Pod Save the World - Israel attacks Iran

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about an Israeli drone attack in Iran, Tony Blinken’s meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, Ukraine’s requests for F-16 fighter jets, Putin’s bizarre threat towards Boris Johnson, the latest on Biden’s documents, deadly protests in Peru, Bolsonaro’s request for a US visa, and the Saudi LIV tour’s deal with Trump. Then, Tommy is joined by Save the Children CEO Janti Soeripto to talk about her nine meetings with the Taliban last week in response to the education bans on women and children in Afghanistan. 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 Pop Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, how do you feel about the Empire State Building being lit up for the Philadelphia Eagles? I mean, I think it's an outrage. Yeah. You know, first of all, as you know, these Northeastern sports rivalries are a real thing. Yeah, I hate the Eagles. Yeah, I hate Philadelphia sports teams.

All of them. And then also, as a Jets fan... They turned on the Jets setting. Those are your colors. Yeah, those are our colors. And guess how many times the Jets have been in the Super Bowl in my lifetime? Zero, okay? So I just don't, we just, you know, light up the, whatever the medium-sized building in Philadelphia,

that's the tallest building. Light that one up. Unbelievable. I enraged all of the state of Pennsylvania over the weekend because I made a joke about yinzers. And in my head, I knew they're from Pittsburgh. Yinzer's the best accent ever. YouTube it, if you want, someone from Pittsburgh.

I kind of thought you could be Yinzer if you were from, like, the Collar counties of Philly. so I made a joke, just got torn up, so I had to do a notes apap apology. Look, I like, it's like a, it's a friendly rivalry except when it comes to sports. Like, that's an unfriendly rivalry. Yeah, no, no. I want all Philly fans to suffer. I like Pittsburgh. They're nice.

And we beat them all the time. Okay. Now that we've turned off everyone who listens, we got a great show today, Ben. We are going to talk about, reportedly an Israeli attack on Iran. I think we can just say it was an Israeli attack on Iran. Nobody's not exactly denials on that one. Yeah. It wasn't, yeah.

There was a horrible spate of violence in Israel and the West Bank. And then Tony Blink and the Secretary of State went to Israel for meetings right afterwards. There are big problems and bad leaders in the United Kingdom. We'll explain a little more there. Ukraine's newest military request, Congress in the classified document storage mess. It keeps growing. Twitter and free speech, protests in Peru and some updates from Ethiopia, Tigray, specifically, Brazil, Australia, and Saudi Arabia.

And then I talk with Yanti Sorretto from Save the Children, which is an amazing organization providing relief to children, families all around the world about her recent trip to Afghanistan where she had nine meetings with the Taliban. Yeah. Trying to get the Taliban to allow women to work for NGOs again in Afghanistan so that these groups can actually do their work and, you know, prevent a massive famine.

Very interesting to hear that. Everybody should, you know, support Save the Trump. children however you can. And this is, you know, we need to not look away from what's happening the women of Afghanistan. Yeah. And you know, and one of the most damning things she said then was that it's just, it's now safer for their whole in-country team now that the war is over than it was before. And I think we all knew that. That was one of the best arguments, I think, for U.S. getting out of Afghanistan was that your average civilian would be safer, but just what an indictment of 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And bleaker for women, which was

the bright spot of what had been accomplished in Afghanistan. Yeah, good point. Okay, let's start with this strike in Iran. Lots of news at Israel this week, but this was the most recent. So Israel reportedly attacked an Iranian military facility with several small drones. The Wall Street Journal suggested that they were going after something called the Iran Space Research Center, which helps develop Iran's ballistic missiles. The New York Times reported this was done by the Mossad, the top intel agency in Israel.

U.S. officials say they did not know about this strike in advance, even though CIA director Bill Burns was in Israel last week. I bet he was a little bit pissed off about that one. Yeah, well, we'll impact this one. Or you think you might be denying it. Okay, there we go. So this was the first Israeli attack inside Iran since B.B. Netanyahu came back to office. The previous coalition government did a bunch of attacks like this with these little drones. The Iranians claim they shot down most of the quadcopter drones, but something sure seemed to be on fire based on the videos I saw. Ben, here's a quote I saw in the Wall Street Journal that jumped out at me that I wanted to run by you. Quote, this is a smart trifecta where Israel can hurt Iran, help Ukraine,

and not risk its strategic interests in Syria, said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. I should note the New York Times said that this Israeli strike had nothing to do with Iran's support for Russia. That makes sense. Israel has pointedly refused to give Ukraine any weapons because they don't want to piss Russia off because Russia lets them bomb stuff in Syria. It's that complicated. But it sure seems like the Iran Hawks are excited to have a new argument for the war they've always wanted with Iran.

Yeah, I guess I'll come back to that quote because I don't want to start with it. I mean, first of all, what's happened is interesting because you could say, well, this is the new government in Israel and they're this kind of hard right government. But the reality is like the Israelis have been moving this direction for some time now. Like the previous government set in motion. Some of these strikes. Yeah, inside of Iran. And what we saw over the years in the Obama years is a huge Israeli willingness to hit Iranian targets in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.

And increasingly, first under Bennett and clearly continuing under this administration, they include Iran in that. You know, so the same kind of Israeli practice of something might just go blow up somewhere if we don't like it now applies to Iranian territory. One might call that starting a war. Or, you know, there is a war that's been happening in the region. And now the war is coming to Iran. And yes, this could escalate because Iran in its reprisals in the past, Iran has sometimes hit back at Israeli targets outside of Israel, you know. And now we could see Iranian reprisals in Israel. And yes, you could see the path desolation very quickly.

That's one point to make is just we're in a new phase of this conflict between Israel and Iran. The second thing is the U.S. piece of this. Now, in the past, the Israelis often wouldn't tell the U.S. in advance, in part because then the U.S. kind of owns what they did. And we might try to talk them out of it. Or we might try to talk them out of it. or, you know, just makes life difficult for us. And so what they might do, hypothetically in this instance, and I don't know what they did

in this instance, but it's to notify the U.S., kind of either concurrent to the action or right after. Or like, hey, batten down the hatches at your rock embassy or something like that. Exactly, because, you know, some shit might go on and, hey, this is already happening. You can't stop it, but we're just giving a heads up, right? And so my sense from the outside is that this was in that category. whether they told the U.S. before or kind of concurrently, it did seem like there was some notification that took place. I was surprised at how fast this was, like, confirmed.

Like, this was usually, you know. Ronan Bergman at New York Times has the story in like 15 minutes. So did the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. I mean, it used to be, you know, way back when, again, without getting it anything that we knew, like, they were Iranian scientists that would get assassinated, you know, and months later there might be some story about it, like, whether it, Israel was involved or something. Now it's like something blows up in the middle of an Iranian city and there's like a New York Times story. There's like a press plan. They're calling up the reports. Exactly. Clearly they wanted it out. The U.S. wanted to put out that the U.S. didn't do it, but Israel did not mind it being known to the entire world that we blew up something inside of Iran in a major

city. So that's the second point. Third point is as a matter of strategy, if this is targeting the nuclear program, I just don't think it works. I mean, you know, all the meetings I was in for many years, the Iranians know how to conduct the nuclear fuel cycle. Like, they have that knowledge. They have the raw materials inside of Iran to do this. And so if you're a mountain bunker in which to do it. Well, that's the thing is, you know, you may pick off a scientist here or blow up a building here. That just drives their program like deeper underground and incentivizes them to, you know, to develop a covert nuclear weapons capability. So I've just, I've never been persuaded that you're going to like somehow stop the Iranian nuclear program with like kamikaze drone strikes, you know, that kind of mow the grass, you know, before Iran can replace that capability.

