My Thoughts on Iran & Ukraine

But one of the things he did was he had an interview with Ted Cruz where he asked Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz is very pro Israel, pro wanting to get involved, pro floating even ideas about regime change. Tucker Carlson asks Ted Cruz what's the population of Iran? And Ted Cruz doesn't have an answer, He's not sure. And I thought that was really revealing. Here's the thing. I don't necessarily

know that I want regime change in Iran. I think the only thing I agree with is with what the President has said, we can't let Iran have a nuke. That I'm I'm fine with you can't have You can't let Iran have a nuke. They're the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. It's clear that they want a nuke. They clearly are trying to enrich way more uranium than is necessary. That you don't really need uranium enrichment at

the levels they're doing it for domestic energy production. You know, you want nuclear power plants, that's fine, you don't need to be enriching uranium for it. It's obvious that they're doing something sneaky and not good. Okay, if we want to just sort of tell them, you're a rogue state.

You've attacked the United States a million times, You've killed hundreds of American servicemen in Iraq, you attack Israel all the time, you fund terrorist operations throughout the globe through your proxies like Hamas and the Houthis and whatnot Hezbollah. Then basically i'm that, And then all right, we want to we want to blow up your nuclear projects and stop you from being able to get a nuke. Okay,

that's good. Regime change is a different thing. You can't just kind of take out the leadership and then not get involved. There's no way that that's gonna work. A regime change project is way more work, way more involvement, and I'm starting to see the fault lines between people who don't want to intervene and get involved and those who do so. Here was this exchange between Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz on Tuesday. The Hill has a right

up on it. The conservative media personality. Carlson on Tuesday released a clip from the interview, set to be released in full on Wednesday, in which he grills Cruise on details about Iran and its demographic makeup. When Cruz does not know the answers Carlson is seeking, the host blasts a senator for failing to know the details of quote the country you seek to topple. How many people live in Iran by the way, Carlson asked, I don't know the population? Cruz responded at all. No, I don't know

the population. Cruz said, you don't know the population in the country you seek to topple, Carlson retorted. When Cruz asked Carlson the same question back, the journalist replied quickly ninety two million, adding how could you not know that? I don't sit around memorizing population tables Cruz responded. The conversation grew increasingly heated from there, as Carlson argued, the numbers are kind of relevant because you're calling for the

overthrow of the government. Why is it relevant if it's ninety million or eighty million or a hundred million. Why is that relevant? Cruz responded, before pushing back against Carlson's suggestion that he doesn't know anything about the country. Carlson then offered another trivia question, what's the ethnic mix of Iran? But that's not a trivia question. Well, see, this is all really relevant. So let me say this. I think

Tucker Carlson goes off the rails a lot. I don't really listen to him all that much on Russia Ukraine stuff. As much as I am not really I sort of join him, at least in being skeptical about American involvement in Ukraine, the extent to which Carlson over sells it to be like, oh, the Putin's actually maybe Putin's really the good guy. No, Putin's not the good guy. This

was an unjustified aggressive war. The question is whether it's a smart idea for America to heavily invest in it, which I'm not sure that it is, and I continue to not think it is, and I think, actually we'll talk about that later in the show. Her recent events have sort of demonstrated how unwise it was to really commit to this. But the point Tucker's making with Cruise right now is a really good point and a really relevant point. Here's Ted Cruz saying, yes, we should seek

to overthrow the existing ruling government of Iran. If you take that position, you got to kind of and you're a US senator, you should maybe know some basic facts about Iran. You should know the ballpark of their population. Probably you should know a bit about the ethnic mix, the ethnic background, something about the culture. Because I was talking about this on the show yesterday yesterday the day before.

One of the things we really learned in Iraq and Afghanistan was well, certainly Afghanistan, was that that was not a place quote ripe for regime change. We went in there, we kicked out the Taliban, We faced twenty years of constant civil war, and guess what we went landed up

at the Taliban being in charge again. Because a lot of these cultures are not ready for eager for wanting Western style liberal democracies, when you give populations in the Middle East the right to vote, sometimes the form of government that they democratically choose is an autocratic theocratic Sharia law mess case in point, the Gaza strip. Israel pulls out of it, Hamas comes in and becomes the terrorist organization.

