Israel, Iran and Trump’s Incompetence | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

Israel, Iran and Trump’s Incompetence | The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart

JON STEWART: We’re in
such a bizarro world. You’ve got me nodding my head
to Tucker Carlson videos. Yeah, he’s– you got Tucker
Carlson going, why are we going to war with Iran again? And I’m like, yeah,
you tell him, brother. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to
The Weekly Show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. And I will be the host– the host today of
your podcast as we find ourselves in a
unbelievably fraught moment in a crossroads of history. And I think I want
to talk just a very brief moment about
the president of the United States, his– Donald Aloysius Trump. You know, you hear a lot about
his grifting and the corruption and the meme coin and the
authoritarian tendencies and the overuse of
executive action and his militaristic
fetishizing of, you know, bringing troops
into American cities and ripping families
apart and just the general moral
decay and abyss that we find ourselves
living through. But I– boy, I have to say,
I just don’t think we talk enough about the incompetence. I just– like, the just
rank shittiness of how they accomplish things
and the price we are paying for his inability to– it’s as though everything
that occurs on the world stage is just another weekly
episode of his program. What’s this week’s episode? Liberation day and tariffs. Great. Let’s do that. Oh, hey, it’s tanking
the bond market, and everybody is freaking out. Oh, great. Yeah, no, that’s the plan. Now we’re just gonna
give everybody 90 days. And then he comes on and goes,
everybody’s kissing my ass to make deals, but nobody seems
to be making any fucking deals. And so then we just move
on to the next episode. Oh, this week’s
episode is we’re gonna go in with the
military to Los Angeles, because that’s exploding
in chaos and violence, even though it’s not. And God, if anybody you
know has experience dealing with unrest in
Los Angeles, it’s the people that– the cops
that already live there. And now it’s Iran. And it’s this– hey,
it’s the Iran episode. And I gave him 60 days because
I’m the deal maker in chief. And we’re gonna
have a nuclear deal. And this is all going
according to plan. And it’s utter incompetence. We’re in such a bizarro world. You’ve got me nodding my head
to Tucker Carlson videos. You got Tucker Carlson
going, why are we going to war with Iran again? And I’m like, yeah,
you tell him, brother. Like, that’s how
fucking upside down we find ourselves in this moment. And it’s all based on
one distinct premise. And that is we are being
led by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And out of DOGE has a
skeleton staff of, you know, utility infielders that are
just out there with eight different jobs each. And nobody has any follow
through and wherewithal to get things done. And if anything
does get done, it will be a happy accident, not
because of the judicious plan that was put into place by a
fifth level Jedi chess master. That’s bullshit. And the chaos right
now on the world stage is a direct function
of that incompetence. [LAUGHS] And I mean, we’re
lucky that we’ve got great– we’re gonna talk about Iran
and everything that’s going on. And I’m so happy to have
our two guests today that can discuss this, because
they are both really well versed in everything that is
going on, in the immediacy of it and in the past of it. So let’s get to them right now. [MUSIC PLAYING] So in this incredibly
fraught moment, we’re awfully lucky today to be
speaking with Ben Rhodes, who’s the co-host of
Pod Save the World and a former deputy national
security advisor to President Obama, and Christiane
Amanpour, CNN’s chief international
anchor, host of the new podcast
Christiane and the X Files with Jamie Rubin. Ben and Christiane, thank
you so much for joining us. This is such a fraught moment. And, Christiane, I want to
start with you because you have just had– you know, you
we’ve been hearing from Israel. We’ve been hearing
from the United States. We’ve been hearing from
a variety of sources. You have just gotten
off with a discussion with the deputy foreign
minister in Iran. So if I could very
quickly, Christiane, what is the viewpoint
from Iran right now? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Well, I’m gonna download quickly
because I’ve literally just come off the set. And just to give you a
context, it’s very difficult. Their internet, because
of these strikes, are very compromised. Their phones are
very compromised. Obviously you can
see there have been targeted assassination
of leaders by the Israelis. They have wiped out a whole
layer of military leadership. And people are scared
about using their phones. So just to get this was
quite extraordinary. And I didn’t ask
exactly where he was, and he didn’t want to tell me. But nonetheless, in Tehran– JON STEWART: Don’t
imagine he would. Yeah. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Right. So in response to what
President Trump has been saying, like, I demand
unconditional surrender, you know, that we could
get your Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, if
we decided, I might not. He’s also just been
saying, Trump, I might join Israel on these strikes. I might not. There’s just a lot of
mixed messages coming out, and I’m not sure
what Trump intends. But he said, the deputy Iranian
foreign minister, that, look, we do not buckle under threats. And it’s very boilerplate
Iran commentary. But it happens to be, you
know, true based on history. He reminded me how they’d gone
through eight years of war with Iraq and Saddam Hussein,
how the whole world was not on their side, and how they
emerged without surrendering. And he said the same here. He said, you know, Israel
is trying to destroy them and that we will not
surrender, and we will continue to defend ourselves. But he did say– and I think Ben would
be interested in this– that we thought we were
going to a negotiation on Sunday, June 15 in Oman. I was and my bosses
were headed that way. And then two days
before, out of the blue, we were attacked
across the country. And he also said
that civilian areas were attacked and buildings and
infrastructure as well as the military and nuclear sites. I happen to know
this for a fact. I’m half Iranian. I grew up there. I know many of the locations. But importantly, I still
have family and friends. So I’m listening to them. And there’s a huge
amount of panic. And it’s very difficult
for them right now. But that’s the bottom line. JON STEWART: Well,