And to the dupevitz point, that makes no sense. How is Russia weaker the day after that strike? It's just totally made up argument. It's complete bullshit. Why is this in the newspaper? I don't know. Like, what is, like, it's pure propaganda. Like, like, even if you think that it makes sense for Israel to have, to respect no borders and to do whatever it takes to degrade the Iranian nuclear program, however they can, to say somehow that, like, Russia lost, like, it's a trifecta.

It makes no sense. Like, Russia is still getting Iranian drones. Like, they didn't blow up the drone factory for that. But just because you target some element of the Iranian sort of security establishment doesn't mean that somehow harming the Russian effort. It's just such a simplistic formulation. What is Israel concerned about in this instance? Like to look at it from the Israeli perspective, it's the nuclear program, right? And ballistic missiles.

It's not the Iranian protesters and it's not the drones going to Russia. It's the ballistic missile program and the nuclear program. So what this does tell me is that there's a new political argument being constructed around a potential war in Iran, which is, well, they're allies with Russia. So, like, now we should take them out. Yeah, yeah. So Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, is visiting Israel in the West Bank as we speak. That trip got complicated in a hurry, too. The trip comes after this horrible spate of violence that has killed dozens of people on both sides.

This cycle is seemingly endless. So it's very hard. Like, I hate trying to say this is what started it because you could go back so far. But some key recent events. I mean, there was an Israeli military raid in the West Bank, I believe, that killed 10 Palestinians. Then a Palestinian gunman shot and killed seven. people outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem, just horrible terrorist attack. The next day, a 13-year-old, a Palestinian reportedly shot two Israelis in East Jerusalem. There's also been

reports of a wave of violence and vandalism by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities in video suggesting these settlers are being protected as they do this by Israeli soldiers. So stepping back a bit, like the New York Times said 170 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military in 2022, and that 30 Israelis and foreigners were killed last year by Palestinians. So it's just like an intolerable level of violence. So the big question is, what does the new Israeli coalition do in response? So far, Netanyahu pledged to expedite gun licenses for Israeli citizens and carry out more arrests against Palestinians.

There's also demands by even more right-wing coalition members like Ittmah bin Kavir to enact collective punishment against Palestinian communities by maybe arrest. the relatives of Palestinian attackers or sealing and destroying their homes. That's something that already happens a lot. You know, terrorists, homes, family homes get destroyed. There's also talk of stripping the residency and citizenship rights of the families of Palestinian attackers. So the last thing I saw then was Tony's public remarks with the PA leadership was urge calm and he announced I think like $50 million in assistance. Not a lot. The stepping back, like the backdrop here is that there hasn't really been a peace process than what, 2014? Like, there's no real, like, talks happening.

No. Bibi didn't even say, Netanyahu didn't even say two-state solution. No, he doesn't believe in two-says. During his press event with Tony, he said, a workable solution. Yeah. The Palestinians have cut off security cooperation since this recent IDF raid that killed all those people. What do you think Tony can or should even be pushing for here? Well, first of all, what Tony was saying and what the U.S. government is saying is the same thing we would have said 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And that's a problem. And look, I'm not putting that on an individual Tony Blinken. Not the U.S. policy. It's U.S. policy. But the problem is the policy is more and more stale, right? So the U.S. talks about two-state solution. Nobody believes that's possible right now. Like the Israeli government is avowedly against a two-state solution. And the Palestinians don't believe it's going to happen. The Palestinian Authority has no moral authority.

Yeah. Abbas has no moral authority. So we have to say that. Tony has to say that because I think it's worth saying that that's the preferred outcome just so that that doesn't disappear from the universe. But let's be honest that there's no process that's going to get us there anytime soon, if at all. The other thing is to talk, particularly after like a horrific shooting terrorist attack, you know, outside of synagogue, to talk about the Palestinian authorities. need to be a security partner. And here's a problem with this.

Like, Palestinian Authority has been a security partner for Israel for many years. But the way in which the Israeli government approaches them is like they're almost like a subcontractor. You know, like we give them some money and therefore they then have to kind of help the Israeli government provide security in the West Bank, but then they get humiliated repeatedly by Israeli government that then also does nothing to deal with settler violence and the displacement of Palestinians and in the air of impunity that has grown up around the kind of violence you talk about that has killed many Palestinians. And so that's not a solution either because the

Palestinian Authority has lost credibility with the people in the West Bank and the people in East Jerusalem. They, the idea of just leaning on them, it used to be the deal was, hey, you need to prove that you can be a security partner to the Israeli government because that's kind of training wheels. And I know that sounds very disrespectful, but honestly, I think this was the mentality. to become a state. You know, you have to show that you can provide security in the West Bank and as a part of this pathway to you becoming a state. Well, nobody thinks that that's what's happening now. So now you're just asking the Palestinian Authority that has been discredited largely some of their own actions, but also largely because of Israeli government actions to do this

for you, that's not going to work. At the end of the day, if they're not willing to say that there's going to be some conditionality in the U.S. relationship with Israeli government, you know, If you continue to displace Palestinians, you continue to have impunity around violence against Palestinians, we're going to condition some assistance so that it's not going to settlements, or we're not going to block every investigation or every action in the international community that allows you to do this with impunity. Unless you're willing to put that on the table, nothing is going to change. And this is just going to be a tinderbox that gets worse.

And so the only thing I can think of that is different is if the U.S. communicates to the Israeli government, if you do certain things like we are going to withdraw certain support that we provide for you. If that's not on the table, I don't really know what to say. Like there's, you know, there's not much else to be down here. And I think the could get worse point is really the key because there are people on both sides who want tensions to be inflamed, right? There are terrorists and extremists. Hamas would love tensions. Hamas, Hezbollah. They want to...

Hezbollah, sure. You know, they want to launch a bunch of rockets. And then there are super, super, super right-wing ultra-orthodox forces in this new coalition that want another excuse to annex the West Bank or further crack down on, you know, Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Or change some of these laws. Like I saw the other one, the nationality. They can just deport people that, you know, their families, you know, yeah. It's just the which is collective punishment.

Yeah. the concept of... Which is against international law, right? Like collective punishment is... And yet, if we are... If the U.S. government is going to block any international criminal proceeding against Israel, then international law doesn't seem to apply, right? I mean, that's why I keep coming back to.

And so, is there a burden on the Palestinians? Absolutely. I just... Well, the PA needs to hold an election, right? When's the last time a boss actually stood for election? I just think the PA is like, we treat them like a government. They're not at this point. It's a mess.

It's a very, very difficult. I mean, I don't know. What do you think we could be doing differently? Listen, I mean, I tried to push Derek Chalet into this a little bit when I interviewed him Ponce of America. I mean, you and I spent a good part of the 2020 presidential primary trying to get candidates to see they would condition aid to Israel if that money went towards annexing the West Bank. And I think you're right. There needs to be some sort of stick. And I also think that I'm hoping they're raising concerns about U.S. taxpayer dollars going to IDF units that then protect Israeli settlement communities that beat the shit out of Palestinians.

