164. Iran’s Leader Dead: What’s Trump’s Next Move?

0:00Katty Kay:I'm R.J. Decker, a private investigator uncovering the Sunshine State's darkest secrets. Tuesday, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. R.J. freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mess.

0:18Anthony Scaramucci:Trying to get someone back to prison today?

0:19Katty Kay:You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. R.J. Decker, series premiere, Tuesday on ABC and stream on Hulu. Tax Act understands you haven't memorized the tax code. That's why Tax Act has live experts to help. Tax Act can even do it for you if you prefer. It's the easiest way to know you're doing it right. Well, other than going back to college and obtaining a bachelor's degree in accounting with a minor in finance, then interning somewhere and becoming fluent in all tax forms. But that might be hard to accomplish before tax day. So maybe just stick with Tax Act. Tax Act. Let's get them over with.

1:01Katty Kay:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry. So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door, expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and cueing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.

1:37Anthony Scaramucci:Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay.

1:40Katty Kay:And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Katty?

1:43Anthony Scaramucci:I am good. We are recording this Sunday evening, Europe time, Middle East time, and Sunday lunchtime, US time, day two of the strikes against the Middle East. I think it is worth giving an update now. I think we've got a better sense of why, you know, what was behind the administration's timing in the sense of the day, how the US administration had the Trump administration. I think Anthony is trying to frame this in a way that is already people are poking holes in. And they're trying to frame it in a way that they can circumvent the demands of the American Constitution and the role of Congress, which I know you think is dangerous.

2:22Anthony Scaramucci:And we should get into that a little bit more. We have got the news that three American service members have been killed and others are seriously hurt in hospital. It's obviously a moving situation. There is also news coming out tonight, Anthony, that the Iranian foreign minister has reached out to his Armani counterpart. This is being recorded by Reuters saying that what is left of the Iranian regime wants to de-escalate. So let's see where that goes. But I think there's a lot of politics of this and there's a lot of moving parts in this. And there is still the overriding question of what does the White House want from this and what can they possibly get from this?

3:00Anthony Scaramucci:Because I'm not hearing anybody, Anthony, that I'm talking to at the moment saying that there is much clarity about what kind of a regime takes place after this. We know now that the existing regime of the Islamic Republic, as we knew it a week ago, has been effectively decapitated, but we don't know what replaces it. We don't know whether the White House is going to really push for a total regime change and what would that look like. Or, as Senator Tom Cotton has suggested today, a Republican who is close to Donald Trump, or are they prepared to deal with remnants of the old regime as they've done in Venezuela?

3:39Anthony Scaramucci:And what would that even look like, given that this is a regime that has been organized and committed acts of terror for decades now and has been committed to the destruction of both Israel and the United States? So I don't even know what that would look like for America to start working with the remnants of this regime. But I think there are still, as we're recording this, there are still an awful lot of unanswered questions and members of Congress have a lot of those unanswered questions and they want to come back and they want to, Democratic members of Congress in particular, want to have a say because they're saying, look, America is at war now and we have a process for dealing with this and we have a constitution that demands our engagement in this.

4:19Anthony Scaramucci:And you can't have a president who just goes rogue and launches an operation on this scale saying this could last for a long time without the involvement of other branches of government. So what are you thinking? I know that you've been writing about this, Anthony. What are you thinking about this tonight?

4:37Katty Kay:I want to step back. Trump is doing something very interesting, frankly, and no one's out talking about it. I've been listening to different podcasts and watching the television shows. And I'm going to try to describe to you what I think Trump is doing. And there's some actually smart people inside the Trump administration. We deride them often, but there's something going on here. And it's deeply cynical, Caddy, but let me just phrase it for you and then get your reaction. So the Trump administration has learned from Cheney and they've learned from Bush that if they're going to have military adventurism, they're not going to turn these things into democracies.

5:13Katty Kay:But what they could do is because these regimes are generally corrupt, they can outbid the bidders in the corruption. So let's go to Venezuela. We go to Delce Rodriguez. You're running a corrupt regime. You got black market oil activities, black market drugs. We're going to bid you higher than that. And you're going to get American treasure and American opportunism in exchange for that. and we're going to keep your regime in place because you know how to control the system in Venezuela and we're less interested in the George Bush, Condoleezza Rice democracy. We're more interested in you being on side with Donald Trump and the Americans.

