'Send a Warrant To TRUMP!’ US REJECTS Iran Plan | With Former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett

25:35So yes, you can have a critical assessment of the US operation. That does not mean that internally and domestically, the country is where its leadership wants it to be.

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26:22Piers Morgan:That's code Piers at CozyEarth.com for 20 % off. And remember to tell them that I sent you. Paul Rykoff, I mean, it seems to me that what is most interesting to observe is the failure so far of any kind of uprising by the Iranian people, which suggests that the IRGC still maintain a tight control and there's a fear of that. And obviously they also don't want to be hit by flying bombs and so on going over the cities. But there has been no uprising at the moment. So the idea of a regime change seems a long way away, if not impossible. But the Strait of Hormuz issue has become a global emergency.

27:07Piers Morgan:I was reading today one of the Saudi executives, I think from one of the oil companies, saying that every week that goes by now is ever more catastrophic for the flow of global oil, gas and general energy and fertilizer and so on. And although some ships are getting let through, that's only with Iran's control and agreement. So where do you think we are with this? We are in what I would call a sucking chest wound for America's military and economy that is now overflowing and impacting the rest of the world. And I think your question of the Iranian people is the right one to focus on because they're a very important barometer here.

27:50No matter what Donald Trump says, they will tell us when the regime, if the regime is gone. We will know. And right now they're smartly keeping their heads down because they can't trust the regime who has spent on killing them. And frankly, they can't trust Donald Trump who's killed a lot of them as well. So they're in a very, very difficult position. But back home, I think it's where you're seeing more and more people calling for a regime change, because Donald Trump has entered us into a war that is overwhelmingly unpopular. He's done something very, very special. He's actually united all Americans against him in this war.

28:19You've got the far MAGA right, you've got the far liberal left, and you've got the middle that two-thirds of Americans think this war was a mistake and don't support it. So Donald Trump got way ahead of his skis here, committing the military first and not committing the American public. And so far, he's been all gas, no brakes. There have been no guardrails in Congress. I think they've failed. So he's got another unauthorized, unpopular war. And now he's coming back to the table with Pete Hegseth to ask for more money. He spent already$25 billion. He wants a new defense budget that's$1.5 trillion, which is an additional$500 billion for Iran.

28:54And America doesn't want it. What they see is the Strait of Hormuz not open. They see the enriched uranium unsecured. They see the regime still in place. They see them still having military capacity. And maybe most importantly, back here in America, they see gas prices at$4.30 a gallon. And you've got 13 Americans dead, hundreds wounded. So most Americans don't think this was worth it. And American wars don't get more popular over time. They get less. And that's the trajectory of the popularity of this war. And Donald Trump's got a real political problem. But the rest of the world, as you smartly noted, has a serious and growing economic problem.

29:25Piers Morgan:Yeah, and I think this has been my concern from the start of this. It wasn't out of any great love for the Iranian regime, which I think has been a disgusting and oppressive regime from the day it took over in 79. Matt Kennard, let's look at the kind of asymmetric war going on involving the Strait of Hormuz, and we discussed that earlier. There's also an asymmetric war going on in terms of the aspirations and interests of America and Israel, it seems to me, where all the mood music coming out of Netanyahu, and we saw a bit of it with Naftali Bennett earlier, is that they believe this is nowhere near finished, this mission, that there cannot be any kind of victory until Iran's nuclear capability is destroyed and the enriched uranium has been removed.

30:14Piers Morgan:Now, I don't see that they're anywhere near doing either of those things, and nor is there any incentive right now for Iran to surrender those things voluntarily. So where are we? Because the pressure, as Paul Rykoff rightly observed just then, is piling on Donald Trump. I'm sure from the softening of his own rhetoric in the last few days, he's desperate to get out of this thing, but he doesn't quite know how to. And he's got the Israelis saying, we cannot just walk away. This job is only half finished. Yeah, I agree. And look, the whole enriched uranium nuclear program is a smokescreen. The reality of it is Israel has wanted the regime change in Iran since 79.