I mean, or trash their land or burn their farms. That's what that's what's what's what's uncomfortable here is like, first of all, we couldn't even get beyond like Bernie and. We get a couple. We get a couple. Pete Buttigieg actually kind of got there. Yeah. Klobuchar was like, go fuck. Biden wouldn't even talk to us.

But the idea of, like, if it was that hard to just say annexation? So basically the inverse of that is like, you're fine funding at the tune of $4 billion a year, the annexation of the West Bank. If that's too hard to get to, I don't know how you're going to deal with the situation where this is kind of boiling of the frog that's happening, where it's like displacing the Palestinians here, provoking them here, like, in changing the law. What we're seeing is a slow motion annexation. And people in Palestinian people feeling totally hopeless. Yeah. And losing their historic benefactors in places like Saudi Arabia where Mohammed bin Salman could not give less of a shit about the Palestinian people. And if I'm in Israel, what worries me, like from an Israeli security standpoint is like where does this lead?

Is this going to make Israel more secure? Because at some point, this is like a brush fire that could catch. And if you have an intifada, you know, that's not good for anybody. No, it's horrible. At least of all the Israeli people, I mean, that you don't want to see anything like what we saw in Jerusalem. Yeah, especially for the vast majority of Israeli citizens who are moderate and want nothing to do with this current governing coalition. Which I get. Like, like they just want to be safe.

Like, and but, but yeah, I'm sure that the administration wants to talk about other things. You and I, I'm sure, would like to talk about other things. The reason we're talking about this is this is like between the Iran. stuff and what's happening in the West Bank in Jerusalem and the nature of this Israeli government and the protest in Israel against what they're trying to do like this is going to be a big issue for the next couple years absolutely and look neither of us is getting a fellowship at the Carr Center for Human Rights of Harvard University after that conversation that people I'm sure no one will excerpt this and use it against us

okay let's turn to the UK for a minute Ben because they're having a very hard time over there first of all the National Health Service is pretty close to failing the there was a report by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that said in December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying because of wait times at the emergency room. Ambulances were taking 90 minutes to respond to heart attack and stroke cases, so like the most dire emergency calls. And there was a seven million person long waiting list for scheduled medical treatments. Like, I don't know, getting a mole removed or something like that. An analysis by the Financial Times also found a precipitous drop in the average British family's standard of living, as compared to

compared to other countries in Europe. By the end of this decade, the average British citizen, the British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish family. So they're just watching themselves go down. Part of this is Brexit, but another big part is austerity and policy choices made by the Tory government over the last decade, specifically budget cuts after the 2008 financial crisis. And then unlike the US where we will gut social services and fund our military until the bitter end, their army's been hollowed out.

there was a report in Sky News that the U.S. generals are warning the British Defense Secretary that they're not going to be able to defend their own country pretty soon. And with Putin as a backdrop, that's actually kind of scary. So with that context, I just wanted to read you three things that Tory political leaders are up to and get your take. Okay. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had to fire, finally fired, the Conservative Party chairman, Nadim Zahawi, after it came out that he had to pay $4.8 million pounds in a penalty for failure to pay taxes. And then he didn't do that. disclose it when he was Boris Johnson's minister. That seems bad.

Boris Johnson is trying to duck questions about accepting an 800,000 pound loan while prime minister from a dude he later made the BBC chairman never disclosed it. And former prime minister Liz Truss went to DC to meet with Grover Norquist and a bunch of right wing supplied side tax cut jackals. And he told her, you do one issue, you do Jack Kemp, you do, we're the lower rate people. Ben, how clear does the evidence need to be that Tory tax cuts and austerity and their policy proposals were a disaster before these guys learned a lesson? What are they doing with Grover Norquist? They just don't have another play.

And the important thing about keeping eye on the ball of like the NHS, the way these things connect is that the austerity like had already gutted social services, right? it had already kind of like stretched things like the National Health Service to the breaking point. Is this like years of austerity? Remember, we had a huge philosophical disagreement with both the Brits and the Germans about austerity. Because like we spent our way out of the financial crisis and they tried to budget cut their way out of it. And Brexit on top of that, right? So you already have like squeeze social services like then all the sudden you take like a hatchet to like your own capacity to grow your economy. You complicate things. You have to do this messy divorce

from Europe. They're in real dire straits here. 90 minutes for an ambulance? They can't pay their bills. They can't make these agencies whole. Like, they can't meet their citizens' expectations for what the safety net should be. They can't figure out a way to generate growth because when Liz Trust tries to do that with the only way the toys know how, which is to like cut taxes, they literally the Bank of England has to step in because they can't support that. I saw like the piece that was making the rounds, that basically like the UK is on the verge, and this is no offense to the good people, Slovenia. But like, you're going to have a higher standard of living as a Slovenian than a Brit in the next few years.

This is like accelerated end of empire, I guess, post end of empire. Worst economic slowdown in the UK in 250 years. And so it's just time to reset this thing. And the reason that Boris Johnson and this trust stuff is relevant is that shows why the toys can't do it. Boris is corrupt. All he cared about is like refurbishing number 10 and drawing attention to himself. Liz Truss had no play other than to kind of be like play at Margaret Thatcher without even like the kind of ideological foundation for it. So she's running around being like a Thatcherite hero to like washed up hacks like Governor Norquist in this country.

Rishi Sunak has no play here. The toys don't have an answer. And so British politics is like somebody underwater that needs to hit by. bottom, like the feet need to push the bottom and push up. You may not be a huge Kirstarmer fan, but like just got to try something different over there. I think Kier Strummer said some good things about, and Lammie's been on here talking about it, but like regenerating the economy through a huge influx and investment and clean energy like that, you know, sounds pretty similar what Democrats are doing, trying to do here. They need to try something different.

Something. And Boris Johnson was running around the House of Representatives today. I was meeting with like Jim Banks or somebody. Yeah, I mean, like if you're the former, if you fashion yourself like a modern-day Churchill and you're knocking on the door of Republican House members, like whatever play you're doing is not working. No, it's not working. Okay, let's turn to Ukraine because last week we went deep

on this debate over whether Western countries should send heavy tanks. We won't get into all those details again, but it was resolved. The U.S. is sending 31 Abrams tanks in Germany and other European countries are going to send about 80 leopard tanks. So that's settled.

Now the debate, turn to F-16s and whether Ukraine is pushing NATO countries for modern fighter jets, specifically the F-16. They say the Ukrainians that Poland is open to the idea. France has not ruled it out, but I think they would want to condition the support. Biden seems to be a hard no, at least for now. The German Chancellor Olaf Schultz, he seemed pretty annoyed by this request, Ben. Here's a quote. I can only advise against entering into a constant competition to outbid each other when it comes to weapons systems. If as soon as a decision has been made, the next debate starts in Germany. This does not look very serious and shakes the confidence of the citizens in government

decisions. That feels scathing for a German. Yeah. Yeah. Calm crazy. For a calm German like Schultz. I mean, first of all, and I think we had it right last week, so did everybody, basically the Germans were waiting for the U.S. to do this so they could all jump together, right? I do think that Schultz, you know, has a point here, right? Which is that the tank thing was like a tough political decision for the Germans to make, for all the reasons we talked about last week, and for the U.S. The U.S., I think, didn't want to necessarily do the tanks, but we all have to do it to get the Germans to do it. The Germans doing it allowed some of the other Europeans who bought the German tanks to do it. To immediately go to F-16s, does, you know, you got to be careful here.

