Mehdi Hasan and Experts REACT to Trump's Iran Decision

Hello, everybody. I'm Mehdi Hassan, editor-in-chief of Zetei. We are here. It's 8 p.m. Eastern and we're all still alive. There has not been a nuclear armageddon. Donald Trump has not gone through with his vow to destroy Iran as a civilization from which it will never return. We can all breathe a sigh of relief momentarily, but how long for? And what happens next? Is this war over? Is this two week ceasefire that Donald Trump and the Iranian government are heralding tonight,

both sides claiming victory? Is it a real ceasefire? Can it lead to an end to the war? And what did Donald Trump just agree to? Joining me now, Harrison Mann, former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst,

former Army major in the US military, now a contributor to Zetao, and of course, Swin Soobsang, my colleague here at Zetao, our senior political correspondent. Trita Parsi from the Quincy Institute will be joining us in around 15 minutes to give us his take on what's going on. He kind of predicted this earlier today. But let me just jump in, Harrison, are you surprised at what we saw at eight o'clock?

I am surprised. I did not predict this. I didn't think Trump was going to nuke Iran, but I also didn't think he was going to take such a conciliatory tone, such a conciliatory tone, because it seems like what's happened is he has said he will actually take Iran's demands quite seriously. Those include removing US troops from the region. It includes permanent Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and a list of other conditions that I honestly

did not think Trump was willing to consider given his maximalist rhetoric and threats up until this point.

Yeah, I just want to be clear to people joining us. Donald Trump, well before the 8pm deadline said, hey, put a post on Truth Social saying, you know, I've delayed it two weeks, ceasefire both sides. The 10 point Iranian plan is not the 15-point US Trump plan. Let's just be very clear. There was a 15-point US plan that was put forward.

The Iranians rejected it. The Iranians have been pretty stubborn. They've stuck to their guns, shall we say, for the past few weeks. And the United States went via Pakistan. And Donald Trump is claiming that this deal

came via the Pakistanis. But as many people have pointed out on social media tonight, the Pakistani prime minister's tweet, his earlier version that they edited, had Pakistani prime minister's statement put on there, draft, as if it was sent to him by the Americans to pass on to the Iranians. Anyway, we'll give Pakistan this victory tonight. They played a role in saving Iran from being further bombarded tonight. We don't have an Israeli response.

But the Iranian 10 points include, as you said, Harrison, retaining control of the Strait of Hormuz, which they're going to open for a couple of weeks now during the ceasefire, they said tonight. It also includes a ceasefire in Lebanon. We should point that out.

It also includes retaining the right to enrich uranium, which is supposed to be at the core of all of this, why we supposedly went to war. So Swin, Donald Trump, you know the man well, you talk to the people around him, do they really think this is a victory tonight? Feels like an Iranian victory.

No, and they also don't think it is the end of hostilities, necessarily. Look, like I know a lot of Democrats and people who are going to rub Donald Trump and Maga's face in this are going to be making a lot of Taco Trump references for the next days, if not

millennia. Trump always chickens out. For those of you watching who don't know what Taco Trump means, this is a mockery of his constant shifting of the goalposts.

Of course. But as of this early to mid-afternoon on Tuesday, so much of the momentum within the Trump administration, including in President Trump's own apparent thinking, was headed towards escalation. This has been building for a while, and of course, during the entirety of this hellish war,

he has been vacillating wildly between trying to save face, trying to pull the plug, or maybe try to pull the plug on the war effort, and then also threatening massive war crimes, genocide or mass murder even, or just simply actually escalating the war, not just threatening and saber-rattling. So

he has been careening between those two main different categories and this is not part of the deal. I need to stress that. This is not, the senior administration officials and other Trump advisors and people close to the White House who we talked to, virtually none of them view this as they did with a lot of like term one stuff as art of the deal,

trying to do his version of Trumpian madman theory. It's not that, it's not that. He has repeatedly escalated and has wanted at different points during this war to escalate in the conflict. And this isn't a negotiation.