31:02Piers Morgan:So is parts of the U.S. government as well. And they're using the nuclear program as a way of trying to basically distract from the real purpose. And that's why, you know, they went in last year and there was a 12-day war. and that was called a success by the Israelis and the Americans. And we're back to where we were. And the other massive point is, look, we're talking about the strategy and who might win and who might lose. This was a major international war crime. This was a violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter. You can't just attack a country which is not a threat to you and it's not a threat to them.

31:37Piers Morgan:And they should be indicted for it. You know, we've already got the Prime Minister of Israel already has an arrest run out from the ICC. Another one should go out to Donald Trump. And I actually think it's a bit disgusting to talk about the war in these terms of how can we open the straightforward moves, blah, blah, blah. We're talking about a major international crime where the Americans and the Israelis killed nearly 200 schoolgirls. It's one of the first acts of the war. And they claim that it was a mistake, but it might not have even been a mistake. We've seen how the Israelis act. We've seen how the Americans act.

32:10Piers Morgan:And we've seen what they've done in Gaza, what they've done in Lebanon. They target civilians. They target kids. they want to send the impression that they will tolerate no resistance. So we're dealing with outlaw rogue states that need to be held in check. And the legal institutions can't do it. The ICC and West France have done nothing. In fact, European partners of Israel have not enforced it at all, even members of the ICC. So where do we go from there? We live in the law of the jungle now. And I think that the reason that this will carry on, the reason there's this breach, is because they don't even know what to do now.

32:42Piers Morgan:because they obviously believed going in hard, as you said, Netanyahu gave this PowerPoint presentation to Trump and said, look, the IRGC will collapse if we kill the Ayatollah. It didn't happen. So where do they go now? The uprising, which they've been trying to ferment, by the way, for years, and there was a good article in the Israeli press which came out in recent days about how Mossad has been fermenting unrest in Iran and was even involved in the December protests. It's not working. And as you said, this criminal attack has actually had the opposite impact. It's got people behind the government in Iran, people who previously weren't, because they see that they're being attacked by hostile, violent powers that want to take control of their country.

33:26Piers Morgan:Because why is Iran a threat? Iran's a threat because it's not under the control of the United States and Israel. The Gulf dictatorships, many of them are worse than the political situation in Iran. Look at Saudi Arabia. You get put to death for a tweet there. Who's the biggest supporters of Saudi Arabia? UK and US. So the whole human rights stuff is rubbish. The uranium nuclear program is rubbish. And look, here's I'll end with this. You led the charge against the war in Iraq, which was based around, or supposedly based around WMDs. That was completely false. So the nuclear deal is the same. It's part of the same dynamic.

34:03Piers Morgan:And look, Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence for Trump, She made a testimony in Congress in March 2025, where she said the intelligence community has come to the conclusion that Iran has no nuclear program, nuclear weapons program. That's Tusi Gabbard saying that. And then Trump obviously rubbished it a couple of months later. But we live swimming in propaganda. And so much of this war is propaganda. The real reason they are bombing Iran is they want to get rid of a government that does not do what they're told. OK, Colonel Kemp, I mean, there's a lot of people that share a lot of those views about this.

34:43Piers Morgan:You know, my view is slightly more nuanced in that I can understand, you know, for example, when the Iranian nuclear capability was attacked from the air last summer in that 12-day war, it seemed a very clean, surgical, effective military action with a specific purpose that we were told had been incredibly successful. Part of the failure of trust now is that we were told after that 12-day war their nuclear capability has been destroyed. And yet here we were back within just eight, nine months, launching a full war against Iran to get rid of their nuclear capability, which they were about to imminently deploy.

35:22Piers Morgan:And this reminded me of what happened with the Iraq war in 2003, which as editor of a Daily Mirror newspaper in the UK, I very loudly opposed, even though I had my own brother fighting in it when it started. But the reason was I wasn't convinced by the evidence that said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was about to use them and could hit London in 45 minutes, none of which turned out to be true. So those with long memories, you know, are very cynical about this. What would you say to try and reassure people who are cynical that Iran did have the nuclear capability, was about to use it?