Christiane, I so appreciate that perspective. And we can get
into a little later the complicated
relationship that so many Iranians have with
their government and what’s going on in there. But I want to jump in
really quickly to go off of what Christiane said. In my mind, this
is another example of sort of the
impulsive and strange nature of our administration
here in the United States. So the dealmaker in chief,
the most wonderful negotiator that’s ever existed
in the history of deal making and shaking
hands, is gonna make a great deal with Iran. They’ve got 60
days, apparently, to do it because, as
you know, the best deals always come with
only the amount of time you can make them. And then on day 61, they
are attacked by Israel. Do either of you know whether
or not the United States was taken by surprise
by that attack or whether or not Iran had any
idea that this 60 day so-called limitation on negotiations
was a hard red line that would be met immediately
with widespread bombing? Do any of you have a sense
that this was pure impulse on the part of the Israelis,
that this was coordinated, or that the 60 day
negotiation was a ruse by which to get the
Iranians to drop their guard? Ben, I’ll start with you. BEN RHODES: I
just don’t believe that Trump was somehow– first of all, I don’t
believe that the 60 day thing was a firm deadline. JON STEWART: And
never understood to be that, by the way. BEN RHODES: Yeah, because
why would there be a meeting set up with Steve Witkoff? But also the Iranians
weren’t acting like they were gonna be attacked. You know, they were not
taking security precautions. That’s how some of these
people were able to be killed in their homes. If they thought that day 61 was
a potential military operation, they would’ve changed
their pattern of behavior more than they did. I think that Israel
believed in– Netanyahu believed
more specifically that they had a window
of opportunity where Iran’s proxies had been
dealt a blow, where Iran is on the back foot, where they’d
softened up their air defenses and some of those
previous strikes. And he wanted to
take this action. And frankly, the diplomacy
that Trump was in was a threat to their capacity
to take military action against the nuclear program. And so he does it
after the 60 day thing. That gives him some pretext to
say, I let this diplomacy go. They have not even
really presented, like, any kind of
detailed intelligence case that suggests
an imminence of Iran having a nuclear weapon. He said the kind of same
things he always does. JON STEWART: He’s been doing
that for about 30 years now, I believe. BEN RHODES: He’s been–
yeah, he’s playing the hits. JON STEWART: They’re
coming tomorrow. They got it tomorrow. BEN RHODES: This is the
problem is nobody can credibly say that, like, if they
didn’t do this today, Iran was gonna do
something tomorrow. The only thing that
was looming was this Witkoff meeting in Oman. And Trump, I think, has
been hurriedly trying to get on board with
what is happening to him in terms of Netanyahu
having changed the dynamic. And he doesn’t want
to admit that he just got rolled by Netanyahu. And now he’s being rolled
all the way potentially into joining the war, you know? We can talk about all the
different dimensions of that. I can tell you, Jon,
that as someone who’s been in simulations
of what would happen in precisely this scenario– JON STEWART: When you
say been in simulations, what do you mean by that? BEN RHODES: It means
essentially you war game out what would happen
if the Israelis bombed the Iranian nuclear facilities. JON STEWART: So these
are sort of AI generated or computer simulated. Here’s where the
casualties would be. Here’s what would occur. BEN RHODES: Or people run them. You know, people
can run them who know a lot about this stuff. It always leads to
Israel asking the United States to bomb this facility. And it almost always leads
to regime change in Iran because it’s like, well, why
would we stop now, you know? And so we’re on the–
people have been thinking about this for a long time. And we’re on the
ride right now. And the question
is, can we get off? JON STEWART: Right. And the facility
you’re talking about is that one nuclear
facility that is buried in a mountain
that apparently can only be reached
by United States bunker busting weaponry, yes? Fordew, I believe it’s called? BEN RHODES: Fordow. And for all the talk about
how sophisticated the Israeli operation has been, if
you don’t blow up Fordow, you’ve only set the Iranian
nuclear program back, like, a few months. And so obviously,
they’re gonna want us to get the underground
facility that only we can hit. We are the only people that
have a bunker buster bomb that can get at that facility,
the only people that have planes that can drop it. And frankly, we don’t
even know that it would destroy it entirely. That’s how deep
underground this thing is. JON STEWART: Right. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: In
answer to your question, Jon, about did
the Iranians know they had a 60 day
deadline, no, according to the deputy foreign minister. JON STEWART: Well, I mean, they
were all gonna meet in Oman, I mean, on day 63. So what’s the point? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Well, right. And Ben will remember that
it took, I don’t know, 18 months to get the Obama
administration– called the JCPOA, the nuclear deal– that was a perfectly
reasonable and manageable and verifiable arms control deal. JON STEWART: Signed
off on, by the way, by the world’s
other countries– Russia, China. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: By the UN. Exactly. Yeah. JON STEWART: I
mean, this was not a bilateral deal between
the United States and Iran. This was a multilateral.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Exactly. But the key here, and
Ben alluded to it, is that Prime
Minister Netanyahu has never believed in negotiation. Just like he does not believe
in a Palestinian state, he does not believe in
negotiating security around Iran’s nuclear program. He believes in wiping it
out and regime destruction, as we’ve just been mentioning. But there has been
successful diplomacy. They all say, oh,
diplomacy failed. But no, in 2015, under
the Obama administration, actually it succeeded. And then there was
this concerted campaign to topple it. And that’s what
caused Trump to pull out of it when he was in 1.0. So Trump pulling out
of this nuclear deal set the Iran’s off on,
you know, more enrichment. So now they have hundreds of
kilograms of 60% enrichment as part of a
bargaining technique or to show their capability. But even the
American intelligence community– and Tulsi Gabbard
