Iran Revolution-Why this is Different...Trump is not Obama

That is enormously consequential. We're going to break down why he said, what he did, what it means, and what's going to happen next.

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dot com. That's Compassion dot com. All right. So, Center Sunday Morning, I was watching CBS like Sunday Morning, their show it with Jane Pawley, and they were reminding people that Tuesday is one year since President Trump will be in office, and they were talking about this and they were also comparing it, saying that Donald Trump has gone so rogue on the world stage now, and they had a historian on to say, well, most countries don't make it to two hundred and fifty years with a democracy

and freedom, and so they were clearly implying that this is that two hundred and fifty year anniversary. We probably won't make it there by July because Donald Trump's gone so rogue. And I laugh because I'm like, this guy is so clearly transparent and what he wants to do and what the voters told him to do. Iran as another example of that, you don't have to guess. He has said what our state admission is.

Like their definition of democracy is not what you actually would get looking in the dictionary, which is the people voting. And actually pure democracy is the people voting and choosing the policies that will govern their country. We don't have a pure democracy. We have a republic. What is a republic. A republic is where the people vote to elect their representatives. So the people are not voting on should our top marginal tax rate be thirty six percent or fifty percent

or ten percent. That would be direct democracy, but instead we have You could call it a democratic republic because it is a republic where democracy operates to elect our representatives. But when people use democracy capital d they usually mean that the voters get to decide. But that's not how democrats use it, that's not how the media use it. Instead, what they mean by democracy is socialists and Marxists are in power, and by the way, they're perfectly happy to

ignore the voters if it keeps them in power. Let's focus on I ran for a moment because listen, and we've talked about this on the pod in the last couple of weeks. I really do think we're in a momentous moment like unlike anything we have seen since the late nineteen in the eighties, the early nineteen nineties. We're in a moment where three of the most viciously anti

American regimes across the planet, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. In the next six months, we could see all three of those regimes fall, and we could also see free and fair elections and all three of them. And if that happens, I think there is a real possibility that they will

elect democratically elect going back to big D democracy. The voters, I believe there's a real possibility will elect leaders who will defend free markets, defend freedom, and critically stop waging war on America and make the choice to be friends with America. If that happens, it will be the most consequential change on the global stage since the fall of the Berlin Wall, since Ronald Reagan and America won the Cold War. And we did that without firing a shot.

That changed the entire globe, and we could see in twenty twenty six a change. Every bit is significant. Now, let me be clear, there are a thousand ways for things to go wrong in Iran, in Venezuela, in Cuba. So and what we do know for certainty is it will not be smooth and without challenges. We know that to an absolute certainty. Expect the unexpected. That being said, President Trump came out this week and he explicitly said

it is time for a new government in Iran. He had never said that before, throughout the first term, throughout this term until right now, he had explicitly not gone so far as to embrace quote regime change. Now, Ben, you'll remember what was it six seven months ago when I did Tucker Carlson Show. He started by peripatetically freaking out and saying, my god, Cruz, you're for regime change in Iran. And he had a heart attack, and then

he began laughing maniacally, which he does a lot. The odd thing is, I think any rational American should be wont to see regime change. If you ask yourself, is America better off if the leader of Iran is not a crazy religious nut, an Islamist radical who chance death to America, to kill, who chance death to America, who

murders and tortures his own people. Who is the biggest funder of terrorism on planet Earth, who provides more than ninety percent of the funding to Hamas, who provides more than ninety percent of the funding to Hesbela, who is responsible for killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. Like unequivocally, America would be better off if the Ayatola was no

longer the leader of Iran. Now, part of the reason why the words regime change have a stigma connected to them, it is many remembered the Iraq War, Remember the George W. Bush administration, where regime change justified sending hundreds of thousands of American troops to spend years fighting in a distant war. And they don't want to see that. And by the way, I don't want to see that. I think the Iraq War was a mistake. I have said that for a

long long time. So when I say I support regime change, it doesn't mean I want to send hundreds of thousands of American troops onto the ground in Iran. What it means is it is unequivocally in our interest to see the Iatola fall. I think the Iatola's fall ought to be driven primarily by the Iranian people, and it's why this uprising is so consequential because it is Iranians who are risking their lives to overturn this regime, this dictatorship.