36:04Piers Morgan:And how do you explain, if that is the case, that what happened last summer clearly wasn't a success after all? Well, I don't suggest that Iran was about to use a nuclear weapon. I don't think Iran had a nuclear weapon, but it was clearly. And I think, you know, even there are plenty of conspiracy theorists around who say that there is no such thing as an Iranian nuclear program. Well, I think the International Atomic Energy Agency would disagree with that. and has disagreed with that in its reports. I don't, to my mind, all the studying I've done, I have no doubt that Iran was working on a nuclear programme.

36:43Piers Morgan:And it's not just me who thinks that, it's not just the West who thinks that, but it's many countries in the Middle East who saw that programme in progress and were themselves taking steps to arm themselves against it. For example, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, all of them have been looking at the potential for their own nuclear weapons program in light of what Iran's got. And those people who say, oh, yeah, well, Israel's also got nuclear weapons. Well, it says it doesn't accept that it has, but I think most people agree it has. But none of these countries ever started to embark on their own nuclear weapons program in defense against an Israeli nuclear system.

37:25Piers Morgan:So it's Iran that's the press. And that's understood, I think, by it's certainly understood by the United States administration. It's understood by most of the Gulf states and it's understood, of course, by Israel. So I think that the reality is that there was a nuclear program. It was potentially going to become a nuclear weapon that's capable of being delivered, certainly around the region and potentially even further afield. And it had to be put a stop to. As far as the damage done in the 12-day war, I don't think anybody, no one that I read or heard in positions of authority around the US or elsewhere said that the 12-day war had completely destroyed Iran's nuclear.

38:10Piers Morgan:Donald Trump did. Maybe he did. I didn't see that. He said he'd been set back decades. He's the President of the United States. He was the one who basically ordered the strike. So the very most powerful and important person imaginable was the one who publicly declared, we have set back Iran's nuclear capability decades. It turned out we hadn't even set it back. Here's my point, though, Colonel Kemp. We hadn't, it turned out, even set it back eight months. And in fact, the threat seems to have worsened, according to those who support this war, to the degree there had to be an immediate massive strike and a war launched.

38:47Piers Morgan:And I find those two positions extremely inconsistent. How can we go from it's been set back decades with this triumphant series of airstrikes last summer, and now suddenly it's so perilous and imminent that we have to launch a massive war right now? Well, setting it back decades is not the same as destroying it. And the reality is that whatever President Trump may have said, Until you actually remove the capability of creating a nuclear program, you can't end it. And what that means in reality, Iran, even if you do remove all Iran's nuclear, sorry, enriched uranium, that doesn't end their program.

39:30Piers Morgan:The only thing that, in my view, will end an offensive nuclear program by Iran is the removal of this regime. And that, of course, is what most people desire. Most people who are fighting this war, anyway, desire. It's what Middle Eastern countries desire. It's what Israel desires. Right, but that has ceased to be one of the aims of the war because they all know it's not happening. It's not an aim. So they have very quickly moved away from talking about regime change. You don't hear any of them talking about regime change, certainly not on the American side, because President Trump knows from his own intelligence people there is no chance of this happening unless there's a massive commitment of troops on the ground, which is politically impossible for him.

40:13Piers Morgan:So I do think... I mean, we bring Benjamin Radd in here. I mean, I... Can I just say... Yeah. I don't think the regime change was a specified objective of the war. It was a desired outcome... But it was being talked about on day one again by President Trump. And I don't think you can say there's no chance of a regime change happening. I don't believe it's going to happen as a result, as a direct result of military action. But I do believe that within the Iranian regime now, both within the political echelon and within the IRGC, there is severe fracturing. Now, that in turn, and Naftali Bennett said he can't predict how long it's going to take for the regime.

40:52Piers Morgan:He said years. Well, it could take years. But certainly I think this action will help facilitate potential regime change by weakening the regime and causing internal division in the regime. The trouble is, OK, let me bring in Benjamin Radd. I mean, the problem is I just don't see the hard evidence this regime has been weakened. I can see they've lost their supreme leader, a lot of their top people, but they seem to have been replaced very quickly. The new lot appear to be pretty intransigent, unwilling to do any kind of easy deal that Donald Trump would like them to do. And the Strait of Hormuz, which is the only really discernible thing we can look at as to whether they have control or not, they are controlling the Strait of Hormuz in a way that is causing enormous economic damage the longer it goes on.