Hamas becomes the dominant political party. They win the elections, They forcibly militarily shove out Fatah, the other political party, with like a mini little civil war in Gaza to shove them out militarily, and they were democratically elected by the people of Gaza back in the two thousands, I think it was like two thousand and eight or something like that. Some places don't think don will not greet you as a liberator if you come in and topple

their government. I've been hearing two different things about the Iranian threat my whole I don't know these past twenty years. One is that Iran was days away, weeks away, mere months away from getting a nuke. There was a story from two thousand and six about how Iran was sixteen days away from getting a nuke that someone posted. People have been saying Iran is about to get a nuke for a long long, long, long time, and they just

haven't done it. Now. There have been interventions, Israeli strikes, all kinds of things to sort of stop Iran from getting a nuke. But there's a little part of me that's like, well, this is a kind of a boy who Cried Wolfe situation. How sure are we that Iran is actually that close to getting a nuke. I don't doubt that they're working towards that goal, that they want a nuke, I just don't know how imminent a threat

it is. The second thing I've heard for a long time is people saying that the Iranian people are suffering under the yoke of the horrible Iyatolas, that they resent the Iyatolas, that they hate the suppressive government, that eighty percent of the Iranian people actually don't support Aatola komeni and the theocratic rule by the Iatolas in Iran, that they yearn for freedom. And then people will always bring up, oh, remember in the seventies when when the Shaw was in charge,

how awesome that was. And I guess the Shaw's current I don't know the Shaw who got expelled in the seventies. I guess it's either his son or his grandson. All of a sudden, now that he's popping up on videos on Twitter saying oh, we are ready, we are ready to come back and free the Iranian people. I'm like, all right, let's okay. So just a couple of things. First of all, I keep hearing this about also the

majority of the Iranian people reject the Iyatolas. Well, they've been awful quiet about their rejection of the Iatolas for the last you know, twenty plus years, fifty plus years. They seem awful quiet about it because the Iatola is still there. He's still in charge, Ayatola Komane, he's eighty six years old. Nobody's thought to internally topple him. You know, I don't know, maybe that'll happen in a week. I

guess could happen, But it's only happening. If it happens, it's only happening as a result of the precipitating event of Israel blowing up all of their major military leadership. So clearly, whatever public support there is for getting rid of the Ayatola has not been able to materialize into actual effective internal reform within Iran. No one's doing that. Secondly, this people always bring this up about well, back in the seventies when the Shaw was in charge in Iran

was such an open country. Okay, well that was seventy you know, that was fifty plus years ago. And let's remember it was the Iranian people who overthrew the shot. They kicked his rear end out and replaced him with a theocratic, crazy regime ruled by religious leaders, by the Iatolas. So it was the Iranian people who got rid of the Sha. Let's let's let's recall that. Okay. I prefer the Shah over the Iatolas too. I prefer, you know,

pre revolution Iran to current Iran. I think it's nice that women were able to walk around without hit jobs and not get shot. But let's remember that it was the Iranians who overthrew the shot, who didn't like the shot. So this idea that, oh, yeah, the Iran's like they're ready, they're ready to just get rid of the Iatolas and just go right back to you know, being you know, the cool, groovy Iran of the nineteen seventies. Boy, I really doubt that. I do not feel like that makes

a lot of sense. So in short, I don't want us to be involved. I don't want us to be involved. I don't want us to be involved. If we want to be involved at the level of let's stop them from having a nuke, and if Congress authorizes that or something like that at some point ever happening, okay, fine by me. But what I don't want is the president just doing any kind of military strikes he kind of wants to whenever he feels like it, involving us in

the actual work of regime change. And I get I understand the temptation on the part of the people who want regime change. The Iranian government is terrible. They are horrible. They are horrible, international sponsors of state of international terrorism. They funded Hamas who committed the October seventh attack, they fund the Huthis who've been constantly harassing our shipping. It's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, always around, no question, really bad. They're a horrible country.

And I can see how tantalizing it is that with a couple of air strikes Israel socked them much harder than I think even the Israelis might have expected. That they killed basically most of their major military leadership, most of their nuclear development leadership, and it seems like that Iotolo Komane's sort of isolated. He's eighty six years old. Maybe we're at the point where if we do one harder push, maybe we can take that old man out

and allow something new to come in in Iran. If that's something new is going to be stable, then the temptation's gonna be well. America needs to come in, help us out and help stabilize things, help train our military, and blah blah blah. Like I don't know, man, Like, I understand how tantalizing it is if you could get rid of the Ayatolas. But presumably whoever Comani's successor is is already ready to go. It's not just a thing

of killing an eighty six year old man. They have a whole kind of system in place over there, so I'm and backed by support of the military. So now a lot of their senior military leadership is all dead. I'm just saying, if you want to do regime change, Ted Cruz, you probably should have a sense of what Israel, of what the Iranian population is. You should have a sense of their ethnic background. You should have a sense of their cultural feelings about the shaw versus the current government.

