00:00What do you think the end goal is of the Trump administration when it comes to Iran? Well, it looks like the end goal is clearly to have an Iran that is willing to operate in the world, operate in the region in an appropriate manner, not support terrorism and not build a nuclear weapon. And that's the key goal. Whether we're able to achieve that with the current regime in place is a different question and whether they will take this opportunity. Their nuclear sites have been struck to not strike back, but instead instead negotiate a middle ground solution. Is the key question in play today, Tom. What do you expect the Iranian response will be, given your experience focused on this region? Look, I can't see a world in which the Iranians don't respond in some way with an offensive strike against the United States. The reality, though, is that while they might hit U.S. forces in the region or try to use cyber capabilities or more likely use a terrorist attack against American interests either in the region or in Europe or in the United States, any one of those is likely to be met with a stiff response by the United States. You saw Vice President Cheney, Vance just said. We've seen President Trump say the same thing. The secretary defense essentially highlighted the exact same thing as well. And so it's going to be very unlikely that if they strike back, the U.S. will respond in a significant way, particular if Americans are killed. The Iranians saw what happened when they hit Americans in Jordan with the killing of Kassim Soleimani. They ought to be warned about what's going to come next. How realistic do you think it is that military action can resolve the question around Iran's nuclear facilities, given that we have 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, we don't know the location of that. Now. It seems at least the US and Israel don't know the location. They have the ability, of course, to build centrifuges and they've said that they have an enrichment facility somewhere in Iran. Is it realistic to think that military action alone can remove the nuclear threat from Iran? Well, look, maybe not this military action alone, but certainly over the long run, that can be part of the solution. But you're right. We don't know what we don't know. There may be may very well be. Facilities are almost certainly are facilities in Iran that have nuclear dimensions to them that we have not yet located, not yet struck. That's going to be part of the challenge. To your point, there's all this enriched uranium that's about 60% that might be enriched to two weapons grade as well. We need to figure out where that is and extract that. Part of the problem here is that we've allowed Iran to have an enrichment program for so long. You know, we didn't even let our allies, the emir of the United Arab Emirates, conduct a nuclear enrichment program. We told them, you want the gold standard, we'll give you enriched uranium if you want to build a civilian program. The idea that back in 2015, the Obama administration would allow and enter into a deal where the Iranians got to keep a nuclear enrichment program is a core part of this problem. It's why President Trump walked away from that JCPOA deal. It's part of why we're here where we are today. Well, the counter to that would be. The JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Iran nuclear deal kept a cap on enrichment, kept a cap on Iran's ability to build towards a nuclear weapon more effectively than the military action has so far been from Israel and the US. Yeah, that is exactly you're exactly right, Tom. That is the core of the debate. The problem, of course, of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is it would have expired in 2025, so we'd be at the expiration of it right now. But even beyond that, it allowed Iran to continue to also develop advanced centrifuge capacity. It also allowed it to continue to build ballistic missiles, which it didn't even have restrictions on, in fact, remove some restrictions on. And perhaps worst of all, it didn't even touch the question of Iran's terrorism around the region. So if you're going to solve the Iran problem, nuclear enrichment is one piece of it. Weaponization is another. Ballistic missiles or a third. And all over all of this, Iran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad. These are things that have been dealt comprehensively. Unless you demonstrate to Iran you're willing to go up against them directly, as we have now, It's unlikely to put any of that on the table. Jamil, you've recently suggested that the US should should take action to support potentially support regime change in in Iran. How widely held is that view now in within the security apparatus of Washington? To paraphrase President Macron, have we not learned the lessons of Iraq, of Libya? No, it's a great point. And I think the really important point here is if there's going to be regime change, it can't come from the outside. It can come with the US coming in and removing the leadership of Iran. It's got to come from the Iranian people. But we know that over half the Iranian population is under the age of 40. We know that 80% of the population does not support their current leadership. They don't like that brutal dictatorship. If they choose to rise up, it's incumbent upon us to support them. We've said we saw the Green revolution or President Obama. We didn't support them when we had the opportunity. Now is our chance. The Israelis clearly have strong supply lines into Iran to get capabilities in, as we saw on these earlier strikes. So if we can use those supply lines to supply weapons capabilities, you know, communications gear and the like, to the Iranian people, if they want to rise up, we should enable that to happen. We don't need to ourselves. We don't need to pick the next leader of Iran. That's for the Iranian people.

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Iran Knows Well the Consequences If It Striks Americans, Jaffer Says

Jamil Jaffer, who served as the former associate counsel to President George W. Bush, says Iran has seen what would happen if the country decides to hit Americans, referencing the US assassination of Kassim Soleimani in 2020. Jaffer says the end goal of US strikes in Iran is to have the country operate in the region in an appropriate manner, not support terrorism and not build a nuclear weapon. "Part of the problem here is we've allowed Iran to have a [uranium] enrichment program for so long. We don't even allow our allies, the UAE to conduct one", he says. Jaffer speaks to Bloomberg's Tom Mackenzie on "Daybreak: Europe." (Source: Bloomberg)