said it again this week. We assess that they have not
made a decision to go to a bomb or to weaponize and
that even if they did, it would take a
number of years. She was slapped
around by Trump. And now she says, oh,
no, I have no daylight between me and Trump. So it’s all very confusing. [MUSIC PLAYING] pulled out in I believe–
what was it, 2018, I think when they did that? Was that at the behest
of Israel as well? Or were there other forces
that had asked or was that merely a knee jerk
reaction to anything that Obama did, I will
undo, and therefore I’m gonna pull out? Do you know what the
lead up to pulling out of that deal entailed? BEN RHODES: I would say it was
a convergence of those factors, that Trump wanted to
dismantle anything Obama did, but that Israel and kind
of hawkish types in the US wanted us out of the deal
from the day we were in it. I think what’s
important to note, Jon, about that is that Trump
wanted to find that Iran was not complying with the deal. And if you recall, he kept
asking for that report. And his own administration,
including guys like Jim Mattis, you know, his
secretary of defense, kept saying, well,
no, actually Iran is complying with this deal. You shouldn’t pull out. And then ultimately, he
kind of overruled his more, you know,
conventional but still hawkish advisors to pull out. But I think it was, you
know, Trump’s instinct was, I’m just going to get out
of whatever deal Obama was in, because the deal that he
was negotiating with Witkoff sounded very similar to
the JCPOA, the Iran deal. JON STEWART: Of course. BEN RHODES: You know, he
wasted a decade on this and, frankly, led
us to a place where we might end up
in a war because of that antipathy for Obama. JON STEWART: Christiane,
is that your understanding of how things went down? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yes. You know, you could say, if you
wanted to be really generous, that Witcoff had come
up with another plan and it was about this
sort of consortium whereby they would try to let
Iran say that it could still enrich but maybe not
right on Iranian soil but maybe in an island. Anyway, it was to try to
thread all the needles, to go into another deal that was
not exactly Obama’s deal, but it was similar. But it had this thing which
said Iran cannot enrich. So how were they
going to resolve that, because Iran
believes that to be their fundamental
international right? And so that was what
was being worked out. JON STEWART: Especially
given that Israel has nuclear weapons. And America has– and everyone
else has nuclear weapons. And North Korea has– CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well,
that’s the thing, Jon. Jon, you just hit on something
really, really vital, because one of the
unintended consequences– and there are always unintended
consequences in a war that is not planned out, in a war
that has no exit strategy, in a war that has
actually no big strategy other than let’s set back or
maybe let’s have regime change. Some say that if this regime
survives that they will then– it will be a self-fulfilling
prophecy, that they may, like North Korea, decide
to go in secret, to get out of the IAEA, the
NPT, the inspections, and actually to become a
nuclear power because they’ve been shown by Israel that
their conventional weapons are useless. JON STEWART: Not
enough of a deterrent. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
And this shadow war– yeah. So it could have a kind of
a worse negative impact. JON STEWART: And I want
to step back for a second and talk about the macro
idea of risk assessment within this world. The one thing about Israel
that I truly do not understand is this idea of they won’t
live in a world of risk. But we live in a world of risk. There is no zero risk. It’s this idea of if there is
one suicide attack that is done by a Palestinian, well,
then we must remove Hamas, or we must wage war
until we are safe. And that just seems like
a fundamentally flawed– the United States certainly
lives in a world of risk. Russia has nuclear weapons. China has nuclear weapons. North Korea has
nuclear weapons. They have all expressed
at different times antipathy towards the
United States or a desire to use them, in
North Korea’s case, against the United States. So this idea that we can create
a world where there is no risk, it seems that what they create
is a world of instability where everything is at risk. BEN RHODES: Yes. JON STEWART: And so
I just want to get at the underlying fundamental
principle that is being deployed here that’s causing
such destruction in Gaza and all of this death as
though you can create a world of no risk through violence. It makes no sense to me. Ben, what is your thought
on that larger principle? BEN RHODES: I think you
put your finger on it. There’s two things
I’d say about this, because the first
is that there’s been an Iranian nuclear
program for decades. And Israel has lived with that. And Israel has done quite
well in that world, right? And what we were trying to do
is put a lid on that program and make sure they
can’t get a weapon. The risk is them having
a nuclear weapon. JON STEWART: Transparency
and verification. BEN RHODES: Yeah. Them having a nuclear
weapon, now, that’s a different level of risk. But them having a few
centrifuges operating– if you have transparency,
verification, you got inspectors all
over there, you’re looking at the
whole supply chain, like, that’s a level
of risk that you should be able to live with. And my concern is in
trying to remove all risk, Israel is creating
more risk for itself in the sense of if you– JON STEWART: For everybody. BEN RHODES: For everybody. If you remove that
government through violence, it doesn’t– we saw
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the
Obama years, you get something usually worse. You either get the IRGC, the
worst guys with guns in Iran, will be the strongest guys. Or you get kind of a
failed state civil war in a country of over
90 million people with no plan for
what comes next. You also could get a
situation where, you know, even what we’ve seen in
Gaza, do we really think that’s gonna bring
meaningful, quote unquote, “peace” over time? JON STEWART: Or that you
can bomb a people out of wanting to be free. BEN RHODES: Yeah. JON STEWART: What if Netanyahu
decides he’s actually the biggest threat to Israel? Does he have to bomb
himself at that point? BEN RHODES: Well, but this
leads to the second point I was gonna make,
because we can get into, like, they’re creating
enemies for the future. One of the things I hate about
our discourse on this stuff is if the negative consequences
don’t happen next week, it’s like, well, look.
