Chapter 1: What were the immediate reactions to the U.S. bombing of Iran?
The United States has launched a major attack on Iran, this targeting not just some periphery sites, but the very center of government. The explicit goal of the strike is regime change in Iran, not merely the setting back of a nuclear program or other weapons programs. This is the real deal.
No one is particularly surprised by this, especially after the strike on Venezuela, because in the lead up to Venezuela, you saw this huge gradual buildup of military assets in the region. You saw the extension from the White House of all sorts of diplomatic olive branches. Maduro refused the olive branches. Then the US went in and took him out. So you saw the same thing building up here.
A few weeks ago, people were waiting for the United States to launch a strike on Iran.
Chapter 2: What is the goal behind the U.S. military strike on Iran?
But I remember I was on with Hugh Hewitt, and we agreed, no, probably we were seeing the same playbook play out, which is there was going to be this buildup of military assets, there were going to be more diplomatic olive branches, and then when that was not going to work, Trump was going to strike. Here is the political issue for the White House. Iran is not Venezuela.
Iran is not Venezuela Iran is not Afghanistan Iran is not Iraq though there are way more parallels with Iraq Iran is a real country with a real solid regime and so Changing out that regime is going to be a little bit more difficult.
Obviously, there are a lot of people who are elated by the strike on Iran, notably the Iranian Americans whose families fled from Iran after the revolution in 1979, but also plenty of the Iranian people who have been waiting for some kind of regime change.
And the only way that regime change was going to come about was very likely with regional strikes from Israel and ultimately with strikes from the global empire, which is the United States. So what does it all mean? We have intervened in Iran before. We've intervened in Iran a number of times.
The clearest example would be 1953 when the CIA and MI6 out of the UK helped lead a coup that threw out Mossadegh, the socialist, and consolidated the power of the Shah of Iran. Now it looks like the Shah's son, the crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, is going to try to unify the Iranian people and bring some political stability to Iran if the regime is actually displaced.
However, all of that remains a little bit dubious because let's not forget after the CIA coup in 1953, the Islamic revolution happened in 1979. So the pro-Western US backed regime only lasted for about 26 years. The mullahs, the Ayatollah, the Islamic regime has now lasted almost double that. So I'm a little skeptical of regime change in Iran.
The reason that this strike was launched now was the opportunity. And this creates a little bit of a problem for the argument for war because we were told, what, just weeks ago, that the United States had totally wiped out Iran's nuclear program, just obliterated it in the strikes on Fordow and the other nuclear sites.
So if the argument for war right now is that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear weapon, it creates a little tension with the arguments we were making about Fordow just weeks ago. Really, I think the reason the U.S. struck now is we had the opportunity. Iran is weak economically. The regime is weak in terms of popular support.
The regime in Iran just slaughtered tens of thousands of people and is extremely unpopular. So this was the opportunity to do it. President Trump laid that out. He said that if the Iranian people want their freedom, this is their last chance probably for generations. So where does this leave President Trump?
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