Changed Regime in Tehran Would Change the Equation for China, Cripple Russia: Panel

President Trump today saying massive a massive armada is moving toward Iran larger than the one that was sent to the Caribbean with Venezuela. Trump also pushing Iran to make a nuclear deal warning the next attack on that country will be far worse. Joining me now to discuss these developments is our panel Madeline Somerville national trial attorney and former democratic speech writer and John Jordan economist and republican strategist. It's great to have you guys both with us. So President Trump warning Iran that, quote, time is running out and to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program to submit large scale protests in Iran by, you know, the Iranian people taking to the streets. Trump is saying, you know, as I laid out, the massive armada is making its way over to the Persian Gulf. So is moving, you know, toward Iran with this massive fleet, you know, a telling sign. And Madeline, how do you assess the situation right now? What level of pressure should the United States be applying to Iran? I think that the United States involvement with Iran in terms of the language that we've been using lately is very interesting because of the issues with protests that we're having in our own country. I think that the president here understands that he can't support protesters over there in Iran and not here in the United States. But I actually have sort of an interesting take on this issue. So you're equating the protesters in Iran to the ones in the United States? No, I'm saying that his rhetoric, as it pertains to the protesters in the United States, I think he understands that he can't have a negative perspective of them and support the protesters in Iran at the same time. I think that when it comes to his business interests, right, what's actually very interesting is that the oil, right, that that was coming from Iran, and that was coming from Venezuela as well, right, were being transferred back and forth. And this was all sanctioned oil. This was a pathway that was being used specifically for sanctioned oil. If he takes over the ports in both of these places, then he controls where the sanctioned oil is going to be coming from and to and from, which relates to China and Russia. And so I don't know if people have really presented it in that way, but it's the truth. And it's something that's interesting to contemplate. So if he was trying to get in the oil game or prevent that sanctioned oil from being transferred, then that's something to consider. John, what's your take? And is the current level of US support and posture toward Iran what the vast majority of Americans would like to see? So I differ with Madeleine. And I don't think that this situation or a lot of these international situations, you know, fit within the left versus right framework of talking points against Trump or this other thing. This is a complex situation. Iran is the youngest population of any OECD country. I mean, more people born after 1979. The current regime is deeply unpopular. Presumably about 20,000 people died fighting it. It's a brutal, tyrannical regime. Now, from President Trump's point of view, militarily, I've also been a naval officer for some time and in the intelligence world, is you have to look at what is the endgame of Iran. It's a diverse society and it doesn't lend itself to, you know, decapitation in such a neat way, especially how the Republican Guard, the besieged, all the elites, all are dependent on this kleptocracy or system of graft there. So President Trump, when he's doing this, it's about more than just a nuclear deal, especially after promising the help that was on the way to the tens of millions of Iranians that really don't want the mullahs to stay in power. So you have to look, what is that endgame? What does it look like? Who replaces the ayatollahs? And what are your military options for doing it? Now, militarily, President Trump, you know, he could go after Republican Guard command and control centers. There are a lot of their long range missiles to defang and remove their ability to go after our military assets in the Middle East and our friends and allies. But then what does it look like? I think there's a challenge here in that there isn't a Lech Walesa or a Nelson Mandela type figure that would have broad or very broad popular support to form a caretaker government. So I think President Trump is being ambiguous here, but I'm interested to see how they see the endgame. A new political poll, Politico poll, showing 65 percent of Trump voters support the military force abroad and would back military action against at least one of the following, Iran, Cuba, Colombia, or China, or perhaps Mexico. Does that surprise you, Madeline, given that the MAGA and the America First base has often been less inclined toward foreign war? It does. And as a jury consultant and somebody who works in polling quite frequently, it certainly matters how the question is asked. And so as it related to that particular Politico article that you're referencing, where that poll came from, the question was if they would support interference in any of these countries, military action in any of these countries. And I think that actually I'm pleased to hear that people would be more supportive of military action in Iran, not just because the regime is so unpopular, it's devastating the civilians there, but because I think that they truly are a threat and that there's been a lot of propaganda that's been in the United States saying otherwise. That's simply never been true. And so I'm glad to see that people kind of have their, in my opinion, have their heads screwed on straight in looking at the threat that Iran poses to the world. I do think that it's a legitimate, it's a legitimate concern there. Now, I think it's interesting that a few of the other countries that were included in the survey, we had Mexico. When you're comparing interference in countries like Venezuela to Mexico, you might say, well, it would make more sense because the fentanyl and cocaine and different drugs that come into the United States that are affecting our population come more so from Mexico than they do from Venezuela. So it makes sense to have some sort of intervention there before it would elsewhere, which kind of relates me back to my last point, which was, it seems like all of this is related to the issue of oil, right? Because that is the relationship between the countries of Venezuela and Iran temporally with our involvement with them and also as it pertains to oil with Russia and China. So I am surprised because I know that people didn't want to get involved in the forever wars, just like we did in the past. I know I'm quite familiar with the Iran-Contra affair and what with Jimmy Carter and our involvement with the ISIL event. So I am interested to see, just like John said, how it's going to turn out. John, oftentimes when we hear American war and oil, people's minds default to, you know, like it's an oil grab for greed. But talk to us about the national security elements, as Madeline pointed out, when it comes to the geopolitical implications of Iranian oil