See? That worked. Well, wars usually– like,
the price comes due 5 years, 10 years out, right? Iraq took a while. It looked great when the
statue fell in Baghdad, right? But the second thing I
think that’s important here is they’re
changing the nature– a country that does what
they’re doing in Gaza or a country they’ve now gone
to war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran. That’s not healthy. And their society is
moving to the far right. I think there’s a synergy
between what you’re doing abroad with violence and
the kind of government you have at home. And so it’s not just the
risks of their foreign policy. It’s the risks of what this
is doing to Israeli society and democracy, because–
JON STEWART: Right. What does it turn you into? BEN RHODES: I have people
I know who are like hawks. And they’re like, well, I don’t
like what Netanyahu’s doing with democracy in Israel. But I support, you know, all
these other things he’s doing. I’m like, no, those
things are connected. [LAUGHS] He’s
consolidating what feels like a far
right extremist, you know, political
system in Israel. JON STEWART: And a
dehumanization of anybody that is– and you bring up
such an interesting point. And, Christiane, I want
to get to this with you. It talks about the
unforeseen consequences that roil future events
that don’t seem to be connected years later. And I want to go back
to this because people don’t talk about this enough. In 1953, the CIA, along with
British Petroleum and the UK government, overthrew
Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was the democratically
elected leader of Iran. They destabilized that country,
allowed the Shah of Iran to gain control for
so-called because he was Western friendly. Did we not sow the seeds for
this entire nightmare ourselves in 1953 to some extent? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
As you know, that coup was the
first of America’s many coups throughout the ’50s and
’60s and even into the ’70s. In Africa, you know,
Lumumba was killed. In Central America,
all over in Brazil, they supported
military dictatorships. It was a dreadful,
dreadful time. And it all backfired
against the US. In fact, it’s said– and I was there during this,
the 1978-79 Iranian revolution. They brought this up over
and over and over again. This is one of the reasons
that they were motivated to, you know, rebel and
rise up against the Shah and also to essentially
blame the United States in great part. Now, we’ve moved many,
many decades on from that. And I think the high point was
the 2015 JCPOA, because it’s a very difficult relationship. And the United States and Iran
were not yet ready to address all the issues. But I can tell you from my
own personal perspective that as a reporter, I met with
all these top level Iranians for decades, ever since 1995. I was the first into
the nuclear plant that was a civilian
nuclear plant called Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. I’m the first and the only one
to have interviewed almost all the Iranian presidents,
including the so-called reform presidents. Over these decades,
many, many officials have said to me,
background, you know, off the record and this
and that, and even on camera that they wanted to make– peace maybe not the
right word, but to close the file of conflict with the
United States on all issues– on terrorism, on missiles,
on nuclear and everything. But they wanted to
get into negotiations. But as Ben knows, this
was scuttled many times by hardliners in the United
States, hardliners in Iran, and hardliners in Israel. So that was never possible. So the JCPOA was the single– the only major negotiation
that came out of 40 years of this Iranian revolution. As you know,
nobody in the world wants to see a
nuclear armed Iran. Iran says it doesn’t
want a nuclear weapon. Intelligence says it
hasn’t got one right now. It hasn’t made a
decision to get one. There was a time– and
again, I was in conversation with a senior Iranian
during the post 9/11 time in Afghanistan. And this Iranian called me in. And he said, because, you know,
there was the whole invasion of Iraq and all the rest
of it based on a fear that they had weapons
of mass destruction, which proved not to be true. And we know the backlash. But this Iranian
told me, yes, we did have a serious discussion
in the leadership about whether we should weaponize. But then we decided not to
because that would make it much more dangerous for
us in the region and in our very
dangerous neighborhood. So they decided not to. And that’s what
intelligence says. Since 2003, there’s
no evidence of that. So I think that this is a
really difficult situation between Iran, Israel,
and the United States that requires
not Trump saying, I can fix it in 60 days, or– what did he say? Overnight between Russia
and Ukraine or fix Gaza. It requires staffing,
experts, technical expertise, and patience to negotiate. JON STEWART: Christiane,
he’s got one guy. Witkoff must be a platinum
miles member right now. He’s got one guy. Marco Rubio is doing
five different– he’s like the secretary
of state, the NSA. I think he’s the ombudsman. He’s the parliamentarian
now for the Senate. Like, they are understaffed. They DOGEd themselves out of
having any ability to carry out the complexity of
the tasks that they need to be carried out. And so these are all shortcuts. And it seems like
the easiest thing to subvert in the
world is peace. It seems like, as Ben
talked earlier– and Ben, I want to ask you this because
it’s hard liners can easily– if we remember in Iraq,
Hans Blix had gone in. And they were going
to be inspecting all the sites that had supposed
weapons of mass destruction. And we had a process in place
that would’ve avoided the chaos and carnage of those 20 years
in Iraq, in Afghanistan, all those places. And it was easily subverted. Ben, how fragile are
these moves towards a more stable, peaceful
world when hard liners are involved in the room? BEN RHODES: The problem is our
politics in this country is so messed up on national security
that it was much harder to get the Iran deal through
Congress than it was to take this country to war in Iraq. JON STEWART: Why is that,
Ben, when you say it’s harder to get that peace
deal through than war? What is messed up about it? BEN RHODES: Well, first
of all, peace– we could have a long conversation
about all the factors that influence American politics. But I would just say peace
is inherently messy, right? Like, the Iran
nuclear deal, sure. Like, it didn’t remove the
entire Iranian nuclear program. So it’s easy to kind of
shoot at a target of, like– this is a compromise. This is a deal
between adversaries. You make peace with
your adversaries. You know, these are bad people. Why are you even
talking to these people? Well, you know, because you
make peace with the bad guys. JON STEWART: Right.
