Pod Save the World - Trump Officials on an Iranian Hit List

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Tommy and Ben discuss the Israeli military’s plan to seal off and lay siege to Northern Gaza, the Biden administration’s demand that Israel improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or else the US will (maybe?) cut off weapons shipments, the IDF’s expanding military campaign in Lebanon, and new details about how Israel might respond to Iran’s ballistic missile attack. They also talk about a “hit list” of Trump administration officials being targeted by Iran, North Korea blowing up roads connected to South Korea and sending troops to Russia, Canada and India expelling diplomats over the assassination of a Sikh activist, and Viktor Orbán getting dunked on in the European Parliament. Then Ben speaks to Saad Mohseni, author of “Radio Free Afghanistan” about running a media company in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. 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 Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, I think sometimes listeners tire of our sports banter at the top, but this time we have a foreign policy connection. Your coach of the Jets, Robert Sala, was recently fired. Yeah, I was hoping we could banter about the Mets. Never heard of them. Did you see how Sala was wearing a Lebanese flag? Yeah, a Lebanese flag during the game in London, and then the Jets lost, and then he got canned. by Woody Johnson, owner of the Jets and former Trump ambassador to the United Kingdom.

And there was some suggestion that maybe there was a connection between the Lebanese flag and the firing and not the Jets sucking ass in the firing. And I saw a tweet that I thought you'd enjoy, which someone at River Tam YDN tweeted, The New York Jets would let a coach wear an ISIS flag if he could win the AFC East. Yeah, I mean, I think that Woody Johnson, it was probably all. the above. I'm sure that he's not, you know, a supporter of the Lebanese people in the same way that we would want him to be. I'm sure also that he didn't like his team losing in London where he was the ambassador where he probably wanted to impress his friends. All his buddies. And I don't know what role Aaron Rogers played, but it couldn't have been good. I will say. You want 30 seconds on the Mets?

You want to sound off. The Mets are giving me the most joy I've had in my life in a while. You've been very happy on group texts. Yes, except for I decided. I decided. to kind of break the bank, do the stub hub thing, go to game one, take my nine-year-old daughter, super excited for her to share in this Mets run. I was about her age the last time the Mets won the World Series. And of course, I picked the one game that they lost nine to nothing. Oh, nine nothing? Yeah, yeah. And got three hits and never were in the game. So she had a baptism by fire of what it's like to be a Mets fan, even in a good playoff run. Was it fun? Yeah, you know, I mean,

And Dodger Stadium is loud. That's cool. And traffic-y getting in and out. But, you know, in there, you know, good food, good snacks. I mean, if you're nine, like, that's the stuff that matters. Yeah, that's all that matters. You get an ice cream and a little, like, baseball helmet? We didn't, yeah, I kind of struck out as a dad this time around.

Oh, nice. Well done. I got kind of dad food. We got, like, nachos instead of ice cream. But it was good. I went to, I scalped a ticket to the 2018 Dodgers Red Sox World Series in L.A. And it was great because, like, I got a ticket. I could not have afforded or found in Boston in like 100 years.

Yeah. And we won. We watched them, clinch. Well, that's the truth, actually. The same tickets I bought in L.A.,

New York would probably be four times as much. 10 grand, yeah, yeah. Well, I think they're going to do well. I think we're going to be okay. I think we're going to do it.

Sorry to all the Phillies fans out there. Sorry, not sorry. You're not sorry? Yeah, I kind of should be honest, I like, really hate all Pennsylvania sports,

because I hate the Steelers and I hate the Phillies, and I hate the Eagles. We're going on a long. long time about this. Well, I just had to explain because Ella's like, or the Dodgers is a big rival. I'm like, well, you know, New York and L.A. have a thing, but it's northeastern cities that that's the real rivalry, right? The Philadelphia. And I like the city and I have friends there, but when it comes to sports, like you want to, you know. I saw Governor Josh Shapiro when we were in Philly briefly and I told him that Philly was J.V. Boston and he did not find

that funny. Almost punch me. Well, it kind of is J. That's what I'm saying, dude. That's what I'm saying. Anyway, enough about us. That's a going in the world series. We're going to talk about the latest from Gaza in this episode and all the concern that is in the press these days about a plan by a bunch of retired Israeli generals to lay siege on northern Gaza and starve out, anyone left there. We're going to update you on the latest from Lebanon, as well as reports about how Israel might retaliate to Iran's ballistic missile attack from two weeks ago. What Iran knew about the October 7 terrorist attack before it happened in what was described as Iran's Trump administration hit list by Politico.

Interesting story there. Very long story. Yeah. Long hit list, apparently. Then we'll talk about why North Korean soldiers are reportedly in Russia, why Indian and Canadian diplomats are getting expelled from the respective countries. And then we'll celebrate a young German lawmaker who dunked on Hungarian dictator Victor Orban to his face. Yeah, that was good.

Very fun. And then, Ben, you just did an interview. What did you talk about? Yeah, I talked to Sad Moseni. who you probably remember from the White House, he runs the Moby Group, which has Tolo News, the kind of leading independent news source in Afghanistan for the last two decades. And he's got a book out called Radio Free Afghanistan that kind of tells the story of this kind of 20-year odyssey he's had.

And it's fascinating. We cover kind of what that was like to set up a media enterprise in Afghanistan that has news, but also soap operas and singing shows and, you know, the full works. what it was like to deal with the American forces there, his assessment of Afghan leaders like Hamid Karzai, Nashafghani, what it was like when things collapsed at the end and he's both covering a story and he has employees leaving. But really interestingly, like what it's like in Afghanistan today and the nuances of the Taliban, the complexities of the Taliban, they're still on air, right? So some things have changed. Guess what? There's no soap opera is no music, but they're still

reporting the news. So if anybody's interested in not just Afghanistan's history, but where things are today, you should check it out. Do you think there's like an Afghanistan version of Politico that's writing stories about fights between like the national security press secretary, the Taliban, and the like domestic policy person? Like in the U.S.

Getting sourced in the Taliban's... That wouldn't be fun. That's not a fun drinks and lunch circuit. No, there's no drinks. To beat Sweden. That's not good. No, no. I'll definitely listen to that. That sounds fascinating. All right, Ben. Let's start in Gaza. because in particular the northern part of Gaza, where fighting is both intensified and the humanitarian situation is increasingly desperate. So the IDF surrounded the Jabalya refugee camp in an effort to take out the remaining Hamas fighters, they say, are in the area.

At the same time, the UN and like countless other organizations are sounding the alarm about the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza after the Israelis closed off the main eight crossings into northern Gaza in early October. But what makes this situation different from all the other previous times we've talked about Israel, like limiting or cutting off aid flows into Gaza, is that a group of retired generals recently proposed a plan where Israel would say to the Palestinians, you have one week to get out of northern Gaza, the northern Gaza Strip, before we seal it off. Anyone who stays will automatically be considered a combatant and military target, and the IDF will then lay siege the entire area cutting off all food and water. to either kill you or starve you out. Now, this is referred to as the General's Plan. So this idea was pitched to Netanyahu, was pitched to the Israeli parliament. The Associated Press reported that Netanyahu was considering it. There's about 400,000 people and left to northern Gaza. Most of them have been forcibly displaced multiple times, and they're now facing more orders to leave. According to Axios, Yoav Galant, the Israeli defense minister, called Lloyd Austin

over the weekend, our Secretary of Defense, and told him that Israel will not carry out the general's plan, but that kind of reassurance seems to be undercut by the fact that the aid has been basically cut off for two weeks. So it's hard to figure what's happening here. On Sunday, General Austin, our Secretary Austin and Tony Blink in the Secretary of State sent a letter to two top Israeli officials articulating a whole range of demands and ways that humanitarian situation is deteriorating in northern Gaza. They asked for Israel to immediately start letting 350 aid trucks a day into Gaza to allow for pauses in fighting for humanitarian relief. including polio vaccinations, and then to take a bunch of steps to prepare for winter.

It's a long, extensive list. But the letter seems to suggest that the U.S. would cut off weapons shipments to Israel if these things don't happen. More on that in a second. So, Ben, just to clarify for listeners, laying siege to all of Gaza like this would almost certainly be a massive war crime. Yeah, it's a war crime. Like, sieges aren't illegal per se, but you have to take all these specific steps to protect civilians. You have to allow food in. You have to protect civilians and the way you conduct your military.

