Amelia Lester
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
When I looked up for my Bad Bunny algorithm, there was no getting around the fact that the world is dealing with some very serious news this weekend.
America and Israel had launched an attack on Iran.
Dual operations, America's called Epic Fury and Israel's called Roaring Lion, hit more than 500 targets across Iran and killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who has ruled the country since 1989.
Now, thank God Amelia Lester is here today because Amelia's other job, as regular Outlouders will know, is an editor at Foreign Policy magazine.
And you're very well equipped to answer all our questions about this.
So my first one is, how are we meant to feel about what happened on Saturday night?
Because I'm seeing very different opinions across the internet.
When you say that the US and Israel acted sort of unilaterally on this, would the usual procedure be that there would have been international agreement that this was going to happen?
I saw in Trump's address after it when he was wearing his USA baseball cap, he basically said, and I paraphrase, that lots of presidents before him wanted to do what he's done.
So, you know, obviously this regime has been in place and around for a very long time.
We know that after the recent protest there earlier this year, there was a brutal reaction to that from the regime.
And Trump said loads of presidents have wanted to do this, but basically I'm the only one who's had the balls.
Why hasn't anybody else done it?
I thought that the Republicans and the MAGAs in particular were very keen on America not getting involved in foreign conflicts.
I thought that was one of their main things.
They were always whinging that Biden and Obama before him had sent too many Americans off to foreign wars that didn't have anything to do with them, and Republican presidents, of course.
So does this...
escalation of conflict that America is involved in.
Isn't that contradictory to what his base would want?
Just a couple of more local things I wanted to know, Amelia.