5:52Katty Kay:Let's fast forward to Iran now. They want to use that same strategy. So they decapitated the top. They probably killed 20 of them. It was very odd that they thought that they could congregate together during the daytime thinking i guess the americans and the israelis only attack at night uh that was a weird

6:11Anthony Scaramucci:thing just to jump in there is a theory there that ayatollah hamini wanted to go i mean you know he's in his mid-80s he actually wanted to go out in a blaze of glory he realized the americans were probably going to get him at this stage um and he i mean it was odd like you say iran experts that i've heard have said that is odd that he was there but they think that this could even have been

6:30Katty Kay:deliberate on his part and that could be the case but i actually think it's something which i'll give praise to the Mossad for i think that they they are deeply entrenched in that government yeah ahmenejad once said that we went for counterintelligence to try to eradicate the Mossad the person we put in charge of it was a member of the Mossad and the Mossad knew exactly where these guys were and they knew exactly what was going on inside the regime and so if you are somebody that supports the state of israel which i do and i would like to see their survival and i think they have a right to survive i think they have done an exceptional job because remember in the republic of iran in the constitution first couple of sentences were dedicated to exporting the regime's cultism and we're also dedicated to the eradication of israel okay so the israel doesn't have that in their constitution okay but i want to go back to this decapitation strategy uh and i want to make it adjacent to corruption so here's what we're going to do we're going to decapitate you guys trump called into the atlantic magazine journalist this morning at 9 30 said i'm ready to to talk to you i'm ready we're ready to open up talks and here are the talks caddy you ready hey guys you guys like money we like money and we're going to offer you a proposal to you run the country uh dial down the radicalism dial down the bullshit about taking out israel we'll give you lots of money we'll let you get your oil back on the oil markets we'll even help you with the chinese but we have to have some say and we have to be in partnership with you on the corruption and in partnership with you on the totalitarianism and so we can deride this we can look at this in a very cynical way but i think this is a brilliant strategy for Trump if you are Donald Trump.

8:26Katty Kay:Now, if you're wincing in the car listening to this, you're wincing on your hike listening to it, I'm sorry, but I just need to explain to people the thinking inside the administration. I'd like you to react to that. Do you think I'm right on it? Do you think I'm wrong on it directionally? What are your thoughts?

8:44Anthony Scaramucci:Look, so I wanted to do an update partly to be able to touch on what we talked about at the end of our lives, stream on Saturday, which is, what if this works? What if this works in the context of what Donald Trump wants to get out of this? And it's interesting that we've been kind of thinking along the same lines over the course of the last day. I mean, I think there is a world in which moving the big figurehead like Maduro, like Ayatollah Khamenei could give Trump domestically some political cover. I think he can say to the American people, we went in there, this was a massive shock and awe type military operation, we didn't put boots on the ground, although it's interesting listening to Trump allies on the Sunday shows today saying, framing this very carefully, that we're not going to have a large scale American presence on the ground.

9:34Anthony Scaramucci:So they're not ruling out presence on the ground. But I think if he could remove the top of the regime as he has just done and have a more Trump friendly kind of remnant of that regime, kind of Iranian Islamic Republic adjacent regime, if you like to call it that, that he feels he can work for. I think there is a way in which he can say this is a win for him. And I think there is a way. It's very interesting listening to Democrats today. They're being super careful about the way they talk that they're talking a lot about the process and I do think it's important that there is a process that works in democracies and you've written about this and that there is a process for a reason it is what makes democracies strong and I think that is important but I think there is it's interesting listening to democrats they're not coming out in full criticism of the of the act itself of decapitating the leadership because they realize that there is a way that this could work out that is positive for the United States.

10:38Anthony Scaramucci:Now, maybe Democrats hope that they can paint Trump as a king who circumvents democratic processes, who expands executive privilege. But if this leads to something that is more America friendly, even if it is in a kind of transactional corrupt way that you're describing, I think that is something that is going to be hard for Democrats to run against. I think there is a way that Donald Trump can paint this as successful. Now, I don't think that that means it's successful in a year's time, two years time, five years time, because there isn't much of a model in that region for a non-hereditary monarchy that is stable and close to the United States.

11:23Anthony Scaramucci:I'm struggling to find the model for that, that maybe it's Syria. I don't know. Iraq is not particularly stable. The Gulf states are all hereditary monarchies. So I don't know that this works in the long term, Antony. I don't know that this produces a regime that is more America, Western, Israel friendly in the long run. I just don't think we know the answer to that. But I think I do see a way in which Donald Trump can present this as a win to the American people.

11:54Katty Kay:Well, again, I'm not saying it's going to work. I'm just trying to present to you what they're doing. They're taking the Venezuela model and they're trying to export it into iran one of the things i'm going to recommend to people that listen to us and read our newsletter and we'll attach this article uh from the new york times over the weekend on venezuela the nightlife is returning to venezuela and in caracas club life the restaurants etc and there seems to be a good symphony between the expats and the in-country elites in Venezuela to helping the working poor. And so if you notice, it seems to be working in Venezuela and it's giving no political kickback or blowback to Donald Trump.