Especially with hospitals or special things you have to do with hospitals. I also suspect this would become item number one in the ICJ genocide trial if they were to actually implement this. But Ben, what did you make of this letter from the Biden administration to the Israelis like kind of declaring the latest ultimatum and sort of hinting at a cut off of weapons? Well, given that first of all, that letter should have been sent in like November of last year, you know, I mean. We're 13 months into this, and now we're sending this letter. I mean, this is the approach. I mean, it just shows, first of all, that their approach is failed. I mean, we're supposed to hug BB and get all these results.

Well, if that was working, you wouldn't have to threaten this kind of action. But to me, it says that what American officials are seeing is deeply worrying. And, you know, we should state that what we've just seen in the last few days, you know, the kind of grinding normalization, you know, you remember a year ago when Al-Shefa hospital was bombed. There was a huge debate about it. It's a global story. Yeah, they've destroyed the entire healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, all of it. Literally, you know, children were incinerated in tents nearby a makeshift hospital.

I mean, there's no pretense of restraint. And what's really come back and full force are these aid restrictions. And I think what leads to that letter is a sense from American officials. that these aid restrictions are once again, like a matter of policy. You know, that this isn't just kind of, oh, it's tough getting trucks in. There seems to have been a cutoff of food getting it. It's a choice. And so I think that probably indicates the trigger that led to this letter being sent.

Maybe our politics have something to do this too, because the other thing that's happened is there's no pretense of negotiating a ceasefire deal. Now, that's gone. You know, we're in a post-ceasefire negotiation world. So that was kind of the main event for many months. and now we're kind of back to Israel pursuing military solutions in Gaza that, as we've talked about, are kind of unachievable unless, and the general's plan kind of gives away the game, the plan is ultimately to make it unlivable and to displace the population and probably bring back Israeli settlements in northern Gaza. And they'll claim it's for like a buffer zone or something. But, I mean, that's ethnic cleansing is what that plan is.

So I think the letter represents a kind of degree of frustration that the U.S. approach has not worked. Ceasefire negotiations have not worked. Nothing we've said privately or publicly has brought about any restraint. And we're seeing, you know, very worrying limitations, if not wholesale prohibitions, and aid getting in again. And so this is an attempt to kind of – and if the pass is prologue, you know, the Israelis will let a few trucks in. It'll get a little bit better, but it'll still be terrible.

and maybe that is enough for this administration. I don't know. Yeah, some trucks will start going back in and then some group of crazed settlers will block the next set and the government will throw up its hands. You mentioned this horrific fire at a basically refugee camp next to a hospital.

There were two specific videos from the Gaza Strip that I wanted to highlight because they've literally, they've haunted me ever since I saw them. And also I think we sometimes talk about the politics and national security implications and like when you do that only you can lose touch to the humanity. So the first is this October 14th IDF air strike on Al-Axa hospital. So the air strike starts to fire, starts burning

all these tents, housing displaced people. And it burnt a bunch of people alive. Yeah, including kids, including a 19-year-old named Shaban Dalu. Shaban Dalu had been injured in a previous Israeli air strike. And in this video, you can see him raise his arm while in a gurney attached to an IV. as he burns alive. Yeah. On video. And this is not, you know, these are not Hamas fighters. It's a student.

You know, this is the dehumanization that is required to do that to human beings. And to be doing it 13 months after the fact, you know, there are no words, you know, left. And for not to, like, shock the conscience. There was a period of time where a video like that would become a global story and all-consuming thing on all media and all countries. And maybe it is outside of the U.S. But it's like, it was, for me, it was like a thing in my Twitter algorithm because Twitter knows I care about this. No, and that's what's so discordant about this war is that, yes, there's this kind of attrition where it grinds you down and it gets normalized.

But outside the U.S., this stuff is, you know, far more consequential in terms of driving opinion. You've seen this. You know, Emmanuel Macron is, you know, increasingly outspoken about, you know, Israel needing to stop this. the U.S. kind of is standing increasingly alone in this kind of blank check for the Israeli military operation in Gaza. And that's going to have very long-term consequences for kind of global views of the United States. Coma Harris put out a statement on the northern Gaza humanitarian situation, right? She did. And I didn't see one from Biden. I don't know that. I mean, I might have missed it. It could have come from the briefing or something, but I did catch that. I thought interesting.

No, I mean, look, you know, she's got, I believe that in the next three weeks, she's not going to solve Gaza even by taking positions that I agree with. I think the important point is if she wins, hopefully, you know, she's got some pretty big decisions to make out of the gate here. Because continuing this policy, you know, will immediately color global opinion of her, you know. And it's a tough inheritance, you know, I mean, a really hard inheritance, because I don't think she was responsible for Gaza policy. That's clearly, you know, Joe Biden had a very clear sense of how he wanted to handle this. But yeah, this is going to be there the day after the election, you know, no matter who wins. But for her, it's going to be a tough set of decisions in the transition. Yeah.

And then there was one other video that I saw, again, it was shared on Twitter. I know even less about it. But I like literally have not been able to stop thinking about it because there was this a clip of this small boy who's maybe five consoling his younger brother who looks like he was two or three. And the younger boy is saying, I want my mom as like the older one rubs his back. And their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. And like I just, like I don't know how you can watch these videos and not imagine yourself or your kids in their place.

You know what I mean? And like what makes me so, I have a bunch of friends and acquaintances, so I'm sure as you do too or even elected officials who I just like fight about on text chains constantly about the war in Gaza. And like what I find is I get to a point where a lot of the supporters of what's still happening in the Gaza offensive, like they can't seem to recognize that yes, of course, like October 7th was like an evil unjustifiable act. But now like October 7th is being used to justify inflicting nearly identical horrors

in suffering on Palestinian civilians seemingly in perpetuity. Um, and you just get to this point of the debate where it's like a mental block. And I find that people just seem to refuse to engage with that reality. You know what I mean? Like on a, on a human level, on a moral level, even on a strategic level. Because like I just, it's, it's, it's wrong, but it's also going to ensure that these people hate you. If someone did that to me, someone killed my wife.

Forever. I would fucking hate you. And I would want to kill you until the day I died. And like, I worry that that's a natural feeling on either side to have that, like, hatred when someone harms you like this. But it's just every day, like, growing in perpetuity. Yeah, like you, I find it hardest, obviously, to consume any of these pictures, videos, stories related to children. Because like you, I immediately think about my children. And it's interesting the kind of reaction you get.

Sometimes people will say, you know, well, it's all homoomelior. Hamas's fault, you know. And part of it is Hamas's fault, but not all of it is. You know, it's not the case that these people are all Hamas. It's just not. They are not all Hamas. These are not all inevitable consequences of war. These are not all because Hamas is using people as human shields. Like the scale of destruction, all of Gaza is destroyed. Almost everybody's lost a family member. You know, children are being killed in the tens of thousands. thousands. And that's the kind of a policy choice, too. It's not just like one stray bomb. So you get the, then you get the, well, you know, you don't talk enough about October 7th or what Hamas wants to do.

But it's like I do. We do. I have. It's been a year. We, we, you know, but it's been over a year. And, and to your point, you know, I don't know that this is guaranteeing long-term security for Israel. I get some people, you know, after my Taunisey Coates interview, too, saying things like, they're just profoundly misinformed. Why don't you ask him how, you know, Arabs have more rights in Israel than in other Arab countries? It's not that they're under occupation, you know. I mean, you may point to, you know, an Arab citizen of Israel proper, but these people seem to have no idea what it's like to be in Gaza or what it's like to be in the West Bank or what it's like to be in southern Lebanon right now. And they don't want to engage that at all. And this is the last point I want to make, which is it's both obviously the suffering that we're seeing.

But it's also what it does to the people that are doing this, like, is not healthy. It has not been healthy for the United States to be in a 20-year war and terror. There is some causation to Trump there. You know, there's something about the jingoism and the normalization of torture and the kind of dehumanization of populations in other countries. What happened in the right-wing media, somehow Trump is kind of a product of our post-9-11 response is something I've always thought of. What is this doing to the nature of Israeli society to kind of be doing this to human beings? That's a profound question that, you know,

I think people need to stop and think about here because, you know, what is Israel on the back end of this, you know, and, you know, I think if you look at Ben-Givir and Smotrich, it gives you a bit of a sense of what that is and it's not good. Yeah, I mean, there's a piece of this I think you and I are most Americans just like fundamentally cannot understand, which is the, the depth of the religious extremism on both sides, frankly, like in Hamas, but also someone like Ittmar Ben-Gavir or, you know, Baruch-Gaulstein, right, like people who like mass murder their opponents for these religious fundamentalist reasons. But yeah, there's also, I mean, just to, our experience after 9-11, it just reminded you that to continue to take these, like, offensive actions

and to justify doing all these things, the level of fear that needs to be kind of permeated through the culture of a society by the government among the people, like everyone needs to feel like they're at risk at all times. Everything gets sort of hyped to the 10th, 11th degree to justify what's happening. It's just...

