Pod Save the World - Hamas and Netanyahu Accused of War Crimes

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Ben and guest host Alyona Minkovski discuss the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against both Hamas and Netanyahu for war crimes, the mass exodus of civilians from Rafah, a US-Saudi pact supposedly being days away from being agreed to, and public rebukes against Netanyahu from members of his own war cabinet. They also talk about the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash, Zelensky putting hopes into Xi Jinping to pressure Putin on negotiations, an assassination attempt against the Slovakian Prime Minister, the latest in the trial of Julian Assange, a failed coup involving Americans in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Anthony Blinken “Rockin’ in the Free World”. Then, Ben speaks with Tamara Chergoleishvili, who is running for office in Georgia in this October’s elections in the European Georgia party.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots of the World. I'm Ben Rhodes. And we have in our rotitting guest host, the special privilege to welcome our producer. Alona Mancowski. Do you want me to just say my name? Alona Mankovsky. Let's keep that in because it just speaks. If you guys think that I only have problems with pronunciations of foreign leaders, somebody I work with every day. Alona Mokovsky is here. She is the producer of the show, but also a very accomplished journalist in her own right with a. I don't want to say long career, because you're still in the earlier stages of it. Don't, yeah, age me too much. An accomplished career on camera, behind the camera. So, Alona, welcome aboard here to the actually at the table. Yeah, thank you. It's nice to sit on the table instead of just on the side of the couch.

I was going to ask you, do you have that thing where you watch us and just think I could be doing this better? I think anybody who's ever, I myself, I don't want to say it's because obviously not with Barack Obama that. usually it didn't happen, but it can be painful to watch people that you've prepared for things. It can at times, yeah. Well, no, let me put it this way. Do I ever sit there on the couch and think, like, I know this foreign policy issue better than Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietort? You probably do. Yeah, there's certain things.

Sometimes do I prepare, you know, interview questions for you guys and you just completely go rogue and I'm sitting there fuming being like, why do I spend time on this? Well, I get that. Don't think I don't see the text messages when you're like, ask about this. But today you get to ask the question. That's right. But now everyone knows a little bit about what's happening behind the scenes. So this is why I'm being punished and having my name mispronounced is that I send annoying text messages to back down. Not at all. It's because of my constant problems of pronunciation. But we're very happy to have you here in the chair here. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm happy that Tommy is still off parenting, enjoying time with his family. And excited. Do you want to tell the world knows what we're going to be talking about today? I will. I will, because there's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot.

Unsurprisingly, it's mostly all depressing. But let's just get in it. We're going to have fun with it. Let's get right into it. We'll talk about the ICC's application for arrest warrants against both Hamas and Netanyahu. We'll talk about the latest on the ground in Gaza, supposed movement on the Saudi normalization deal, an internal pushback against Netanyahu from his own war cabinet. And we'll also talk about the Iranian president's death in a helicopter crash.

Putin and G's meeting, an assassination attempt against the Slovakian Prime Minister, the latest in the trial of Julian Assange, a failed coup involving Americans in Congo and more. It's been crazy week. Yeah. I have to say, that Slovakian news felt like enormous, and now it feels like it happened about a month ago, you know? Yeah.

Well, we were recording an interview earlier this week, and you said to someone, you know, every week feels like a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was one of those weeks. It's very, very true. And then, Ben, you spoke with a woman from Georgia, who's running for office.

Her name is Tamara Trigolethevili. What did you guys talk about? So last week we mentioned these protests in Georgia against a new law that's kind of a Russia copycat law that is essentially about the future of Georgia, whether it's more aligned with Putin and Russia or whether it can have a European future. So we talked about the protest movement, why people are concerned about these laws, what they would do, what the political outlook is in Georgia going forward. I think you get a fiery and engaging and very sympathetic glimpse into the Georgians who are standing up for their democratic future. So people should check it out. Yeah. And yet another country where there are elections happening this year.

You know, I feel like this has been just our year of talking about elections. And so there's just a lot at stake even in countries like Georgia. So let's start with the big news from the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, issued applicants. for arrest warrants on Monday. Now, three of those are for Hamas leaders, Yaya Sinwar, Mohamed Daph, and Ismail Hanyei for planning and instigating the attack on October 7th. So those charges include extermination as a crime against humanity, murder, taking hostages, sexual violence, and torture. But there are also applications for the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant for charges like starvation of civilian,

as a method of a war crime and directing attacks against civilians. So just to put this into context, these are only applications for the arrest warrants. They have to be reviewed by a panel of ICC judges. Israel is not a party to the ICC, neither is the U.S. But there are 124 other countries who are. And so if these were to go through, were Netanyahu or Yovgalanta travel to one of these countries, you know, they would be expected to arrest those individuals. So obviously, Ben, this sparked strong reactions.

Netanyahu said, how dare you compare the monsters of Hamas to the soldiers of the Israeli army, the world's most moral military? And of course, he added that this is exactly what the new anti-Semitism looks like. It has moved from the campuses of the West to the court in the Hague. Biden said, let me be clear, whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence, none, between Israel and Hamas. And then here's what, the ICC chief prosecutor, Kareem Khan, told Christian Amunpour from Ciyan. because she interviewed him about this as they announced it, and she asked him about criticism and what he has to say to that. Well, this court, Christian, is the child of Nuremberg.

It was built because of the awful pictures that haunt us today of the shower and the gas chambers, and then the Balkans, and the list goes on. And we have to look at the evidence. And the way I very simply try to do things is look at the evidence, look at the evidence, look at the conduct, look at the victims, and airbrush out the nationality. And if a crime's been committed, we should move forward. Nobody is above the law. No people by dint of birth or passport, religion, nationality, or the color of their skin have a get out of jail free card, have a free pass to say, well, the law doesn't apply to us. This is a moment when we see in the shadow of

Ukraine, a increasing cacophony of noise of double standards and selectivity. And what we're trying to do is not go with a tide of emotion, but take our time, move as effectively as we can, but be guided by evidence. And every human life, every baby that is killed, whether it's a baby that's cruelly abducted by Hamas and killed, or a baby that's been bombed or killed or has died in incubators because of no electricity or water or food in Gaza. For them, for their families and humanity, it's a tragedy. And this is why we have a court. It's about the equal application of the law. No people are better than another. No people anywhere are saints. Ben, you know, I find it really interesting that the criticism that we're hearing the most in regards to this application is not about the basis of the charges that Karim Khan is making.

It's about having, you know, what they're calling moral equivalents. It's about jurisdiction debates, about having it be against Netanyahu and Hamas at the same time. Yeah, I think that that is a really. bogus way of looking at this. First and foremost, and we want to spend too much time on Hamas because nobody should be surprised that Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th. I thought the one notable thing in the Hamas charges was the reference to sexual violence, right? Because there's been some, you know, back and forth about those allegations. Well, clearly the ICC found enough evidence that there was horrific sexual violence to go along with the kind of wanton. killing of October 7th. So Hamas, not a surprise. Nor should it be a surprise that Netanyahu and

Galant are being charged with crimes that they literally announced. I mean, Galant went out and said, no food, no fuel into Gaza. We have watched starvation being used as a weapon of war. We've seen famine-like conditions. We've seen border crossings closed by the Israeli military. What is that? It's a war crime. If you don't want to be charged with war crimes, then don't commit war crimes. Period. Full stop. And nobody can mount a credible argument that we have not seen collective punishment of the Palestinians, have not seen indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians. Those are Joe Biden's words, not mine, and have not seen the denial of food into Gaza that has caused famine-like conditions. The equivalence point, you know, Kareem Khan made another, good point in that interview, which is the equivalency that he has to worry about is the equivalency of the victim, right? That's his constituency. He exists to serve justice for victims. He doesn't exist to kind of decide, you know, who I'm going to charge when and what. I would ask people who are upset about these charges being filed on the same day, would it be better if he only charged the Israeli

officials and not Hamas? The same people that are freaking out about equivalency points because he charged him on the same day would be losing their minds if Hamas had not been charged the same day, you know? So to me, this is a way of avoiding the substance of what he charged because he didn't come out and say Hamas and Israel the same. He didn't say that. He said, I'm charging these guys with these crimes and these guys over here with these crimes. And by the way, there are different war crimes in some cases, starvation is a weapon of war on the Israeli side, for instance. So that's the main point. Beyond that, there are another other points I want to make. about this alone. The first is the jurisdiction issue. Israel is not a signatory to the ICC.