supporting Russia, China, you know, arguably our two greatest adversaries, certainly China. Well, we live in a hyper-connected world where economics is one domain of conflict, right? So Iran is very important to Russia, a supplier of drones, a supplier of bad behavior to keep the West and the United States diverted. Were Iran to fall, obviously it would put enormous downward pressure on oil prices, which would cripple the Russian economy. I'm a Russian speaker, and I've worked a long time on Russian affairs. The worst thing you can do to the Russians is bring the price of oil down. That's what President Trump has done, from $81 to about $63 today, $50-something last week. So you do that, it's connected to the Ukraine war, and to say it put a hole in the Russian drum is an understatement of epic proportions. So that is very important. More to the point, you diminish China's influence throughout that region. And China depends on the Middle East, about 90% of its oil, and benefits from a discounted, because it's sanctioned, Iranian oil. So you do this, you bring freedom and prosperity somehow, or create the circumstances where the Iranian people, which is the way to do this, to rid themselves of the mullahs, you have crippled the Russian economy, and you put China in a particularly precarious situation because they don't have sources of oil really domestically at all, and they have to transport oil from the Middle East, which could become a US-friendly lake of sorts in the Persian Gulf, all the way across the Indian Ocean to their Pacific seaports, which is a strategic problem for China, which may end up causing the Chinese to look north into Siberia, believe it or not. So that's where you want to be really too careful about is it disintegrated Russia really in our interest, because the result, it could end up being a Chinese resource colony. So there's a lot of twists and turns here, but a changed regime in Tehran changes the equation for China and cripples Russia. I would 100% agree with that analysis. And I also agree that it's not a left or right thing, because that's just the truth, everything that you just said. And I think it's even, you've heard me criticize President Trump so many times, right? But this is kind of a brilliant move here. Okay, we'll archive that one, Madeline. Lastly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today that the end goal in Venezuela is a democratic transition. I think we have a soundbite of that. Our goal is to rope all of this illegal oil into a channel that goes into this account that ultimately goes to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. This is an interim step. This is not the way we want the oil industry to look like in perpetuity. This is simply a way to provide revenue so that there isn't systemic collapse while we work through this recovery and transition phases. So Madeline, do you think the broader media coverage has been fair and how it has portrayed the administration's actions in Venezuela? I don't. And that's not something that makes me very popular amongst my liberal friends. But I have to call balls and strikes. And when you look at the bigger picture here, and the fact that we're talking about sanctioned oil, right, and that we're talking about our adversaries, if we are able to both rid the Venezuelan people of a dictator and get the people of Iran a more safe environment to be able to grow and prosper, and at the same time, right, be able to create benefits for the United States, then, yeah, it absolutely makes sense. Now, do I agree with the way things are always done? No. Do I agree with the messaging that's being given to the American people about it? No, on either side, right? I think that it would be fair for journalists to look at the big picture, like I am, and to try, and like my friend John here, and to try to present to the American people, look, this is a benefit on a large scale. He's playing chess, not checkers here. And I understand that also, you know, we need to be using the proper channels to be able to communicate with other countries and respect human rights. It's difficult. This is a difficult situation. I'm not trying to criticize in a situation that I know nothing about, in terms of extracting a ruler from another country and bringing them to your own. But I think that overall, the media coverage not only hasn't been fair, it's been slightly inaccurate in not painting the whole picture. And to your point just there, Madeline, John, the, you know, not all autocrats or autocracies are created equal, as crazy as that sounds. But the situation in Venezuela is actually different than the one in Cuba. And it's totally different from what we see in Iran, in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. So when it comes to Venezuela, one thing I often hear from folks from Venezuela, dissidents in the sort, is that it wasn't too long ago, it's still within many of the folks that live there's memory, what it was like to live in a prosperous, open society. So what do you think the president, our president in this administration want for Venezuela? And how realistic do you think it's back to them, that it is for the Venezuelan people to get back to that golden age that was only a few decades back? Well, it's a process. And this is step one. Maduro, he was an indicted, an indicted drug dealer, under indictment in the United States and not recognized by 50 some odd countries, including all of the European Union. The administration here unveiled a new model for restoring or promoting democracy and ending malign behavior by these bad actor countries. The Iraq model, the Bush model was we're going to go in full occupation. We're going to root out all of your institutions and impose our own at gunpoint. And then we are going to leave. Here, what the administration did is they removed Maduro. We have a new regime where we've told them, we know where your Swiss bank accounts are. If you don't wish to have the same fate as Maduro, you're going to play ball with us. And you're going to, you're going to end the malign activities. Sooner or later, under the certainly under the Venezuelan constitution, an election is required, and they'll be voted out. But what we've done is we're doing it by remote control. This is analogous to what we did, MacArthur did in 1945 during the occupation of Japan. Within a few months of the end of the war, we only had a few hundred thousand troops in Japan, not enough to impose our will militarily should the Japanese have risen up. Instead, we made a deal when we signed the surrender agreements with the Japanese is the emperor could stay in charge largely. And we let a lot of these kind of some, a lot of really bad guys in Japan still basically run things until they were expelled by the body politic as Japanese society changed. That model worked very, very well, was cheaper and more durable because it wasn't, it wasn't strict. It wasn't a, it wasn't gunpoint democracy like we, like the Bushes tried. So this is interesting, but it's going to take a little process, take some time, just like it did in Japan from 1945 into the 50s. John Jordan, Madeline Somerville, really appreciate both of you coming on. Thank you.