And the last thing I'd say about... Yeah, the last thing I'd say about this is, you know, you and I have experience with this, you know, I don't think the X-Elegal thing. of the Obama years running anywhere near the early war in terror and torture and Guantanamo and the invasion of Iraq. But, you know, there were accesses in the Obama years. You can explain each individual thing, right? Oh, here's why we had to take this strike or here's why this thing is justified.

Can you justify the collective? You know, can you step back and look at Gaza and what it looks like today and say, yeah, that was the right thing to do? Right. And look how much money and time and, you know, the U.S. spend on the war on the air. Look at the number of places that we bombed or drone struck or whatever. It's like, does everyone feel safer? Is there less al-Qaeda now than then? There's more. And look at what those places have become. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let's turn to Lebanon. Yes, yeah, yeah.

So the IDF ground invasion there is expanding. The New York Times looked at some satellite images and videos posted by the Israeli military, and they found the IDF has then moving across the border into Lebanon into a bunch of different places. It's very inhospitable terrain, by the way, like large valleys and things. Yeah, mountains. Yeah, that Hezbo has prepared for a long time. So this is like really grueling fighting. A lot of this fighting, I think all of it at the moment, is happening in what is supposed to be like a UN police buffer zone between the two countries established after the war in 2006.

However, Israel has told residents of dozens of towns just north of that border that they too have to evacuate. So it seems like this, you know, the ground of the area. is going to expand. In addition to the ground invasion, though, the IDF is launching heavy air strikes in and around Beirut. And in southern Lebanon, I was just listening to a BBC report where the reporter said that Israel conducted 200 air strikes in the last 24 hours. So the volume is increasing and also the kind of geographic spread of where they're hitting targets is expanding. The IDF even bombed this small Christian majority village called I2 in northern Lebanon and killed 21 people, and I think that's getting investigated.

So, U.S. Gala, the Israeli defense minister, says that these strikes have destroyed two-thirds of Hezbollah's estimated 150,000 rockets. Lebanon's health ministry says that more than 2,300 people have been killed and 10,000 injured since the fighting between Hezbo and Israel started, like, you know, what a year ago, but about 75% of those killed were in the last month. The U.N. has said that 400,000 children in Lebanon were displaced in the past three weeks, But the Israelis have taken some serious casualties, too.

A Hezbollah drone managed to get past Israeli defense systems and hit a military base, which killed four IDF soldiers and wounded dozens of others. And Hezbo is firing hundreds of rockets per day into northern Israel or at northern Israel. So there's still this ongoing fighting. The IDF also has had these weird clashes with the UN peacekeepers in the region. On Sunday, Israeli tanks entered a base housing UN peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon. No one was hurt, but it was this weird, like kind of, mini occupation for a few hours.

Yeah, and now, like, taped one of his videos, you know, threatening the UN mission. Yeah, yeah. So, like, the UN officials are furious. Georgia Maloney was furious because the prime minister, Italy, because a lot of these peacekeepers are Italian. But Netanyahu blamed the UN and said, quote, the refusal to evacuate the peacekeepers, quote, makes them hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of Israeli soldiers.

So he just lashes out at everyone. So, Ben, last thing on this, the Biden administration's policy is evolving. Yes. On Lebanon. So for a year, you know, Biden pressured Netanyahu not to launch a second front with Hezbollah. I think we gave him a lot of credit for succeeding there on this show. It was their big success. There was their big effort to broker a ceasefire back of the UN during Unga. But now that this IDF invasion of Lebanon's happening, the administration says Israel has, quote, the right to conduct these limited incursions to degrade Hezbollah's capability. Why is that? What's your confidence that these are limited, by the way? Well, it just, it's absolutely extraordinary that you could spend months trying to avoid this outcome, literally be negotiating a ceasefire at the time that the escalation takes place with the strike on Nisrallah. And then a week later, Israel does the thing that you've been telling them not to do for a full year. You're like, out of boy. And you're like, that's great.

We support this. We should degrade their infrastructure, which, by the way, is such an amorphous statement. as to mean anything. You know, that's a blank check if there ever was one. You know, go ahead and degrade their infrastructure. Where does that stop, right? Infrastructure could mean Hezbollah walks up to some farmer and says, hey, man, we're putting 10,000 rockets in your barn. You've got a problem with it, let us know. Yeah. And so they end up there. So then you bond that. Hesbolo has some buildings in Beirut. And now we're going to blow those up. And there happened to be a bunch of civilians there, too. It just shows you the kind of absurdity of this policy where they can take a position for a whole

year that it would be bad if there's an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon. And then when that policy happens and the whole world has heard you, and this is why this matters. It gets the U.S. credibility. The whole world has heard you say for a year, that would be bad. And by the way, when they were asked, isn't your policy failing? They would point to this as a success, right? To your point. And now that the thing that you didn't want to have happen is happening, you're for it? There's something completely absurd about this. I mean, it's hard to think of a superpower looking less like a superpower when they can just switch on a dime like that because they're what, they don't want to be in a different place than B.B. Netanyahu, you know, that's the

first thing. And the State Department is like urging U.S. citizens to leave Lebanon now. They're saying use commercial flights get on U.S. brokered options because the U.S. brokered options will not be able to continue indefinitely. So now we're scrambling to get our own people out of there. Yeah, which I was going to say, and I'm going to bring politics into this too. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, the Arab population of Michigan, it is primarily Lebanese, right? And so this is a population that was already upset about what was being done in Gaza, just out of kind of solidarity. And, and yes, there are Palestinian, a lot of Palestinian-Americans in Michigan, too. But now, like, the war is coming to their families. And I should say, I'd like to see the U.S. doing more to

evacuate Americans. You know, in 2006, they were, you know, putting people on U.S. military ships and taking them out of there, you know. And it doesn't seem to be at the same. that level yet either. And the thing that concerns me is that there's always a reason to kind of continue. So you go in and let's say, hey, there's some rocket sites that we want to take out in southern Lebanon. And then Israel goes in and then somebody fires at them from somewhere else. And then they say, oh, we have to go get those people who are firing us from somewhere else. And then it's like, well, then we have to get where they're manufacturing or there's a a mission creep that happens constantly. That's what happened in 1982 when Israel ended up occupying

Lebanon for a very long time or parts of it. And, and, and, you know, and it's a lot of it. And, And I just, where is this ending? You know? Yeah. I was talking to somebody here in L.A. who, you know, is from Lebanon, has a lot of friends there, a lot of family there. He's Druze, who are, you know, sort of a unique, ethnic, religious group in Lebanon. But not Hamas.

Not Hamas. Right. But, like, not like part of the Shia population, not Sunni, not the Christian. They're 5% of the population. And he was saying that their friends just feel trapped. They're trapped in the middle, right? Like, Lebanon has just lurched. from crisis to crisis to crisis from war to economic crisis, not to a political crisis.

And like they don't want the war to continue, but they're also scared if it stops. Because if it stops and Hezbo is still in charge, you're going to have this kind of weakened but not toppled terrorists but political group trying to reassert its domination over the country. Well, that's the thing. Yeah, the risk of civil war conflict or bombings, you know, is just going up, the more things get destroyed. the more the stakes go up and the more. And meanwhile, you know, I was talking to some Lebanese Americans who were describing their families have no idea where to go in Beirut, right?

So do they go and just kind of try to hang out close to the American embassy because it might not get bombed? You know, I mean, that's the degree of calculation people are having to make in Beirut, like a major world city. Yeah, and you had all these sort of sectarian neighborhoods. And now all these people are getting displaced and squeezed together. Yeah. And that could end very badly. And you're right.

Like there is so much of the Western kind of media coverage and talk about foreign policy or places like Gaza, like the people get otherized, right? Like, you cannot do that about Beirut. This is like a, yeah, this is a place where all these reporters have gone to like hang out in party. Yeah. You know, it's like it's, anyway, it's just awful. And also, there has been this horrible government crisis for years, but you're hearing, you're hearing kind of like American and Western officials talk about this like it's some moment of opportunity for Lebanon. Never works. Never works. Never works. What the fuck are we? How many times you have to see in the Middle East that, you know, if you blow everything up and then say, well, what a great opportunity to get the right kind of person in charge here.