Palestine is, and the ICC, like a lot of countries around the world, kind of recognizes Palestine as an entity whose territory can therefore investigate upon. So it's investigating in Gaza based on the jurisdiction that that's Palestinian territory. Even if that wasn't the case, and we're going to begin a theme of American hypocrisy here. Putin is not a signatory to the ICC. When the ICC brought charges against Putin, the United States welcomed it. They went out of their way to say they supported this investigation. They said they were going to participate in providing evidence to support this investigation. This is next level hypocrisy, people. The president of the United States literally goes out and says, we fully welcome this, even though there's not, there's a jurisdictional issue.

not a signatory to the ICC. Why is it okay to investigate someone we don't like in Russia, and it's not okay to investigate someone who is our partner in Israel? You cannot have international justice and say it only applies to some people. I mean, this is the basic idea of international justice depends upon consistency here. So to me, like fundamentally, I find the U.S. response is really disappointing. There's even rumblings at the Biden administration, Tony Blinken today on the Hill, said he'd work with Congress. Congress said they want to sanction the ICC on this. I want to just take a step back and consider what would happen if a Democratic administration went along with sanctioning an international organization as if it's like a terrorist organization. We're going to

go after the ICC and sanction them? What is the message that sends about the American commitment to the quote-unquote rules-based international order that we hear about? You're saying that not only we're not going to play by the rules, we're going to attack the people and sanction the people and undermine the people that are trying to enforce the rules if they do anything that we don't like. That is a gift to Russia. That is a gift to China. That is a gift to any autocrat that wants to live in a world with impunity where they can get away with things. To see a Democratic administration making common cause with Maga Republicans with Tom Cotton and Elise

Stefaniac and BB Netanyahu to attack the international criminal court. Stop and think about this, people. This is my plea. I know there are people who listen to this in the administration. Stop what you're doing and think about this because do you want your legacy to be that you participate in the sanctioning and potentially destruction of the international criminal court? I don't expect the United States to support these charges. I wasn't surprised. I did not expect that at all. Personally, I think the U.S. should be a party of the ICC. That's a pretty outlier of view in kind of my community because I think we have to be consistent on these things. But there's a difference between not supporting it. and attacking it in the way that we've seen. And I think that there's just a real danger that this is a 75-year process since Nuremberg of building up international norms, international laws, international bodies like the ICC. And in the short-termerism of being pissed off, I guess on behalf of BB Netanyahu, that you're going to put all that at risk, I really hope people are going to stop and think about this.

So, end of rant. Sorry to start you off with that, but I warned you that I was a little irked. It's an incredibly important point, though, that you make. And it's very true, right? We've seen it. Russia every single time uses any instance of U.S. hypocrisy in recent or even, you know, more further back history as excuses, right? As reasons to be able to justify whatever it is that they want to do in the world. So it does come back to Hantis.

And not to mention, you know, demographics. a lot of traction with that. They get a lot of traction. In the Global South, we've talked on this podcast time. They're like, oh, why can't we get more support in the global South to support Ukraine? This is why. And if anything, I think democratic countries should be held to higher standards than terrorist organizations. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's especially, I think, important and egregious when you see a democratic country committing war crimes. And by the way, Kahn is not using the term genocide because, of course, we know there is that other case. But the way that he explained what extermination means is that it's mass killing, but minus the specific intent element

that is part of the discussion, the debate, and the genocide case at the ICJ. And then just last point I want to make on this is, it seems like Amal Clooney is now, she's out of the gutter, right? A lot of people are hating on it. Well, I should mention full disclosure, you know, I've actually done a little work over the years with Amal Clooney and her foundation, the Clooney Foundation, the CUNY Foundation for Justice. But yeah, one of the subplots here, minor subplot, is that she's been getting dragged for months for not using her platform to post

in social media about this. Well, it turns out it's because she was like doing the work of being on a panel of experts that were reviewing evidence and making recommendations along these lines, along with like a pretty interesting collection of people. One of the Israeli participant on that panel is a Holocaust survivor

and a kind of tower of Israeli jurisdiction. Prudence. So this is, again, like, people can argue, and I'm anticipating, you know, people may not agree with me on, you know, who are more supportive of Israel in its current situation and the need to defend themselves. I will say that the ICC said in its statement, Israel is a right to defend itself. It's about the explicit conduct in question. And look, that, like, I guess my argument would be, even if you don't like this, even if you don't like the precedent of Israel being, I don't know, well, obviously we talked about the equivalence point, but even just, I don't know, somehow Israel is being singled out. I just think you have to then engage the conduct.

You know, if you don't believe that starvation has been used as a weapon of war, then make that argument, you know. It's interesting to me that you don't hear people defending that reality. Or make the argument, there's a legal argument. that Israel as a state should be able to investigate its own crimes. Now, what the prosecutor's office said is that there's no indication that Israel would investigate this conduct. So, again, like, if you don't agree with me, I would hope that you could make an argument that Israel is either not committing war crimes or is credibly investigating war crimes. But just making an argument about timing, process, that's actually a pretty big tell.

I'd say, you know, if you can't, if you can't defend the conduct and you're just defending, like, that he announced these charges on the same day, just stop and think about that, people, you know. Well, let's talk about a little bit of what's been happening in Gaza just over the last few days. The head of UNRSA says that at least 800,000 people have fled Rafa since Israel's evacuation order and military assault there began. And as a reminder, there were an estimated 1.5 million sheltering there before that. I actually spoke with Scott Anderson on Monday. He is the head of UNRWA in Gaza, and he described to me what the process has been like of just seeing these people move very, very quickly out of this space. I think the thing that amazed all of us is the speed at which it happened. People that weren't in the evacuation zone that weren't even close moved very quickly.

And, you know, for most of them, as you talk to them, it's their fourth, fifth, sixth displacement. Some people moved in donkey cars if they had one, and it took them, I suppose, a few trips. Some people had their own cars. But what you also saw was a steady stream of trucks just moving back and forth. And literally everything people owned was going in a truck, and it would be anywhere from right at $400 to $800 to move all your worldly belongings, which is difficult for people that can't access cash. The health center that I work out of, it was a huge tent and makeshift plastic shelter or structure area. There are people everywhere.

Now you look out the window and there's nobody. I mean, the whole thing, it's just empty. And what it's also done has made it much harder for us to deliver aid because people are moving. The situation is very fluid and they're moving places where there's not really proper infrastructure. So it makes it harder because we have to literally truck everything to food, water, medicine, any shelter supplies, you know, all of it. It's getting hotter. Summer's coming. And water is probably our number one concern at the moment. And we just don't have enough of everything to take care of everybody.

