Regime Change in Iran

believe South Carolina. And so he tweets stuff about how in love he is with Nancy Mace and lots of other funny jokes. Anyway, he had a tweet that I retweeted from my account that I think perfectly sums up my attitude on Iran. He writes, as a complete dumbass centrist. I am finding myself just automatically agreeing with the last

Iran take. I see the last Iran opinion. I see someone will post something like we can't let Ron get a nuke, and I'm like, oh my gosh, you're right, And then someone else will post we can't get dragged into another war, and I'm like, well, yeah, that's a great point. I'm helpless I'm at your mercy, and that's me. I am worthless as a talk radio host. The point of having a talk radio host is to loudly get in front of a microphone and yell your opinion. And

I am completely hopeless. So at the moment, it seems like here's where we stand as far as could the US get pulled into this. So up until now it's been all Israel. Now kind of all Israel, because the only reason Israel's able to engage in an attack like this is because of all the military aid that we have given them over the course of years and years and years and years and years. So it's not like

we're totally not involved. Obviously we have been involved and Trump, I don't think Trump gave Israel the green light, but he didn't give them the red light. And also I think it might be a little unreasonable to expect that the United States can just dictate to Israel what it will and will not do. It seems as though Trump asked Israel to hold off for sixty days while he

put this Iranian deal on the table. Iran didn't act on it, Israel started their attack, and now most of the people that the United States was negotiating with are dead. So it seems as though Israel is kind of doing this on their own, not necessarily with a green light from the United States, not necessarily with the red light

from the United States. There is reporting that the United States is involved in some of the defensive stuff that Israel is doing to counter incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, so US military forces are involved in shooting down According to the story from the Wall Street Journal, US military forces are involved in shooting down incoming Iranian ballistic missiles that have been shot at Israel. Here's from Wall Street Journal.

Iran has fired about two hundred ballistic missiles in four barrages and more than two hundred drones toward Israeli territory so far in response to multiple waves of Israeli strikes in Israeli military official said before the retaliatory strikes even began, US jet fighters, Navy destroyers, and ground based air defense systems had positioned to help counter any attack. According to US officials, US ground based interceptors also helped defend Israel

in the latest barrages. The officials said the US operates several Patriot anti missile batteries across the region, moving them around to address perceived aerial threats. They're concentrated in Arab countries on the Persian Gulf, where the US operates sprawling military bases, as well as Jordan and Iraq. So we're involved,

but only in defensive operations. We're not involved in offensive operations. However, it seems that reading some of the more neo Khan leaning commentators like Jim Garrity writing a National Review, who I think is Leans, certainly he is solidly a you know, pro involvement in Ukraine of super pro Israel. I'm not saying neokon in a pejorative sense. I think I'm just

saying that is the position he has staked them. Basically, it seems as though the temptation that's on the table for the United States actually become directly involved with this war or in Iran is the possibility that we could actually affect regime change, the tantalizing possibility that maybe the current Iranian regime under the Ayatola Komani, who is eighty six years old and all of his senior officers are now dead, that the whole regime could topple any minute,

and that maybe if the United States intervenes with direct aerial bombardment something like that, maybe we could topple the Iranian regime and have something replace it. That is tantalizing. It is tantalizing, especially to the neo con types. Now why is it tantali Well, first of all, the existing Iranian regime is horrible. It is evil. They are terrible, terrible, terrible. They are the source of Iran is the chief exporter

of Islamic terrorism worldwide. Iran has supported most of the most disastrous, chaotic bad actors in the Middle East who have caused the most disruption in the region. They armed, equipped, funded hamas. Iranians were involved in the planning for the October seventh, twenty twenty three attack. The Iranians fund the Huthis, The Iranians fund Hezbolah. So Iran funds its proxies all throughout the Middle East to engage in all kinds of