Like, we support Ukraine. Like, they're the ones fighting on the front line. They're going to ask for everything. So, like, I don't necessarily blame. But it sounds exhausting, yeah. But you also have to realize that there are politics in these other countries and also even militarily and around the escalation risk, the F-16 is the most obvious thing that poses an escalation risk, you know, because that is a weapon that clearly could be used to strike into Russia. And if I'm even Ukraine or friends of Ukraine trying to get more assistance, what I'd be pushing on now is like more tanks, actually, right? Like the number of tanks provided was significant, but not frankly, that significant if you dig into it militarily.

And frankly, rather than kind of upping the anna, oh, you have his tanks, now bring the planes. I think the focus should be on these things that are working and are relevant to the offensives that everybody's expecting in southern and eastern Ukraine. Like, that's tanks, that's artillery. Like be focused on building out that contribution instead of moving to the next. big weapon system that you know, by the way, the Biden people are clearly uncomfortable with because it poses the greatest escalation with Russia. And yeah, like, after you just put the German chancellor in a pretty tough political bind, got him to the right place to do this right away, I think is politically not the right look. Now, what the Ukrainian supporters will say is

the faster you can help Ukraine win, the better, et cetera, I get all that. But like, maybe the faster way is to get them more of the stuff that you think is necessary for these offensives. like tanks and artillery and all the rest of it, instead of just, you know, now we won F-16s. That argument more faster, will end it faster. That might be right, but politics is going to govern these decisions. That's just sort of what it is. I also saw the United States is ramping up production of artillery by 500 percent. So there's all these long-term steps being taken.

Also, did you see that Boris Johnson, speaking to Boris Johnson, he told a BBC documentary that during a phone call in February, Vladimir Putin threatened to fire a missile at him? No, I missed Here's the quote. Here's the quote. He sort of threatened me at one point and said, Boris, I don't want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute or something like that. From the relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have,

he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, responded saying, It is a lie. There were no threats of missiles. If this passage was perceived in this way, it is very embarrassing. meaning for for boris i think yeah boris i mean i saw i'm writing like long opeds about ukraine i mean he's clearly trying to position himself as he's the vanguard of you know whatever this question of like helping ukraine win fast is an important one because i i still think it has to be to find what that

means because prudence's not going to surrender um so does that mean pushing rush off every inch of ukrainian territory but russia's still there Putin's still there right and so to me it's more about like what should be the party the party should be first of all getting the Russians out of any place that they've like this is lambridge that they've created in the south and then just trying to push them out of eastern Ukraine pouring f-16s in like not attached to like I think this is getting too divorced from where the politics of the US and Europe understand things are going like what what is the military strategy like I mean I think I mean I'm guessing here right I think the F-16s would be used to fire at these long-range Russian bombers, which I think very often are

firing missiles from inside Russian territory that hit Ukraine. So back to your escalation risk point, like, there it is. And that's where I'm also like, let's pour in more Patriot batteries. Like, I'm for all the defense of stuff. I'm for like more support for Ukraine. I really am. I don't want to but I think that like there's a real clear case that has been built and made around tanks, artillery and patriots that I have not really heard articulated around the F-16s. Yeah, me either. Last week I mentioned that Turkey seemed like they might block Sweden's entering into NATO. Now it seems even more muddy. So maybe we dig into that when there's a little more resolution. I think Turkey tried to say, oh, Finland, you should join first. Then Sweden can join.

The Finns rejected that. Who knows? Erdogan's a pain in the ass. There's an election coming up. I'm sure he's trying to leverage something out of it. Exactly. He wants like a bunch of Gulen supporters and Kurds, I think, sent from Sweden to Turkey. And I think they're mad. that there was some anti-Turkey rally in Sweden that pissed him off. And by the way, there's an election campaign in Turkey that Erdogan may try to steal or, you know, like, you know, make all of his opponents illegal. He doesn't want the West to criticize him. Yeah. So dragging this out through his election is useful to him because, you know, keeps the West from being too vocal about what happens in Turkey.

Yeah. I talked to Derek about this. He said he thinks it'll get done. And he actually specifically mentioned there's an election coming up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get it. Okay. Quick update on this. lists classified document saga. NBC News reported that some of what the FBI took from Biden's house in office were handwritten notebooks. We talked about this last week a bit, I think. If you take handwritten notes in a classified meeting, you're supposed to mark them as classified. They're technically classified. They're technically government records. But if you now have FBI agents and lawyers flipping through Biden's like notebooks trying to

figure out what's classified and what's not, you can see how that will slow things down because there's not like a little marking that makes it very easy. Also on this front bend, both and Republicans in the Senate are frustrated with the Biden administration because the Intelligence Committee wants to see which documents were recovered from Trump, Biden, and Pence. But the DNI, our friend of Real Haynes, I think she had reportedly said they would brief them on those documents, but then the Department of Justice launched these special counsel investigations, and now they're saying they won't brief an ongoing investigation. Senator Tom Cotton, notorious asshole, he threatened to block the confirmation of all Biden.

nominees in the Senate until they get this briefing or see all these documents. That is childish, stupid, disproportionate, part for the course for him. But I will say, on balance, I think these senators are right. And like the suggestion that Mark Warner can't see what documents were taken from Trump's house or Biden's garage because there's a DOJ investigation is ludicrous. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's stupid. I don't know why you wouldn't just share these documents.

Like they're the Intelligence Committee. Yeah. They're supposed to be overseeing this. This is their job. And so like, you know, why not share the documents? The first thing. The Tom Cotton thing is a pain in the ass. It does point to the fact that even, you know, we talked about Sir Margaret on nomination last week.

The Republicans are good at using every procedural thing to slow down nominations. The Democrats may get to a point where they have to kind of just like ram some of this through. So it bears watching whether or not all the Biden appointees for ambassadorships and other things are getting kind of paralyzed here. The one thing we haven't focused on the classified documents thing is the overclassification piece. And you mentioned the handwritten notes saying, I mean, I think people don't understand just how absurd the overclassation is. So much stuff. So this came up. I'll use another infamous example, which was like the Hillary server.

If I recall correctly, like there was a judgment made that X number of documents on that server were classified. But some of them were kind of like, you know, and these are not direct quotes. So like, you know, Hillary. It was like news reports about drone strikes in places that were considered classified. Yes. Because they were shared by people with clearances, that was viewed as being classified. So yeah, yeah, that's one good example. Like what to do about this news report about drone strike will class classified.

Another is like any conversation with a foreign leader. So I think there were like emails like S, that's the jargon for secretary, like connected with BB. Like, oh, classified. You know, like. So stupid. If anybody wants to be constructive here, whether it's the intelligence community or Congress, trying to find kind of major categories of like addressing over classification would be helpful here. In other words, the bias is any reference to like, say, a foreign leader called classified or any note in a meeting that was classified is classified.

Or we dealt with the absurdity when WikiLeaks documents were published in the New York Times. the New York Times was actually seen as classified, remember? You couldn't go to the website. You couldn't go to the website of your computer. This is crazy. And so they have to change on some of these categories. Like the bias has to be towards this is not classified, you know, rather than everything is classified.