Now, additionally, in the north, at least 64,000 people were displaced from the Jabaliyah refugee camp in the past week, where Israel has been fighting a seemingly reassembled Hamas. There have been horrible reports of aid trucks on their way to Gaza from the West Bank being attacked by hundreds of settlers. the Rafa Aid crossing remains closed. Aid is getting through at Karam Shalom and Arres. But I heard from unrepresented, but it's still just a small trickle of what it should be. And Biden's newly built floating pier is now operational. Sentcom has been tweeting or writing on X about this a lot, Ben. I'm not sure if you've seen them.

But as of yesterday, they wrote that 569 metric tons of assistance were delivered across the pier. So are we acknowledging then that there is a problem? These things all kind of piece together, right? Because the administration is, I think in part because of this ICC thing has been trying to say, well, Israel's letting aid in again, that they're not. I mean, you can follow the numbers on that Rafa crossing, for instance, and some days nothing is getting across. If Israel was permitting aid to get in, why would we build the floating pier? It's kind of like it's a pretty big tell, you know, like if the trucks are getting in across the border crossings, then why do we have to build some giant pier? And frankly, look, I have a lot of respect and appreciation.

And we should be very clear about this because sometimes these kind of people don't get the credit they deserve. All the people that are working on this thing, like all the military people that built this pier, all the kind of earnest aid workers who are out there just trying to get whatever they can into Gaza, they deserve our credit. And they're not, you know, without risk, by the way. But even with that assistance, that assistance is you could, if you just had one border crossing open and the trucks are flowing, you would get more than all of that assistance in relatively quickly. You know, it's still, it's much, it's a much smaller distribution point than just driving a bunch of trucks across a border crossing. And that kind of points to the kind of absurdity of this whole thing is we're trying to kind of pretend like there's not these. restrictions on food getting in. And the problem with all those people moving, that's great in a way that they're out of the line of fire. Bear in mind that some of these people have

been displaced, two, three, four times already. The problem is, as you heard from UNRWA, like getting aid to these moving populations when they're fuel restrictions, so it's harder for trucks to drive. It's just a mess. Yeah. And, well, I mean, to your point, too, just about the aid workers. Scott is a guy from South Dakota. He has been out there for years. I spoke to him about whether and at what time they might make the calculation that they have to leave Rafa. And he was like, you know, that very well is a possibility. But he's not planning on leaving Gaza, you know, like they are committed to providing the aid to being there as long as it takes. I'm glad you say that, Lone, because, and again, now people get to peek on the curtain

of all the good work you do to bring us these clips. You remember, Unra has been kind of smeared in Congress as a bunch of terrorists. Like, Scott didn't sound like a terrorist to me. You know, he's a guy from South Dakota trying to get people some food. Exactly, exactly. All right, well, there has unfortunately been no new movement on a ceasefire and hostage release deal or a plan for what comes next. And that's actually starting to catch up with Netanyahu at home. In just the last week, two members of his war cabinet have publicly criticized him. So first it was his defense minister, Yoav Galant, and then Benny Guntz, the more centrist opposition figure, he gave an ultimatum that he would leave the government by June 8th if Netanyahu doesn't. present a plan. You spoke with Nadav Tamir earlier this week. He's a former Israeli diplomat. Now he's the executive director of J-Strae. And here's... In Israel, yeah. Thank you. In Israel. And here's what he had to say about kind of all this internal tumult that's happening. I do believe that there are many rifts in this government. And the fact that also the demonstrations

are starting to come back. Today we had a huge demonstration next to the Knesset. because the Knesset went back to session, and we will have more of that. So I do believe eventually that this government will not last, you know, more than in 2024. I can't put the finger exactly what will be the thing that will eventually break it, but I don't think it will be sustainable.

I do believe that an American pressure can help this government fall, if it put Netanyahu more on the horns of the dilemma, whether he is where the IDF, the Mossad, the Shabakh, are telling him he should be, which is with the Americans, or with Smotrich and Banavir, eventually he will have to make the choice. So speaking of peek behind the curtain,

this is kind of part of our conversation with Nadav was part of a different project that you and I are working on that really is looking a lot at the way that Israeli society has drifted towards the right over the last few decades. And so, you know, it's interesting to hear from Nadavah because he seems very hopeful that Netanyahu's days are numbered. We've spoken to other people who are not convinced, you know, and I think have a much darker view.

And one thing that I've noticed is that every time it seems like the international pressure is reaching some kind of fever pitch, then something happens that pulls it back. And so it happened before when then Iran launched strikes against Israel. Now you have Benny Gans defending Netanyahu with these ICC. arrest applications. So it's, you know, all of a sudden there's a lot more unity and it's interesting how just in like the blink of an eye

with one action we can see some of this, I think, internal division that clearly doesn't go away but just on a public facing front kind of push to the side. That's a good point. It applies to the U.S. too. I mean, just quickly on the internal division, I mean it's about the lack of a plan

for what's going to happen in Gaza, right? And and that's what Gallant and Benny Gantz have been saying they need is we want a plan and we want an openness to some kind of American-led effort rather than just kind of this open-ended Israeli military operation that Nanyahu seems to be signed down for. It's a sign, by the way, it's pretty astonishing that Netanyahu's gotten away without presenting any plan, you know, to like what's the goal of the war, when is it ending, what's the future of Gaza? But to your point, Alona, and so we'll see. We'll see if Gantz and Galant

go forward with their threat to resign. Well, let me interview just for one moment because when you talk about the lack of a future plan, I keep thinking back to something that Ali Valshi said when he was on the show a couple weeks ago when he was like, the jig is up for Netanyahu, you know, if this ends or when this ends, we should say, right? And so it makes sense too why he's in no rush to present that plan. That's right. That's right.

And so we'll see if the jig. We'll see if Gons withdraws his support. That doesn't necessarily collapse the government. I don't think they still need no confidence in the Kinesit. Well, you can see a scenario in which it all kind of unravels and there's an election forced in some number of months. Or, yeah, you could see some scenario where he seems to just plot along and survive. To your point, the only thing I want to say is Netanyahu is very good

at kind of finding the thing that can redirect attention away from whatever his deficiency is. And I want to harken back to the statement you played of him responding to the ICC. when he said it started in the, you know, college campuses in the, in the, whatever, the West or something, and moved to the Hague. That's classic Nanyahu, because what's he doing there? He knows that Joe Biden took his side, essentially, on the college protests, you know, oh, these are extremists. And the more people are talking about that, well, that was good because suddenly instead of talking about, you know, from his perspective, the lack of a plan in Gaza and the disaster that's unfolding there, let's talk about. college campuses for a while. And then let's talk about the ICC. He always finds the thing that he thinks is the shiny object that will basically, you know, don't look over here at, like,

the fact that I have no plan in Gaza, look at the college campuses, look at the ICC, look at, you know, Aram, look at whatever the thing is. And I don't know why that's not obvious to people that that's what he's doing. Yeah. He's not happy that all the graduation ceremonies are happening. Yeah, yeah. He's like, we're going to get people back in school. The students are going to be gone. Yeah. In the meantime, we're being told that the U.S. Saudi part of the normalization deal is supposedly days away. That was in a CBS report. And so that is the part of the deal that deals with a defense pact, with a civil nuclear cooperation element. But at the same time, the Saudis have said there is no deal unless statehood for Palestine is on the table.