41:44Piers Morgan:And that is unsustainable for the Gulf states, for the United States, for everybody, apart from probably Israel, who don't care that much about the Strait of Hormuz, but they can afford not to. But everybody else who does care is seeing just massive economic hardship. Yeah, let me touch on several points that have come up. Number one on the nuclear program. Iran was, through last summer, a nuclear threshold state, a breakout state. If we separate the nuclear program into the weapon side and the enrichment side, You want to prevent Iran from enriching uranium beyond the 20, 19 percent threshold, which is basically beyond that.

42:22You're now passing civilian use, medical grade use, energy use. Right. You're going into weapons grade territory, 90 percent being nuclear bomb level. Iran had it's been proven, it's been shown both by the both by IAEA and intelligence sources had exceeded that 20 percent threshold in violation of the JCPOA or excuse me, in violation of the NPT going back to the 1970s when it was first drafted. So then what the United States would target would be Iran's ability to construct a warhead because it's not enough to actually enrich uranium to 90%. You need to then make it small enough and workable so that you can fit it onto a warhead.

42:58It's possible the United States set back its warhead production facility capabilities. That we don't know. We haven't received a lot of clarity on that. We need to separate that from its enrichment capability. It can still enrich if it has centrifuges. centrifuges buried under mountains. That is the concern. If your concern is that this is a country that should not go beyond that 20 % threshold, no country under the NPT should, then that is a legitimate cause for concern. Is it enough to go to war? I'm not saying it is, but I want to separate the two elements here. Number two, yeah, the second part of this becomes, again, revolutions, which is what we're talking about here.

43:32When we say regime change, we're talking about a revolution. They happen slowly until they happen quickly. You cannot predict the timetable. Nobody can. There's a whole host of factors. Number one, there is an imbalance of arms. You have the Iranian people are not armed. It wasn't until the Shah's army started defecting. We started seeing weapons pouring into the hands of civilians. We started to see a hesitation on the part of the Shah's army and the police to shoot the protesters in 1979 that the tide began to turn. We haven't seen that yet. We might not see it. But to say sort of, OK, why hasn't this population risen up?

44:06Why haven't they done this? They are genuinely afraid of being mowed down like they were January 7th and 8th earlier of this year. So there's all of those concerns at play. Now, the Strait of Hormuz, that is a card that this regime gets to only play one time. By that, I mean it will be a matter of time before the Gulf states, regional allies, the international community, trade, all of this figures out a way to circumnavigate or bypass the chokehold that Iran has on the strait. And it is a chokehold that goes both ways, by the way, because if there is a blockade, if there is a hesitation of maritime traffic and trade to come through, it impacts Iran as much as it impacts the international community.

44:46So if we're looking at a war of attrition based on who will capitulate first, I don't think anyone can confidently predict how that will turn out, except that I think the international community will develop the means, methods, and resources to eventually figure out a way out of the strait, whether it's bypassing through land routes, other routes, and then what does Iran have left? That's why I said it's a card it can play one time and one time only. Then what will it do going forward? And then your question about the status of the regime, again, there is a lot that we do not know. We know that there's an internal division.

45:16We know that the president, for example, has been bypassed in the power structure completely. We know that Kalibov, who is a prominent figure, the Speaker of Parliament, has now been marginalized as well. Where is power currently residing? There is disarray. There is, I think, a degree of dysfunction that we simply don't hear about. But if you read the Persian press or Persian social media, you catch glimpses of this. You see the infighting, the inconsistent messaging that comes out. That, to me, signals there's more beneath the surface than we can see.