terrorist attacks. They are a hugely destabilizing force in the world and to depending on who you talk to, it seems that they have been trying to develop a nuclear weapon for a long time. And that's sort of the trump card for me at least, is you know, I absolutely don't want the United States to be involved in a war in another Middle Eastern country. We have been there, done that, Iraq, Afghanistan, decades of being there, decades of being in Afghanistan, and what happens we get driven out

in the Taliban's back in power. What was the point. Yes, we killed Osama bin Laden, Yes al Qaeda is diminished, But I don't want another twenty years long war. I don't want any other war. And especially I mean, this is more crystallized in my mind having my little brother who's an officer in the United States Army. My actually my brother just got promoted. He's now a captain in the Army, got promoted from lieutenant to captain just this past weekend. We're very proud of him. So don't I

don't want another war. But Iran is really bad. They are a terrible, terrible, terrible, evil regime. And Iran also sort of has a history, like within living memory of many people of having a relatively western, open modern society prior to the nineteen seventies under the Shaw. Now the Shaw himself got toppled, he got regime, he got his rear end, regime changed. But under the shaw. Iran was a fairly open and modern society and it's still within

the living memory of many people in Iran. So unlike Afghanistan. Okay, Afghanistan was a certain we got to Afghanistan in two thousand and one, we toppled the regime. Afghanistan had had a certain way of life for way longer than we had ever been through. The Afghans had preserved that way of life against the Soviet invasion, beat off the Soviet invasion invaders. Iran is different. Run's a totally different culture

from Afghanistan. So now I don't purport to know everything there is to know about Iran, but not by a long shot. But it's different. And the thought is, well, maybe the United States takes part in aerial bombardment and this and that and the other, and maybe we can topple this regime. Well, so that's the temptation, that's the tantalizing temptation for especially the neo con types, is what

if we could actually do it? What if we could actually get rid of the current system in Iran with the Ayatolas, the theocratic, insane, Sharia based regime, and maybe replace it with something. Now there are two problems. One is what comes next. That's one of the big problems with a lot of countries in the Middle East is you know, you don't like such and such leader. Okay, well, what's gonna come next. You know, we don't like Saddam

Hussein Sadamasin's a very bad guy. What comes next? Well, maybe we get democratically elected sharia' that's what the people

vote for. Okay, you don't like, uh, you know, Israeli control of Gaza, Well, the Israelis leave, and what happens the Gazans elect Hamas you know, giving people in these regions the right to vote, the right to self determination doesn't always lead to good outcomes because look, there are a lot of populations there who may want to vote for something that is incredibly anti Western and incredibly medieval in its way of thinking. So you know, be careful

what you wish for. I mean, it's hard to envision anything worse, anything more illiberal, anything more pigheaded, anything more terror supporting than the Ayatolas. But you could affect regime change and then just go, you know, out of the frying pan into the fire. Secondly, to affect state regime change is not as easy as one, two three. It's not as easy as snapping your fingers. You know, Syria, which has been fighting a civil war for years and

years and years. They finally the one side overthrew the existing regime of Bashar al Asad. Bashar al Assad, who had been the president kind of dictator of Syria for the prior you know, twenty four years. He gets overthrown, and he was a terrible guy. He was bad dude. He was kind of I think he was kind of a also an Iranian proxy. Iran would use Syria under Bashar al Asad and before Bashar al Asad was his

father was kind of the dictator. Before that, they would use Syria as their sort of through point for getting arms and weaponry transferred from Iran to the Syrian to their various little proxy militant entities throughout the Middle East. The Huthis, Palestinian Palestinian groups has blah things like that. Anyway, the guy who overthrew As'ad, who's now in charge of Syria, he had been a former al Qaida guy, and now everyone's like, oh, he's this moderate rebel because everyone disliked,

you know, everyone within the American foreign policy establishment. Understandably he did not like Asad, but they are trying to gussie up this new guys if he's some wonderful saint, and it sort of remains to be seen how this new guy is going to govern, and it also remains to be seen, like, you know, how stable is this guy gonna be? This guy Ahmed al Sharrah, so you know, how stable is that guy going to be? You know, we replaced the Taliban in Afghanistan and we had twenty