Sees control. That never works. Like, point me to the Middle Eastern country that has emerged from being broken apart by violence in some democracy flourishing way. You know, I can't believe we're back here. It's the same fucking people that said that about Iraq or saying this about Lebanon today. I know. I know. I've had people talk about, I've had people say this to me about the moment of it.

opportunity for Iran of like decapitating the snake in Iran. What an opportunity? Decapitate. What are these people talking about? They're like it's baseball cards that they're trading here. Yeah. So I guess there was some reporting that the U.S. was told by Israel that they intend to wrap up the Lebanon operation in the coming weeks. We've heard that before. Maybe right after our election. Yeah. Hopefully it's true. And B.B. does his best for Trump. Yeah. Yeah. He gives him out of boy. Before we're going to break, Ben, we're trying to do a lot of stuff here. We got a lot of great shows. Trying to do some electoral work over. Vote Save America, and we're trying to build a little progressive independent media company at a time when it's

challenging. One way you can support us is by subscribing to the Friends of the Pod. For a limited time, we're offering 25% off all new annual subscriptions. If you're already a monthly subscriber, upgrading to an annual plan is quick and easy. Join Friends of the Pod today to help our mission and help yourself to exclusive shows like Inside 2024. Add free Pod Save America and much, much more. go to crooked.com slash friends to get more. And by the way, Inside 2024 just dropped a new episode. Hysterias Aaron Ryan sat down with Tina Chen, former chief of staff to Michelle Obama

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thanks to the team. We've had two episodes so far. People should go back, check those out, one on democracy globally, one on the stakes for the war in Ukraine. This Saturday, in your feeds, definitely don't want to miss this one. We cover the war in the Middle East, focus on Gaza, but also stretch the regional perspective. We talked to Peter Beinart, who's always incredibly smart, provocative, thoughtful on where things are going with Israel. We talked to Rula Gibriel, who's just a great, you know, guest to offer not just a Palestinian perspective, but her own deep expertise in covering this region for a long time. And Greg Carlstrom, greatest follow on Twitter when it comes to Middle East politics.

It's a great episode. You know, he looks at the region. Yeah. So Peter, Rula, Greg, you don't want to miss this one. No. Those are some really, really smart, thoughtful, at times controversial? Yes. Yes.

Everybody says something controversial. You won't want to miss it. Yeah, you will not be forced to listen to conventional wisdom. No, no, not for these three, no. you'll get deeply held ideas. So check it out, election series in your POTT of the World feed on Saturday. Finally,

last bucket of this Middle East talk here, Ben, so on Iran itself. So it's been two weeks to the day that we're recording this since Iran fired the 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. We've been waiting for some sort of response from the Israelis ever since. There was some reporting today or this week

that Biden called Netanyahu as their first talk in like seven weeks. And Biden got some assurances from Netanyahu that any response will focus on military targets in Iran, not on their nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure. We'll see. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran is warned, I guess, like Western or Gulf leaders, that if the Israelis hit them, they will respond to any attack by hitting Israel's civilian

infrastructure, and they will retaliate against Arab states that facilitate the attack. So they will, obviously, they'll grow this thing immediately. They'll expand the war that is. To bolster Israel's air defenses, Biden sent a fad missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 U.S. military personnel to man it. And also on the Iran front, the New York Times was given minutes of 10 meetings between Hamas's top leaders who planned the October 7th attack in Gaza. This was like what they talked about and all their planning over the course of several years. These notes were apparently found on a computer that was recovered by the IDF in Gaza. The meetings reportedly show that Hamas did in fact brief both Iranian officials and Hezbollah on the October 7th attack before it happened and tried to get them to participate.

The report said Hamas leaders came away from these discussions thinking that Iran was supportive in principle. But we all saw what happened kind of that day that week. Hezbollah participated in the attack in kind of a limited fashion with some limited rocket attacks. After the attack, Iran didn't get involved directly until after the Israelis bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus and killed two IRGC generals. Obviously, over the years like Iran has given lots of money and material support and weapons and training to both Hamas and Hezbollah. But Hamas was not talking about that. They were trying to get them to like engage and fight with them that day, like blow up military, Israeli military infrastructure at the start of the attack. So it's worth reading this piece in full because there's lots of interesting.

detail in there. But also, I came away from reading it very nervous that the leak was part of the messaging effort to kind of preemptively justify or explain some sort of major Israeli response against Iran. Yeah. I mean, it was a complicated leak because on the one hand, it's very alarming if Iranian officials, you know, had some notion that there was a attack being planned on October 7th. but they also on the other end they clearly chose not to participate so it's kind of a murky picture but obviously a damning one just for them having four knowledge um my experience with the years of Iran is that the proxy that they had the most kind of control over was hisbola that Hamas was kind of in a category like the huthies where they gave them money and weapons because they kind of

suited them but they weren't like pulling all the strings right and they weren't like ideologically alliance, right? Yeah, there's Shia and they're Sunni, right? So this is a bit complicated, you know, but I think you're right. I mean, where could those documents have come from? I mean, clearly this was an effort to kind of message around Iranian complicity to some extent, which suggests perhaps like a, you know, a justification for a bigger military operation against Iran. Who knows what we'll see happen? I mean, one thing I will say, Tommy, is that one thing the Israelis under Netanyahu are good at is they act like they might do something really over the top. The U.S. spends a lot of time trying to talk them out of doing it. And then they do

something that would have been seen to be really dramatic. That's true. But it seems like less. So it's like, you know, I can see a world in which they might launch like a pretty significant military attack on Iran, but not hit the nuclear facilities in oil fields. And the Biden people are saying, oh, we talked them out of that. Kind of like the Rafa operation, you know. Well, they didn't destroy all of Rafa. So at once. Now it looks more limited.

But yeah, you know, and beware of this, you know, this is, we've seen this happen repeatedly since October 7th. Like, the general's plan may fall in that category. Like, here's our plan to depopulate Gaza, you know. And then the U.S. spends a lot of time. And then they think they kind of talk them down from doing something when, in fact, Israel's still escalating what they're doing, you know. And that kind of feels to me like where we are right now.

But, you know, they seem pretty determined the Israelis to kind of use this window to degrade the Iranian network, including the Iranian regime itself, as much as possible. The question, again, is what emerges on the back end of that? Because you're not going to eliminate it entirely. And you're going to buy a lot of ill will in the process, not just among those groups, but globally. And that's, you know, that's the tradeoff that the Israelis seem to be comfortable with it. Yeah. It's worth reading the story. Lots of interesting details. No Judy Miller on the byline, but it did get my spiky senses, anxiety that leaks popping up. Another one, though, on the Iran front, Politico had a long report about what they described as Iran's hit list of former Trump aides and the challenges the U.S. is having protecting all of them. So these are all Trump officials connected to the 2020 assassination of IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani. Politico describes the threat as pervasive assassination threat that is much more concrete than the graphic videos. brash proclamations and menacing social media posts that have found their way into the public eye.

Congress has been briefed on all this. They're like 24 sources quoted in the story, current informer and congressional. Congress appropriated a bunch of money to protect some of these individuals, especially the former state and DOD people. But not everyone in particular, it sounds like the NSC staff, the White House staff, who are asking for secret service coverage. But secret service, as we've discussed, is having a hard time protecting Trump at the moment. so they're spread a little thin. But apparently, I mean, it again, it's another very long story. It sounds like the Iranians are doing extensive surveillance on all these individuals, just kind of like on the internet. They're trying to get access to their schedules, figure out where they are. There was an anecdote about some Trump official who was in Paris who was like tailed by a couple of dudes that freaked out a security detail.

Obviously, this list of people they would like to respond to, the Iranians would like to respond to, include Donald Trump, who has decided that Iran is responsible for the two assassination. on him in this presidential cycle. He apparently has requested... Which is crazy, which is crazy. It seems very unlikely, at most unproven. He's requested military aircraft and military vehicles to take him from place to place in the final weeks of the campaign because of these Iranian threats, I guess.

I can't tell if this is a real thing, if this is his staff, just like trying to call Biden week, if they feel like the Secret Service isn't up to the job. I don't know. What did you make of the story? Well, first of all, you know, this goes back to the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, right? So the Trump administration assassinations Qasem Soleimani, who is this kind of revered leader of the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Corps. So it doesn't, on the one hand, the idea that Iranians have long memories will want to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani, you know, that that rings true.

On the other hand, you know, and I've said a version of this before, you know, it may be that there's some IRGC guys who like to get together and put together lists of people that they don't like. And, you know, intelligence kind of picks that up and how concrete this threat is remains unclear. It's kind of murky when you read that story. What is kind of aspirational we might like to do this someday versus like actually trying to do it is a different thing. I mean, we haven't seen, you know, so I take it seriously, but we've yet to see them try to do this. It may also be that they want these people to just kind of live with some degree of fear, you know. Yeah. So there's another word, and this is not me trying to diminish it.