If you spend a lot of time on social media, Swin, as I do, you will see the various tweets and posts laying out how many times Donald Trump has shifted since February the 28th. We've won the war. The war is over. The war is not over. I've decimated Iran. Oh, I'm shocked that they're still bombing the Gulf. Oh, we've accepted their peace plan.

Oh, they've accepted my spleen. We've got ceasefire. No, we don't have a ceasefire. They need to open the Strait of Hormuz. They don't need to open the Strait of Hormuz. That's Republicans have agreed tonight to their own proposals, right? This is the Iranian 10 point plan that Trump has accepted. I'm trying to, you know, you and I always play this game in meetings when we're talking privately. Imagine if Biden did this. Imagine if Obama did this.

Imagine if a Democratic president had agreed to let Iran sell oil, more oil than they were selling more and making more money than they were before. And basically retain control to the Strait of Hormuz and toll the boats and ships going through it. Republicans would be losing their mind when they swim.

It's a significantly dumber version than in term one when he released a bunch of Taliban from prison in his supposed fake flimsy effort sort of to end the war in Afghanistan. Obviously that fell to Joe Biden who actually ended the conflict.

But no, you're absolutely right. There is a category of thing that Donald Trump can do and still be lauded as the God King Emperor by the MAGA movement, where if literally any other president, Democratic or even some Republican, they would be, we all know what everybody, including MAGA would be saying about them. But now I just want to read something and to give you an idea of what dad life is like right now while covering this war.

These are some notes of mine written in crayon, not long before I came on here because I was grappling with my two tiny children upstairs.

While talking to the children who surround Trump.

Yeah, yes.

So this is from a senior administration official in Donald Trump's midst. Obviously with the nature of these things, I sadly am not able to name it on the stream right now, but you can understand it that this is someone who is often in the room. They tell Zateo tonight, a problem is Donald Trump hates being humiliated. He is going to see coverage that he was beat by the Iranians.

I'm expecting that to change his thinking." And by that, the official means on this matter as he continuously becomes inundated within the coming days of, oh, the Donald Trump's got one over, sorry, the Iranians got one over on Donald Trump. So that is one data point as to why, when we at Zotero say, this thing is not over,

he could still do massive apocalyptic war crimes, he could still escalate. Those messages are coming from people deep within the Donald Trump administration and Donald Trump's orbit as well.

And I've said this before, especially to people watching abroad who are not in the US right now. I know it's hard for non-Americans to believe this, but we really are governed in this country by an insecure, thin-skinned, narcissistic man-child who does make geopolitical decisions based on if he feels hurt or upset or humiliated today. There are many who would argue that he went to war in Iran because he didn't get a Nobel Peace

Prize. He's like, well, I don't believe in peace anymore. I think he said a version of Harrison, you wrote a piece for us. You're now a contributor for us. We're great to have you at Zotero. You wrote a piece for us saying how this war would have to end. Is there anything in that that Trump did tonight?

Yeah, so I laid out three steps that Trump would have to take if he was serious about peace. One was some kind of unilateral de-escalation. Second was acknowledging Iran's demands. And the third was reigning in Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And he actually really surprised me

by doing basically number one and number two on this list, which was clearly he was, to in as much good faith as he could, looking for some way to end the war. And two, he was willing to say, I'm gonna take Iran's demands seriously,

which I really didn't expect to see out of him. And so the remaining step and the biggest spoiler that we're all aware of is what is the Israeli government, what is Netanyahu going to do to try and keep this war going? Because he's closer than he's ever been to really getting his war of annihilation against Iran.

And so that's one of the biggest things that we can probably expect to see starting tomorrow.