Without just resorting to platitudes about all the noble Iranian people chafe under the yoke of the audiotols do they do? They chase under the yoke? I feel like a lot of them, what like the yoke? I think a lot of them are like, you know what, this yoke I'm yoking. We're yoking it up under the iatolas just an ox feeling very comfortable with my yoke of Sharia Islamist lunacy. A lot of people in the Middle East like that crap. They do. They vote for it when they get the

chance to, they overthrow the shot to get it. This country overthrew the show to get it. Do you think they're less inclined that way after fifty years of indoctrination. I don't know. I don't think so. It's not like the I mean, it's not like the education system was teaching kids the last fifty years. You know what, back in the good old days of the Shah people, you know, people were able to buy cool Western clothes. Nobody was

raised that way for fifty years. You've got like three generations of people brought up for this form of government. So I just don't believe this is like a country ready for regime change. Now when we return, why I feel like I kind of trust President Trump on this of all people. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I think I really trust President Trump on all this

with one caveat one caveat now jd Vance. Jd Vance, being a millennial, is still willing to go on Twitter and debate with people and sort of defend the President's position on a lot of this stuff, including on the Run stuff, and he wrote that basically, Hey, President Trump's been really consistent out one not wanting to get America involved into destructive wars in the Middle East. He's still

that guy. He's still consistent in that. But he's also been very consistent that Iran kan't avenuke and if the United States gets involved or doesn't get involved, I think that President Trump deserves a level of grace and a level of trust on this point, especially from conservatives. Okay,

I find that to be a fairly compelling argument. And oddly enough, as much as you know, I've been frustrated with Trump on certain things with social conservative issues and sometimes on you know, his postured during the campaign on abortion was I think frustrating. He's governed pretty pro life, but there's still some very significant things that I'm hoping he acts on, particularly with the abortion pill and things like that. Honestly, though, with foreign policy, I trust Trump

way more than I trust almost anybody else. I feel like the foreign policy blob of experts have been wrong about everything all the time, always. I feel like Trump was the only the first Trump administration was like the most successful foreign policy four years that we've had for

a very long time. Started, no new wars, helped crush isis, fostering good relations between Israel and various of its Arab neighbors, thonging of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Israel signs treaty, you know, treaties with various other Middle Eastern countries, to exchange embassies and have international flights and trade agreements, the whole Abraham Accurts thing. Trump is wildly more successful, full then all of these other people who have been in charge.

So I'm very inclined to trust President Trump with all of this, with only this caveat, With only this caveat. One of the things Vance was saying was, you know, it's going to be up to President Trump whether to engage in military strikes or whatnot. Blah blah blah. Eh. This is a thing I've hated about military operations in general. It's not really up to President Trump whether to engage in strikes. If America is getting attacked, yes, President Trump

can defensively initiate things. But if we're talking about America offensively engaging in something has to be involved. Congress has to be involved. The president is not unilaterally. Yes, once the military is engaged in something, the president has total control over the conduct of the military. Once Congress declares war, once Congress authorizes his use of military force, the president is in charge. The president is in charge of how

the military conducts itself in battle. One hundred percent totally agree, no argument there. But the decision of going to war, Congress needs to be involved with that. Particularly the House. Okay, the House, as the representative of the American people, as

the most directly proportional representative of the American population. The House has been involved, is involved, is mandated to be involved in the text of the Constitution because it's the American people deciding are we going to put our life on the line, Are we going to put the lives of our sons on the line to fight for this or that cause. Why has the US not ever directly engaged in the Ukraine War because the American people don't want it. Congress is smart enough to realize that they

can't even put that to a vote. All of the foreign policy blob who would love for American time, treasure, and blood to be invested in the Ukraine Russian War, they don't even dare say it because they know that the American people think it's nuts. They don't want American

boys to die for the DNBAS. So now, maybe President Trump can try to argue that he's got coverage for using military force based on the two thousand and one Congressional Authorization for military force that President Bush and President Obama and President Trump and all the present and since have used for fighting terrorism in the Middle East. Maybe he still has that. I find that to be a

big stretch personally. I'm just saying, if we're gonna get to the point of regime change, especially, we need another authorized use in military force. And the problem is they're not gonna get it. All these people who want to top of the Iranian government. I just don't think the American people want a regime change war, which necessarily will require investment of more American time and treasure time, treasure blood, and American troops. I don't think people want that. I

don't think the American people are gonna sign up for that. Now, limited air strikes, you get authorized used for limited air strikes just to take out Iranian stuff, or even just get giving the Israelis some of the bunker buster bombs that they don't have that we have that they might need for finishing the job with some of Iran's nuclear facilities. Okay, the American people might like that, but I do think Congress needs to be somewhat involved to the extent that