45:46Piers Morgan:okay but can i just add one thing on on uh on the enrichment so there was a the joint coordinated plan of action was signed in in 2015 by the Obama administration and p5 plus one which is a security council and germany now the iaea said that iran was abiding by that which said enrichment couldn't go ahead uh up to uh over 3.67 percent and and they were even taking out the enriched uranium and being made into fuel rods in france and taking it back which is actually one of the demands that Trump's now making. What happened? In 2018, Trump pulled out. And then, two years later, assassinated the most senior general in the Iranian military, Qasem Soleimani, who had lured to Iraq with a drone.

46:30Piers Morgan:So if you're Iran, you're looking at this thinking, we're not dealing with good faith actors here. We're dealing with people that will assassinate now our leader, assassinate our top generals. There's been a war on Iran since 1979. It's taken different guises, but effectively it's involved assassinations, murders. Yeah, no, I think that's a perfectly valid point. But that's important, though. No, I agree. I don't disagree. It goes both ways. I don't disagree. It goes both ways. Yeah, I don't disagree. What right does Israel have to say that Iran can't have nuclear weapons? Iran's got nuclear weapons and didn't sign up to the NPT, which was referenced from 1970.

47:07Piers Morgan:Israel, you mean? So Iran's going around... Sorry? Israel, sorry. Israel, yeah. Israel didn't sign up to the NPT. Let me bring in, I want to bring in, I've been asking that very question. I don't understand why Israel gets a pass to not be transparent about its nuclear weaponry. It should have to, like everybody else does. Paul Rykoff. OK, there's a lot of interesting views have been expressed here. Do you see an off-ramp for Trump that could work? I mean, do you see anything right now, looking at the whole state of play, where you could point to something the Iranians may give on, which Trump could claim as victory and get out of this.

47:44That's what Trump's scrambling to find right now. And I think here's the larger problem for the world. The Iranian regime is a threat to huge parts of the world and can't be trusted. Donald Trump is a threat to huge parts of the world and can't be trusted. And most of us are somewhere in between. And neither one of those groups really speak on behalf of their people in Iran or in America. The biggest story in the world, in my view, is that Donald Trump can do anything he wants with the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and nothing is stopping him. The American Congress has failed to stop him.

48:12His own party has failed to stop him. The American people have failed to stop him. Everyone from NATO to the UN to EU, they've all failed to stop him. And this is bigger than Iran, because Donald Trump, I've said, is all gas, no brakes. And this is the, I think, ninth country he's conducted military operations in since he's become president. And he's already talking about Cuba as the next stop. He's always threatening Greenland. He's talked about hitting Mexico. So the real question is for the American public and especially for the Congress, will you stop Donald Trump from doing anything? They've been totally feckless.

48:42They failed to exercise their constitutional authority. And maybe now we have a circuit breaker on the funding. This might be the place where Donald Trump can be slowed down by members of his own party and by the opposition party. When they ask for an additional one point five trillion dollars for more war, most Americans don't want it. So he's trying to find that off ramp because he knows the midterms are coming if there are free and fair elections in the United States. He knows Republicans are hemorrhaging, especially his base is hemorrhaging, because there's another important part of this. He lied to his base.

49:10He told his base, no new wars, no regime change wars, no forever ending wars. And that's what we've got now is a new forever war. I fought in Iraq and I've seen this play before. We've all seen this play before. And what the American public doesn't want is 10 years, 20 years of a prolonged war being advocated for by chicken hawks in Washington and around the world who want to send American boys and girls to die in a land where we waste billions and trillions of dollars and get nothing outcome in return, both economically and strategically. So my biggest concern as an American is that this makes America weaker.

49:41This makes us more vulnerable. He's going to try to negotiate with China this week, who's standing there just licking their chops because 41 percent of our Navy is in the Gulf right now. So Iran has become a sucking chest wound for our military and for our economy, and it has our enemies celebrating. Iran is actually in a better position, in my view, strategically long term. China is in the best position of all because they can just sit there and watch us punch ourselves out. So to answer your question, Pierce, yes, he's looking for an off ramp, but it doesn't look like there is one because the Iranians refused to accept his terms.

50:11And now he's got us over a barrel in what could be a quagmire that could go on for years. And I think most importantly, I think this will be the number one issue in the 2028 election. I mean, this is this will become the seminal issue here in America. And it's either the Democrats or Republicans within his own party who are going to have to run against the Iran war and creating that off ramp because it doesn't look like Donald Trump can find it.