It's just saying. Yeah, that would be awful. Yeah, like they may just kind of, they may not mind the U.S. is picking up, oh, we might, you know, we might have designs on these 24 people. I want John Bolton and Robert O'Brien or whomever it is to be uncomfortable. You know, maybe we have some guys, you know, tail somebody in London just to, you know. So I think that may be happening too. It's just like a sense of like intimidation and like planting a seat in people's heads. So, you know, but it's it's the, you know, it's the, if you go all in and trying to kind of end a regime, you know, like the Iranian regime precisely because like there are people in that regime that play a version of hardball, like I take the threat seriously.

and all the U.S. can do is kind of follow the intelligence picture and do what it can. I do think there's a chance, and I hope this is the case, that these are not very advanced plots. These are kind of aspirational meant to intimidate and not to actually do something. Yeah, I hope that's the case. I hope that's case. I can totally understand how if you were like a senior director on the NSC, you have, and that Iran decided that you were part of this assassination plot, and they've added you to this list, and you're getting warning. by the FBI about these threats or surveillance on you, but you have absolutely no resources to protect yourself short of something you fund out of your own pocket. That is terrifying, and I truly

do feel it for these people. I find it very hard to believe that because of a threat from Iran, that the U.S. Secret Service can't adequately defend Donald Trump and that he has to drive around Milwaukee at an MRAP and then fly back to Mara Lago and an F-22. Like, this is, it's just absurd. It seems like posturing. This is totally different. So break, break. I'm not comparing it apples to apples. My only experience of something strange happening after the White House is when it came out in the news that I was getting spied on by a bunch of former Mossade guys, Black Cube. They were trying to dig up dirt on me. They had files on me.

I remember just kind of feeling kind of, like when you're in the White House, you know, you have all this juice. And I had secret service protection at times because right wing death threats in this country. But your former White House officials, like you're on your own, man. You're gone. I was like, who do I call? I called like John Brennan. You walk out that gate and you're like, see you. I remember calling Brennan me like, hey, can I do anything with this Black Cube thing?

He's like, I'm not the CIA director anymore. You know, like there's not a former White House official hotline to call, you know, which sucks. I mean, I feel bad. And it's the kind of private protection is incredibly expensive. I think Mitt Romney talked about paying hundreds of thousand dollars a month for protection from mega people, basically. And he does have the money. Mick can pay for it. Maybe Mick can, you know, donate.

Not a bad idea. A couple of people. things, Ben. So we're going to add North Korea to our kind of basket of problems that are steadily getting worse at the moment. So it was not long ago that we covered the bags of trash that North Korea was floating over the border into South Korea and the kind of tit for tat between North and South continues with the North taking this, it's largely symbolic, but very provocative step of literally blowing up roads in railroad tracks meant to connect North and South Korea, as you can imagine that roads were not in use. But they were a part of this

project started in the 2000s that was designed to eventually connect the two countries. And for decades, you know, North Korea claimed they wanted to reunify the peninsula, but Kim Jong-un changed the policy officially back in January, calling the South an invariable principal enemy. So the road destruction came after North Korea accused the South of dropping all these propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang via drone. I don't think the South Korea's declined to confirm if they're responsible. In response, the South fire at some warning shots near the border, et cetera. So it's like this constant tit for tat. But Ben, I mean, I think blowing up the roads, obviously, is bad news for anyone who supports reunification. It's bad for anyone that's worried about the nuclear risk from North Korea.

But it also comes in this broader context in this moment where North Korea is giving Russia all these artillery shells in support for the war in Ukraine. In exchange, they're getting some kind of military technology. I think people assume it's ballistic missile program. help. And then just this week, there's reports that North Korea sent troops to Russia to fight against Ukraine. This was in the Washington Post. The Ukrainian intelligence officials said there are several thousand North Korean infantry soldiers in Russia now getting trained. It was not clear to me reading this piece if they're going to get sent to the front lines or if they're just there to like maintain North Korean equipment that's old and shitty and kind of probably needs a lot of

work, but it seems like a hell of an escalation. Well, it's starting to get like World War vibes, you know. I mean, I should add on the Iran piece. I noticed the Iranian president went to visit Putin, you know. These countries are getting closer, you know, Iran, Russia, North Korea, China. And yeah, if you suddenly have North Korean guys on the front lines or doing anything, frankly, in Russia, that's a massive change for North Korea that the so-called Hermit Kingdom walled off in the world.

I mean, that's Kim kind of flexing a bit, but that's this kind of intermingling of Russia and North Korea. And it's not just an alliance of convenience. It seems to be more like an alliance now, you know? Right. And yeah, you wonder what the North Koreans are getting. Bliss and missile technology, Russians have a lot of intelligence. You know, there's all kinds of things they could be getting. And I'd watch this space because no matter who wins, I think we're in for kind of a bumpy year with the North Koreans.

Because, you know, I've said before, if Trump wins, Kim's going to. feel pretty emboldened to fuck around with the South Koreans. Yeah, these boys in the White House, you know, they love each other. But if she wins, the North Greens have a pattern of kind of testing new U.S. presidents, you know, if you go back and, you know, when Obama came in, they were missile tests and, you know, when Trump came in, remember, you had the whole Rocket Man thing. And, you know, so I just kind of feel like we're headed for a little more attention on North Korea than we ever want to give. But the mega trend I'm watching is that the kind of absence of diplomathing, you know, de-escalation in any of these theaters seems to be kind of thickening this anti-Western

alliance in ways that are pretty worrying, you know? Yeah. One other story that we've been watching for a while now is about the assassination of a sick separatist named Hardeeb Singh Najjar on Canadian soil in June of 2023. I should say he was like an alleged separatist. He was just kind of an activist in the space. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, his government accused the Indian government, led by Narendra Modi of being behind the assassination.

And now the fallout from this case is growing and growing, as the Canadian government says they have evidence of a much wider campaign of targeting Indian dissidents happening in Canada. An investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found at least one other murder, drive-by shootings and a home invasion carried out by a gang that was allegedly being fed intelligence

by Indian diplomats in Canada, who would also use threats of, you know, denying immigration documents to get Indians living in Canada to become informants for them. Canadian officials are saying that all of this is being directed by people at very high levels of the Indian government. This Monday, the Canadian government expelled six Indian diplomats who they said were involved in gathering intelligence on sick activists, including the most senior Indian diplomat in Canada. Here's what Trudeau said about it all at a press conference. Let me be clear. The evidence brought to light by the RCMP cannot

be ignored. It leads to one conclusion. It is necessary to disrupt the criminal activities that continue to pose a threat to public safety in Canada. That is why we acted, because we will always, first and foremost, stand for the rights of Canadians to feel safe and secure in their own country. We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil. A deeply unacceptable violation of Canada's sovereignty and of international law. So we should say the Indian government denies everything. They also expelled six Canadian diplomats because why not?

Why not? Either way, it's a new low between the two countries. Again, just the broader context here, if people were like, what is happening? The people being targeted by the Indian government allegedly support the sick separatist movement in the creation of an independent six state. There is absolutely zero risk of that happening. The movement is banned in India. There is no chance this is going to happen. But the Indian government is still jeopardizing its relationship with some of the most powerful countries in the world. For what? Yeah. What is the point of this? A couple things on this. I mean, first of all,

if you read the accounts of this, the Canadians briefed out, like, this is very specific evidence that they had. These are intercepts. I mean, they were quite specific on background in detailing what looks like a very robust intelligence picture. And frankly, intelligence pictures suggest that these Indian diplomats were not exactly being that careful in covering their tracks. They're surveilling people. They're talking about it. They did. Why would they make this up?

It is not in their interest. It's not fun to have a fight with a country of over a billion people that is. really important geopolitically. You don't be sculled by Trudeau? Yeah. So suck. I feel like an asshole. The first point is that this feels pretty clear that this happened.

And also, like, I have to say, like, good for the Canadian government. I mean, one thing you can do with autocracy is just call it out and, like, you know, be transparent about what you know. And I kind of, I wish the United States was kind of backing them up more. I mean, I know we have this big geopolitical play with Modi and we, part of our, China strategy and he's in multiple quads and things like that. But it's not acceptable to basically be weaponizing your diplomatic service to kill people or severe people or intimidate people like this in Canada. Right. You know, I mean, it's crazy. And I'm glad that they are calling this out

and that they're not kind of self-censoring and handcuffing themselves because, you know, India is an export market or because India's part of some China strategy. Like I'd like to see the G7, the U.S. like other groupings of countries kind of backing this up. And this leads me the last point, which is to your point about like, why are they doing this? You know, listeners this podcast know, like, we're not huge fans of

ethno-nationalism here. You know, and I just don't like this. You know, you get a sense that like Modi thinks he's the prime minister of all Indians everywhere. You know, like even if you're not in India, even if you're not even a citizen

of India, if you're Indian diaspora like, you know, yeah, he can silence you. You're a part of his constituency. It's an incredibly nationalist view of things. By the way, the Chinese are doing the same thing. You know, they've got multiple stories recently about people that they have in New York that are, they set up a police station in New York to kind of, you know, monitor Chinese diaspora there. Like, they clearly think that they're in charge of people in flushing queens who are Chinese. Like, those are people in the United States, you know. All you have to do is upgrade Eric Adams on a flight.