But President Trump, I think is doing a good job of number one, making clear that America stands with the people, stands with the protesters, and threatening accountability and what is accountability look like like. He has made clear to the government of Iran if you just sit there and begin massacring the protesters, there will be real consequences. He hasn't specified what they are, but the clear implication is the

consequences will be military and nature. That deterrence, by the way, military and nature is not send hundreds of thousands of troops to the ground, but it may well be bombed the crap out of something like there is And hopefully that is a.

terms of covert activities. I hope we're doing everything humanly possible to help and support the protesters so that they can overthrow the government, not us, but them. But we can be contrasted to what happened when Barack Obama was president, and I want to actually I want to compare the two and give you that contrast. So there was an article in Tablet magazine several days ago, and it's called is this Time Different? In Iran? By an author named

Peter throw and here's what he said. I want to read this at some length because I think it's really quite interesting and profound. In two thousand and nine, what shocked me about President Barack Obama's lack of support for the Green Movement protesters in Iran was the failure to launch of the Commander in Chief's colossal ego. Here were thousands of young Iranians filling the streets of Tehran to appeal to him, even with a wistful pawn on his name. Obama,

Bama Bashid Obama be with us. Anyone in government at the time knew that the Chicago un lacked nothing in the way of ruthlessness, though he tended to save it for republicans of the non Islamic variety. He applied the word enemy to the GOP, but never to the Mullahs. If righteous anger at the regime's murder of dissidence didn't meet the threshold for Chicago rules, I thought surely vanity might do the job. But opening to Iran had been

an early theme of his presidency. That same year, with a mushy Persian New Year message and a secret letter to Supreme Leader Ali Kameni of whom he knew little. Quote. Despite his title of Supreme Leader, Kameni's authority wasn't absolute. Obama preposterously intoned in his memoir of Promised Land in twenty twenty, quote, he had to confer with a powerful council of clerics, the Guardian's council. Referring to the clerics, journalist Kareem Sajjapur observed that their average age is deceased.

Obama continued, that's pretty funny. Obama continued, quote, my first impulse was to express strong support for the demonstrators, Obama records further in that memoir. But when I gathered my national security team, are Iran experts advised against such a move. According to them, any statement for me would likely backfire. Activists inside Iran fear that supportive statements from the US government would be seized upon to discredit their movement.

Datan Sharansky. But what of that national security team? Obama does not name them, but his administration would become known for high level sentimentalists towards Iran, Rob Malley, Samantha Power, Philip Gordon, sahir Naurazadree, and the diplomatic weaklings who would negotiate the nuclear deal. So Obama issued a series of statements that he himself would describe as quote bland, bureaucratic, and passive. Bitter that quote, I had to listen to

Republicans how that I was coddling a murderous regime. Actually he was six years away from truly coddling it. Our cerebral leader lamented that as president, quote, my heart was now chained to strategic considerations and tactical analysis, my conviction subject to counterintuitive arguments that in the most powerful office on Earth, I had less freedom to say what I meant and act on what I felt than I had

as a senator. In other words, what passed for his convictions were easily defeated by an America bad briefing from his subordinates. Now it goes on to say, numbers are still inexact, but Tehran's thugs made about four thousand arrests and killed hundreds to quell the two thousand and nine demonstration. The Green Movements leaders were jailed globally, dissidents of all stripes, and even Madonna and U two spoke out in favor of Iranian democracy. By the way, where are Madonna and

you two right now? That's an interesting question. Was it a bitter pill for a cool cat like Obama not

to be in that club? I suspect not, as he harbored some sentimentality towards the Islamic Republic, having stated in his first letter to its leader, as well as in his tape video message on the occasion of Norah's the Persian New Year, that he sought normalization with the state sponsor of terror, a long step beyond better hope, hoping for better relations with a Ran someday, as you might do in a holiday.