Sort of how it works. Right. BEN RHODES: It’s not hard
to make a deal with the UK. Like, you know, even
Trump could do that. Whereas a war, you
kind of promise that it’s gonna look good. And we’re gonna take
out these bad guys. And actually, it usually
looks good at the beginning of the war, right?
JON STEWART: Right. Right. BEN RHODES: You know, at the
beginning, it’s like, oh, look, the Israelis are
killing all these guys. And wow, Mossad had
drones in Tehran. Isn’t that cool? But to your point, the coup
in 1953 looked pretty good. You know? It was like, wow, we got
our guy back in there. And now that Iranian
oil and gas is flowing, there’s no war– no
concern about them being on the wrong side
of the Cold War, you know? Well, you know, 1979,
it didn’t look good. And so I think
that the problem is we are so short term in our
thinking and our response. And I’ll fault the
Democratic Party here. You can sense the
kind of fear in some of these Democratic
politicians right now. It’s like, well, if I oppose
this Israeli military strike or oppose the US getting
involved, you know, am I picking a fight
with Netanyahu? Or will I be called weak? Maybe this strike
is gonna look good. And then Trump’s gonna,
like, say, I’m weak. Stand for something. If we haven’t learned anything
from the last 25 years, we’ve learned that
violence in the Middle East is unlikely to lead
to better outcomes. And certainly the
violent removal of governments by the
United States or Israel, for that matter, is gonna
lead to a better government. Like, I don’t know
how many countries we have to try that
out in before we learn that that is not what works. And so I think,
you know, opponents need to simplify the message. And Christiane will
remember, she can attest. When we said in the Obama
years that it’s either this deal or a war, we
were called, you know, how dare you say that. Well, that was the case,
because either you’re gonna have a deal over
this nuclear program, or Israel was gonna
do something like this and try to get the United
States involved in that war. That’s where Trump is now. Trump is either
gonna join this war, or he’s gonna try to stop it. And that is such a
consequential choice. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
And I think you guys saw this in your administration. Netanyahu, as I said, has been
trying to do this for decades. No other American president
allowed him to do it. Everyone restrained him. He came to Congress
and was given the floor to address
Republicans practically only to dis the JCPOA. He did–
JON STEWART: He had charts. I think he even went to Kinko’s
and got some bomb charts. He drew little pictures. BEN RHODES: Cartoon bombs. JON STEWART: Yeah. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yeah. I mean, it’s an
absolute now successful strategy against negotiations
and against getting a deal. And I think that this is– you
know, you talk about peace. It is hard. But look at what the
US was able to do, for instance, with the
parties in Northern Ireland. Look at what the
South Africans were able to do after apartheid. Look at any number. Look at Oslo. I know Oslo has not come
to fruition, and we wish we were back in the mid ’90s. But that was, you know,
all sides getting together with really vested, honest
brokers and third parties, whether it was the US, whether
it was the Oslo negotiators. And the parties on the
ground decided to come, and they got the help
to move towards peace. Bosnia. I mean, it’s not perfect. But after– you know,
I covered that war. There was a US brokered end. And you know, it’s tenuous,
but it’s not back to war. And so it is possible. Politicians and leaders have
to decide whether they want to do that or whether they want
to react in this kind of easier way, as Ben was laying out. And, you know, whatever you
might say about President Biden and about should he have
restrained Israel more given what’s going on in Gaza,
on the day that he landed in Israel after October
7 and the horrors that were committed
there, he told them, don’t do what we did in Iraq. Don’t go for revenge. Look what it’s going to–
look what happened to us. You know, self-defense. But don’t go crazy
like we did in Iraq, because look at the blowback. And it’s been severe. JON STEWART: Why do you think
that politicians are more likely to be OK owning the
years of instability and chaos that occurs from these types
of military interventions, but they are afraid
to own whatever even singular incidents
might be the result of peace? In other words, no
politician seems to want to make the peace
deal if there might be a suicide bombing that occurs. I’m not suggesting that
that’s a wonderful outcome. But they seem much more willing
to own the years of instability and the long term deleterious
effects of these kinds of interventions than they
would have the courage that when you make peace,
peace is not oftentimes final, idealized serenity. There will be spasms of
violence within that. Is that the fear
that they have? They don’t want to
own those outcomes? Or is that not in
the calculation? Ben, you know. You were in the room when
these things were going on. I’m only saying that in a way
of, like, you know, in Israel, the only person– when
they tried to make peace, there were assassinations. Sadat was assassinated. Rabin was assassinated. You know, that’s
how things roll. But if you make peace,
if you shake hands, and then there’s a bombing, now
suddenly everybody says, see? You never should’ve done that. But nobody goes
back and says, this is a nightmare of instability. BEN RHODES: I
think that this has been a huge issue in American
politics for a long time. And again, it comes back
to the point that he’s– like LBJ, even though
it was evident in 1965 that, you know, we were
unlikely to defeat North Vietnam in South
Vietnam, right, that the Vietnamese people
didn’t want us there, that the South Vietnamese
government was corrupt, he was afraid of, you
know, essentially pulling out and being told,