That's one of the things I've always been worried about. Obviously, the Israelis are spoilers. They've always been spoilers. I've said on the record here at Zotero and elsewhere that even if the Americans and the Iranians stop fighting, nothing to stop the Israelis

from carrying on their bombing campaign. They literally just bombed a synagogue in Tehran in the last 24 hours, right? They are bombing whatever the hell they want to bomb. And this is a war Benjamin Netanyahu's waited 40 years or more to fight. So he's not going to stop.

And they are spoilers. I made this point recently on another podcast, but let me just make it tonight. Throughout the history of American-Israeli negotiations, the Israelis have been spoilers. Benjamin Netanyahu came to Congress to try and undermine the JCPOA and was welcomed by Republicans in Congress. And they clapped him as he undermined an American president

in Washington, DC in our capital. Benjamin Netanyahu, after 2021, the Israeli government, I should say, in 2021, when Biden becomes president and said, I'm going to try and go back in the JCPOA, the Israelis attacked Natanz in April, 2021.

And that led to 60% enrichment. Last year, when the negotiators on the American side and the Iranian side were close to a deal in Oman, the Israelis launched the 12-day war. And this year, we know that they were close to a deal. The Omanis tell us in Geneva, and they started this war on the Saturday, February 28th. So we know that the Israelis are right now, there's no response from the Israelis, but I'm sure they're sitting around working out how they can undermine this. Maybe, as Swin said, by Netanyahu just calling Trump and saying, do you really want to look like a loser?

They've humiliated you. I wouldn't put it past him. Harrison, I don't know if you saw the New York Times reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan today, showing that Netanyahu was a key player in this drive to war, to the point where he was invited

into the Situation Room, where he normally sits, to sit opposite Netanyahu. But apparently, if you say Israel dragged us into this war, that makes you anti-semitic, Harris.

Yeah, I mean, a few things to say on that. And I do think there's one side in which Israel did drag us into the war, and the other way where you have to look at, okay, Trump does what people tell him why did why was he exclusively surrounded by cabinet officials and media figures who were sympathetic to the Israeli position

There is an American side to this agreed and I want to add something else that if we want to be a little Optimistic about what distinguishes this moment from the Gaza deals and Lebanon deals that of course became Violent worth both worthless and violent is that Trump doesn't care what happens to Palestinians in Gaza He doesn't care what happens to civilians in Lebanon He he does clearly have a big sensitivity to the price of oil to the S&P 500 and so Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz again is something that catches his attention in the way that the dead Arab civilians do not and so

That's that's the only thing that gives me some hope that he may be more willing to to apply pressure for, I'd say, the second time

on Netanyahu in this case. So when I've got to ask you a very important question that we kind of have reported on today, we're going to be carrying on tomorrow. I've been going on about it for, I don't know, 11 years since the man came down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, which is he is manifestly

unfit to run a school board, let alone the United States government. He proved that this morning with the single most deranged genocidal public statement ever made by a United States president, certainly in modern American history, where he said that this would be the end.

He was going to end Iranian civilization, for which it would not come back. Shocked a lot of people, not Republicans in Congress, but everyone else with a brain and a heart. A lot of talk of 25th Amendment, a lot of Democrats saying, now is the time for 25th Amendment.

Ironically, the person who would have to do that is JD Vance, who's busy. But talk to me about what you're hearing about people around Trump, around his mental health. I mean, sorry, this guy is not all there. He was never all there,

but clearly he's worse than he was before. Well, for even the casual observer, I think it's extraordinarily difficult to figure out where Donald Trump's decline starts and where his never having ever inclined begins. It's typically a mix between the two. But having said that, to your point of people surrounding him, what they think of his mental health

and his both cognitive and physical decline, a lot of them have eyes and ears like we do. So for the more self-aware ones, there certainly is an acknowledgement of that from time to time. But at the core of it, even though you can argue he is getting more degraded in a bunch of ways right now, he is sounding more psychotic than he did even five

or 10 years ago, there is a callousness, a highly depraved political callousness that all of these, virtually all of these senior appointees and officials have developed where they're just like, okay, this is just the Mad King being the Mad King. And if you can't handle it, you can't handle it. And you haven't been around him.