years of constant fighting. We replaced Saddam in Iraq and we have, you know, twenty years of constant fighting. So the idea of you know, oh, the US will just engage in a couple of air strikes and then all of a sudden up regime change done. Hooray, mission accomplished. Boys, we did it that. I don't think that's how that works. I think there's a good chance that you can't achieve regime change, you know. And that's the thing. I feel

like people of neo cons love doing this. I've been following politics since I was I don't know, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, and I feel like I've heard for the last decade US certainly, and maybe longer than that, especially about Iran. Like remember the Green Revolution those happened all these different Middle Eastern countries during the Obama years we're having you know, the Egyptian government got overthrown and then got reoverthrown back to basically the same government they

had before. All these Green revolutions were actually uh, people wound up with a lot worse governments during that time. And for years people have been saying, the Iranian people hate the regime they live under. They are suffering under the regime they live under. They they are chafing for They're they're champing at the bit yearning for freedom, to which I say, well are they? Though? Are they really?

I mean that there were some of the Green Revolution protests like in the Obama era, But if so many millions of Iranians really don't like this regime, there's really no way that they could have overthrown this regime on their own without us prior. I don't know, That's the thing, Like I feel like we always want to overestimate this idea that the people genuinely hate their current existing government that the United States also hates. You know, I don't

know how dissatisfied the Afghans were with the Taliban. I don't know how dissatisfied the Iraqis were with Saddam Hussein. I don't know. I don't know how dissatisfied, which leads me to my point. I don't know how dissatisfied the Iranians are with the current setup. I mean, will we actually be like and it's just that that narrative again, Well,

we'll be treated as liberators, will we? I mean, yeah, they used to have the Shah, and they used to have this more open, you know, western open societ that was like fifty years ago, and they overthrew that guy and replaced him with the most not that kind of regime possible. You know, we bring up that they'll shoot women or execute women for walking around without a heye job. We think that's terrible. I don't know that most Iranians think that's terrible. I don't know. Maybe there are a

lot of them who think it's terrible. Maybe, but I don't know that. And I don't feel like anyone in America has really the most solid grip on just how unpopular or popular the iatolas are in Iran. At the same time, there's the nuke thing. So we'll talk about the nuke thing, the big trump card in this after the break. This is John Girardi Show. As I said at the start of the show, I think my opinions on Iran are sort of wildly all over the place. I feel like I just kind of agree with whatever's

the last thing I read. So if the last thing I read was we cannot allow the Iranians to get a new because we should, We should intervene, we should topple the regime now while we got the chance, I'm like, oh, that's pretty persuasive. And then I read someone else being like, really, you wont another war in the Middle East that's gonna drag on for twenty Oh, that's pretty persuasive. And you know, you're trying to do. Regime change is obviously not so simple.

It's not like you snap your fingers and it just happens very often. It requires twenty years of dedicated, you know, ground forces, and maybe it's not super stable and god

knows how committed the Iranians are. The one thing, the one thing with Irun that makes it a little more dicey than everyone else is whether they are well, let me put it this way, whether they were close to getting a nuke before the Israeli strikes, whether they are close to getting a nuke now after the Israeli strikes, whether long term they're going to be close to getting a nuke, whether they even want a nuke to begin with, Okay, which it seems that all of those points are disputed now,

I guess I'm not. I give more credence to the idea that, yes, Iran would like to have a nuke, thank you very much, and then also the idea of, well, how will Iran act with a nuke? Most countries with nukes, even really bad countries like North Korea, don't use them willy nilly. It gives you negotiating leverage, but most countries don't actually use them. North Korea has a nuke, they don't use it. It strengthened, it strengthens their negotiating position

in various kinds of ways. But they're not firing the nuke because they know if they actually fire a nuke, we will eliminate them from the face of the earth. So they don't fire a nukes. They have a nuke, it's a negotiating leverage point. They don't use it is the Ayatola Komane, an eighty six year old man, by the way, and there are these news stories about how he's kind of feeling totally disconnected because all the people