Netanyahu keeps saying he's not interested in a two-state solution. So I'm just confused, like, what is, okay, settling on part one of this deal when the other part is, you know, is very important and was kind of elephant in the room that isn't going away? What does this achieve? You tell me as somebody who's like done negotiations behind the scenes. Plan A, which we talked about a couple months ago. Well, Plan A before October 7th was this grand Abraham Accords thing where there's Saudi normalization and probably not much of the Palestinians. plan B, which was where the administration was in March, was a negotiate a six-week ceasefire, use that time to land the Saudi deal and get the Israelis in a better place on the Palestinian statehood

and about the future of Gaza. Cease fire negotiations seem to be on the back burner. So plan C kind of appears to be a U.S. Saudi bylaw. agreement with some reference to some future Israeli participation, you know, that Saudi says, okay, well, we'll normalize with Israel when there's like a Palestinian state or a credible pathway to a Palestinian state or something. I mean, we'll have to wait and see here, Lona. I was surprised at how forward-leading the Saudis were, like this is days away. I see what's in their interest, right? So basically, they're going to get, what, a civil nuclear

program from the U.S. They're going to get security guarantees from the U.S. U.S., probably a lot of weapons and stuff from the U.S., no wonder they want to do a deal, right? And by the way, they won't even have to normalize with Israel as a part of that. What we get is, like, I go out to see, like, because I guess before the justifications, what we would get, even though it wasn't us, Israel would get normalization. But when you remove that, then, like, what's the deal? I don't know. I mean, I think, okay, if I were to mount there, the, I know the administration, you know, understand.

is also thinking Saudis kind of are floating between us and the Russians and the Chinese, anything we can do to kind of like hold them closer to us will be good. Maybe they'll give us assurances that they'll buy American weapons and American technology instead of, you know, Chinese or Russian. That's not quite as permanent as a nuclear program and a security guarantee. We'll have to see. But right now it's kind of strange to consider, like, this. This was so tied to the Abram Accords, if there's not as really normalization, and I don't know how you can credibly say there's any pathway to Palestinian state, I'm not sure I'm not sure what's in it for us.

Yeah, well, I was like, maybe they're just really, you know, looking for a win right now, but I'm not quite sure how you sell that as a win. That's what strange to me is I don't know that people are going to see giving Saudis a bunch of stuff as a win, but we'll see what's in the deal if there is a deal. Yeah. Well, again, as we've spoken about. It may just be wanting to like break this, do something, you know, like shake it up. somehow. I mean, that may be what they're thinking.

Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. I have nothing to say there because I can't get inside their brains on this. But it's been a strange one to watch. Many, many, many questions, absolutely. Iranian president, Ibrahim Raisi, along with the country's foreign minister and other officials, were all killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. It's being investigated, but so far it's looking like it was a technical issue. They were flying in dense fog in the mountains after inaugurating a joint dam project with

Azerbaijan. And in the interim, Mohamed Mokber, the first vice president, will take over until a new election. Now, just a few details on Raezy. He was a hardliner who had the nickname, The Butcher of Tehran. Yeah, I mean, not an nickname you want. Yeah, for being involved in the state-sponsored execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. He's been, obviously, at the helm in the aftermath of Masa Amini's death and the Women Life Freedom Movement, where we've seen a huge crackdown and dissent. The laundry list of human rights abuses just goes on. But I think the most important questions, of course, are people asking what happens now, what this means for Iran, but also just for all of the regional tensions that have been spilling over since October 7th. So

tell us, wise Ben. What comes next? You know, well, first of all, this guy was a creep. you know, he, you covered what a hardline asshole he was in Iran. In the region, you know, he was definitely responsible for, you know, trying to deepen this kind of connectivity between Iran and the Houthis and these other proxy groups. I mean, he was with the program of the hardliners. And I say that because, well, that's not going to change. I mean, he was, you know, the supreme leader who's the ultimate authority,

more powerful than the president, you know, got the president he wanted in Raeisi in a lot of ways. They barred a bunch of other candidates from running. The vice president will be a hardliner, and I'm sure that the next presidential election won't be some open slate of candidates. They kind of curate their list, and there'll be another hardliner in there. So I wouldn't expect there to be big changes in Iran's policies. I think where this gets interesting is Reisie was one of the rumored candidates to succeed the Supreme Leader, who's 85 years old and not a picture of health. And so kind of lurking in the backdrop in Iranian politics,

there's been this idea that there might be kind of instability, succession crisis if and when the Supreme Leader, well, he will die at some point. So when the Supreme Leader. I love sometimes the way these things are reported, people would be like, he's 85 and not in great health. He's 85. So I think you could just say that.

Either way. I mean, I know we all have older leaders these days. But look, the main point is that there's a lot of jockeying around the throne, essentially. there is a lot of, you know, churn that Chaminé wants to, the Supreme Leader wants to anoint his son, which would be very controversial in destabilizing. It's basically, they got rid of a, they had a revolution to get rid of a hereditary system. Like, if suddenly it's returning to a religious hereditary system. And so I, that's what I'd keep by on,

is, is protest flaring back up, factions, you know, clashing. Does the IRGC, you know, where are they vis-a-vis the clerics, vis-a-vis the kind of technocrats? Like, the, There's medium-term potential for some real instability in Iranian politics. But I think, you know, for now it is what it is and probably not going to change much. Yeah. I personally love just in terms of observing the very difficult and careful line that, you know, diplomats and like a Biden administration officials have to walk in these situations. Because it's like, what do you do when the leader of a country that you are not allies?

with dies, right? And so the State Department did release an official statement with condolences. They then were criticized for that. The right wing, like freaked out. Yeah. People freaked out. So then Matt Miller, the State Department spokesman, had to kind of walk it back and say, well, we've been quite clear that Raezi was a brutal participant, you know, in the repression of the Iranian people for four decades. And it's not funny. But for some reason, I just kind of enjoy watching the gymnastics. I'll tell you what is funny. I'll tell you what is funny. which is I noticed after this kind of right-wing freakout, which maybe your world was missed if you don't consume right-wing media,

a tweet from Victor Orban. I would like to express my deepest condolences to the Iranian people upon the tragic accident that took the lies of President Ibrahim Risi. You can see where it's going. I'm waiting for the American right-wing freak out over Orban. First of all, look, it's kind of common courtesy. There's like a plane crash that kills the president of a country. You express condolences.

I will say someone who's been there. sometimes you use it to kind of, you know, keep the wheels of communication open with an Iran that you don't have an embassy. And it's a kind of, it's you kind of sending a message, hey, look, we know, we don't like each other, but, you know, let's make sure that we can at least be in contact, which is a good thing, I think. I don't like this kind of performative criticism of stuff like this. I think the Biden administration humbled is exactly right. I just want to play you a clip from the great mind of RFK Jr., because he had some thoughts on how we should be engaging with, you know, with leaders abroad. We need to be sitting down with other world leaders,

with people like President Xi and President Putin and President Adman Dinojad, or the Prime Minister, all the people. We can't afford to be at war anymore. We have, the fight for the salvation of humanity. Did you know Ahmadinejad was still the president in Iran? That was my main takeaway, right? Because I was like, okay, what's he, no, otherwise the point he's making is a very Ben Rhodes point, right? That you should engage in diplomacy.

But I mean, it's silly. Yeah. Agreeing with the guy. But Obama famously made this argument in a debate forever ago, dating myself was in 2007. We should be willing to engage your adversaries. But when Obama made that point in 2007, Ahmadinejad was the president of Iran.

That stopped a very long time ago. So I don't know if RFK's briefing is up to date, you know. All right. Let's move on to Russia and Ukraine news. Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been giving a number of interviews to foreign news outlets. And it seems like he's trying to change the narrative after Russia made military advance in Harkiv last week.