There was one White House official years ago

who compared it to me by being like, okay, it's like being around him is like working for Harvey Weinstein and being upset that Harvey Weinstein would be mean to you. Obviously, there is a ton of baggage with that analogy, but I'll never forget.

They're both accused of sexual abuse. One was found liable to sexual abuse in a court. I would say this, Swin, in the first term, his Mad King approach went from like Sharpie gate drawing on maps, we could laugh at him to actually getting hundreds of 1000s of Americans killed during the pandemic by denying what was going on. This time around, again, started with the you know, the usual craziness. And here we are in a

war and people worried about the use of nuclear weapons. It's a real problem. If you're a democrat tonight, what are you thinking? You think I'm hoping they don't put their, you know, a lot of them came out very strongly today. I'm hoping they don't take their feet off the pedal. I mean, the fact that he's pulled back,

cannot undo the Monday tweet saying, end of Iranian civilization, or the Sunday tweet saying, fucking open the straits you bastards, praise be to Allah. Like the deranged Trump can't just be put back

in the deranged box, can it Swin? I don't have a ton of faith in elite democrats and liberal leadership in this country right now, particularly not on Capitol Hill, when to, in reference to what you were saying about like, oh will democratic leadership and other prominent democratic politicians take their foot off the gas of this guy needs to go. Not only is this no way to run a war, no way to run a country, but it is, it is, it is psycho shit. Like this is, this belongs, like you would sack an individual who ran a laundromat this way. He is running the most powerful country and most powerful

military that's ever been on the face of the planet. But no, that sounds perfectly common sensical to you, me, maybe everybody on this chat right now, but no, I have no faith that Democratic leadership, if he moves on, that they wouldn't

try to move on.

The problem is there's a very good chance he is not trying to move on from this. But there's one more thing I want to say that's referencing also the senior administration official who I quoted earlier to you from my notes. This individual says they are going to try to front load in the coming days positive coverage that he's been getting the media trying to inflate this in Donald Trump's mind as it's so-called win, and that they are even planning to talking to elite

members of right-wing and conservative media and influencers to try to check in with them to see if they, you know, are you going to be doing this?

He fell out with Tucker Carlson over the last 24 hours, called him low IQ after Tucker called him out for his Easter message and obviously for this war. I mean, Trump's entire approach to politics, his entire approach to governing is to create problems when there weren't any, and then try and take credit for solving the problem he created. So he walked us to the ledge today, and now he's walked us back for now as Harrison points out. Harrison, I want to come back to you, but I believe we have a new guest joining the panel, Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute, an expert on Iran-America relations, written several books on the topic, now has a Substack.

Check it out at Trita Parsi on Substack. Trita, thank you for joining the conversation.

Thank you.

You had a tweet earlier today where you said, this may all be bluster before a significant retreat. Trump may accept a variation of Iran's proposal, but precisely to avoid appearing as if he caved, he issues these bombastic threats to leave the impression that Iran backed down out of fear.

Feels like you've been very prophetic today, Mr Parsi.

I wish I had better prophecies than this. But yes, I think this is pretty much what ended up happening. He was in a desperate state. I think these threats and this constant effort to try to shock people with these threats were read by the other side as nothing more than desperation. I'm not saying that the Iranians weren't worried or anything like that.

But I think we've seen a pattern that when he is about to back off of something, he tries to give a prelude in which he gives the impression that he's in control. Reality is since day four of this war, Trump has lost control over this war. And it's gotten to a very, very bad point. Now whether this ceasefire survives or not is a huge question mark. The track record of the US and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon is certainly not something that

will give people any confidence. And I'm sure that the Iranians are very, very suspicious. But one very significant thing has happened now, which is that this war, this failed war, has taken away the potency of American military threats in any future US-Iran negotiations. Trump can continue to issue those threats, of course, but they will not carry much weight. Because in essence, the war with Iran was tried and it failed.