Yeah, and you get whatever you want, right? Come on, guys. So I just, I did this trend of nationalism is bad enough when it's within the borders of the country, but this kind of globalization of nationalism is that's what, you know, I think is going on here. And look, yes, countries have a right to say, I don't like something that somebody's doing there. They can bring that to the attention of the Canadian authorities if they think there's something criminal happening or something, there's a threat to their national security. They have every right to do that.

They could complain if the Canadians aren't acting on it. But what they can't do is like run hit jobs on people. Right, right. I wonder, I mean, so six, I think are like 2% of the Canadian population. There's a bunch of like a dozen or so sick members of parliament. I wonder if that representation and that sort of sizable population kind of forced the government's hands. I think, yeah, they're an influential diaspora group in Canada. But with you, they deserve credit for doing it.

And on your intelligence point, I mean, you're right. There was a surprising amount of briefing. about the nature of the intelligence, but also, like, Canada is a member of the Five Eyes, it's the U.S., the UK, New Zealand, Australia. It doesn't necessarily mean that Canada intercepted all this stuff. It's interesting that all those countries have been sitting on this information

to kind of try to work over how to deal with it. I've always wondered about this since this first happened, which is, you know, because they spotlight the rural Canadian mounted police or whatever, you know. But you're right. Like, they're in this intelligence pool where everybody shares everything. Don't just imagine, like, dudes on horses

holding up, like, cones there. I think about like, you know, remember the untouchables when those dudes like rolling on horseback and stuff. So like in my mind, I have a bunch of like mustached, you know, Canadians. We're the worst. We're the worst Americans. But the reality is like it's probably, you know, I want, if it is five-eye stuff, then what does the U.S. thing about this? You know, and are we saying to the Indians? And look, I want to get along with India. Like, I want the geopolitical thing to work out.

I want, you know, but you have to have some lines here as to what is acceptable, you know. And look, we can have the debate. Like, I'm sure the Indian government might what about this and say, well, like, you guys do drone strikes in all these other countries. Fair debate. Let's all, like, have the debate, but like, you know, this is, you know, kicking out six Canadians. I guarantee you those Canadians are not surveilling Indians to kill them, you know? So it just kind of feels like a dumb tip for tat. Yeah. Speaking of dumb things, just listening to that Trudeau clip, can everyone just stop saying, let me be clear? Obama is the guiltiest party, right?

Kamala does it. Everyone stopped doing it. Trudeau, by the way, I mean, we could, you know, come back to this after our election. He's had some challenges. He's in a rough couple months. Yeah. I think he just survived his second no-confidence vote. It was like a bullshit won by the conservatives that had no chance of passing. But that also came after the new Democratic Party, the kind of Bernie Sanders wing of Canadian politics. Led by a sick politician. Yeah. But pulled out of, you know, their kind of deal with Trudeau's party.

I think Trudeau's approval rating is down on like the 30. a 35% range, which in some ways is impressive because he's been in charge for nine years, including, you know, from the pandemic until now. And basically every incumbent is getting killed in the polls. But yeah, you pointed that out. I mean, the, the pandemic has not been good for incumbents. People are pissed off, you know. Yeah. Finally, Ben. So it's not often that you see a world leader just get like dunked on straight to their face. But Moritz-Kerner, who's a German member of the European Parliament shot his shot, verbally.

Last week, Victor Orban gave a big speech to the parliament in Strausburg, which it received what the New York Times called a hostile reception. After his speech, Orban was forced to listen as a parade of lawmakers, including the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen,

told him what they really thought of him. But Kerner went particularly hard in the paint. Let's hear a bit of a clip of what he had to say. What a speech, Mr. Mr. Orban, what a speech. You say you want democracy and you brag about your majorities in the Hungarian parliament. Yet since years, you only rule by emergency decree.

Are you so afraid of democracy, Mr. Orban? Mr. Orban, you are not a patriot. You are just a useful idiot of Russia and China. That's the reality. You turned Hungary into a banana republic. You robbed your population. and enriched your family and friends. Under your rule, Hungary has become one of the poorest

and officially the most corrupt country in the EU. Thank you. What a fraud. What a burden for your people. Mr. Orban, please step down to make Hungary great again. There's something so funny. Oh, man. I want to start having a German accent when I...

Dripping sarcasm in a German accent is so funny. I mean, I will tell you, like, what I love about that is, you know, my last book, I had this whole Orban section. And Orban has this kind of J.D. Vance thing where he kind of likes to think of himself as the smartest guy in the room. And he likes to kind of go to hustle audiences. I mean, you know, we could see a few wants to come on. But because what I like about is the useful idiot point, which is you think you're such a fucking genius. When actually, you're just this kind of vessel for the Russians and the Chinese to get influence. in the EU, which is true, by the way. I mean, the Russians have all manner of agendas running

through Urbun. The Chinese, you know, like Hungary's kind of become part of their Belt Road thing, but Hungary's probably like a massive Chinese intelligence base in the EU. And so this guy who thinks he's this like super intellectual J.D. Vance of Europe kind of thinking of the future of, you know, quote unquote, illiberal democracy is what he literally calls it, is actually just this guy who's like a tool of these bigger farm powers. It's a good way of cutting him down to size. Yeah. It's not just saying, you know, hey, like, you're, you're authoritarian.

Like, he doesn't mind that. What he minds is the idea that he's just kind of a tool, you know. And so I, and it gets all the better in a German accent. You aren't even up to speed on the European Parliament's new rules of procedure. You've vult of emergency decree. Like, you know, it's... Have you even read Rule 243? I feel like we're going to get in trouble.

Do you think this guy's in, it put himself in any danger? Like, we just talked about the Indians. wacking people in Canada. Is there any chance Orban would go after a German lawmaker? It's pretty ballsy. No, but one of the strange realizations I had when I was in Hungary working on that book is like I met multiple people

who had also been spied on by Black Cube, right? So there was a great like story it's not, I mean, interesting story of Black Cube spying on some OSF, you know, Soros kind of funded NGOs

and the venue before the Hungarian election, shortly before the Hungarian election, they said it was this big conspiracy that there was a meeting in Germany where one of the people in these NGOs said something like, you know, we want Orban out of there, which of course someone in NGO wants. And guess where it showed up in the media? The Jerusalem Post. Interesting. So there's this kind of weird relationship because Orban's any Semite, but what Netanyahu really cares

about is whether he's an ethno-nationalist like Netanyahu is. And so there's this kind of strange, you know, symbiosis between Netanyahu and Orban and Black Cube is doing stuff. So it is possible that this guy could get like spied on and stuff. But it's usually of that variety more than it is the Canadian, you know, Indian method. Well. But, you know, I don't know. I hope they don't mess with him. He's young.

He's like 34. He's from the sort of FDP party, which is the liberal political party in Germany. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Quick side note. I went on a trip with Josh Ernest. Former White House presbyter, Josh Ernest?

In like 2005, it was after the Bush re-election. And it was one of these things where the FDP has a foundation, and it was like an exchange. So they flew a bunch of young American political professionals to Germany to meet with the FDP. And what was really funny about it is that they're the Libertarian Party. And there are all these people, AstroTurf people, like Koch brothers funded people, like, you know, 29-year-olds running groups with names like Americans for Prosperity. And they wanted to love the FDP because they're libertarian. But they're true libertarians.

And so the head of the FDP was a super charismatic gay guy who hated, you know, remember Bush ran on like banning gay marriage. And this guy in the best German accent was like pounding on the table and like, what the fuck do you have against two men? And like all these guys who thought that they were there to like, like, get, you know, Josh Ernest and I are like right there with this guy. Like, and he was like, fuck Putin. Like, what, like, this guy was like the best.

Like, I wish I remember his name. I love that. But it was just like, it was such a great, like, upending of expectations for all these Koch brother funded people that all of a sudden have some, like, gay German yelling at them about their Republican Party's policies on gay rights. Mr. Orban, you aren't even up to speed on the rules of procedure as enshrined in Article 232. Yeah, yeah. Everyone on the couch is looking at us.