And it feels like things are just not going well, to say the least. So we gave a long interview to the New York Times where he sort of lamented that they don't have permission from the U.S. or other Western countries who send weapons to them to then use those weapons to strike on Russian Federation soil. And that's despite Russia launching strikes right from their border. And he also told the AFP that engaging global players like China is crucial because they have influence on Russia. And the more such countries we have on our side, the more Russia will have to move and more countries to run. reckon with. He also told them that Chinese president Xi Jinping said that he supports Ukraine's territorial integrity. So this is also kind of coming on the heels of Putin's visit to Beijing. He and Xi have met more than 40 times, by the way. I guess that's what happens when you're just

leader forever. But it was a real bromance. I mean, yes. But I don't know. To me, the Russia-China relationship is a real just marriage of convenience. You know, I don't think that Russia enjoys being in need of China. It's like a vassal station. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, they have to find kind of a common foe. And there isn't a real ideology that unites them. It's more just that the common foe is America.

They like to, you know, point out to ways, point out ways in which they think that the U.S. is squeezing them around the world. But it just seems, unfortunately, to me, completely unrealistic that G. would try to pressure Russia into any kind of, you know, diplomatic negotiations here with the war in Ukraine? Unfortunately, I don't see any incentive for Xi to do that. And whereas I see for a kind of coldly calculating guy like that, plenty of incentive in getting cheap Russian oil and, you know, seeing the West, you know, get a black eye. I mean, that's kind of all Chinese foreign policy in a nutshell.

actually some cheap resources and undermine the West. So I'm not sure about that. Zelensky raises some other interesting points that I think we should be open to. One of the interviews he said, why can't you help us shoot stuff down like you helped Israel? I don't know. It's a fair question. I mean, we should at least be considering. You know, he wasn't saying shoot down planes, but like not only more patriots, but maybe we could help them figure out how to do it. And, and, you know, maybe if there are European NATO countries is it want to send personnel. Again, I know there have been all these kind of, you know, lines we've set that we don't want to cross.

But I think he's right. Like, this is going in the wrong direction right now. I don't know. I need patriots. I need help shooting stuff down. I'd like to shoot these weapons into Russia. Like, he had a list of things. And, again, I think they should be taken seriously because the current plan of just, you know, maintaining artillery and basic needs and occasionally sending a new system, like, that's.

leading the slow bleed. People have listened, no, at some point there's not to be some negotiation, but I want Ukraine to be in the best possible position. Alone, I'm going to turn the tables for a moment here. I mean, you're Russian, right? Indeed. The wrong kind of immigrant, as I like to say. I love Russian people. It's like, same thing with Israelis all the time. I say, like I love so many, all the Israelis I know I love. I'm curious how you think of two things. I mean, one is, yeah, this China thing, is there, do people, what do people in Russia think about, you know, do they think of China as like a, you know, like a close friend in the same way that the, you know, the U.S. would think of the Brits or something? I feel like Russians look at China more as like the person that you want, you know, to back you up in a fight, right? Or just like that person that's going to like sit at the lunch table with you. Like they're not necessarily your friend, but they help provide. some type of weight and credence to this notion that like, well, we're not alone, right?

Because so much of the framing that is being, you know, kind of sold to the Russian people of this war is that this is not just between Russia and Ukraine. This is existential. This is about the West versus Russia. And so, you know, China is along in that kind of battle against Western hegemony. And if you're looking at a massive economy like China, a massive military. like China, it's just someone that is good to have on your side. Does it go deeper than that? You know, aside from sharing, obviously, a gigantic border, you know, that you could argue

is obviously strategically important, too, that you don't want to be enemies with your neighbor and that there are economic advantages. I don't think that there's really like a much, much deeper kind of connection there if that's what you're asking. But I just feel like it really can't be undersold the extent to which Russian people are only seeing one side of this, right? Information space. Yeah. Well, because I was going to ask you on the Ukraine part of it, you know, part of what has begun to really alarm and sink in on me, right, is which is an obvious point,

but sometimes it's missing in kind of the foreign policy discussion is like, okay, this is a big country, Russia. It's not going anywhere. they've got a lot of nuclear weapons. They've got a big army that's dug in and grinding it out, which is what the Red Army used to do. And there seems to be among the populace, maybe because they have no choice,

maybe because they have wrong information. We should add, like, it's not just that you're somehow a Russian background. You have family in Russia. You know, like, is your, like, what is your sense of the patience and willingness to, absorb casualties and, you know, international criticism and some isolation to stick it out on this. Yeah. I mean, it's hard. I haven't been there in a little while, right? Like, I don't feel safe going there currently during the war, even though I do have family who I would love to visit.

But I think that if you look, A, unfortunately, as you mentioned, it's Soviet history historically, right? This is not a government who gives a shit to be quite honest about just throwing people into the meat grinder in terms of war. I think there's a huge difference between what's happening in urban centers, like in just in Moscow and the capital. I think that you are so much more shielded from the reality of this because all the fancy restaurants are still open. You go into malls and maybe the American brands are gone, but they're just like new companies and new brands that carry the same clothes. because they've just been sold to them but have like slightly different names. It's like the knockoff Louis Vuitton bags and canals. Yeah, exactly.

The conscription is a little more aggressive out in the provinces. It's definitely more aggressive there. And I think that, you know, people, just like in any country, but Russia specifically right now, too, like these arguments of kind of patriotism, they work on people, you know. They run really deep. But listen, obviously there are concerns. you wouldn't be Vladimir Putin and passing so many censorial laws and cracking down on every little iota of dissent if you weren't afraid, you know? And there are clearly people who are speaking out. But just the truth of the matter is that a lot of the people that I knew who were more liberal-minded, you could say, they've left.

You know, whether they were journalists, whether they're just people who had the means to get out of the country. You see a lot of kind of generational divides there. So it's complicated is the real answer. But personally, as just as a Russian person, I feel so much rage and anger and disappointment because I know what Russia could be, you know. And I feel like I very much spent a lot of time there in the years that were, yes, still under Putin, but where it was, you know, flourishing a little more, you could say, internationally, economically, right, when the World Cup was there and stuff, which, again, have all the criticisms you want. But if you went to Moscow, it was this incredibly international, you know, a beautiful city that was like a playground for the rest of the world.

And I don't know, there's just, there's been a huge brain drain, obviously. And I feel like he is sucking the future out of people's lives. You know, I have a niece there who's a teenager. And so it like, it just, it just crushes me inside watching what's happening there now. Well, God, hope for the best and prepare for the rest. Yeah. Yeah. Did I mention that Russians are also just total fatalist?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, unfortunately, go read my Dostoevsky. Everything is always just like, that's, you know, that's destiny. All right, let's move on to, sorry, we're still working through the news here, guys. Let's move on to news out of Slovakia, where there was an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fizzo. He was shot five times while leaving a meeting and entering his vehicle last week. He's now in stable condition, according to the doctors that are treating him. And the 71-year-old attacker was initially described as a politically motivated lone wolf, but then now Slovakia's interior minister is saying that he may have been part of a group.

That's in part because his internet communications were all deleted two hours after the attack. You know, we don't know the motive here, Ben, but, you know, it feels like a lot of the analysis in the wake of this has just been focusing on the political polarization within Slovakia right now. Dimitri Medvedev actually, speaking of Russia, he even invoked the assassination of Archduke Friends Ferdinand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, to kind of say this could be, you know, a World War I, excuse me, style kickoff moment. But, you know, without being, I think, alarmist, how would you read into just the events that happened there?