And that's going to fundamentally change the dynamics. The United States or Trump can no longer coerce the other side or essentially try to dictate terms. There's going to have to be a real compromise. A real compromise requires real diplomacy. Whether Trump has the patience for that or not remains to be seen. And of course, in the background, the Israelis will do everything they can to sabotage it.

Yeah, we were just saying that before you joined. The Israelis are clearly going to be spoilers. Again, no doubt about that. I always think of the Barack Obama Syria red line, where the Republicans pilloried him for not meeting his red line in Syria

over the use of chemical weapons. And here you have Donald Trump's moved red lines maybe 17 times in the last 28 days. Trita, I've got to ask you this question about the actual 10-point plan. We were talking about this before you joined, which is the Iranians have claimed victory. Iranian state TV has claimed victory. The Supreme National Security Council has claimed victory. Iranian Foreign Minister Arakchi has posted it saying we're looking forward

to temporarily opening the strait, assuming we're not attacked for the next two weeks. But talk to us, talk to our people watching right now on YouTube and Substack in their tens of thousands, wanna hear the answer to this question. What is in these 10 Iranian points that Trump has agreed to that could come back to bite the Republican Party and Iran hawks in the ass?

Well, to just summarize some of them, the key things in it, of course, is that they want a permanent end to the hostilities. They're not looking for any ceasefire. They cannot afford to be part of Israel's mowing the lawn strategy, what they're doing towards the Palestinians in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, in which Israel is constantly bombing them every few weeks or every few months or every few years. That's

not going to be acceptable. And they don't want to be in a scenario in which even if the ceasefire lasts six months that the Israelis are back after that, starting a war. So they want security guarantees. I'm not so sure that paper is written on is much worthy, but nevertheless, that is going to be one of these things they're going to be asking for. But the more important ones are they're going to ask for our sanctions to be lifted as part of a deal. And again, it shows that the Iranians have leverage now in a way that they didn't have before.

Even in the previous negotiations, their demands for sanctions relief was far more limited than what it is now in these negotiations. You know, the language that is coming out does not say that the Iranians will not charge a transit fee. So it's not clear. The Iranians may continue to charge a transit fee for ships going through the Straits.

The Strait was never technically closed.

The ten points includes, my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, that Iran will retrain some control over the Strait of Hormuz. Exactly. It specifically says that. Which was not the status quo pre-the war. So they've gained something here. No one recognized that Iran had a right to control the Strait of Hormuz pre-February 20th.

And if it ends up being a permanent state, and the legal basis of it is frankly questionable, but there may be a foundation for it that will be found. But nevertheless, this will be a new feature of the geopolitics of the region that did not exist before, and it's very significant.

Now, part of the reason why the Iranians are not giving it up entirely is because early on three weeks ago, perhaps they would have. But at this stage, instead of using it as leverage to end the war, they're using it as leverage to manage the relationship with countries after the war. They're going to use this transit fee to renegotiate and reestablish economic relations with a large number of Asian countries who tended, you know, long period of time

were close trading partners of Iran, but in the last 10, 15 years have been chased out of the Iranian market by US sanctions. They want to reestablish those relations and they're gonna use this transit fee mechanism as a way of forcing them to have that relationship with them.

So, and this is gonna be very important for them because they're gonna, I mean, they were in need of massive investments before this war began. Signatures have been devastating.

They're making more money from oil sales now than they were pre-February 20th. I find it fascinating that on February 27th, the Omani foreign minister turned up in DC, went on CBS Face the Nation and said, we are so close to a deal, they've agreed to everything and more. Trump had the possibility of getting the Iranians to agree to more than what they had agreed

in the JCPOA with Barack Obama. I know you were heavily involved in the discussions around that, I remember at the time. Trump could have got a better deal than Obama did from an American perspective. He turned that down and instead tonight he's accepting a much worse deal than any American president who's dealt with Iran. Harrison, Trita mentioned the American military and what it means now to have military threats and military bluster and military deadlines.