Because if all it turns out is that we've been through all this because Joe Biden had some handwritten notes that probably didn't say anything sensitive, but like, you know, today I talk to my buddy so-and-so and like, oh, that's classified because that person's a foreigner. Like, this is a waste of various times. Yeah, the overclassification issue is a real, real problem, in part because it just makes the volume of classified documents completely unworkable. There's no way to declassify them. There's no way for archivists and historians to go through them.

It's just like it's just a deluge of stuff. And why is it classified? Again, like if it is a source and method of intelligence collection, I get it. But if it's just like the meeting happened to be in the situation room or it was a foreign leader phone call, but they didn't discuss anything sensitive. Like, it's just too much. It's too much. Two Twitter stories. So one, Semaphore had a good piece about how Twitter closed.

It's one office in the continent of Africa, which only got 20 staffers to begin with. This has now led to a proliferation of fake news ahead of Nigeria's upcoming presidential election. So I think you see a lot of people being like, oh, you're on fire. The whole staff didn't have any impact. Well, abroad, it did. Maybe it didn't in like, you know, in D.C. But in Nigeria, it has a huge image. Also, Twitter blocked access to a documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Indian government demanded that they censor it.

This documentary looks at Modi's role in the Gujarat riots back in 2002 where there was basically a three-day pogrom that killed thousands of people, mostly Muslims, horrible reprisal violence, sectarian violence. Modi was a regional governor at the time. He has been accused of condoning the violence or failing to respond to it. So, Ben, this exact scenario was not only predictable, but I think we predicted it on this show. India was always going to be a weak spot for Elon because Tesla wants access to the Indian market, maybe to put some production there. Elon wants Starlink, the satellite service to be available in India. So the self-declared free speech absolutist immediately caved to this demand for Modi, which included censoring tweets by Indian members of parliament who posted links to this video. I'm sure there's countless other demands that we don't know about.

Best of all, someone tweeted at Elon like, hey, what's the deal here? Can he explain what happened? He pretended not to know about it when he's providing tech support. When he's down in the weeds of everything else. He's turd or whatever these guys. So Twitter is not the only tech company who complies with Indian censorship request. YouTube does other places. But again, like it does underscore how utterly full of shitty is by calling himself a free speech absolutist.

No, you're not. No, I mean, he's a free speech absolutist for like right-wing American trolls. But like if you're in any other country in the world, particularly a country where he has business interests, like he'll censor anything. It's with message here. And we've dealt with this because Ron Ayob was a part of the investigation that proved that Modi in his circle were at least complicit in kind of not jinning people up. Certainly looking the other way in Gujarat. And by the way, that wasn't a novel conclusion like the U.S. had a travel bin on Modi until he was elected prime minister as well as a bunch of European countries. I think the bigger question raised, India was always going to be a very awkward issue.

There are a number of categories. Let's break them down, Tommy, like the democracy people, you know, people who are, you know, in the kind of, let's say, are big collective of never Trump pro-democracy people here. There's a question of what happens when the Democratic movement, you know, because it's easy to condemn, I don't know, Victor Orban, like the prime minister of like a medium-sized Eastern European country. Central Eastern European country that, you know, is on the margins of some U.S. interests. Israel, there's a thing that we've talked about today, huge democratic backsliding in Israel. Like if this was happening in other places, like trying to neuter the Supreme Court, trying to take away rights from people, trying to inflict collective punishment, like there would be a lot more attention on that from the democracy crowd.

We don't really talk about it when it comes Israel because there are a lot of factors, including geopolitical ones. India, right? Huge geopolitical interest in the United States, because is there part of any strategy? strategy to deal China and huge profit motive for the Elon Musk's of the world because there's this massive emerging market. And so I just think like we have to check our own Nigeria. Do we even give a shit, right? Like, you know, do we care about that Nigerian election that could help determine the future of democracy in that part of Africa that is going to be like half the world's people by 2050, the continent of Africa? It just shows that like we have to try to strive to be more consistent in how we think about our principles here because everybody else can

see these double standards. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so here's a good country to focus on, which is Peru, talking about sort of democratic backsliding. So in early December, the now former Peruvian president, Pedro Castillo, was impeached after he tried to dissolve Peru's Congress. Castillo was then arrested on the charge of violating the constitutional order. I think he's sitting in jail still. His vice president, Diana Boluarte, replaced him. She called for calm. She called for like a unity government. But there have been massive protests ever since calling for her to resign. The Associated Press reported that nearly 60 people have been killed in those protests,

mostly from security forces firing on protesters, but protesters also attacked a police officer, burned into death in a squad car, like a lot of nasty stuff's happening. Bolowarte called for moving up the elections from 2026 to 2024, and a concession protesters saying, no, that's not enough. We want them this year. Now then, a group of House Democrats are calling on President Biden

to suspend U.S. security. assistance to Peru until security forces stop massacring protesters and until there's some accountability for the people who have been overseeing that. Peru's foreign minister is in DC this week for meetings. The U.S. provides $40 million a year to Peru. It ain't much, right? It's all counter-drug stuff. Do you think this is a good idea? Is this meaningful leverage in your book? I just don't think it's like that. I mean, it's an interesting idea. And I certainly think if there's continued security force violence, like we should put some restrictions on it. Again, like, do we do it in other places, you know, but I think, look, they're in a massive political crisis

in that, like, they have, they've had this revolving door of leadership, right? And part of what you, I'm not a Peru expert, but clearly in addition to like the grievance of a left-wing president who was beginning to move an anti-democratic direction being ousted, his supporters are stirred up, partisan has just got to be frustration with just, the politics is broken in this country, right? And so I do think that this is, I don't like the idea of the U.S. bilaterally in Latin America generally, like just telling people to do something. I think you try to get a collective of other countries, you know, to work diplomatically to try to understand what is Prue's roadmap to an election, like how are they going to get out of this impasse? And yes, I'm not saying it shouldn't be on the table.

like if they're massacring people, like we can put a hold on that assistance. Absolutely. I just don't know that that's going to be the game changer. I think you need a broader regional strategy that brings in a bunch of different voices and is trying to find a pathway through that has an election and in some kind of internal dialogue in Peru that can try to stabilize. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's good. That's well said. Let's turn to Ethiopia because I read this article that made my jaw drop in the FT where the former Nigerian president who was, serving as the African Union's peace mediator in Ethiopia, trying to mediate the civil war that's been fought in northern Ethiopia in the Tigray region. He said that there may have been as many as 600,000 casualties. This was this interview with FT. They also talked to another researcher named Tim Vandenbent. He told the FT that he believed the figure was accurate and put the number of civilian casualties between 300,000 and 400,000 and then like battlefield deaths between 200,000 and 300,000. So there's just a staggering number of deaths for a war that didn't start long ago. It was this late 2020. That's like Syrian Civil War like neighborhood

casualties, right? And for a much shorter compressed period of time. Right. I point, I made the contrast just point out that in a very compressed period of time, like you're reaching that level of violence and death. Yeah. And so, you know, you have this fragile peace agreement. It got a broker late last year. You just got to hope that sticks, basically. But I mean, 600,000. people. It does show you that even not solving the problem, you still have an overwhelming humanitarian interest in just trying to stop fighting and get people talking. Because they're not solving the underlying differences with Eritrea and D.Rae and Ethiopia. We've unpacked that it takes a while. But just trying to get humanitarian access, get assistance to people, put anybody in

between warring armies and just stop this thing. Like, this is the scale of loss of life that can happen if you make the perfect, the enemy the good. Yeah, you save like a thousand lives a day. I mean, that's what they're talking about. Former Brazilian president, Jerry Bolsonaro, has apparently put in a request for a six-month tourist visa to allow. Lexa, KFC, huh?