Well, I, you know, world those who carefully follow my travel, no, I was in Bratislava right around the time of Fizzo's elect right after he'd won this election. And, you know, most of the liberals that I met were pretty rattled by it. This is a pretty, this is basically an Orban character, pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, autocratic, you know, ready to start the playbook of, you know, taken over the media and, you know, intimidating civil society. And so there were these deep polarization in Slovakia in the same way that we've seen in so many places. But it always feels a little more like sinister in central and eastern Europe because of the history of both the right and the left. And polarization can lead to bad places as it was. Dimitri Medvedev reminds us of that as more nationalism.

But that said, I mean, nobody should be trying to kill anybody. and so there's something very shocking. I mean, America's had actually probably a little more recent history of political violence. To me, what worries me, it's like when we saw Abe killed in Japan, although that turned out to be a very particular cause of the assassins.

You just don't want to see this kind of, you know, an assassination in one place can beget, you know, you start to normalize violence in politics. That's what worries me. It also worries me, if like this is some pretext to like crush descent in Slovakia too. Like all the, you can see all the ways this goes bad. What I will say is I actually thought on both the right and the left in Slovakia,

the initial reaction was like, okay, let's be together. Let's, you know, try to show a common front. It feels like that's cracking a little bit as the finger pointing starts. I really hope for the best here because I, you know, I love the people of Slovakia. too, and people I've met working really hard to kind of preserve democracy there, and you'd hate to see something like this send things even further off the rails. Yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to see more violence here right there. All right, some good news for Julian Assange.

Two judges on the High Court in London ruled that he can appeal his extradition to the U.S. because the U.S. government provided, quote-unquote, blatantly inadequate assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain. The WikiLeaks founder has been in legal limbo in the UK for over a decade. If extradited, he faces 18 charges of espionage and computer hacking in the states. Those add to 175 years in prison, although the U.S. government keeps saying that he would only serve like four to six. But this is all stemming from when WikiLeaks published the Afghan-Norak war logs, the diplomatic cables, right? The U.S. government's position was that putting those files out there without redacting any names or sensitive information

could have put lives at risk. But basically every press freedom organization has said this would set an incredibly dangerous precedent for journalism. Julian Assange is Australian. You have the Australian government who is asking for the Biden administration to just drop the case, which Biden said that he was considering just a couple of weeks ago. I don't get what he's waiting for when he says he's considering. Because if the court had ruled in a different way, it would have been 24 hours. hours later that Assange would have been on a plane, you know, flying to the U.S.

Yeah, look, I, I'm no fan of Julian Assange. I think the U.S. view, but is a butt coming here. The U.S. view, you know, is colored, I think, by the U.S. national security establishment is just disguise, like, you know, public enemy one. you know, for a lot of different reasons. And here's my critique of Assange is I don't know that this guy was acting as a journalist. But however, my bigger criticism, so first of all, the cables that were leaked, I was there. It did put people at risk. There are people that disappeared, you know, who were like civil society contacts of U.S. embassies

or, you know, people who wouldn't want to. I mean, not like big bad, you know, not like, I don't know, Bibi Nanyahu. We're talking about like in countries where it's dangerous for civil society to meet with the U.S. Embassy, their names are in cable. Suddenly the good guys are in deep trouble because Julian Assange didn't give a shit enough to try to redact their names. That's bad. What's different in some ways even sketchier than the kind of radical transparency of releasing the cables is kind of where he ended up in 2016, right? where literally, you know, the Russian intelligence is just hacking stuff and somehow it ends up on WikiLeaks. Like that felt more like acting like an extension of the Russian intelligence services.

I think that's probably what has a lot of American security types pissed is because they were kind of the cutout, right? You know, the GRU or somebody would hack some stuff. But remember, it was like it was on WikiLeaks that you had a lot of the emails published from the DNC or, you know, different. All that said, now here's my butt. Number one, he's not charged with that. Like, that's not the crime, right? The crime relates to the earlier cables and the Afghan and Iraq war material. Number two, it's wrong to be charging him, I think, under the Espionage Act for essentially publishing stolen information like that.

Like, it just, that's potentially, that could be weaponized against journalists. And number three, this guy has, again, I'm no fan of him. He's paid a price. The guy is living in his own, you know, whatever in the Ecuadorian embassy. Then he's been in prison. I think that this has run its course. I think that Biden should send this guy to Australia. Like, I just, what would be gained by bringing Julian Assange to the United States

kind of prosecuting ways it could set bad precedents for, for, for journalists, you know, so what? He can sit in a U.S. prison for four more years and go crazier and crazier. Like, it just, whatever you think, and I took a position just now that's a little more to the right on this stuff, I just think this has run its course. This is over. Like, he's paid a price. We want to protect journalism.

The issues around Russian hacking and election interference have kind of moved on from WikiLeaks. And the Australians are really good for. friends of ours and are worried that he's going to kill himself or, you know, die in a prison and they're going to have a huge political problem on their ends. I just think that it's time to bring this to an end. Yeah. And well, and journalists reported on all of those documents, you know, that were leaked, too. That's why I think journalists take such a strong position on this is because there was important information. I actually, I interviewed Julian Assange in 2010.

It was the day he released the collateral murder video, which was, you know, which was. a video of a strike in Baghdad that killed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, something that the U.S. government denied, which I thought was incredibly important, you know, for that to be put out there. And I've actually been thinking about it a lot of, like, just how differently. What was he like? Well, it was very quick. Let me just say that, you know, I was in the studio. They were giving the, I think they had done a press conference at the National Press Club, like across the from our offices at the time.

And then they came over to our studio. It was all very quick. But he, like, came in with his little, like, team of hackers. You know, they, like, rushed in, set up in some room. There were, like, 10 people just on little computers typing away while I interviewed him. Exactly what you wanted to be. Yeah. It's like a movie.

And then they rushed out just as quickly. But I've just been thinking about, like, if TikTok, if social media, you know, were around at that time, how differently, how probably much more of an impact some of that material might have had. Like that video specifically because it was visual evidence of something. I mean, the impact that was huge because the cables in particular like even that they didn't make a big spot here, like there were all these mini scandals and all these countries. Yeah, yeah. Well, it just shows you the way the world works though, right? Because the diplomatic cables were more about just like, oh, gossipy.

Yeah, gossipy kind of stuff or sliding somebody. Someone sleeping with somebody or someone's corrupted. Versus war logs that were just basically showing you how sorry the U.S. government and the administration at the time. lying to you about the success of the war in Afghanistan. Oh, no. I don't, I have no problem with that criticism whatsoever. And I guess like what I don't understand of it someday maybe someone can tell this story. Because there was this kind of weird drift.

Like, you're right. It started. It was like hardcore stuff revealing like, you know, lies and civilian casualties and things like that in Iraq and Afghanistan. then it migrated to this kind of radical transparency around the cables, which kind of pissed me off. But admittedly, I was in the U.S. government. But what pissed me off was this kind of piece of the lack of regard for the people whose names were in there who didn't want to be in there. But I could still, I could see the argument for radical transparency. I just didn't agree with it or how it was done necessarily.