You were a U.S. Army major. You served in the military. You were at the DIA. You actually wrote a piece for us about the domestic implications of all of this. In this war, we have seen multiple generals and officers removed from their posts. The head of the army removed mid-war.

Why is that? For people who haven't read your latest piece on that subject for Zateo, why should we be concerned about what Hegseth and Trump have

been doing to the military in the midst of this illegal war? So the removal of several high profile generals, including the chief of staff of the army, that's a four star, the highest rank you can be, you can do as military right now now is actually incidental to the war in Iran, but not totally unrelated. Really, since Trump came in in his second term,

he's been trying to have a totally different relationship than he had in his first term, where he really felt constrained by basically establishment figures, both in and out of uniforms. You remember his national security advisor and homeland security director were both retired four stars, but who really believed

in a sort of traditional relationship between the military and the president. Now from day one, Hegseth has been cashiering generals who seem insufficiently loyal to Trump and just people who he doesn't like the look of because mostly they're black or they're women, and that's not the kind of fighting force that he wants. He's increasingly had his Christian nationalist, sort of white supremacist pastor coming to the Pentagon, giving these sermons. And so I think we've seen what is largely a

coincidence of his Pentagon purge overlapping with the Iran war in a way that's, of course, detrimental to the war effort, especially firing the chief of staff of the army, who is, while not a battlefield commander, he is the force provider. He's responsible for getting all of the stateside troops ready to go overseas. But the other place where this unfortunately overlaps with the conduct of the war in Iran is the further conditioning of both the general officer corps and really everybody in the military

to not question orders, including patently illegal orders. We've seen multiple units and flag officers committing war crimes, right? Somebody had to, there were probably hundreds of people involved from top to bottom in bombing that bridge in Iran last week. That was a civilian target. It was for the purpose of intimidating Iranian people or pressuring the government. Trump did not claim a military purpose. It was a war crime. And so one of the reasons I was fortunately wrong, but I was much more

pessimistic than Trita is that I felt we'd been building to a point where we had more and more of our senior officers in the military who were gonna be much too afraid, if they ever had the courage, to stand up to the kind of war crimes that Trump was threatening.

You say standing up to Trump. Swin, the New York Times piece I mentioned earlier from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, they have on the record, well, off the record sourcing, but they have explicit quotes, in quote marks, not paraphrasing, direct quotes from the key officials

in this administration on the eve of war. Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, JD Vance. Vance obviously leaked the story, in my view, saying that he was against the war,

but he

had backed Trump if he wanted to go to war. The rest of them weren't happy. John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, saying the Israeli case was farcical. They were always overstating things. General Dan Cain saying something similar as well about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying, you know, the Israelis always do this.

Susie Wiles, worried about national security. Stephen Chung, the comms director, saying, how do we explain this to American people? We said we obliterated it eight months ago. That's unprecedented, isn't it? I can't remember another president who's in the middle of a war and his entire team, either directly or indirectly, are providing quotes of how much they

disagreed with Trump and Netanyahu. We did a lot of reporting on this at Zotero during the days, weeks long run up to the start of this war. And one of the many things that kept striking me over and over and over again, and kept making me think and scream, I have never seen anything like this in the American history I've been alive for,

is that essentially nobody in the inner Trump orbit, in the administration, except for the literal president of the United States, was explicitly full-throatedly for this fucking war right before it launched. Like with the possible exception of Pete Hexen, who was kind of wishy-washy like a lot of them, but a little bit more enthusiastic

than the Marco Rubios or Suzy Wiles or J.D. Vance's of the world. Everyone across the board thought or said in a kind of sheepish sort of way in private meetings with Donald Trump that this was a terrible idea and it should not be done.