well, look, this guy, you know, he
wasn’t tough enough to stand up to these guys. And because he
escalated, he destroyed his own capacity to do the
Great Society, you know? So in other words,
he was more afraid of the much smaller cost. And I think part of– I think the reason is,
Jon, is that everybody can see what the cost is going
to be to doing the peace deal. You’re gonna be called
weak by all these people. You know, there’s
gonna be holes in it. But what they don’t see is
that the costs are usually deferred to doing the war. And again, so I think it
interacts with this kind of short term way in which
we think about these things in our politics. If you look at, you know,
Israeli and Palestinian leaders even, you know, Rabin is
the only Israeli leader who was like, you know what? Like, I’ve fought
in all these wars. And I’m gonna take this
risk and make this peace. And guess what? He was assassinated, you know,
by a right wing extremist, right?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yeah. BEN RHODES: And so
sometimes people are afraid to make peace
because the peacemakers have been targeted in some
of these places too, right? So that’s a more extreme
version of getting criticized politically. But in the US, I just think,
you know, this default to, like– you know, despite
the fact that– one other thing I want to
say is that every American– I worked for Obama in ’08. He ran as the
anti-war candidate. The American people
keep telling us through their elections
who they want, the kind of leaders they
want, or leaders who don’t get us into these wars. And yet politicians
have not absorbed that lesson, apparently. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And it
looks like Trump is struggling. I don’t know. But I mean, every
time I look around, there’s another Trump
thing saying, oh, you know, Ayatollah says he
won’t surrender. Good luck to him. And then, but I wanted
to not go to war. I wanted to be the
peace candidate. I wanted the Nobel Prize,
et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it’s just– we’re just
not sure what’s coming out. JON STEWART: Yeah, why
is it easier to own war than to own peace? I don’t understand that. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Ehud Barak– also a military
man, prime minister, defense minister, head of the
Israeli army, chief of staff– he made one of the most
far reaching offers to the Palestinians back at
the famous Camp David of 2000, you know, with Yasser Arafat
and Clinton, et cetera. And Arafat couldn’t get
himself over the line I think partly because
he was afraid of being assassinated like Assad was. But I also think they
missed a huge opportunity. And once Netanyahu
came back, it’s been– no way has
there been any effort to make any peace deal. And then I’d say another thing. People are never incorporated. The Iranian people for
45 years have never been mentioned, not by
Israel, not by the West, not by the United States. It’s all been about
terrorism, this and that. Nobody has thought
about the people. We have been so dehumanized,
so delegitimized. Now Netanyahu’s saying,
rise up, you know, and using the slogan and
saying, “zan, zendegi, azadi–” “woman, life, freedom.” I mean, when did you ever
care about the Iranian people? Likewise, when did anybody–
the entire body politic care about the
Palestinian people? JON STEWART: And by
the way, as difficult as the Iranian people’s
relationship is with their
government– and nobody is making the case that the
Ayatollah is a great dude and has brought, you know,
real progress to them. Boy, if you want to
get a people to unify with their government–
BEN RHODES: Yeah. JON STEWART: –even
those that have an incredibly fragile
relationship with that government bomb them. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Well, you know, the deputy foreign
minister said exactly that, because I said,
you know, people are unhappy with
your regime, and they have been for a long time. And the rest of the
world is watching to see whether this is
finally going to lead to the end of your regime. And he said to me, Christiane,
people may have a lot of problems with our policies. But as you just said, once they
are bombed by a foreign entity, then they coalesce. Look, I will say that
is also complicated. There are– I would say the
majority of the people of Iran want a different
kind of government. They want freedom. They want to be able to
have electricity and heat and travel and have–
you know, pay their bills and all that other stuff. And some may even be hoping
that this Israeli attack will lead to some kind of freedom. But the majority,
as we’re reading, or those who are
commenting online, are actually more rallying
around the flag at this time. So I think that’s
something also potential unintended
consequence that we don’t know where that’s going to lead. But I would say leaving
out the human equation, the human factor in any of these– you know, any of
these situations just proves that actually
people don’t care about people. They just don’t. JON STEWART: Boy howdy. And as you see this–
you know, and it brings up an interesting– I want to talk about
one other dynamic. And I so appreciate you guys
spending the time with this. So we’ve talked
about Israel, Iran, the United States, the sort of
fraught relationship between. I want to talk a little bit
about the Sunni world within this and more
Saudi Arabia’s kind of the– and maybe even Egypt
as kind of more the central– I am confused as
to who’s proxy. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: [LAUGHS] JON STEWART: –in any–
is Israel our proxy? Are we Israel’s proxy? Is Saudi Arabia and that world? Because if anybody is
going to be pleased– and I know that they have
to send out the diplomatic missives stating to the other. But if anybody is
pleased in this moment, I would assume it’s
the Saudi group that is constantly at battle
with the Shia world really. Now, that–
BEN RHODES: Yeah, so– yeah. This has changed, Jon, a bit.