And then it's, I don't know how it kind of migrated to. Then you go through the Snowden years. And then suddenly by 2016, this guy's like literally just like a tool. for Russian intelligence. Like that story of how, maybe it's a story about how good the Russians are, that they just kind of pulled this guy in somehow, wittingly or unwittingly. But anyway, that's for another time. I'm going to be completely honest. That's a Hulu documentary. I think I stopped paying attention by, you know, by that point. Well, that's what I'm saying. By now, and now it's just come out, this is over. Like, this is like ancient history. Yeah. It's making me feel old just talking

talking about. All right. Well, let's do, do we have time for for one more story here. So this This one, I mean, it feels like it's out of a movie if it weren't so tragic. Yeah, the consequences, right? Because there was a botched coup attempt in Congo last weekend that involved American citizens. It was led by a man named Christian Malanga who called himself the president of New Zaire. He had immigrated to the United States from Congo in the 90s. And he and his fellow assailants live streamed videos while they were preparing to start. stormed the president's palace in Kinshasa.

And unfortunately, then, multiple people ended up losing their lives. And so they shot two police officers while trying to force their way inside. Malanga ended up being shot and killed. And then his 21-year-old son and a business partner were both captured and taken prisoner. I would be completely honest with you, Ben, I don't really know what to say or where to start on this one. Because to me, like I said, it almost feels like a movie plot. But what's your analysis on this situation? My analysis is to recommend that people should kind of go down the rabbit hole on this one, because we can't do it full justice.

I mean, first of all, it speaks to the, you know, fragility and lack of institutions and places like the DRC. The greed that kind of drives this competition for resources and effort to get mining and the kind of weird mercenary culture that exists in these places. Because what happens is in the absence of strong institutions, and with all this money sloshing around through these national resources, you know, you get kind of Wagner group types. But 31 flavors of that. They're American ones, Israeli ones, Russian ones. And you get these kind of soldiers of fortune guys who get these delusions of grandeur. They're living in like a movie in their own head. But there's real world consequences above this.

There's another story that people should check out about the U.S. waiving sanctions. on some Israeli billionaire mine guy that involved in all these human rights violations. They're waiving the sanctions for some complicated formula where then he'll sell the mining and then we'll kind of get in there and get our cobalt. And the tragedy is that the people are just getting totally screwed, you know. And they live in a country that is rich with resources and the whole system is designed to deny the people themselves as resources. and you get, and it's that kind of, it's kind of a weird version of post-colonial colonialism, right?

Because it's like this country's so weak and fragile and has been so kind of cannibalized by all these foreign interests that, yeah, like some lunatic like this. It's like trying to take it over. I mean, that's the serious part of it. But, but yeah, you should go for the ride and check out the background on the sky because it's pretty nuts. This is what Ben does late at night. It's literally what I do when I'm tired. Like, tired reading sad, you know, Gaza news. And, you know, it's like, oh, what is this story?

Like, this looks like worth falling. Sad Gaza news or a sad Knicks fan news, huh? Oh, it's one of the worst experiences in my life the day. I mean, I love this Knicks team so much. It's been 24 years since we had a thrill like that. But it felt like it was building to losing the next round, which would have been fine. But to see basically every player on the team go down. I mean, by the end of the game, we had, like, none of our top four.

players on the court. It was just like this kind of, why can't we have nice things just as once? I'm sorry. I had to bring it up because I got accused in my household of not being supportive enough. I'm sure you weren't supportive enough. There's no amount of support. And Nix fans needed bottomless support on that day, you know. So on behalf of all of the partners of Nix fans out there. Yeah, I understand. I apologize. All right, last but not least, we have to discuss the performance that rocked the free world last week. I'm sorry, CJ wrote that and I had to read it that way. I think that's the right. It's a good line. So Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Ukraine and in an effort to show America's ongoing support for the Ukrainian people. He performed

Neil Young's Keep on Rockin in the Free World in a bar. I would play a clip. Maybe in the post-ed-ed-ed-ed but it's like, honestly, you really have to see it. I don't think you want to play the clip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are so many times on this show where I'm sending videos to Ben and Tommy I'm like, I wish we were a video-first platform because there are some things that just don't translate to audio only. But a lot of people pointed out afterwards that the song actually talks about

the hypocrisy of American society related to drug addiction, climate change, poverty. And so maybe it didn't go over quite as Blinken was hoping. What did you make of this little rock and roll stint? I have thoughts on this. I mean, first of all, you're right. There's the kind of born in the USA of it all, right?

Like the Republicans used to love Bruce Springsteen born in the USA, which is basically a song about like the horror of the way in which we sent people off to Vietnam and then banded them when they came home. So the lyrics here, you know, we got a thousand points of light. Great George H.W. Bush reference, by the way, there. We got a thousand points of light for the homeless man. We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand. I mean, you know, this is not necessarily like, you know,

patriotism and roses here. No. Well, I think being able to criticize your own country is patriotism. There you go. In the truest way. So you make that point well. The second thing I want to say, though, there's, the foreign policy point I'm going to make is I am fully supportive of Ukraine.

I think anybody who's show this podcast would know that that's very sincere. There's an aspect of the support for Ukraine that I find a bit weird, which is just kind of like we get to somehow go back in time to when we were like it was simple when we were the good guys. You know, like there's this nostalgia like make the rules based international order great again, you know, in the American foreign policy establishment where everybody wants it to be like 1990, you know? And this song is like such a like such that. Like they could have played like winds of change by the scorpions or right here right now.

Remember that song? Right here right now. like about with like the end of the Cold War stuff like you think like T Swift would have been more appropriate no it's just like there was something perfect about this administration which is pretty retro in that regard playing like a like a like a end of Cold War kind of anthem in Kiev I admire the impulse behind it and also see like the kind of problematic aspects to it you know it kind of sums up my whole view of the there's a lot there was a lot going on in that clip, you know.

Very well said. I'm just going to leave it at that. So next up, we're going to hear your interview with Tamara Jurgolashvili. What happens when a prominent Indian judge seemingly dies of a heart attack, but his family doubts the official story? Crooked Media and the Branch have teamed up for a brand new limited series, Killing Justice, where host Ravi Gupta follows the reporting and legal fallout from controversy. Throughout the eight episodes, Ravi examines the conflicting evidence to answer how one man's death became a magnet for the increasingly polarized politics in India and what this means for the future of the world's largest democracy.

Listen to the killing justice trailer now on Apple or Spotify and don't miss the two-episode premiere on May 27th. For ad-free episodes, join the Friends of the pod community at crooked.com slash friends. Okay, today we're going to talk about the dramatic political crisis that has been gripping Georgia, which we mentioned last week, over a new foreign agent law. But more broadly, the question of whether the country's future is more closely tied to Russia or Europe, something that has drawn enormous protests into the streets of Tbilisi. Joining me today, we're very pleased to have tomorrow, Cherogh-Lashvili, who is running for office in Georgia in this October's elections for the European Georgia.

So tomorrow, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your interest. So why don't we just start by going over the latest news for people who may not be following this closely? The parliament, which is controlled by the kind of pro-Russian Georgian dream party, passed this foreign agent law, which is modeled on a kind of playbook from Putin. It makes any media company or NGO that receives more than 20% of its funding from foreign sources, having to kind of register as, quote, carrying the interest of a foreign power.

We can talk a bit about why that's out of the kind of Putin playbook. But this past Saturday, the president vetoed the bill. And just to kind of update our viewers, where do things stand now? What happens after the veto? What are people's expectations about what happens next? I've been involved in Georgia politics, like, from different angles, like, for 30 years. I've never seen anything like that because, like, huge numbers are out in the street protesting. and also there is a Western reaction.

Like, finally, the West is talking about sanctioning officials who are responsible for sort of adopting the law. So they already wanted to back, like, and start some sort of dialogue at the same time to do some face-saving. But president, like, had a very, like, strong position and very correct position. So she vetoed it without any, like, sort of an attempt to beautify the law or to amend the law, because this is what the government was asking from her. So we'll see what will happen.

