly Israel has a reason to get the information

out there about how badly the regime is doing. So I think we will find out, I've heard at least 65, maybe more people have been killed. Hundreds and it could be thousands have been arrested, put in jail, prison. And it sounds like there's gonna be a lot more going on

and a lot more people hurt than killed. So it is, these protests are huge and everything is indicating that the government's only response is they're going to crack down brutally as they have in the past.

And I'm expecting to see that. And unfortunately, I'm also expecting to see the casualties increase as well.

Live look at the White House. It's just past 6.30 in the nation's capital. The big question on everybody's mind, Hal, President Trump has publicly pledged to support protesters. He's threatened consequences if protesters are killed. His most recent post says,

the USA stands ready to help. The big question is, what's the likelihood that the US does get involved? What's your gut tell you?

My gut tells me if the president was to do something, you know, first off, we can always impose more sanctions. That's something we do. We can work with our allies to do a variety of things. We can seize ships with Iranian oil. We can do a number of different things.

But if we do something kinetic in Iran, it will have to be very targeted, very specific. And I would imagine that we would go after the Revolutionary Guard Corps with very specific targets where you're not gonna see a lot of civilian collateral damage and maybe key leadership sites,

maybe Khomeini's home or home of other top leadership might be targeted, although that area of Tehran where they live is supposedly there's a very extensive underground bomb shelter system that they have in there that they were hiding in during the June bombings. And that would take, that may be something

where it would probably take a B-2 bomber to put some ordinance down there to penetrate deep enough to cause problems. But then you have to have really exact intelligence to say where are they in that underground complex to say where are they in that underground complex

in order to have the effects on target.