And in fact, it could turn into a quagmire that could,

whether they said this

directly to Trump or not, bring down this administration and completely hurt the Republicans' chances in future elections, maybe even beyond this year's supercritical midterms. Now, the other thing that kept striking me is that everybody who felt that way and thought that way still took an openly go along to get along position. Their explicit position was we will do whatever the mad king Donald Trump wants us to do, and we will back it lustily and execute upon it his whims if he decides to do this thing

that almost across the board we all thought was a terrible idea. We talked at Zateo a lot about how the United States is currently ruled by a mad emperor. It's it's quickly not becoming a metaphor or mild hyperbole.

Plenty of doctors who think it's dementia. Let me let me ask you this, Trita. Big picture on Iran. Back in January, December, there were protests against inflation, the economy, lack of freedom. President Pozhensky at the time said, we hear you. We want to hear you out.

There were people in the regime who said, these are legitimate. And then everything went to shit. We know what happened in January. We don't know the full details. But we know a lot of innocent people were killed. We know there was outside intervention, perhaps Israelis, perhaps Americans.

Maybe we'll never know the extent of. And then Iran looked very weak in that time. The government looked weak. The system looked weak. The people seemed to be out on the streets emboldened. The world was condemning Iran.

And then along comes Donald Trump, the man who saved the Canadian Liberal Party by interfering in their election. You know, Rick Wilson, former Republican strategist, wrote a book saying everything Trump touches dies. Here you have an Iranian protest, Iranian monarchists treaty, you know, the better than me were cheering Trump on. They were holding rallies saluting him. And he's gone and really fucked up the Iranian freedom cause or the Iranian opposition cause of the Iranian model, whatever you want to call it.

The anti-government cause is much weaker today than it ever was before. They've just watched their own country being bombed by a president who was happy, as Harrison says, to blow up civilian bridges, blow up schools on the first day and threatened to destroy the entire country slash civilization. Where does this leave the Iranian government versus opposition debate tonight?

There is no doubt that Trump has given the Iranian theocracy another lease on life, just as much as Saddam Hussein did in 1980 when he invaded Iran. At the time, Iran was in a chaotic state. Revolution had happened. The theocracy had not consolidated as powerfully. But because of the invasion of the Iraqis at the time, everyone close rank, Khomeini completely took control of the country. And 47 years later, that theocracy is still in place.

Without a doubt, this has been a major blow to the cause of democracy in Iran. Not because these outside opposition groups have been completely discredited. They have been, and that's ultimately, I think, a good thing. Because they stand in the way of Iran's democratization. They are the ones who have been pushing for sanctions for the last 20 or so years. That led to a scenario in which the Iranian people were so desperate that they had to

go out in the streets and not even, not only just call for regime change, but some of them even call for military intervention. They did so from a position of despair because the narrative that was formed was that nothing else will work. The Iranian people cannot overthrow the regime. You have to have foreign military intervention, which was, of course, entirely false.

But these opposition groups have been pushing us in this direction. They had been arguing for war increasingly as we got close to the point earlier on. They denied that that's what they wanted, but it was very clear that that's the direction they wanted the United States to go in. But for the internal opposition, the real opposition, this is nevertheless a huge blow. Because the Iranian government will now be able to securitize the society even further. Because it's absolutely clear the country was facing an existential threat.

And this is going to make it very difficult going forward. The version of the Islamic Republic that will come out of this is likely going to be more hawkish, more radical, more repressive.

With a much younger Khamenei in charge.

Exactly. And a new generation of leaders in the IRGC, et cetera, who believe that they have been vindicated in their criticism of the previous generation, who they accused of being too soft, not pushing back hard enough, not taking bold military steps every time Israel or the United States was bombing them up until now.

Harrison, I got to ask before we run out of time, you quit the Biden administration over the genocide in Gaza. That genocide is not over. The ceasefire that was signed there six months ago is a joke. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, thousands injured, tens of thousands continue to be displaced from their homes living in tents. The ethnic cleansing plans from the Israeli right continue in full force. the Board of Peace, don't even get me started on that. Where does tonight leave Gaza?