Yeah. JON STEWART: OK. BEN RHODES: So MBS has actually
evolved on this thing a bit. And it gets to your
thing about risk. JON STEWART: Right. BEN RHODES: MBS got spooked
a few years ago when the Iranians
demonstrated that they could hit Saudi oil fields. And the Emiratis also got
spooked when the Iranians demonstrated that they might
be able to hit, you know, Abu Dhabi or Dubai. And so what the
Saudis did in 2023 is they normalized
relations with Iran. And I think it’s not
because they like them. It’s not because MBS has
any love for this regime. He doesn’t. He loathes them. But if this war
goes off the rails, right, if the
Iranians feel like we have no choice but
to lash out, they could bomb Saudi oil fields. They could just become
nihilists and say, you know what? We’re gonna burn it
all down with us. You know? And you’re gonna get sucked
into the quicksand of this war, too. And, you know, these
guys have a good thing going right now in the gulf. They don’t want to
mess with it, you know? JON STEWART: So do they now
see Israel as more of a threat to that than– I always assumed that they
saw Iran as more of a threat– Iran and through Iran,
Russia, as more of a threat to their supremacy
in the region and would rather
surreptitiously work with Israel. BEN RHODES: That’s
how it’s been. JON STEWART: In your
mind, has that flipped? BEN RHODES: That’s how
it’s certainly been. But I think it’s been evolving. And now, given all that
Israel has been doing, I actually think
that it’s beginning to flip not everywhere
in the gulf, like– but I think the
Saudis are looking at this and thinking, this is just
creating a lot of risk, right? There’s more risk
in what Israel is doing now than in living
with the Iranian regime. And secondly, if you
look at Gaza, like, these guys have large
populations of younger people that are completely outraged
about the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians
and children in Gaza, and precisely because they are
gonna be around for a while. I guess as a young guy, if
he’s thinking about the risks to his potential
rule and legitimacy, the anger over what’s gonna
happen to the Palestinians, particularly if they end up
getting ethnically cleansed, and we get–
people get in there and find hundreds of
thousands of people killed, and the disorder of
what’s happening in Iran ultimately begins to pose
a bigger threat to him than the Iranian regime. Christiane, you
report on this, so. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
I think you’re right. And I think that
something that solidified the Saudi risk
appetite was when Trump did not come to their aid. Do you remember after Iran
did hit the Abqaiq gas field or whatever it was, the energy
target during that time, they– oh, my God. You know, who’s our ally here? And notably, back in
the October, you know, missile exchange
between Iran and Israel, you had all these countries,
including Arab countries, saying that, hey, we are
defending– you know, we’re helping strike
down Iranian missiles. Today?
JON STEWART: Right. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Nada. OK? No allies. Not the Europeans,
not the Arabs. So Israel is on its own
with the United States right now, as far
as we can gather. And that goes to the heart
of what Ben mentioned. And it’s about Gaza right now. Israel, which
would have wanted– and Saudi, which would have
wanted the normalization deal, cannot do it. Saudi cannot do it while
Israel is still in Gaza, while it’s still
slaughtering civilians. And every single
day, we get pictures on our feeds and statistics
of children, women, and men being killed just at the
aid distribution site. I mean, dozens a day. JON STEWART:
There’s I think 140 killed just yesterday
within a 24 hour period at these aid sites.
It’s insane. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
And the settlers running rampage in the West Bank. JON STEWART: But why then– guys, you know, for MBS, who
is assuming this sort of larger role within as a statesman
not just in Saudi Arabia but in the larger Middle East,
why then is there passivity? Because it is– look, they
could’ve very easily– the idea that Gaza is being
left to be brokered by Israel and the United States clearly
is not going to in any way help the Palestinian
people avoid this just God awful carnage
that they’re living through. Why hasn’t MBS and that part of
the world been more forceful? You know, they
all– like I say, they throw out the missives. That’s why in my mind,
I think to myself, well, ultimately, they
must be OK with this. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Well, I mean, look. Ben will– but as for me,
it’s been my first question I ask every Arab leader. It’s a shameful
dereliction of their duty as well, which
doesn’t mean to say, unlike Mike Huckabee
is suggesting, the ambassador to
Israel for the US, that it’s the Arab
countries who should give the Palestinians their state. But it does mean that they’ve
never given them, you know, citizenship. They’ve kept them in, quote
unquote, “refugee camps.” And they have not
done what you just suggested– use their
influence, their strength. JON STEWART: That’s what
I don’t under– that’s what I don’t understand. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
They tried in 2002 the so-called, you know,
Arab Saudi Arabia peace plan. And it was rejected– JON STEWART: Which, by
the way, could still– could still be in effect.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yes. JON STEWART: Why does Israel
have a veto on all this? That’s what I don’t– why
are we continuing to allow Israel purely to
have a veto based on their sense of security? Why is everyone else’s security
secondary to their sense of it? BEN RHODES: I think that they– I mean, there’s layers to this. You know, there’s no love
for Hamas, obviously, in Riyadh and Saudi Arabia. JON STEWART: Right. Or anywhere. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yeah.
BEN RHODES: Or anywhere. But is there even, like–
there’s not a lot of confidence in the Palestinian Authority. There’s a lot of– but I
think one of the reasons, Jon, is at the end of the day,
they believe that the US will back whatever Israel does. And so why do they want
to stick their neck out for the Palestinians when– JON STEWART: So they don’t
want to own the peace. It goes back to what
we talked about. They won’t own the peace. BEN RHODES: They don’t want
to own the peace because– but they don’t trust Netanyahu,
who’s gonna make peace. So why should they
spend a lot of capital? Now, they tried to
kind of shortcut this thing with
the Abraham Accords where the Saudis stayed out of. The Emiratis are kind of like,
well, let’s make this deal. We’ll normalize
relations, which was not really a peace deal. It’s, like, direct flights
and commercial relations. Because the peace has to be
made with the Palestinians, not the Emiratis, you know?