he worked with are now dead. And frankly, I think it's a fair question of whether any you know, given that we in the United States just went through this with an octogenarian president, you know how loose it is he, how stable is here, and how stable is whoever's going to replace him? Is an iatola in Iran, either the current one or whoever's the next one, who is going to step up after Komane. Are they crazy enough, suicidal enough to actually use a nuke, to give a nuke

to approx see to explode in Jerusalem? Is that even physically possible? I guess. I don't know all that. Do they have actually the ballistic missile technology to deliver said nuke a long distance? Do they have the ability to detonate a nuke in a city, to smuggle it into a city and there by detonate it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I

don't know. But that is the big threat. That is the one thing that the Neokon side has in its favor is this is a unstable suicide bomb loving martyrdom, Islamic martyrdom, jihad, embracing theocratic government. It genuinely embraces these principles of theocracy and martyrdom for the cause of Jihad and Sharia. And they're going to have a nuke. You know, you think that they won't use the new You hope they would act rationally with the nuke, but that's not

always a guarantee. One person can make one bad decision and all of a sudden, no Tel Aviv, no Jerusalem. No, you know, I don't know if it's possible to smuggle a nuclear weapon into a city in the West, you know, No Paris, no, you know, whatever it is. So I guess I can't I acknowledge that that is maybe the trump card. Now, maybe the Israeli strikes have completely decimated their nuclear capacity. I would want to know that one way or another before I'm supportive of regime change. But

the nuke angle is the one trump card. And all this all right, when we return, will go away from foreign policy to domestic stuff. Gavin Newsom Gavin's Last gasp An update on his lawsuit against President Trump. That's next on the John Gerardy Show. I had a piece published by National Review today. You can check it out at my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash Fresnojohnny at Fresno Johnny.

It's a piece basically about Gavin Newsome, And as I've talked about before, my thesis is that I think non Californians and even a lot of Californians, don't realize just how politically damaged Gavin Newsom is right now, and how he has really isolated himself within California and has racked up just a string of really embarrassing and devastating failures that and critically, it's failures that are non partisan in nature,

that have outcomes that are non partisan in nature. Things that he said were a priority in twenty eighteen that he just didn't deliver on. Things that are just bad homelessness, lack of new home construction, when he's been saying since twenty eighteen, Oh, there's a serious problem, we need to fix it. The high speed rail having zero point zero inches of operable track. Wildfires. Wildfires were a huge problem twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, they were still a big problem

at the start of twenty twenty five. He has issue after issue after issue after issued like that where it's like, it's not a thing where Republicans really don't like it, but Democrats really like it because it's a super liberal policy. No, it's a wildfire. Nobody likes a wildfire. Homelessness. Nobody likes homelessness. Davin Newsom spent twenty four billion dollars on homelessness and it hasn't helped the problem at all. So no one

likes homelessness. No one likes high how costs. No one likes the fact that we can't build anything quickly in California, including new homes. Nobody likes wildfires. Nobody blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, issue after issue after issue, or what he has is something that's like a liberal policy that he's had to backtrack from because it's been such a disaster. He extended medical eligibility to illegal aliens. It wound up being way more expensive than he thought, so

he has to pull back on it. So that looks bad to everybody. It's not a thing that just Republicans are mad at because Republicans don't support giving medical coverage to people who aren't supposed to be in the country. This is something that looks bad to everyone. Liberals are far angrier at Gavin Newsom right now than conservatives are over the medical for illegals thing. All right. Conservatives are just like, okay, well, you know, just another thing that

we don't like. I mean, you know, it's a thing that we would expect from Gavin Newsom. Liberals in Sacramento. Liberals in the state legislature like Joaquin A. Rambula, for example, are really upset at the withdrawal of coverage from illegal aliens, really upset. Advocacy groups all up and down the state are super angry at Gavin Newsom for the withdrawal of some medical coverage from some illegal aliens, not all, but some,