12:39Anthony Scaramucci:And that is obviously the model and it's a different country with a different population and different links to the United States. But that is the model that they hope they can make work in Iran.

12:48Katty Kay:Listen, there's a lot going on here, Katty. So let's just talk about a number of things that are going on. The regime is grotesque on every level. It is definitely a terrorist exporting regime. Talk about Iraq. They've got lots of influence over the Iraqi government, much to the chagrin of the Americans in the West. They are no good. And we both know that. But the question about what we're doing and why we're doing it and whether or not it will be successful, I don't know. Ultimately, it will be the institutionalization of that regime. they killed 40 people maybe at the top but after 50 years is there enough sediment in their governmental procedures where somebody rises to the top and they keep the regime going because i can tell you without a land invasion without soldiers on the ground uh the rebel causes inside the government are not well funded they're relatively unarmed the citizens that want to overthrow the regime not armed yeah yeah and they've been they've been more or less from a terror point of view uh and again i don't know the iranian government saying 3 000 people died in the protests the americans are saying it could be over 100 000 and there's lots of disinformation but there's enough information to know that they've done a very good job of repressing

14:16Anthony Scaramucci:opposition in the country and they also had done a job they had an org chart they knew this was going to happen. They had got layers of succession planned in the event of exactly this sort of decapitation. Now, as you say, we don't know how deep it goes. We don't know. And the Americans actually don't have, I understand, very good intelligence into that org chart once you get down to the kind of sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth layer of seniority of the people that could do it. And we don't know how good they are.

14:44Katty Kay:Can you, for all of us, what is the political cost to donald trump if anything and can you please weave into that the epstein situation because i'm you know i i guess i've become very cynical in my old age but i do think that man if i want to get this epstein stuff off of the front burner uh dropping some bombs is a good way to do it so

15:07Anthony Scaramucci:on the timing of this i do think it's worth a couple of minutes on the timing of this the administration is making the argument today through its proxies you heard congresswoman luna who's an ally of Donald Trump's, on the shows today saying the reason we had to do this now is because Iranian missiles in the southern belt of Iran were poised to attack American interests in the Persian Gulf, particularly the Fifth Fleet Base down in Bahrain and in Qatar as well. So, that is the official line. And they're trying to push that one really hard because they want to have cover for an operation that actually was a war of choice.

15:46Anthony Scaramucci:Now, the reporting that is coming out is that there wasn't any imminent threat. Whatever the administration says, there is not the intelligence that those missiles, which have been pointing at American assets for years, if not decades in the region, were actually poised to strike. Obviously, we talked about the nuclear program. The nuclear program was in a worse position than it was six months ago, and there was no evidence, my understanding is, that there were people going to dig up the uranium that had been enriched and that had been buried after the strikes last summer. So, the only plausible explanation that I've heard for the particular timing of this, the day, as opposed to the broader timing, and we can get to your Epstein point in a second, was that between the CIA and Mossad, they had this intelligence that these group of leaders were in that building, in the palace, on Saturday morning at US time.

16:43Anthony Scaramucci:And so, they felt that was the right time to strike and that they could get all of them. That may be the case. I think it's worth putting all of that out there. You know, Saturday Night Live is having a lot of fun with this. The late night comedians are having a lot of fun with this, that this is a great distraction from all of the Epstein files and what we are still to find out. And then what we reported about last week, which is that we know, and it's been widely reported that the Department of Justice is under scrutiny for not releasing files in which there are accusations that Donald Trump abused a minor girl in the 1990s.

17:16Anthony Scaramucci:That's just an accusation. We have to say we don't know whether that's true or not. We don't know the veracity of the interview. We don't know the plausibility of the interviews. We still haven't seen those files, but we know that those files were meant to be there and they haven't been released yet. We also know that Donald Trump's approval ratings are very low and he's going into a midterms in which Democrats could win the House and he'll be investigated. Otherwise, for the president who has spent the last 10, 20 years railing against regime change and forever wars. And as recently as the Venezuela attack said, what are we doing in the Middle East?

17:50Anthony Scaramucci:That's 24 hour flight away. It doesn't make sense. From a point of view of timing, this doesn't make sense. So maybe you're right. Maybe it's just the distraction, in which case people are dying, including American service members for that distraction.

18:04Katty Kay:I mean, again, I think your points are excellent. I think that there's a a couple of things going on at the same time. And I think Trump is cornered. And I think to Netanyahu's credit, he used the cornering of Donald Trump to get him to flex.

18:20Anthony Scaramucci:MBS has been calling him asking for this too, but that's not American interest, that's Israeli and Saudi interests.