and helping them stay on top in Iran. Like, let's just be clear, we sent them money. Yeah.

to full flower under the Biden White House. And I think the history for a lot of folks that may not remember what was happening. Look, two thousand and nine was sixteen seventeen years ago, was a long time ago. Yeah, let me jump forward because the question then is okay, what's different now? And let me jump forward to this article. I think it's a really insightful article. So, after two weeks of the largest nationwide demonstrations in Iran since the

Islamic Revolution, what has changed and why? It has nothing to do with negotiating tables and lots to do with battlespace. First, let's note that this month's huge anti regime demonstrations in more than one hundred Iranian cities were not ignited by a single big domestic event like a blatantly stolen election or the murder of an innocent young woman. The Iranian real has been crashing, passed a million to the dollar. Let me say that again, one pasted one million to

a dollar. That's their exchange rate for weeks, and inflation reached the point where the Tehran Bazaar was losing money on every transaction, so it closed everything else.

strike and reported military affections. The battle space started shaping up six years ago this month under Trump, with the US killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps kud's forced commander Kassam Salamani, the second most powerful man in Iran, by US drones at Baghdad Airport. He had just arrived from Damascus, where he was briefing former Syrian president Bashar al Assad on a plan to attack the US embassy in Baghdad as it had been done in Tehran in

nineteen seventy nine. Iran's Iraqi katspaw Abu Madi al Mahandis and ten senior Iranian briefers and bodyguards were also killed in the strike. After twenty years a Bush, Obama and Biden kid gloves, Tehran was legitimately frightened, and then after the Tehran directed atrocity against Israel in October twenty twenty three, Israel killed Yaha Sinwar, mohammadif Hasrand, Nosrala, Ibrahima kil Hashim Safedin and Ismail Haniya, added IRGC safehouse in Tehran and

almost one hundred more in Lebanon and Gaza. Deprived of its decapitated Hezbela Pratorian guard, the Syrian bath Party didn't trust its own people any more than the Bolavarian Maduro trusted Venezuelans more than Cubans. The criminal Assad family fled to Moscow. Then last summer, the Israelian US air forces wiped out much of the Iranian military's general staff and key nuclear sites. The pro Tehran, Moscow and Beijing dominoes

continue to fall. With the capture of Nicholas Maduro, the massacre of his Cuban protection detail, the seizure of Russian ghost ships, and the spread of Starlik terminals in Iran, Iranians have seen the regime and its backers exposed and humiliated by an American administration, and they were quick to exploit this roll of the dice. Unlike Prohamas nihilists from Berkeley to Dublin. They have hit their streets in millions without a single kefia or aluja Akbar, motivated by American

successes against their regime and its effeckless backers. At the time of writing, the regime has turned off the Internet and all landlines, and Kameni has engaged emerged from a

two day silence to express defiance. This is no surprise to anyone who knows that Kameni's greatest fear is moderation that causes the regime to bend and then break, as expressed in Alex Vatanka's The Battle of the Iyatolas in Iran, Kameni became obsessed with the prospect of an Iranian Gorbachev who would impose reforms and usher in a USSR style collapse.