so they are just fit to be tied. Most of the state legislature, in fact, is unhappy with it, and the state legislative proposal for the budget. The state legislator's proposal from the budget sort of moderates even the Newsom position, and a bunch of Democrat legislators aren't even happy with that. So Newsom is hugely politically damaged right now. He has isolated people in California. You've got because of his cuts. You've got teachers unions mad at him, public workers, public

workers unions mad at him. You've got the abortion industry mad at him. You've got Planned Parenthood was furious at the cuts he proposed in the May revision. He's got environmentalists getting mad at him because now he's belatedly trying to do more water delivery stuff for southern California to equip them for wildfires, and they're mad at some of the stuff he's trying to do there. You've got legislators really mad at him. You've got advocacy groups really mad.

Everyone is mad at him. So he has all these non partisan failures. He's got fellow liberals really ticked off at him. He's the ultimate lame duck. He's only got a year and a half. He's got a year and a half left as govern and you can see the tenor of conversations that happened in Sacramento. It's shifting away from a Newsom centric focus. The legislature sees his May revision of the budget and they're like, well, we don't

want that. We're gonna give our own proposal. That doesn't cut as much as you cut, and they sort of I think they're taking this attitude of they're not afraid

of Gavin Newsom anymore. I think Gavin Newsom, especially around the time of his recall, Newsom at the time of his recall clearly had more power, more clout, more money behind him, more support within the Democrat Party than he had ever had, and he was able to intimidate every elected Democrat in California and basically say, if any Democrat dares to run in the recall election, their career is over. And he was able to do that. He had the muscle,

the money behind him to do that. He had organized labor all behind him, he had the environmental groups all behind him. He had his traditional, you know, magic circle of donors. The CEO of Netflix was giving like tens of millions of dollars to the anti recall campaign because there wasn't a there's no dollar contribution limit on a yes or a no on a recall campaign like there is for individual races giving a donation to a candidate. Newsom had that muscle back then. He doesn't have that

muscle anymore now. The most innovative kinds of legislative proposals that are happening in the legislature. They're sort of happening independent of Newsom. It's not a Newsome proposal. You got Buffy Wicks from Oakland who's proposing all these new things having to do with trying to reform SEQUA. That's all kind of a legislative initiative. It's sort of Gavin Newsom tagging along after the fact. He's not the chief driver

of things in Sacramento anymore. They know he's gone a year and a half, even with a lot of his cuts. I mean, you had these advocacy groups saying we look forward to working with the legislature to fix this, not working with the governor, working with the legislature to fix this, because they all know he's not long for this world. We're not scared of him anymore. He's not the kingmaker that he was because his political mortality is coming up.

He's you know, after the twenty twenty six elections, he's done. He turns out as governor and he's not coming back into California politics. That's the other thing is I don't see a credible path to ongoing political relevance for Newsom. For anything short of the presidency. What's Newsom gonna do after this? Well, he can't realistically run for the Senate right now. The two US Senate seats are filled, so and they're filled with it's not aging Dianne Feinstein or

aging Barbara Boxer anymore. You've got Alex Padilla, whom Newsom appointed. Newsom appointed Alex Padia in twenty twenty one to replace Kamala Harris after Harris became the vice president, so Newsom appointed him. He appointed him to the Senate in twenty twenty one. Padilla got re elected in twenty twenty two. So Padilla is in office through twenty twenty eight, and you know, odds are he's gonna run for president in

twenty twenty eight, So Newsom can't get Padia's seat. Probably if if Padea runs for reelection and he's he's not that old, I don't think. Yeah, he was born in nineteen seventy three, so he's only like fifty something. Yeah, he's like fifty two years old. Padilla is likely going to run for reelection twenty twenty eight. I don't know how Gavin Newsom can incredibly run against him. It's not I you know, what's he going to do? Primary the guy that he appointed? The other Senate seat is filled