18:27Katty Kay:But I also want to address for people who ask about, well, why would the Iranians send missiles into the Gulf states that didn't attack them? like why are they hitting hotels in iran or residential buildings in bahrain and i think you guys have to know the answer to that the answer is that in those countries there are many expats as an example the population in the uae could be 10 million people caddy but there's only a million of them are emiratis you know it's one thing if you're french and you bomb france and it's world war ii the french are going to stay inside of france but if you're bombing countries that are generally reliant on expatriates there could be an expatriate migration you know people have said to me wow i saw dubai as a safe haven i saw it as a tax haven i went there for a tax shelter i'm now living in a bomb shelter you know it's a it's a it's a meme going around but i think what the iranians are trying to do is they're trying to tell you that hey we still get state sponsored terrorism and we still get the idea that we can strike fear in the hearts of your citizens even though we ourselves are under attack one other quick point caddy and i'd love you to address this uh one thing trump is letting the world know and this is something the americans have held back on frankly for you know 80 years is that not only do we have the most powerful military in the world and we probably have the best cyber capability we have the probably the best robotic drone usage in the world uh and we probably have the best sonar technology we probably have the best avoidance of radar technology okay with the stealth bombers etc that there's nobody close and maybe i'm wrong about that caddy but i think there is nobody close and it worries me because when that happens when you have nobody close uh the other teams get together and say okay we got to team up against this group of people because they're no longer acting with their military might with some level

20:37Anthony Scaramucci:of benevolence what is your reaction to that i'm struck by how cautious everybody is being in their response to this. We haven't heard very much from the Russians and the Chinese, which is sort of interesting given that Iran was a client of theirs and a provider of theirs. I think everybody's kind of waiting to see which way this falls out. But however it falls out, a lot of countries are going to be thinking, yeah, that we don't want to be in the side of being a small country alone. We need to gang up with other countries. We need to be part of a coalition against the US. I think that is a possibility.

21:17Anthony Scaramucci:On that point about them sending missiles into the Gulf, there's a couple of interesting things I've heard today. One is that there's a randomness to the way they're sending these missiles that suggests a certain amount of disarray in the leadership or whoever it is that's organizing. Maybe these were preordained bombing sites that they had before this attack that they had already put into place. But there's also the fact that they've been striking Oman. There was a report that a missile went near Cyprus. It does look like that was a kind of fire at a ship, not necessarily at Cyprus itself. But they're going after America's allies.

21:57Anthony Scaramucci:This is a regime that is prepared to take enormous risks at the moment because they feel they haven't got much to lose. And so they're going to go after America's allies, try and draw America's allies into this to try and broaden the conflict, and to show that they can strife. You are close to the United States. You are vulnerable right now in the Middle East. I mean, I have a nephew who's living in Oman in Muscat. He's lived there for a very long time. You know, it's a scary time to be a foreigner in the Gulf at the moment. So I think that's some of what's going on. And we, I think, all have to hope that this doesn't escalate and that this doesn't result in a broader war, particularly that doesn't bring in, you know, the Saudis, because I think that would be the most catastrophic if that would happen, if there was a real attack on Saudi Arabia and this were to broaden.

22:45Anthony Scaramucci:And I think then we are looking at a much bigger problem. And this is the problem with a war of choice, as America found out so much. We've spoken about this so many times, you and I, America found out in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, things don't always turn out the way you think they're going to turn out. We have to make the case that this could work for Donald Trump and there's a lot of people who are happy about seeing the Ayatollah deposed today. But there is a reason that you work with allies. There's a reason that you work within the processes of the United States as well.

23:20Katty Kay:I just want to add one last layer to the Iran discussion and that is the Pope. And the Pope, Pope Leo, is out this morning denouncing the attacks. And obviously, he's doing it in about as polite and as a diplomatic way as he can. But there's a problem here for J.D. Vance. And I just want to remind people, I am a practicing Catholic. And probably the one Catholic who has been the most prominent convert to Catholicism in political life is J.D. Vance. and jd vance has also lined himself up with the in criticalist if i'm pronouncing it right wing of the catholic church which is the wing that emphasizes deference to rome and so i just want you to hear me out for a second the pope is pope francis no mas does not like donald trump pope leo i'm really not in for this authoritarian stuff that's going on in my home country I'm the first American Pope.

24:24Katty Kay:And this is going to cause a problem for J.D. Vance because, you know, Caddy, I can tell you about Catholics. The Pope still has that doctrine of infallibility for most practicing Catholics. and it's going to hurt Vance coming up into this potential 2028 election. I think people need to know that there's been a revealing tell here in Vance's relative silence on the critiques of these policies by the Pope. And don't underestimate that. If you're not a Catholic, you may not get this, but I'm just telling you that the Pope has a lot of power.