Ben Rhodes
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Like if Trump feels like he can do these things and the democratic world is going to kind of fall into line or at least kind of be pretty passive about it, it just lowers the bar on him doing it.
And that's the thing is he could be doing this again and again.
In Iran, he could kind of keep bombing again and again.
We could do this in Cuba.
Greenland could come back in the picture.
Panama, like all these other places.
And so you have to be thinking ahead to creating some guardrails around what Trump is doing.
Well, so if the Supreme Leader is dead, I would definitely, how is that announced?
Who announces it?
Is there a succession plan?
I mean, I think we'll get a pretty quick understanding of the kind of political strategy and dynamic inside the Iranian leadership.
So I think that's an important thing to watch.
Do Iranians heed Trump's call to kind of rise up and start to create like a civil conflict, essentially, so that there are clashes in the streets, just like there are clashes in the
No, yeah, Netanyahu in particular, let me speak directly to the Iranian people.
The Kurdish areas and the Baluk areas of Iran, a lot of people may not follow this, but there are kind of longstanding separatist movements in those regions.
Do they start to try to rise up, which could threaten the territorial integrity of Iran?
So there's a lot to watch.
I think that I want to just echo something you said, Tommy, like,
We tend to consume these things in news cycles.
And even Trump loves that 12 day war, right?