50:30Piers Morgan:Yeah. And you're not hearing a lot from J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio right now about this war. And I suspect that's not a coincidence. Thank you to my panel. Really interesting debate. I appreciate it. This episode sponsored by Ridwell. Ever tossed something into your recycling bin and just hoped it would get recycled? That's wish cycling. And most of the time, those items don't actually get recycled. Ridwell makes it simple to get it right. Ridwell helps you recycle the things your curbside bin doesn't take, like plastic bags, snack wrappers, pill bottles, and bottle caps. Getting started is easy.

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51:14Piers Morgan:Well, two weeks ago, President Trump accused Kurdish groups of stealing U.S. weapons sent to support Iranian dissidents. The Kurds have also poured cold water on repeated suggestions. They can be used as a proxy ground force in the Iran war. U.S.-Kurdish relations, though, appear convivial. Last night, the president shared to millions of his followers an interview praising him as a master dealmaker. Well, Khubad Talibani, Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region, was the man with the warm words, and he joins me now. Welcome to Uncensored. Thank you, Piers. What shall I say, Mr Morgan? Piers is fine.

51:47Piers Morgan:What did you feel about President Trump reposting your interview last night? Were you flattered or slightly appalled? Obviously, I was flattered. I was surprised. I was getting a lot of messages from a lot of people saying that the President of the United States has reposted your article. So I must say I was a bit taken aback by the fact that he tweeted it, but, you know, not disappointed that he did. The thrust of your interview was that you declared that Trump is master of the deal and can land a major deal to end the Iran war. But as my panel have just been deliberating, we can't work out how he does a deal that allows him to get out of this anytime soon with any kind of legitimate claim to victory.

52:35Piers Morgan:Can you? I think if he's left to his own devices, and if this is really a negotiation between the United States and Iran, I think there's a deal to be had. And I think if the deal is broader than just looking at the nuclear file or looking at the ballistics file, but you're looking at a whole package that includes the economy, that includes investment, that includes opening Iran up to the global economy, I think there is definitely a deal to be had. because this is something that Iran wants. I think they're tired of this isolation. They have suffered, obviously, as a result of the war, but as a result of sanctions over many, many years.

53:17Piers Morgan:So they have fallen behind in terms of global development. But at the same time, the opportunity for growth, for economic growth for Iran, for the region, for U.S. investment, for European investment, for other investment in Iran is huge. So, yes, I think if there is a deal, if there is a negotiation that is between the US and Iran and America is allowed to execute this deal by being allowed to, meaning other countries do not interfere and try to guide this in a different direction, then I think, yes, we can see a deal and there could be a win-win here. But to do a deal, you've got to know who you're dealing with and got to know that they are actually in a position to call the shots.

54:03Piers Morgan:You're in a good position to answer this question. But do we know who is currently running the Iranian regime? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there's too much talk of there being divisions between the diplomats and the IRGC and the religious establishment. Iran is more unified today than it has ever been. So this notion of there's these guys we can work with and those guys we can't work with, I think this has been overplayed possibly by those that thought that this war is going to end in 48 hours. The reality is Iran is a unified nation right now, and people in Iran have rallied behind their government, whether they've liked them or not, whether they were happy with their performance or not.

54:50Piers Morgan:this war has done a lot to unify Iran. So the people who are negotiating on behalf of Iran are representing Iran. And I think that makes it easier for the US to deal with. Do we believe that the new Supreme Leader is even conscious? Do we know anything about his current condition? I have no information on that. But I think that is beside the point. The reality is Iran is standing on its feet. It has withstood a battering from two of the world's most potent militaries. And, you know, again, go back to President Trump's initial statement at the outset of the war. You could argue that he's achieved these military objectives.