We'll see what the government do. They can overturn the veto or just leave it that way or try to bring the process into some sort of dialogue. I don't think that's going to happen. And frankly, I don't believe that it is about the law. It is about the regime because the law is just the symptom. And in October, we have the elections and we have to mobilize the protests and somehow just, you know, like transform this energy into the energy for peaceful democratic change.

So that's pretty clear. So basically, the president veto did. Now the government could either overturn the veto and just kind of move forward with the law. They could withdraw the law or maybe their preferred option when I'm hearing you say is, you know, make some small changes to the law, try to suggest that they were trying to address the concerns of protesters in Western governments, but really they continue with their strategy. So that's clear. So in terms of the protests, I'm just kind of curious for people who've watched this. And you mentioned that, you know, you've been out there. Who is in the streets? Why are these such enormous protests? What's the mood among protesters? I'm just bringing people inside what it's like to be out in Tbilisi at this moment.

For someone who was born in the Soviet Union back in 1975 and being raised up in a very anti-Soviet family, for me, this protest is very exciting and very beautiful because the driving force of the protests are the people who were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And they're carrying the messages from Georgia's First Republic, which was like sort of conquered by Stalin back in the 1990. And then, you know, like the whole Georgian elite, European elite was repressed. 20,000 Georgians were killed. 80,000 was imprisoned. 100,000 was sent in exile. And then 300,000 died in the Second World War. So, like, now I see this protest as the regeneration of Georgian brain.

Soviet Union was very much like what Orwell has described. What Stalin did is that he took out the processor out of, like, Georgia's head. Like he annihilated creative minority, elite, and he erased Georgia's history. And what I see now, for me, it's like Georgia making connection to its past. And what is also amazing is that it doesn't have a leader. It's very self-driven and it's very self-organized. It's amazing to see this self-organization and, like, I don't know, unification around the same goal and people, you know, like helping each other, like to widen the protest.

For me, the major difference is that people who are the driving force of these protests were born after the Soviet Union, and they're completely different. And they act differently. You know, like, I am acting differently at the protest. I don't wear any uniform or any mask when they're spraying like the pepper spray on us or something like this. I am from the 90s, you know, like they are all prepared. Like they don't want to die for Georgia or something like this.

They're just ready to resist until they get what they want. And they're very well prepared. They have like water like in their backpack. You know, like if your eyes are hurting, someone is coming and telling you, oh, I need to help you. And you know, like for us who were born in 90s and who grew up like in 90s when everything was so crazy and desperate, this is something very different. This is a different generation, you see.

just to kind of bring people inside the concerns with the law. We saw laws like this early in Putin's regime. We've seen laws like this in places like Hungary. It's not just about foreign funding. It's about kind of delegitimizing civil society, independent media, and it usually leads to a slippery slope. But I just want to ask you, you know, you founded one of the larger independent media companies in Georgia. You mentioned you've been involved in politics and civil society. if this law goes forward, what do you think the impact would be? What would it be on independent media, on civil society, on democracy in Georgia? A major problem with this law is that this law declares what is purely Georgian,

like strong civil society, like free, like pluralistic media, like independent judiciary. It declares like what is purely Georgian and what is essential for Georgia's sovereignty as something foreign. So it is already looking at Georgia's national interest from foreign perspective because what independent media is doing is serving Georgia's interest. This cannot be a foreign interest. If American taxpayers are spending money like in Georgia, this is not for foreign interest. This is for Georgia's interest.

So this is the major problem with the law. After that, of course, there are practical implications for those who work for such media and like many people will be concerned because now they have added the change where, for instance, like if the person is called for questioning, like working for the foreign agent, like some sort of affiliated company,

they even have to answer the sex-related details. So, I mean, now they are implying that someone is importing LGBTQ, some sort of lifestyle in Georgia, and they have the right to, I mean, this is something very much like hands made tale. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's something, we've seen these anti-LGBT laws in Russia. We're seeing them in Georgia now, too. Yes.

So if you look at this, I mean, already there are Russian forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions of Georgia. If you look around the neighborhood, right, and you see the former Soviet republics, you know, you have this kind of diverse experience, right? you've got the Baltic states that kind of were able to fully integrate into the Western institutions. You've got Belarus, which kind of got swallowed up by Russia. You've got Ukraine that's fighting for its future. And then you have Georgia, which is kind of poised in between Europe and Russia. Where do you see this going? I mean, could these protests become almost like a

made-on movement like we saw in Ukraine? Do you think the political elite is, is He's getting swallowed up by Russia. I mean, how do you see the future as you prepare to run for office? What would you like to see and how do you see it going? I consider Ivanishvili's regime, oligarchs regime, as Russia's instrument of Russia's hybrid warfare. Because Russia is implementing everything that it wants to achieve, like isolation of Georgia from the West, breaking down Georgia society and Belarusization of Georgia's society, like through the government. And so they have a government now in place, which is actually the tool of Putin's hybrid warfare.

And we need to change this government. And of course, between Belarusization and Maidan, I will choose Maidan every day of the week. But we don't want Maidan because Maidan ended up with casualties, even though it was very important. And even though I choose it, of course our goal is. to achieve the transfer of power through peaceful means. And that's why we need Western support. Like at one point, like, you need these people in the streets so that they shake the regime.

On the other hand, we need some sort of agreement among the political spectrum. What are we going to do in the first hundred days after the regime change? Because people have to know, like, what they have to expect from us. This is for ordinary citizens. Ordinary citizens need to have a free court. and go there. Ordinary citizens need to have like a sort of a diversity of opinion in media so that they can make their own conclusion. If all this like sort of triangle, people in the street,

our Western friends and political spectrum behaves well and we do all do kind of what we ought to do for the sake of democracy, for the sake of values of freedom, I think we have a good chance that Georgia is getting out of this trouble in its own way, not in a Maidan way, not in, of course, like Belarusization is not the way, it's not even an option, but in its own way, and this way will be peaceful, like Rose Revolution was. One last question for you then, you know, you've taken the decision to run for office in the upcoming election. What led you to run for office? What issues are you running to advance? And what should we expect from that election?

Do you think most Georgians are ready to reject the ruling party in its rather strange agenda? I'd start from the last point. I mean, we are getting there. Like two months ago before Ivanishvil introduced this Russian law, nothing would sort of make me say that, okay, we are winning this election. Now we have a chance. As for what led me, I mean, I don't know, I urge to change things around me. And I've been involved in change since like very youth.

I worked for American Bar Association, U.S. Department of Justice. I was very deeply involved in Georgia reforms. And then I worked for the Council of Europe. I was involved in the reforms. And then I was covering politics. So now I just want to do it by myself and not comment on it. I think that, I don't know. I think it's the right time.

I always thought that I would do that. Great. Well, look, we'll follow your. campaign with interest just as we'll follow what's happening in Georgia. And I really appreciate you coming on to help us understand what's been going on. Thank you so much. Thank you to Tamara. Thank you to Scott Anderson. And thank you to Ben for letting me guest toast this episode. You were great. This was so fun. Let's let Tommy have more babies. Yeah, no. Yeah. Well, no, you should, you know, like, I'm so glad you were able to step out behind the mic here. And it's a reminder of like,

Now people know how smart you are and good at this and why, you know, you help us and make us look smarter than we are. It's also reminded that there's a whole team of folks that put this all together, of which you are a fearless leader. So, yeah, thanks for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to the whole team. And that's it, guys. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

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