they legally need to be. When we return, we'll talk about Ukraine. What's happening there next on the John Gerardi Show. The situation in Ukraine is getting worse and worse and is deteriorating more and more. And there's now that there's more and more of a rift developing between the American foreign policy folks who really want more intervention in Ukraine

and those who don't. And the frustration on the part of those who want more intervention is why aren't we continuing to supply the Ukrainian Why aren't we giving them more aid? Why you know, Ukraine's gonna be suffer this terrible defeat and America's gonna look terrible. The reputation costs the United States is going to be terrible, to which all the people who said maybe we shouldn't get involved in this are starting to very rightly say, I told yousel.

This piece by Michael Brennan Doherty in National Review has been one of the leading foreign policy talking heads against more American involvement in Ukraine. He writes this Three years ago. Daherty wrote this on how to Lose Big in Ukraine. The mismatch is quite clear consistent with the theory that Russia ultimately cares more about this conflict. It is acting vigorously to achieve an acceptable end. Russia is acting chief

vigorously to achieve an end that's acceptable to itself. Meanwhile, the United States, unable to rally the deep passions of the American people to take signs significant risks in this conflict, must satisfy itself with hoping that more of the same failed strategy will yield a marginally less humiliating outcome. Our policymakers in the executive branch and across the blob of NGOs are cut off from the people whom the constitution

authorizes to declare war through their elective elected representatives. So basically, here's what Darty saying. In Russia, policy for their military operations is vested pretty much totally in Vladimir Putin. Putin decides, he completely controls the politics over there. He decides, and he desperately wants to get some kind of acceptable outcome in Ukraine. He wants some level of victory in Ukraine, whether even if it's not the total takeover of Ukraine,

it's capturing a lot of it. And he seems still aligned with the Russian people on wanting to achieve that goal. So that's really important to them. The Ukraine situations the most important thing for the Russians right now. Well, Ukraine is just not that important to the decision makers on war and peace in America, namely the American people. The American people, through their elected representatives in Congress, who authorize the President to engage in military conflicts, who through Congress

declare war. They are not willing to take the same risks that the Russians are. They just don't care about it at the level that the Russians do, and the Foreign policy Blob can rant and rape, but it's so critically important. Okay, you think it's important the American people, don't, you know how? I know. We're not even close to thinking about proposing to Congress the idea of America declaring

war on Russia over Ukraine. We're not close. We have debates in Congress about whether or not we will give the Ukrainians money, and half of half are a very sizable minority anyway of Congress, half approaching a majority says no, we don't want to give them more money, like we've given. How much are we going to give? What's the end goal here? We're ambivalent about giving the Ukrainians money as a country, and frankly, it's just not something the American

people care about. The Foreign policy Blob can rant and rap about this all they want. The simple fact of the matter is it does not impact the United States one wit who controls the DNVAS region. It just doesn't. It does not impact the lives of a single person who lives in Oklahoma or Illinois, or Chicago or Los Angeles. It just doesn't. It does not change the price of fish. It does not change. The price of beef does not

change the price of it. Just there are so many more issues that are so much more important to the American people right now. They just don't care about it to the level that the Foreign policy Blob wants. Hence, the American people are not willing to declare war. The American people are barely willing to fund the Ukrainians. So the idea that you're going to get mad that why aren't we wanting to fund it, Well, it's just not

that important to the American people. So getting us involved in the first place, investing as much money as we do, as we did now it's like this is going to be such a humiliating defeat for the United States. Okay, well, you guys were the ones who wanted us to get on the hook for it, knowing how anemic the support was. We can't. There just isn't the will. And that's the

difference between our two countries. Again. In Russia, Vladimir Putin snaps his fingers and the whole policy of the Russian government. Putin could end the war tomorrow. Putin could snap his fingers and say we're done, we're going back. He wouldn't he doesn't need to take a vote, doesn't need to take a poll, He just snaps his fingers and it's done. In the United States, we don't do that. I might talk about it in the next segment. How similar it is to kind of the classical model, to Rome and

