So we're talking about Iran today in the
killing of Major General Qasem Solomini.
First, let's just talk about who he was.
I know he commanded the codes force who
America considers terrorist organization.
They also deemed him a terrorist.
But who exactly is he in Iran's political
structure? Yeah,
he's been a military hero in Iran.
He has served in the military very
openly and proudly as they would,
say heroically for the last 20 years.
And his role more specifically
has been to sort of Unite the
region in Iran's causes.
So he really leads forces.
Outside of Iran,
so attacks you might see in Saudi Arabia
or in other places in the region,
that's really been his role to
sort of export terror around the
region, and that's one of the things
that America has talked about
with him since the early 2000s.
Since the Iraq War started right,
and so he has been serving openly,
so this hasn't been sort
of like Osama bin Laden,
where we didn't know where he
was or he was sort of in hiding.
He's a very public figure
and very popular in Iran.
And probably #2 when it comes to power and
influence, even though he's not a political,
doesn't hold political office.
That's right so. The United States
says that he's responsible for the
killings of hundreds if not thousands,
maybe indirectly more throughout
the last few decades.
What it's a very complicated
scenario over there because you have.
His influence. With those other countries,
but he also influenced a lot of Shiite.
Groups outside of the Iranian
force that he commanded, right?
Yeah, so outside of
his direct command really what he
did and actually what he was doing
when the Jones tried hit him was to
coordinate with other militia groups
with heads of state with all kinds
of terrorist groups and other actors
to sort of coordinate their efforts
to disrupt and terrorize the region.
Now what do you think from
a foreign policy standpoint?
This does with our ability to try and.
Semi peacefully coexist with Iran. This, I
think, is where the biggest amount
of concern that we're hearing today
comes from is what happens next?
I don't think that there's any question
that Iran will retaliate in some way.
The question is how and when, but not if,
and so our tensions have been rising with
Iran since we pulled out of the nuclear deal,
and we ramped up our sanctions,
which have had a devastating impact on
their economy, which was the intention.
But we've seen over the last
month this back and forth they.
Have a strike.
We have a strike something happens,
we do something back and so a lot
of people are concerned that this is
a major escalation in that back and
forth. And going more on the
political side of things, now,
President Trump has campaigned an
promised throughout his presidency that.
He was going to pull people
out of the Middle East.
Now we're hearing that hundreds
were already who are already
scheduled to go to Kuwait.
They deployed but now 3000 more troops
are being sent to the Middle East.
What do you think that does to the
president and the GOP politically?
And then on the flip side,
what does that do
to the Democrats?
I think you're right, the president
did campaign on no more endless wars,
and that's something we've heard from
a lot of candidates and politicians
on both sides of the aisle.
And I think America is not interested
in being involved in more decades
of war in the Middle East.
The president,
I think his supporters and people
who support this action would say he
took decisive action today that was
necessary and that makes us safer.
And so I think if you saw the
president's remarks this afternoon,
he talked about this was not
meant to further war, right?
This is meant to make us safe and to
eliminate sort of this mastermind of terror,
and that this should deescalate
things in the Middle East.
I think critics would voice concerns
that this actually escalates.
Things makes the region more.
Unstable makes it less safe and
also makes our allies particularly
vulnerable like Israel and Saudi
Arabia and other allies in the
region. And let's talk about
that a little bit more.
How an already very destabilized Middle East.
What does that do to not only 'cause
I ran very influential in the Syrian
conflict with supporting Assad?
That's more of a three tier.
What happens in that region?
What happened? I mean,
there's a lot of moving parts here.
It's so complex in our sort
of enemies and alliances are
sometimes one in the same right,
and we see this here and so part of
what this escalation between the
United States and Iran has been.
It's taking place in Iraq because
we're having a struggle over who
has the most influence in Iraq.
And we might partner with certain
people and even groups that we
oppose in our fight against ISIS.
But then we have a drone strike against them,
you know, Iraq is worried about us
infringing on their sovereignty
because we're having drone strikes
within their own country, right?
It perfect
example of that would be some. The Shiite.
Quasi military groups that Iran works
with but who also fight ISIS, right?
So the enemy of our enemy is our friend.
It's very complicated and so one of
the risks is how does our very tenuous
alliance with some of these groups
now look moving forward in our war
against ISIS and. On Twitter.
World War Three was trending.
Do you think that? This could,
how high do you think this could escalate
politically well so domestically?
Loop back to what we're earlier?
The implications for
immediate domestic politics,
so we definitely saw both Mitch
McConnell and Chuck Schumer talk about
this as well as impeachment today.
So today, impeachment takes a back burner,
right? But they both talked about this one,
which McConnell,
in terms of the president taking important,
decisive action to keep us safer
and to fight terror.
And then Chuck Schumer more questioning
what was the rationale for this?
So if it was as the
administration has asserted,
all day defensive pre emptive action
to protect an imminent threat,
then the administration was
within the right to do that.
But what members of Congress are saying
is we want to see the evidence for what
sort of precipitated this threat and
what your strategy is for moving forward.
We're definitely seeing the
Democratic candidates come out.
No one saying we shouldn't have.
Eliminative this guy right he is a bad actor.
He is the lives of hundreds
of Americans on his hands.
We have agreement over that,
but I think the process is
where we have some disagreement.
There's long been a push and pull of
where do the war powers really lie?
Congress has led the president usurped
those for many administrations.
So yeah,
kind of
going back to what we were
talking about earlier.
You were talking about Iraq,
Afghanistan as a possible
retaliation location for Iran.
Do you think that?
The fact that we killed Soleimani on
Iraqi soil obviously is better than
killing him on Iranian soil, right?
Well, yes, but if you look at that,
we also killed in Iraqi
militia leader as well,
so that also does not sit very
well with a lot of Iraqi public.
So everyone of these issues is so
complex and there's so many strings that
are affected by each of these decisions,
and so even domestically we're seeing
the cities of New York and Los Angeles.
Prepare for possible threats and attacks.
It is unusual for us to strike.
Drone strikes aren't unusual for us,
but it is unusual for us to strike a
leader as high up as we've discussed
that so many is in his country.
An one reason we don't do that is we
can see that it could potentially
make our military and political
leaders vulnerable to attacks,
and so I think that's something
we'll be preparing for it too.
And last question I have
for you, where do we go from here?
I think that we're going to see
domestically you know you saw Senator
Sanders and others come out today
talking about some of their concerns.
I think domestically we could
possibly see another bill coming
through like we did this summer,
proposing to limit presidential
powers when it comes to war powers.
I suspect it won't pass the Senate
just like it did in the summer,
but we could see some of that
politically domestically.
I think right now we're seeing a
really a real ratcheting up of our
domestic and International Security.
Are concerned about our efforts
to protect our allies who might be
particularly vulnerable now and
our diplomats around the world
who could be targets alright?
Well, need to
thank you so much for coming in.
Thank you. It's great idea you too.