Okay, I think that's enough of us offending all our listeners in German. We love everyone except the AFD. Did you see the Hitler guy, the neo-Nazi who was- Yeah, the neo-Nazi who was hiking near where like Hitler used to hike and his mountain retreat and he fell to his death? I did see that. A lot of bad Twitter about that, a lot of bad resistance Twitter, but it was interesting. Yeah, it was interesting.

Also interesting is after the speech, Orban speech, a bunch of members of parliament, serenated him with a song called Bella Chow, which is an authentic. Italian anti-fascist anthem. And at the end of the singing, or during the singing, the European Parliament, president said, this is not the Eurovision. But the good thing about all this is like the left and center left and libertarians are like stirred. They're awake in Europe.

You know, this is good. Like for a while, Orban counting on everybody, kind of not paying attention. I kind of like this, you know. I also like the tone. I like, I like trolling and mocking and cutting down to size, strong man. You're just putting Putin's stage. Running Hungary into the ground on behalf of Vladimir Putin. Amen.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear Ben's interview all about what it is like to run a news channel, a TV news channel, a news gathering organization in Afghanistan right now. So stick around for that. Okay. I'm very pleased to be joined by Saad Moseni, who for a long time ran Moby, the kind of leading media outlet in Afghanistan over the course of. 20 years starting in 2002. Saad has a new book out called Radio Free Afghanistan, a 20-year Odyssey for an independent voice in Kabul.

It's great to see you. Thanks. Thanks, Ben. I still run it. It's still here. Yeah, still run it. Yes, it's still there. Yes, absolutely. Well, actually, that's, you know, kind of sets up the whole tenor of this book,

which is what's extraordinary about it is it's your own story. It's the story of building this. Media Enterprise, but in its own way, it's also a way of telling the story of what happened in Afghanistan over the course of the last two decades. I want to start by going back in time. You had left Afghanistan in 1978 as a child and then returned in 2002 after the U.S.-led invasion. And I just want to start by having you describe kind of what it was like to return. What was the Kabul that you found in 2002 like? Well, it was quite different to how we left it.

And yet, I remembered all the streets. I had kept on going through Kabul for 23, 24 odd years. So I was familiar with all the roads and all the major streets. And yet the city itself had been totally destroyed by the Civil War of the 90s. And what was extraordinary was the people. They were like zombie-like walking aimlessly. And the city had shrunk from like 1.2, 1.5 million individuals to about 6,700,000 people because of the Taliban.

So it was quite jarring to return. It was the same old Kabul, yet quite different. Yeah, and we're going to get to Moby in a second here. And I'm just kind of curious. I mean, one of the interesting kind of points you make, which I heard frequently from people who visited, you know, I visited, but I visited, you know, in a giant security footprint. So I was kind of mindful I wasn't seeing much except for Bagram Air Base and the kind of presidential palace compound and the embassy.

But the, you write about the kind of two cobbles, right? Like there was this kind of cosmopolitan, you know, dynamic city with, you know, very entrepreneurial Afghans, a lot of international presence. But then, you know, that that was kind of a city within a city. I mean, how did you see over the course of, you know, the international presence, the city around you evolving? Well, you know, the initial changes were very much sort of almost forced because there was so much money and there was so much engagement. There were so many NGOs and so many embassies. And it seemed a little artificial, but over time it became quite organic. And you have to remember, Ben, that the country's population doubled from 2000.

to 2021-222. Today's Afghanistan's population is at 42 million. It's still growing at 3% per annum. So half the country wasn't even born in 2001. So we've seen this huge transformation of the country. It's become vastly organized. People are much better educated. Literacy rates have more than doubled.

But of the younger generation of Afghans, the under 30s, the great majority are educated. A lot of them have been to universities. universities. So it's a transformed country. And through this book, I try to tell the story of this new Afghanistan, this transformed Afghanistan. A lot of people view Afghanistan as a complete and total failure. But for the people, I think it was a huge success. Well, yeah, I want to talk about the people because, you know, Moby was such an interesting, you know, I remember when I was in the White House for eight years, you know, you kind of looked to that as, you know, an independent

news source and kind of barometer of what was going on. But what's interesting, and you obviously tell the story in the book, it wasn't just news. You know, you had soap operas. You had very popular, you know, singing competition. And I'm wondering, you know, Afghanistan is such a diverse country in the sense that, you know, you have some deeply religious Muslim population communities. You have different ethnic groups. You have obviously an urban rural divide like other countries. I mean, as you're kind of developing programming, talk a little bit about how you took into account the kind of diversity of the audience that you were seeking to appeal to. And in programming, how did you kind of get to know the Afghan people better, what they were interested in what they wanted more of in terms

of programming? Well, you know, Afghanistan was obviously, initially access to media was quite low, except radio. Television was quite low. So it was a bit like the 19th. 50s in the US. People started to get one television set for a house or for a community. So it was a single TV households we were directing. So it had to be general entertainment that would appeal to the entire family. So we chose, skewed a little bit towards females. So we had lots of soap operas. We had variety shows. We had reality shows. We had these singing competitions like Afghan Star. We had sports. So it was, it was, we were. We had to take everyone into account.

I mean, obviously even the rural urban divide. Initially, we were targeting city dwellers, but we realized a lot of Afghans in smaller communities would also watch these programs. And some of these programs were hugely controversial, but people still watch them. So our viewership was, it continues to remain extraordinary. We're talking about 10, 15 million people watch our sort of primetime programs,

even to this day. Yeah, I mean, did you feel like you were participating in the development of a kind of new form of national identity? I mean, it's interesting. I remember the Afghan star, and I actually remember following the woman who won that at one point was on, you know, she had an Instagram following. It was pretty enormous. She was kind of like, I know how to describe it to our listeners. it's not like the Afghan Kim Kardashian, but she, you know, she would kind of wear Afghan security forces uniforms. But it just felt like, you know, if you went to Moby, it was the assertion, you know, if the Taliban represents obviously a certain kind of identity, you know, you seem to be building a different kind of identity in what you were showing in that, obviously, the gender diversity on air.

I mean, how conscious were you of being a venue for that kind of? nation building in a sense. Well, Afghans have a very strong sense of what it means to be an Afghan. They've always maintained that. I mean, Afghanistan was formed in the 1700s. So in terms of how people feel towards a country, it's pretty strong. I mean, there are different interpretations of what it means to be an Afghan. But there are some common themes, you know, which we managed to capture through our

Football League and the singing competition. and so forth. There was always this need to unite. Even our, for example, a lot of travel shows went going through the different communities were hugely popular because people were rediscovering each other from different ethnic backgrounds and different parts of the country. But a lot of the stuff that you saw on television was,

they were pretty organic. You know, we were always very careful in terms of not imposing social change. We would facilitate social change. maybe give people a glimpse of what was possible, and it would step back. And I think sometimes we made mistakes. We pushed too far. But I think what we did was we weren't afraid to take risks. And sometimes our decisions were hugely controversial, but we persisted.

And I think we managed to fast track some of the changes that would have taken perhaps, you know, a couple of decades. We managed to achieve those in five or ten years. Yeah. And now I want to, you know, pivot to talking a bit about, obviously, the war and the U.S. presence. You know, you write with some understandable frustration about, you know, American officials who would tell you, you know, when you would kind of point out problems, corruption, you know, Afghanistan is a sovereign nation as if the U.S. didn't have,

you know, the capacity to, it wasn't kind of complicit in, you know, the corruption and some of the dysfunction and the government. And I invite you to be as critical as possible. possible, because I'm highly mindful of the mistakes that the U.S. made along the way. Do you feel like, did U.S. officials listen to Afghans? I mean, when I look back on it, I kind of think to all these meetings I was in about Afghanistan where there were no Afghans present, you know. And as I've gotten to know more Afghans over the years, they have very common, you know, complaints and critiques of things that the U.S. was doing, the kind of corrupt economy

were building the dependency of Afghan security forces, things like that. What was your sense of the willingness of American officials to listen to people like you who probably had a closer ear to the ground than certainly people back in Washington did? No, I think people did listen and were willing to listen. I mean, I think there were so many committed individuals who really cared about Afghans and Afghanistan, and they continued to care about Afghanistan. You know, hundreds of thousands of Afghans were taken out of the airport. A lot of them, you know, a lot of the sort of evacuation projects were funded by private individuals and foundations. And I think the reason why I'm continuing to sort of, you know, talk about Afghanistan is that there

was interest from members of the American public. I think the problem was, and I think someone mentioned this years ago, that America fought 20 different wars one year at the time. There were a series of tactics, and there were no, I mean, no one sat back and said, listen, this is going to take us 20 years to achieve. So let's plan for this properly. And this was the problem that a lot of the foundations of this new nation were not laid properly. And a lot of money was spent, but a lot of that money was squandered. And I think, I mean, it's important to criticize the Americans, but I also, you know,

I mostly criticize the Afghan. for having squandered this enormous opportunity because of corruption, because of ineptitude. And it's important for us Afghans to look within and ask ourselves as to what we did wrong. So there are important lessons for us. I think there was also too much money. I mean, I think we didn't have the capacity to absorb that much assistance and that much help. Yeah. Well, you know, I wouldn't ask you, I mean, you have kind of detailed discussions around, you know,

You obviously had relationships with both Hamid Karzai and then Ashafgani, the two presidents during this time. And, you know, you're particularly critical of Ghanai at the end. How would you, what's your assessment of those two men and their kind of performance? I mean, they have said, it's a tough job, you know, president of Afghanistan. You're negotiating between, you know, foreign militaries and different constituencies in the country. you're dealing with an insurgency. Like you said, it's hard to absorb all this funding. But what did you see in Karzai and Ghani?