55:36Piers Morgan:So, OK, fine. Move on. Let's talk about what are the non-military objectives now. Now, I say again, if you look at this through the tiny window of the nuclear portfolio and the ballistic missiles portfolio, I don't expect a deal. But if you broaden this out to include a whole host of economic packages and reintegration of Iran into the global community, you know, coupled with with, you know, more incentives, loans, investments, World Bank engagements, IMF engagements, I think there is a great deal to be had. one that would suit Iran, one that does not look like one country is twisting the arm of the other.

56:17Piers Morgan:Again, for a deal to stick, it's got to be good for both sides. And I think there's enough room to manoeuvre within both countries' direct objectives for there to be a deal and for there to be a positive outcome out of all of this tragedy. Fascinating take. I want to just talk about something that Scott Horton raised on my show last week. He claimed it's a hoax that the Iranian regime killed 40 ,000 protesters in January. Let's take a look at what he said. The media and the government continue to push this lie, this completely preposterous hoax, Pierce, that the Iranian government massacred 40 ,000 people in January to put down that insurrection.

56:58First of all, we already know, Donald Trump admitted, now that we're living in the future here, Donald Trump admitted last week or two weeks ago that Israel armed those Kurdish groups. Those weren't peaceful protesters. There were peaceful protests, but the fighting was not the massacre of peaceful protests. The fighting was fighting against Kurdish communists who were sacking police stations and burning mosques and trying to overthrow the government there. And then just think about that casualty count. 40 ,000. That's like the Battle of Gettysburg. We're to believe that the Ayatollah pulled that off, something like that, maybe 10 ,000 more than that in January without carpet bombing his own city, without committing some kind of Dresden, without leaving tens of thousands of body bags everywhere.

57:44And what do we see in the propaganda? 12 body bags. And then they go, oh, how can you deny the massacre? What do you know about that reality of what happened in January?

57:57Piers Morgan:We can just speculate, Piers. I really cannot argue to the number of whether it was one person killed or 40 ,000 killed. There were demonstrations. Demonstrations were put down. The impact of those demonstrations and the violence in terms of putting those demonstrations down can be speculated and has been speculated from small numbers to large numbers. The reality that we deal with today is during this war and in the aftermath of this war, we have not seen uprisings. We have not seen people taking to the streets. We have not seen what the so-called experts that said there's going to be people taking matters into their own hands.

58:37Piers Morgan:They haven't taken matters into their own hands. That's not to say they won't in the future, but they haven't done so now and they're not doing so now. There is a regime in place in power, which, unlike what we saw in Syria, unlike what we saw in Iraq in 2003, is not tied to one person. Iran is a country that has institutions, political institutions, government institutions, religious institutions, and yes, military and paramilitary institutions. Those institutions have been able to withstand a battering for almost two months. Now, we're dealing with a dynamic in a post-war ceasefire environment where the world needs the Straits of Hormuz to open up so the global economy can improve.

59:29Piers Morgan:I strongly believe that President Trump wants a deal. I strongly believe the Iranians want the deal. So I think the climate is conducive. You could argue that there is probably only one country in the world that doesn't want to deal. And I think you probably know better than me who that country is. Yeah. I mean, Israel's made it pretty clear that they think the job is only finished if they physically take the enriched uranium and have a guarantee that there is no ongoing nuclear capability left in Iran, which implies to me that they are planning more military action. How can they guarantee that, Piers?

1:00:06Piers Morgan:Let's say they take away the enriched uranium now. The technology is there. The knowledge is there. The intent is there. All that will be missing is the financing. So maybe it'll just start up again the next year. It's wrong to look at this solely through the eyes of the nuclear portfolio. Iran has much more to offer the world than the threat of a nuclear Iran. And I think we're missing the point here. The world is missing the point here. World powers, European countries are missing the point here. Iran is a massive country, geographically massive. It is a massive country in terms of a very civilized population.

1:00:50and it's a country that has a very sophisticated governing institutions and governing structures

1:00:56Piers Morgan:who may not be liked by the West, may not be liked by the US, but they've proven to be very resilient and very strategic. And again, I keep going back to this. The US wants a deal and they're looking for a deal. And I think if they're left to their own devices, they'll get a good deal out of this. Kuba Talibani I appreciate you coming on thank you very much thank you

1:01:47Piers Morgan:Thank you.

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