The more so because this was addressed by Tom Friedman, a Jewish American journalist, in a nineteen ninety six column titled Waiting for Iyatola Gorbachev after he visited Iran that pressed all of the leader's buttons, his defiance to continue as long as he is alive or in power, which may not be long, and listen to this because he faces two threats. The one in front of him is the unpredictable Donald Trump, who has already shed Iranian blood

and has promised to rescue the Iranian people. The one behind him is the IRGC, which holds all the firepower in Iran, and which knows, as Mohammed am Dinijad do, that the Mallahs are despised by nearly the entire population. They are unlikely to lay down their guns or give up the forty percent of the Iranian economy they control. They are led by Ahmed Vahiti and internationally sanctioned terrorists. Quote terrorists are acts was a wise saying of one

of my counter terrorist colleagues at the CIA. She didn't just mean that terror plots ruined our weekends and sleep schedules. She meant that terrorists are psychopathic, disloyal, and venal creatures who could and did mistreated each other and turn against each other. The top ranks of the IRGC are full of them, and this is the final point what might lead the IRGC to sideline or overthrow Kameeni and his

weak president Masud Pezeshkian. Two kinds of strike, an anti regime blow from the United States or the labor variety that would shut down Iranians Iran's energy sector if both occur, my money is on a coup and goodbye Mullahs. And this is from Peter Thurreau, spent twenty years in the

US government and the CIA. I got to say, look, I appreciated that that article because it provides a level of context and detail, drawing a real difference between what happens when you have a weak pro Islamist president like Barack Obama or for that matter, Joe Biden in the White House versus a strong pro America president like Donald Trump, and I think the terrain is totally different, which is why, by the way, Trump is saying to the protesters, keep a list of the names of any soldiers who are

committing atrocities, because there is going to be accountability. That carrot and stick is really powerful for deterring that kind of horrific action.

in Iran, to Vladimir Putin in Russia. Venezuela is another example of this, right, then what the money that they need to survive and to hold on to power and to pay their forces to keep them in power and to go after their citizens just completely disappears. That is part of I think what Donald Trump, and it was very interesting to hear this kind of back and forth.

There's like, hey, I'm sorry that the price of per barrel is not where you want it, but it's helping American families a lower gas prices, and it's a national security thing for us as well. And it's allowing some of these horrible people in the world to start tetering a little bit because they don't have the cash flow they had two three four years ago under democratic leadership.

almost every bad guy in the world. That is weak in Russia, that is week in Deran, that is weak in Venezuela, and Maduro because it is I guess God has a sense of humor in that that many of the worst players on planet Earth depend upon oil revenues. There are in many ways Petro tyrants. Now Duro's not Maduro is innate number two, five seven.

of oil so dramatically that you devastate US producers. And as you know, I talked to I represent Texas, I talk to a lot of US producers, and I will say, at down around sixty seventy dollars a barrel, you see what we've got now, which is gas prices at about two three bucks a gallon, depending on what part of the country you're in. Now, if you're in California, there's still four five bucks a gallon.

a drop. But what happens if we see forty dollars oil, You'll see bankruptcy bankruptcies throughout the Permian basin of the small producers. And when those guys go away, those are the guys driving production. And what it does is it weakens America's ability to produce oil and makes us more

dependent on foreign adversary. So I think what President Trump of the administration is trying to do is stay in a sweet spot where oil is low enough that our enemies are weakened, but not so low that we're devastating us small businesses. And I think they're doing a pretty good job of trying to balance those two factors well.

don't want to hurt mom and pops. You don't want to hurt the small ones like you said, the big ones will be okay, but these small refineries that literally power these small towns where they are, you don't want them to get hurt either.

one in terms of Venezuela. Venezuela, as we've talked about, has the highest proven reserves of oil in the world. No country has more. But the Venezuelan infrastructure is completely collapsed. Communism is not capable of producing what they should and so Venezuela right now is producing about a million barrels a day, which is a fraction of what their capacity is.

I will say I I asked one of the major CEOs, I said, okay, what would the time frame be to take Venezuela from one million barrels a day to three million barrels a day. And the response was ten years. That it doesn't happen over like, it would take tens of billions of dollars of investment, and perhaps north of one hundred billion dollars. Now you would recoup that, but

the infrastructure has so degraded. And I said, all right, so ten years to go from one million a day to three million a day, how about just from one to two And the answer was five to seven years. So the first millions, it's.