To stay in the United States. Okay, I heard a BBC report today that said he's been staying with an MMA fighter in Florida. I saw that too, yeah. Do we know which one? I don't know MMA at all. Can we just like, is Crick going to do a podcast? You run this place, right? Sure.

Nominally. Like a flirt. Like what, like. What is happening? And of course there's a bunch of MMA guys down there. Like Florida attracts like a very predictable yet eccentric collection of people. I can't imagine what the Orlando Burbs are like. So obviously back home in Brazil, they're trying to figure out if Bolsonaro had a role in their little January 6th.

Yeah. I don't know who makes the decision in the U.S. government, Ben, but like, can you think of easier no than denying this visa request? I can't. I mean, like, what, trying to like, inciting interruption in the largest democracy in South America, like, it seems like that'd be a strike against you. And Lula is coming to Washington on February 10th. So, you know, you might want to figure this out before that. I also saw that the Brazil and Argentina were talking about creating a new common currency to operate in parallel with their currencies. Basically, is a way to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar in the region.

I don't know. Well, I think what the Lula meeting will be interesting because like, like, continuing on the theme of like the never Trump coalition, right, like everybody becomes friends when they, Lula is going to come here. He is not where we are on Ukraine. Not even close. So today he met with Schultz and I saw his comments were basically like, well, it takes two to fight.

So like the Ukrainians are kind of equally responsible for the war. And yes, he's going to start ginning up this stuff in Latin America around getting U.S. influence reduced. we've been, you know, saying for a long time that it, on Cuban, Venezuela policy, like, you know, he's not exactly Bolsonaro on that. So I think Lula, you know, from, and I'm by the way sympathetic to some of Lula's views, not on Ukraine, but on, on certain aspects of Latin American policy. But I think we have to remember that, like, Lula, huge improvement over Bolsonaro, the right thing for Brazilian democracy, I think the right thing for, causes of social justice in Brazil as well. It doesn't mean he's going to be an easy partner for Biden.

And I think that's going to be kind of probably on display at that meeting. They'll want to coordinate. Yeah, one way to make this go better is to not be kind of harboring Bolsonaro. Although I don't know if Lula might want him out of the country. I don't know if they, like if I'm Lula, I don't know what's better. Like having him hang out with an MMA fighter in Florida or having him like stirring him crowds in Brazil, you know, I don't know. Yeah, maybe at some point you've got to prosecute him. We'll see.

Speaking of denying visas to assholes, Australia might deny a visa request by Kanye West because he loves Hitler and hangs with Nazis. Where he's like ski hats or masks? So Kanye, I guess, wants to visit his new girlfriend's family in Melbourne, but Australia can, they can deny you based on good character. Girlfriend or married? I thought they were married. I can't keep track anymore. I tried to, I was TMZing. They're married now?

I think it was like reporting. Does anybody hear we confirm this? Okay. Well, Mazel Tov. Yeah, but what's weird is, like, when I went down this rabbit, she looks just like kind of Kim Kardashian adjacent. Yeah. Haley, am I right about that?

Okay, yeah. You got to be, okay. Maybe she's related. Oh, if they do let him in, here's the job, Kanye could do, Ben. Australian authorities are searching for a tiny radioactive capsule that apparently fell off a truck during a 1400-kilometer trip in Western Australia. This capsule is 8mm by 6 millimeters. It's part of a gauge in mining equipment that emits enough radiation

that it could burn your skin or cause prolonged cancer with exposure. So, I don't, don't drive to Perth anytime soon. It's my message to you. Boy, we've had some good Australia stories over the years. How do you lose a fucking capsule full of... That sounds like the opening scene of a movie. Yes, very much so. The Walking Dead.

Yeah, and the Kanye West coming into the movie halfway through would actually be a good twist, you know. What if he's an anti-an hero and he saves the day? His ego. covers his like, you know, yeah. Yeah, the radioactive material makes him... Not a Nazi? Not a Nazi. You were maybe, like, yeah, maybe he had, like, had some exposure in the past.

It actually distorted his brain, and then now he gets the antidote or something. You know what? Hollywood calls us. They let Djokovic in this year, and he won the Australian Open. He did. No, his dad was hanging out with some Russians. I worked it in. I want to hear it.

Well, his dad, after the quarterfinal win, was celebrating outside with all these guys holding, like, the VIII. sign or the Z sign. Oh, no, like on the Russian truck. Yeah. And like the Russian flag and stuff. Then he didn't show up for the same finals. Djokovic put out a statement, clarifying that he was against the war.

Great. But it wasn't great. Isn't he sort of like a weird Serbian nationalist hanging on dicey figures? Yeah, I mean. He tried to distance himself from whatever his dad was doing with these guys with the Z sign. But, you know, if you stack up his Z sign. If you stack up his views on, like, vaccines and some other things, like, it suggests perhaps, like, that that's not too out of brand, you know. Interesting.

Finally, we just wanted to highlight the fact that the Saudi government continues to pour money into Donald Trump's pocket. We've talked at some length, I think, on this show. I can't remember for sure about the $2 billion check that the Saudis cut to Jared Kushner, despite Jared having no investment experience, as went to his little fund. And this week we learned that the Saudi-owned live golf tour will host three of 14 tournaments this year at Trump-owned courses. He hosted two live events at his courses in 2022. Trump also cut a weird deal with the Saudi real estate company to build a $4 billion project in Oman. When Trump was asked about Saudi Arabia's human rights record last October, I think the New York Times asked him at the tournament.

He said Saudi officials were, quote, good people with unlimited money. And we have human rights issues here in this country. We have human rights issues here as much as anybody. So there you have been foreign government pouring money into the pocket of a declared presidential candidate. Well, plus, like, we know that, well, A, we know that Liv is like just sports washing to the kind of cartoonish degree, right? There's no other reason for the Saudis to have like a golf tour. We also know that they overpay, right? Didn't they offer like Greg Norman like $100 million?

to like be the commissioner of this league or something. There was a report that they offered Tiger Woods like $800 million or something. Yeah. So they're probably not just paying the normal fees as a tournament. You know, they're probably in the same way that they overpaid for all their hotel rooms at whatever that cheesy Trump hotel was in Washington. Like, I'm sure they're massively overpaying. I think the Washington Post had a story that found that the number of campaign finance disclosures that talk about events at the Trump Hotel have gone to zero since. it's become like, I don't know, like a Hilton or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Entirely just a grift. Just a grift. I mean, we all knew it, but. I'd love to know what the sum total value of all that was because I bet it was a lot. There's like hundreds of millions. Because if you, the thing about hotels and golf courses is they may sound like something different than stock trades, but like it's just direct money coming in.