by Adam Shiff. Shift just got elected in twenty twenty four, so you know that seat's not open to Newsom at least until twenty thirty. And again, Shift's a relatively young guy. I wouldn't you know, in the grading on the curve of the American gerontocracy where we've had eighty year olds be president, I would imagine Adam Schiff is going to run for reelection twenty thirty, And again, what's Newsom going to do? Try to primary the guy they don't really

disagree on much. So Newsom can't take one of the two California US Senate seats. Running for the House seems like a bit of a step down. Frankly, I don't know that he wants to be one of you know, three hundred and four or however many members of the House there are members. That's a step down to be a state representative, forget it. So Newsom has nowhere to

go other than try to run for president. So when we return, I want to talk about how that's the main reason I think he is so desperate to get into and win this current little legal fight he's having with Donald Trump. That's next on The John Gerardy Show. Gavin Newsom has nowhere to go but up. It's his only route to any kind of ongoing political relevance. He can't run for either of the two US Senate seats. They're not open to him. He appointed Padilla Adam Schiff

just got elected. I don't think he wants to go back down to be like a member of the House of Representatives or something, or in the state legislature. God forbid. So what does he have left the presidency. That's his only option left for any kind of continuing political relevance, and it's an office he has obviously coveted for a long time. Problem is he has so many failures on his resume, non partisan failures. Wildfires. We had bad wildfires, He had opportunity time to do stuff to correct it.

We had more bad wildfires. Homelessness was a big problem when he started. It's a worse problem now. And he spent twenty four billion dollars on it, and no one knows where the money went. No new housing constructs, you know, bad low housing, new housing construction. When he started as governor it continues to be a huge problem. No high speed rail, No high speed rail, just problem after problem after problem after problem. You know, he he extends medical

coverage to illegal aliens. Now he has to pull it back. All of his problems are non partisan coded in nature. And if he goes to a Democrat primary and he's on that debate stage, Josh Shapiro can skewer him, not with you did this super liberal thing and a lot of people don't like liberal things. Shapiro can skewer him with non partisan failures. You said you were going to address homelessness. Homelessness is worse than when you started. You said you were going to address the fact that housing

construction takes too long. You know, you said you were going to high gas prices. During your time as governor, gas prices expanded enormously. You signed this law in twenty twenty four, and then within a year two years, gas prices shot up enormously. You know, you did this, You did that, you did that, and all of it is non partisan aligned, it's non partisan coded. It's the kind of thing that other Democrats in the Democrat primary can demolish him with. So what does he have left? Trump

the white whale for all Democrats. If Newsom so Newsom filed this lawsuit to stop Trump from activating the California National Guard, he gives this wildly over dramatic speech about how the democracy is at stake, it's on the line. He pretends like he's gonna cry and stuff. He gets the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California, even though the riots are happening in southern California, and the Northern District of California is the judicial district that's centered

in San Francisco, seven hours north. Why does he do that because sixty three of the sixty five federal judges, the Federal District Court judges who serve in the Northern District of California are Democrat appointees. Each of the Bush's got one judge, and they're both at senior status, so

they're like, you know, not full time judges. He gets, of all people, Steven Bryer's brother, who gives a predictably wildly left wing ruling while during the oral arguments, he was talking about how Trump can't be a king, you know, just coincidentally, the same language that's being used for all the protests that took place over this past weekend, the No Kings protest. So that's the thing. Newsom has a

lot of failures. But if he can get into a showdown with Donald Trump and somehow win and come off as a sympathetic figure, all that other crap could go away. That could cover up the multitude of his failures. If he's in the debate stage and say, I'm the only person here who's been able to take on and beat Donald Trump. None of you other people have. I'm the

one person who knows. I stood toe to toe with Donald Trump, and I stopped him when he was trying to be a dictator and use the California National Guard to, you know, impose martial law. I think that's why he's so invested in this. It's his only shot, his only shot at relevance, his only shot at the presidency, his only shot at the Democrat nomination, to cover up his laundry list of failures. That'll do it. John di already shows you you next time on Power Talk.