I've been told that the Gulf coast refineries could almost overnight refine an additional two hundred and fifty thousand barrels of the heavy crude from Venezuela. Now, interestingly enough, when I've asked the refiners, okay, what would the trade off be, what would the impact be? Say for West Texas producers, the refiners at least were not that concerned about it, and they said, look, the other producers of heavy crude

are Canada and so the Tarsans in Alberta. And I said, look more Venezuelan crude would impact Canada and actually Mexico. Mexico also produces similar crude to what Venezuela and Canada produce. And so that in terms of the impact, those are the trade offs. Those that's the kind of decision making the Trump administration is engaged in right now.

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kind of know the state of play there. We talked a lot about it Ran today. Can you give us for everyone listening just a quick update on what's happening in Cuba. We've mentioned it several times of how things could be teetering there. Give a little bit of an update for people that so they understand what's happening on the ground there as we wrap things up.

you know my dad. Well, but when I want to give my father grief, I'll call my dad a communist gorilla. He gets very mad.

call her my Theoloka. She's my crazy aunt. She is a fireball. She was there in fifty nine when Castro took over, and the young people, the Cubans didn't realize Castro was a communist. They just thought it was a people's revolution against Batista. He took over and he clared he was a communist. He began firing squads, he began executing anyone who disagreed with him against seizing people's lands.

And and my Theosagnia fought in the counter revolution. Was that there was a whole counter revolution of the people trying to fight back. And my theoso Onia ended up being thrown in prison and tortured by Castro's goons. So I take it very personally when it comes to communism,

it strikes very close to home. If you look at the history of Cuba, starting early on from when Castro took over and made Cuba a communist dictatorship, for decades, Cuba was effectively a satellite state of the Soviet Union, remember the whole Cuban Mission missile crisis under JFK, and the Soviets provided them a financial lifeline. Look, if you're a communist, you destroy the economy. That happens all across the world. Communism is a great way to destroy jobs

and make your people incredibly poor. Cuba went from it was the number one sugar producer in all of Latin America, and they just destroyed the sugar industry and everything else and brought massive poverty to Cuba. They survived because the Soviet Union sent them money, and they sent them money because the Soviets wanted a military satellite just ninety miles off the coast of America. Now, when we won the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed, suddenly that financial

lifeline disappeared. And what happened was Venezuela stepped into the breach and you had Huo Chavez and then later Maduro, both communist dictators who destroyed the economy in Venezuela, just like Castro had in Cuba. Chavez and Maduro did the same thing in Venezuela and Venezuela had a corrupt bargain where they were sent oil which they had a ton of, and they would send money, which they had a lot of, in exchange for selling the oil, and what they would

get back is is enforcers in thugs. There was a reason Morduro's entire protection detail were Cuban guards. And you know in the article I just ran, it talked about how one of the reasons is Maduro didn't trust Venezuelans because he was such a terrible leader that he was afraid Venezuelans would turn on him, which is why he

used Cuban enforcers instead. Well, with Venezuela, with Maduro having been arrested, no longer in power, Venezuela is no longer sending oil and no longer sending money to Cuba, and the Cuban economy is in freefall, just like the Iranian economy is in freefall. The regime is incredibly precarious. And I'll tell you what's keeping it alive right now, which is Mexico is still sending oil to Cuba. And my hope is the Trump administration is going to lean on

Mexico to stop that oil going to Cuba. I think that may be the single most important piece to nudge Cuba beyond the tipping point, much like Iran is, and I think the communist dictatorship is terrified that they will lose control.

I think President Trump is encouraging that. But it is the economic factor, more than anything that I think is putting the regime in a massively fragile position.

miss an episode. You can tell Siria Alexa play Verdict with Ted Cruz and that will happen. And you can also watch the show now on YouTube or on Facebook. Makes you subscribe on YouTube and you can watch the show on the big screen in your living room or on your phone wherever you want to on demand as well in the center. I will see you back here Wednesday morning.