I mean, it is just cash flow. Yeah, just cash in his pocket. Okay, that is it for the news section. But stick around because when we come back, you will hear my conversation with Yanti Serepto from the Save the Children. She's the president and CEO of Save the Children. She just got back from a trip to Afghanistan. She had nine meetings with the Taliban where she tried to convince them to let women work for NGOs and allow them to operate and provide humanitarian relief.

So you will not want to miss that. I am so excited to welcome to the show today. Yanti Sorepto, who is the president and CEO of Save the Children USA. An amazing, truly wonderful international NGO working to improve the lives of children around the world. If you're thinking about charitable giving this year, consider them. And consider doing it early in the year instead of waiting until the end, which a lot of people do for, I don't know, tax reasons, I guess. But whatever. It's wonderful to have you on the show.

Thank you so much. And wonderful to be here. So you just got back from Afghanistan. I think you returned on Friday where you had nine meetings with the Taliban. I would love to talk about those. But before we get into specifics, could you just take a moment and help people understand. why you were going over to Afghanistan and what the situation is like in Afghanistan now,

especially for women and children, since the Taliban took over. Thank you. And absolutely. So Afghanistan is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today. And actually that's saying something in a world where there's lots of prices, right, vying for that particularly unappealing title.

We were talking about a country of 40 million people, 28 million of those people, are in humanitarian need. Importantly, for us, 15 million of those 28 are children. So well over half of the people in humanitarian need are our children. Children are always the most vulnerable,

particularly in countries like Afghanistan and girls even more so. What we've seen, and safety children has been in Afghanistan since 1976, right? So for many decades where we've also worked under the previous Taliban regime, and we've worked in many of the provinces where the Taliban was essentially already

in control before the fall of Kabul in August of 21. Now, I'm trying to get my year straight here. So what we've seen over the past 18 months, you know, a couple of things. We've definitely seen a deterioration of women's rights and rights for girls, for sure. We've also seen, of course, a huge impact on the Afghan economy when the United States and other countries pulled out. Just simply the economy essentially lost 20% with value. So that in and of itself is, of course, a problem.

I was driving around in Kabul, and you literally saw these roads where there's almost these graveyards of big construction machines and diggers and everything else because they are now not being used, whereas before there was actually construction and infrastructure work going on. So there's that. On the upside, in terms of,

the positives, it is definitely more secure. It's been less unsafe in country. There's been less conflict, less incidents that allowed us actually to expand some of our work into areas where before it was literally too difficult to work. So that's better. And the Taliban, you know, always reminds us of that when we speak to them and says we didn't thank them for that. So there's that.

But what we're seeing is, you know, incredible rates of malnutrition. We had the opportunity last week to visit a nutrition, a malnutrition treatment clinic. You know, we're thinking, you know, a small space where there were, I think, certainly 40 women with their children, often, you know, more than one child, young children, babies, newborns, as well as toddlers, where they come to have their children checked out. and we checked them, the wonderful people there, check them on malnutrition, right? And growth, stunting, wasting,

are these kids, you know, what's their situation like? And then when they are found to be suffering from malnutrition, they get treatment in order to get them back on track. So we, and those rates have gone up massively. That's why, you know, 28 million people in humanitarian need in Afghanistan, but six million of those really at famine's door, speak where they don't know where their next meal is coming from. And also don't forget, we were there last week. It was cold. There are areas in Afghanistan where it is minus 25 Celsius.

I'm talking here, 25 to minus 35, 3 Celsius. People don't have money to buy fuel. So it's bitterly cold. I saw kids on bare feet coming in the door in that nutrition center. So that's what we're seeing on the ground. So people are dying. It's bitterly cold and there isn't enough food. Yeah, and so, you know, the Taliban fairly recently instituted a ban on allowing women to work for NGOs that provide aid and assistance. What does that mean for an organization like yours? Are you able to function without women working on the ground? It certainly was incredibly unwelcome, I would say. So we have 5,000, over 5,000 staff in country.

The vast, vast majority of those are Afghan nationals, right? We probably have how many 20 to 30 international staff there on the 5,000 staff. Almost half of those 5,000 staff were women. So they're nurses, doctors, finance managers, logisticians, HR managers, etc. So the Taliban sent their edict of women not being allowed to work for us on the 24th of December. That meant that on the 25th of December, our work stopped. it paused because we cannot do our work well and safely without women in that whole cycle. Women help us, you know, you have to understand in Afghanistan, women and children are the most

vulnerable of those people in need in order to speak to women, to find women and to be allowed to give, to deliver services to them. You actually have to work with women. Right. You can send some single man into a house with only women. Exactly. And that's not going to be accepted. Exactly.

So that in and of itself is an possibility. Of course, if women know that there's a food distribution program going on and there's only men there, they will not find it safe to actually go there. So for all those very practical reasons, it's impossible for us to do our work without women, aside from, of course, the principle that we think women have a right to work wherever they want. So we paused our work. Now, in Afghanistan has always been like that. Negotiations happen at a local level always.

So to create that operational space and agreement with local authorities to allow our work. So that whole process kicked into gear. The Ministry of Health was then actually very quick to say the ban doesn't apply for any of the health work. The Ministry of Education followed suit to say the ban doesn't apply to all of the primary education that you're delivering. So where we can, we've gone back. We're not sitting there saying, we're not going to do anything until this ban is reversed. If we can find an opening to work, we're doing so. So a lot of our mobile health clinics are back.

A number of our primary schools where we teach girls and boys are back and opened. And it was heartening for me to see when you're speaking to local staff and our local partners, often women, they say, look, local communities, women and men want our programs back. They want their schools to be open. They want health care for their kids, right? Which parent doesn't want that? And they understand that you have to do that with women. So they advocate locally on our behalf to have our work we started.

So you had these nine meetings with various members of the Taliban. Can you give sort of a sense of who you were talking to and how they went, those conversations? Yeah, it's always interesting. So we saw Minister of Foreign Affairs economy. Economy is an important ministry because that ministry actually holds the registration of all of the NGOs, right? So they give the license to operating country. And then we saw a variety of line ministries, health, education, rural development, refugees, interior, etc. So in all of those conversations, you have a couple.

conversation about why we think the ban should be reversed, that we think the ban is wrong, particularly wrong, with dire consequences for the people of Afghanistan, and that's surely not what the de facto authorities would want for their population. And then we started to also get more practical to say, look, within education or within health, we would like these exemptions, these authorizations you've given us, thank you very much, we'd like them to be expanded. And we'd like them to be very reliable and sustainable. So that, if you give us a national authorization, if I then go to a checkpoint in this province over there, far away from Kabul, our female colleagues are not being harassed at a checkpoint or being prevented

from going back into the office or into the school. So those are the conversations that we've had with ministries where there were authorizations given. And then there were others where we said, look, our work on food security, our work on livelihoods, on installing safe drinking water, infrastructure is really important to keep those schools and hospitals open. So please allow us those authorizations as well. So we're trying to essentially push the boundaries of what is allowed under this temporary ban. Wow, that's amazing. So these are really granular kind of inch by inch.