Because the Iranians have said we want any ceasefire, any peace deal to be in the wider context of Lebanon and Gaza. Are you optimistic about that?

No, I think of all of the theaters of conflict, or in Gaza's case, theaters of genocide in this war, not just Iran, but Lebanon and Iraq as well, Gaza's the one that the least parties care about. I mean, and Trita, you can correct me, including probably the government in Iran. The hopeful note on this, I think,

is that the balance of power between Iran and Israel has shifted irreversibly in Iran's favor, or at least more towards Iran than it was before everybody got to basically try out their relative strength in this war that Trump started. So the other side of this is that right now the vast majority of Israel's activity troops are in Lebanon. They've kind of reached a limit of advance there and exhausted themselves.

And so there's one way to look at that actually forcing an end to that front will free up more troops for the continued ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Could I?

Yeah, please, Trude.

If I could just, Harrison is absolutely correct. I just add one thing. You know, as part of the 10-point plan, the Iranians have asked for a ceasefire elsewhere as well. Lebanon, and I think it does include Gaza. I don't think they're just doing this because they want to show solidarity.

I think that's one element of it. But it's also because of the fact that if Israel continues with its genocide there and its bombardment of Lebanon, the spillover effect risks bringing that regional war back into place, which again, their objective is to end this war in a durable manner, not just a ceasefire. I mean, this is what many of us said already back in October 2023, that if this war is not ended, it's going to spill over to the entire region, which is exactly what has now happened on at least two occasions. So I don't think the Iranians are insincere in trying to end that war because it's actually part of their own security demands.

Whether they can succeed or not, of course, is a different matter.

You, Trita, were one of the – also, if we're going to go back in time, you also – I remember when I moved to DC in 2015, you were one of the people supporting Barack Obama's argument that if you don't do the JCPOA, if you don't do the nuclear deal, the alternative is war. And we were told by the Republicans, by the Israelis, by the Hawks, no, no, no, that's not the case.

You're fear-mongering. And in fact, it turned out the alternative to the JCPOA was indeed war. issue by the way. The 10 point plan, 20 point plan, ultimately Iran still wants to enrich uranium and the hawks in the West will say that is not okay. So all they've done is kick the can down the road. So let's end tonight with some predictions. Swin, am I going to have to invite all three of you back in two weeks time at 8pm Eastern while we sit on the ledge again? Less than two weeks. Okay, that's... Less than two weeks. I'm with you.

I think less than two weeks. Trini, you've been very prophetic today. Are you optimistic about what happens in the next two weeks if this ceasefire holds, if the Strait of Hormuz is opened?

I'm not optimistic because I think this very much depends on whether Trump finally gets serious and essentially says no to the Israelis permanently. If he does that, then I think there is some cause for optimism, because I think he has learned his lesson, hopefully. This was an unbelievably dumb idea. You should never have done it. And it doesn't matter what planning you do now.

If you go back into it, you will once again be in this terrible situation. So you cannot restart the war. But if he doesn't really put the Israelis in their place, who are the ones who are pushing him in this direction, he was very receptive to their arguments, clearly, but nevertheless, they were the main force behind this.

If he doesn't put a stop to them and put a stop to their efforts to sabotage it, then yes, we will be back in three weeks and talking about another war.

So I think we are going to be back then because he's not going to do any of those things, Trita. When you use the phrase, if he gets serious and if he's learned his lesson, I think Senator Susan Collins of Maine will tell you, he never learns his lesson and he never gets serious. So I fear we may all be back here very soon as Swin says. In the meantime, we will carry on covering this conflict, Lebanon, Gaza, we won't forget about the genocide. Do support Zotero. After this live stream is over, head over to Zototeo.com Make sure you become a paid subscriber to support independent journalism to support Harrison's columns to support Swin's Reporting and Trita who's written for us and appeared on our broadcast many a time over the last couple of years We're about to approach our second birthday

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