Greece and the city states of the Mediterranean. That this feature of our constitution I think is brilliant and right that the people who are the ones who are going to go to war and send their children to fight and die in a war, through their most representative branch, the House of Representatives, have the critical role in deciding whether we're going to war or not. So you know that this is the problem, is that this has always been much more important for Russia than it has been

for the United States. So for the pro Ukraine types to get mad and angry, why aren't we investing more? Why isn't Trump investing more? Well, Trump was elected by a large number of people who don't want to keep funding Ukraine. He won the election in twenty twenty four after years and years of the Congress and the presidency under the Biden era giving Ukraine more and more money. Trump won. Sorry like you lost that you lost that rhetorical argument. You can be upset about this, think about

the reputational costs to America. Well, the whole point of this was for America not to be directly involved. And that's why I hate the whole concept of proxy wars, the idea that oh, we're we're not voting on war, We're just voting on you know, military funding for the Ukrainians. But then it's like we're losing a war. Our reputation is harmed. Look, if there's someone you want to blame, I don't think it's Trump for coming in towards the

end of this and acknowledging this isn't working. They're not winning. We got to have some kind of peaceful resolution to it. Now, I think they're legitimate criticisms of Trump that he has failed to utilize maximum leverage, and to a certain extent, he needs to give Ukraine a bit more leverage so that he can actually affect some kind of peaceful resolution. Although we forget that Trump's only been on the job

for a very short amount of time. So I don't know the idea that you know, we should judge Trump. I think by whatever the end result, what ends up

being rather than where we are right now. I think there are some fair and legitimate critiques of how Trump has sort of negotiated this up until now that you know, he has not really allowed Ukraine to get much negotiating leverage, and he's not really giving you know, if the United States keep saying, like, you know, we don't want to keep funding Ukraine, then it's not going to give much leverage to the United States to negotiate a peaceful settlement.

If Putin thinks, well, the United States is just going to stop funding them, I'm going to keep this war going. He has to give the Ukrainian some kind of leverage, and I think there's some legitimate critiques that he has not done that. But in short, this is the problem with Ukraine is people get mad that the United States is going to suffer a horrible reputational loss if we allow Ukraine to lose. Well, you know, you sell this as, oh, we're just funny, We're just giving them a little bit

of money. We're just giving them, you know, forty billion dollars to help, you know, massively deteriorate the Russian milita. It's a small investment. Now, it's our reputations on the line, Well, we didn't want our reputation to be on the line. You sold it as let's just give a little money to deplete the resources of the Russians. I find the whole thing frustrating. I feel like we kept giving money to a losing cause, and I feel terribly for the Ukraine.

I don't want Ukraine to be conquered by Russia. I don't think Vladimir Putin's a good guy. I think is a horrible guy. But we're in this sort of lose lose situation when we return this function of the constitution as putting the people in charge of decisions to go to war and peace. How it relates to the Greek and Roman models that's next to close out the John

Girardi Show. One of the interesting thing things about various different Greek and Roman political constitutions that got embodied into our American written constitution, the unwritten constitutions of those Greek and Roman city states, Greek city states and the Roman Republic, is they basically allowed a lot of the Greek city states had some kind of democratic assembly, an assembly of

the citizens that would decide certain kinds of questions. Now it varied from city city state to city state in Greece and the Roman Republican model also was a little different from the various Greek models, but one of the things that seemed consistent was that it was usually in an assembly of the citizens that questions of war and peace were decided, and the property qualifications for being a citizen in many individual Greek city states and in Rome, a lot of it had to do with did you

have enough money to pay for your own sword, spear armor. In Rome, actually you were a different kind of class. If you had a horse that you paid for, you were an equestrian, and that was like a property status class, and it changed sort of the level of the weight that your vote had and the idea of being basically, we are going to extend to you the right to make laws, to vote on laws, to decide on governmental policy to the extent that you're invested in this project,

and we're not. We are as a city state, we're not going to go to war unless we all sitting here together decide yep, we're because we're the we're the ones voting, and we're the ones who're going to go to war. And that's why citizenship was usually limited to adult men. It may have had something more to do with that than, you know, just pure misogyny. I mean, certainly there was a certain kind of chopanism that existed.

But the guys all voting were the guys who themselves were gonna go to war and fight and possibly die. It's probably why Athens had a much broader democracy than most of the other city states. Athens had a navy. The qualifications to fight in a navy are less than to fight in hop light battles because you're just rowing an ore. You don't necessarily need enough money to pay for armor or swords, you know, all that hoplight armor.

And this gets incorporated into the American Constitution by if we're going to declare war, then the House of Representatives, which is the most representative body that the directly proportional representation of the people as a whole, the citizenry as a whole, which is going to have to go to war itself and fight and die, the House of Representatives

has to okay it. And it's this cool feature of our constitution that it's if when the people decide to go to war, the people decide to go to war, and I think that needs to be first and foremost in our foreign policy blobs. Eyes that'll do it. John j. Already shows you next time on Power Talk