What about this? Can I get that? Can I get that? And can I hold on to this over here whilst I try to expand this here? Exactly. That's amazing. I was listening to someone talk about this ban who had a lot of experience in Afghanistan, and he said that ironically, some of the more militant factions of the Taliban sometimes can be more moderate,

and maybe this edict banning women from being employed or being in schools came from the clerical leaders in Kandahar. Do you think that's an accurate assessment? That is absolutely the case. And are you able to connect with the Kandahar leadership, or is this more of a Kabul-based set of discussions? We in the end decided not to go to Kandahar this time around because we felt we had, A, we managed to get to some of the influencers in Kabul who also have an influence in the people in Kandahar. We also didn't want to be snubbed in Kandahar and then not being seen because we've seen that film before as well. So it's a balance, right, always to say when is the right time to try to engage.

when it's time to not engage. I mean, overall, I would say, and that's also our briefing to member states and the international community, we do need to have more political engagement. We cannot leave it to just a humanitarian community to essentially be the only ones in country and be the only interlocutor with the de facto authorities. That doesn't work because then humanitarian support is being politicized, really. quickly. Especially after two decades of a war effort that

people feeling less safe than they do now under the Taliban rule. Is there any political space for, I mean, I assume more likely men, husbands, fathers, brothers to protest, to call out the government for this decision? Yeah, and there is, and you do see it at small scale level. You see dads, you know, bravely taking their daughters to school and just standing there demanding that she's let in. And even if they don't let her in, they're coming back to the,

next day, right? It's just unbelievable to see. We're seeing those dads and the moms advocate to, you know, as I said, to reopen those healthcare clinics and they want women to work there, not men. So we do see it. You know, the spirit of African women never ceases to amaze me and inspire me. I spoke to a number of those Afghan leaders who work for NGOs, who run NGOs. they are essentially the managing directors and CEOs of NGOs who are not allowed to come into the office at the moment and they said to us, look,

African women have always worked. This is how this country works. We will always find a way no matter what anyone says. So they're quite, you know, their spirit is quite indomitable. But of course, it's hard for them. It is hard. Incredibly brave people.

What do you think the United States, the Biden administration should be doing to help the people who are suffering in Afghanistan. What are they getting wrong? What could they do better? We think, and the mission was a, it wasn't just a UN mission, right? It was a mission of UN agencies

plus a number of NGOs on behalf of the humanitarian community. We think the international community should step up its political engagement. We understand, recognition is super difficult, but we need some incentive, some levers. with the de facto authority, because otherwise, why would they, why would they do anything

that we would like to see happen, like girls back in school, like women to work, like, etc. So, and we do think there are other levers there that are possible. They need, they desperately need, I mean, when we spoke to the Taliban, they're very clear, they don't want humanitarian funding to leave their country. It's 20% of GDP. They need, they do understand intellectually and emotionally. They need it and they want it. Now, how we get there is then, I think, the task.

Are there, they need a working banking system. At the moment, there is none. And that's partially because of sanctions. They need to work together with the international community on counterterrorism. And I think the international community has, you know, an interest there too. So there are ways economically, politically, yes, humanitarian support, that there could be more engagement with the Taliban.

So that would be one, continued engagement and support not just money, but also expertise, to work with the de facto authorities. And importantly, the Taliban also needs to embrace that and allow that to happen and allow that in. It really takes to the tango here. So that we are definitely saying to the US government, but also to other governments,

that now is not the time to abandon the people of Afghanistan. It would be so easy to say, oh, this is just too difficult. And the Taliban, you know, we just need to use a stick and we'll just remove the funding. That is hurting the people of Afghanistan, the innocent population, not the de facto authorities. So we ask, we're asking for donors to keep some patience,

to continue to support humanitarian community, to work it through, to expand those areas of authorization, to continue to grab back some of the space that we've lost and to keep it and to continue to do good work there, whilst at the same time really kick-starting a political engagement process with the Taliban to understand, to stay in dialogue. Because if there is no dialogue, you know, it will be impossible to make any progress whatsoever.

That's not to say that it will be easy. right or super straightforward. It won't be. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned counterterrorism cooperation. I mean, I think it's understandable, but unfortunate, that the entire U.S. Afghanistan relationship is seen through the prism of counterterrorism and cooperation. It's obviously a legacy of 9-11. But ironically, the Taliban government now faces this pretty acute threat from ISIS. Do you think that threat is great enough that they might consider cooperation with their enemy six months ago? Well, see, I mean, you know, depending on who you spoke to in the town, you know, in that sense, completely centralized either, right? You get messages. But I think they would be interested in some of that, absolutely, in cooperation on, yes, on counterterrorism, on the drugs trade market. There, you know, they gave back to us that they have clamped down on the illegal drugs market. And that was to the benefit of the international community as well as of the Afghan people.

So, you can argue, is that really true? But there are certain elements of truth there that I think we should not completely ignore because there are ways that you can still be useful to each other, even though you could mightily disagree about lots of other things. Yeah, yeah, of course. Is Pakistan playing any kind of constructive role in this? Tricky at the moment, also because of the, a, large displacement populations going backwards, and forwards, terrorism, again, now also being, you know, coming up in Afghanistan,

which is seen as a threat by the Taliban. So it's tricky. It's tricky. It's currently not, I think, you know, probably the most in that sense, useful relationship. But, you know, I think, look, I meana Muhammad, the deputy secretary general went a couple of days before us, which I thought was an important signal of political engagement, that most senior woman in the United Nations. And she also, aside from reiterating all those other messages, I thought it was very helpful to engage countries in the region, Islamic countries,

or in anything, to also send those messages of condemning the ban to the DeFAC authorities, which I thought was helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Final question, most important question. listeners who are hearing us talk right now, they want to do something to help the Afghan people. What can they do? How can they support your work? Well, that's great. I would say wwwsafetychildren.org. There's lots there about the situation in Afghanistan. We put updates there. I would also say, you know, support for us, safety children really also works with grassroots advocates in the United States. We actually have a C4, a campaigning arm that has a lot of phenomenal,

has hundreds of thousands of amazing supporters and volunteers who write to their congressmen and women. They fundraise for us. They go on the streets. And they campaign on the behalf of children and girls in Afghanistan but all over the world. So yes, if you can and are willing to give us a donation for children in Afghanistan or any of the other kids,

caught up in emergency crisis across the world, that'd be fantastic and is hugely appreciated and helpful, but you can also take action on kids' behalf. And there's lots about that on our website. That's great. Well, listen, I want to say it again. I mean, Save the Children is an amazing organization. Your whole team is doing incredible work, incredibly brave, at times, dangerous work. There is this acute crisis in Afghanistan right now. There are growing crises in the Horn of Africa. or other places, so this money is being spread thin. So if you're thinking, hey, maybe I'll donate some money to our organization like Save the Children this year, now is a better time to do it than December because we really, really need it.

So thank you again for doing the show and for all your great work. I really appreciate it. Great. Thank you guys so much for having us. Thank you. Thanks again to Yanti Srepto. Thanks again to Mohammed bin Salman for funding all my favorite golf outings. Yeah, all those principal players in the live tour.

These good folks over there. Elon Musk for his bringing Andrew Tate back on the Twitter but censoring BBC documentaries. And listen, just stop taking work home. Everybody. Get a little work life balance. You won't have any classified issues. It'll be fun. Yeah, it's a

good role in life. When you quit a job, don't take work with you. No, never am. All right. All right. POTSade the World is a crooked media production. Our executive producers are Ben Ben Rhodes and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley News. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin and Charlotte

Landis are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World. And thanks to Saw Rubin for production support.