JON STEWART: Right. BEN RHODES: And
that– you know, I think some people sincerely
believe that maybe that would, like, pull this issue into
kind of a broader context where the Palestinians could
do economic development and everyone in this
region’s gonna get rich. Well, it turns
out, to your point, Jon, earlier, people
want to be free. And they want to be free in
the places that they live. And the Palestinians didn’t
get anything out of a deal where the Emiratis are
making business deals with the Israelis, right? And there’s just
not an Arab leader that has been able
to speak to that or has been willing
to go out on a limb and speak to that, because they
frankly think if they go out on that limb, the US and
Israel are gonna [INAUDIBLE] it off at the end of the day. JON STEWART: Christiane,
I know you have to go. And so we’re gonna let you. What does pulling back
from the precipice look like in your mind? And how could that be achieved
in these next, you know, tumultuous days? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Well, from my perspective, having just talked to the
Iranian foreign minister, so from their perspective,
they’re one party to this, if it stops, they’ll go
back to negotiations. He told me, we haven’t
given up on negotiations. So– JON STEWART: And
what does escalation look like on the Iranian part? Like, what do you think
they’re willing to do? CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, he
wouldn’t tell me straight out. But they have threatened
if the US gets involved– and as Ben laid out, the
US has a lot of bases. It has 40,000
troops, I believe, or something like that,
personnel in that region. JON STEWART: And more. Right now, we’re
sending more in. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yeah. And, you know, it’s considered
that Iraq or militias in Iraq, Iran backed
militias are perhaps the first line of attack
on various, you know, American targets. But it’s not gonna be good. JON STEWART: Ben,
your final word on what you think
de-escalation could look like and, in your mind,
how that could be accomplished. BEN RHODES: De-escalation
involves the United States stepping in and saying
Israel has to stop the military operation. And we’re going to make a
nuclear deal with the Iranians. And the Iranians, you
know, get crappy terms. And this thing is just
kind of put on the freezer. If it doesn’t happen– and I think if the
US bombs Fordow, to end where
Christiane started, there’s real, meaningful
pride in Iran. It’s a revolutionary
government. It’s a government that went
through the Iran-Iraq war. So the idea of
unconditional surrender, as Trump, like,
you know, tweeted, is just not in their DNA. JON STEWART: Or any country’s. BEN RHODES: Or any country’s. And again, the concept–
look, we might not see– like, maybe they go underground
with their nuclear program, and they pretend like
they’re making deals. But they pop up in a year
or two like North Korea did with a nuclear weapon. Maybe the response comes
through an immediate flood of attacks against US service
members or oil fields. Maybe it comes later
in terrorist actions. But the idea that this is
gonna be neat and clean and that they’re just
gonna surrender, or that– I saw Newt Gingrich
post, now’s the time for a moderate, inclusive,
secular, Democratic government in Iran. I’m like, we don’t
even have one of those in the United States, right? JON STEWART: By the way, they
had it, and we overthrew it. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR:
Not in Israel either. JON STEWART: Right. BEN RHODES: Not
in Israel either. Right? So the idea that,
like– yeah, the regime change thing is the
catastrophic success, right? But it’s the Iranian people
that to replace it, you know? And I worry about a
failed state in Iran. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And I
would like to say, just a plug for myself and my new podcast. I do this with my
ex-husband on this episode, which has just dropped. All the behind
the scenes stuff. JON STEWART: Oh, Christiane,
truly professional. Well done. That was cherry. Ben Rhodes, co-host
Pod Save the World, former deputy national security
advisor to President Obama. Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s
chief international anchor, host of the new
podcast Christiane and the X-files with
Jamie Rubin, which is talking about
this very topic, as Christiane just mentioned. Guys, thanks so much
for spending the time. I know it’s a really fraught
time for both of you. So thanks. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Thanks
for you taking the time. BEN RHODES: Thanks, Jon. [MUSIC PLAYING] JON STEWART: Boy,
I want to thank Ben and Christiane for being here. You know, you’re in
the middle of it. And you just know that
their phones are dinging the whole time because they’re
in the midst of actually talking to the relevant
players within this fiasco and hearing in real
time, as Christiane was saying, on the phone with
the deputy foreign ministers of Iran. But the one thing
that struck me was the ease in which
de-escalation can take place. And for some reason, that being
the moment that’s fraught, that peace is more
fraught than war in the immediate moment
of political gain, whether it’s even for
the regime in Iran, whose own people rose up against
it time and time again, who they’ve had to
physically put down, whether it was based on the
Green Revolution that took place or the Mahsa Amini– and I hope I’m pronouncing
that correctly, Mahsa Amini– that sparked so much
protest and unfortunately violence within that country. And you see how
war is in some ways their answer to
coalescing their people. It’s a stunning
kind of realization that it’s easier for
these so-called leaders to live in war than
to live in peace. Anyway, I appreciate
both of them taking the time to enlighten
us in those issues. I want to thank our
folks, as always, for helping me put
on the podcast. Lead producer Lauren Walker,
producer Brittany Mehmedovic, video editor and engineer
Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer
Nicole Boyce, who’s gonna have a time on this one. I’m pretty sure Ben’s
mic was going in and out. So Nicole, I am so sorry. Researcher and associate
producer Gillian Spear and our
executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thank you for listening. And we shall see
you again next week. Oh boy. [MUSIC PLAYING] The Weekly Show
with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It’s produced by Paramount
Audio and Busboy Productions.

Amid growing fears about where the Israel-Iran conflict leads, Jon is joined by Ben Rhodes, co-host of “Pod Save the World” and former Deputy National Security Advisor, and Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s Chief International Anchor and host of “Christiane and The Ex Files with Jamie Rubin.” Together, they trace the complex history that brought us to this moment, examine Trump’s response to the escalation, and explore why achieving peace remains far more challenging than waging war. Plus, Jon weighs in on the Trump administration incompetence that got us here.

Go to https://groundnews.com/stewart to see how any news story is being framed by news outlets around the world and across the political spectrum. Use my link to get 40% off unlimited access with the Vantage Subscription.

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On Mondays, Jon Stewart hosts The Daily Show, but on Thursdays he hosts The Weekly Show — A podcast featuring in- depth conversations with special guests that explores the biggest threats to our democracy. Also hear from producers and friends of the show who discuss the latest headlines, what’s on their minds, and more!

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