How do you compare those two leaders? I think Karzai was an extraordinary leader, quite inspirational, a true national figure, but a terrible manager. And Ashrafgani wasn't a particularly good manager. He was also a terrible leader. And he never listened. I mean, one of the big flaws of Ashrafganis was that he was, that he was inclined to be very didactic and would give a speech and lecture rather than listen to

people. And it was quite frustrating dealing with both of them, to be honest with you. And of course, there was so much corruption and aptitude. I mean, we did a survey, I think, in 2019 or 2020, the Taliban's approval rating was at about 15%. But the government's approval rating was also around 17%. So the Afghan population, which, by the way, it continues to pay a price for its government even today, always paid this price. You know, we were sort of between a rock and a heart place. Yeah, well, when things, you know, unraveled at the end in August of 2021, when did you have a sense that this was collapsing? that, you know, Kabul was going to follow the Taliban. And then how did you deal with the situation where, on the one hand, you're covering this massive news event.

On the other hand, I imagine, you know, and you write about, you have employees that, you know, want to evacuate because they are worried about being targeted by the Taliban or they're worried about what Afghanistan is going to be like. How would you describe those weeks? Well, I mean, it's like a blur. the last few months because we had a sense that the government was going to collapse. I was actually in Washington in July and I went to see Samantha Power, I went to see Jake, I went to see a whole bunch of other people. And I told them that this government's going to fall. And I was asked the question, when do you think?

I said by November and everyone said, wow, you're being an alarmist by November of 2021. I said, absolutely. Because it was always going to be a case of lowering one flag. raising another flag. My assumption was that they would not fight. As soon as they knew that the end was near, people were just going to switch sides. And then, of course, when it happened in mid-August, we were dealing with, you know, our biggest threat in those early weeks was we were losing our people every single day. They were going to the airport. And, you know, the newsreader would show up at 10 by 11 o'clock, he was out. The producer would show up at 11. He was out by 2 in the afternoon.

So we were constantly hiring people throughout the day and putting them in front of a, you know, a television camera to read the news or to report on something. And what's extraordinary that Afghans had watched so much media that a lot of these kids just were like ducks to water. They, you know, they were just very natural from like no experience to presenting to tens millions of people. So it was a pretty, and we were worried about our people and we were worried about our people at the airport. We're worried about our staff on the ground. This sort of Taliban force, a bit

sort of not dissimilar to a Martian, you know, invading force from Mars had taken over the city and this country. And we didn't know what they were going to do with us. So I had very little sleep probably, you know, in all of August and all of September. And what was it like just dealing with the Taliban in those initial days? You obviously employed women on air. And, you know, there were some dramatic moments that I remember even seeing. How did you interact with the Taliban? How did they seek to impose their will on programming that obviously runs counter to their brand of Islam? You know, they were very careful and quite gentle in the way they conducted themselves.

And they were actually just as surprised as everyone else, because I don't think they realized they would need to come into the city. that quickly. As a matter of fact, when Ashraf Ghani fell and sort of he brought the whole thing to a head, the assumption was that there would be an interim arrangement and Karzai and Abdullah, Abdullah were meant to go to the Doha and negotiate with the Taliban, but Ghani fleeing brought everything to a head. So they were quite surprised, just like the rest of us. So, but, you know, our guys on the ground were just as cheeky and, you know, they were pushing the envelope. The first time a Taliban official came to speak on television, they had a female reporter interviewer. But slowly we realized that we couldn't have music on, we couldn't have soap operas.

But what's extraordinary is that, you know, Afghanistan obviously is a different Afghanistan 2001. And I ask myself sometimes this question. It's almost like a race, you know, do we change them or would they or will they change us? And it's almost like a race because even today, if you look at Kabul, for example, or Mazare Shari for Herod, the major cities, you know, the Taliban are changing in the way that they interact with people, the way they dress, there are a lot of females that work for government offices. In terms of implementation of their directives and decrees and so forth, there's quite a bit

of a difference to Taliban 1.0. The concern that we have is, within the Taliban movement itself, obviously it's not a monolithic movement. There are different views in terms of how they should govern the country. There's almost a race between the pragmatist and not so pragmatic Taliban, while there's also a race between the modern Afghanistan and the Taliban movement. And we're seeing all of this play out on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, I mean, we recently had a woman named Sahar,

Halam Zion who works for Malala and talking about obviously all of these different dictates that have come down, you know, kind of from the hardest line, you know, in the Taliban. Obviously, you know, banning women from attending school, you know, the kind of bringing back, you know, women can't speak in public. even extending to men, you know, men can't look at women who aren't, you know, in immediate relations in public spaces. I mean, you know, feels like a kind of, you know, iron, you know, I mean, Sahar used to term gender apartheid. And yet you also hear that there's this diversity in the Taliban, some of the people at the local level or more pragmatic are a little annoyed, frankly, by these really hardline dictates and make it harder to get international assistance. how should we understand what the Taliban is today?

Because what we see is all the worst things that they're announcing, but then you hear from aid groups and others, well, there's this diversity in the movement. How do you see that? Well, the situation on the ground is a lot more nuanced than how they appear from the outside. So to answer your question, I mean, I think all of the above is true. And some villages and sometimes they're very clear.

And so they don't even allow TV cameras and press conferences. But then in a place like Kabul or the other major cities or even some smaller villages, they're much more liberal. Like, for example, Bahmian, you know, this historical city where the statues, the Buddha statues are destroyed in the 1990s. The governor is the same guy that destroyed the Buddha Bamians. And yet today, you know, 25 years on, he's much more liberal. He's allowing some education at these vocational training centers, and he tolerates, you know, quite a degree of freedom enjoyed by the inhabitants of Bahamian. And tourists are going to visit.

So, you know, you're seeing differences in the way that these laws are being implemented. And that's why I said that, you know, it has to converge it at some stage. either on the implementation side, they're going to become much more strict, or they need to actually dilute these laws. And that's why I think it's important for the world to engage, because they need to go and talk to these Taliban to make them understand that there is a roadmap of sorts in terms of recognition and legitimacy and lifting of sanctions,

but they have to do certain things in order to get there. I mean, I'll give an example. They banned NGOs from hiring Afghan women. So the likes of the NRC, Jan Egelen was telling me this, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind sharing the story. They went and met with the Taliban across the country and through negotiating with them and making them understand the importance of foreign NGOs hiring female employees that they could better serve Afghans.

And as a result, he told me this like 65% or 70% of their women continue to work, even in the most conservative communities because they were able to convince these people on the ground. Well, yeah, that's a good, I mean, the last thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, to me, the U.S. it feels like hasn't found a way to figure out, you know, its post-collapse of Kabul Afghan policy. I mean, there are all these sanctions in place. There's, you know, there's some sense that there's probably counterterrorism discussions happening because ISIS-K is a threat. And yet, you know, I think the principal issue that is concerning to the U.S., you know, is the status of women in Afghanistan, women and girls. What should we be doing differently? Which are the United States and other

former ISAF, you know, the international coalition partners, be doing to try to influence a direction of the Taliban, to try to incentivize, you know, like let's start with women and girls, like less stringent policies related to their ability to work or have an education? Well, I mean, Afghanistan is a transformed country. So let's see if we can maintain these games. gains. And I think it's, you know, the international community owes it to the Afghans, and particularly our women, actually, to remain engaged. The economy is in tatters, the humanitarian crises, which we haven't talked about. It's just, I mean, Afghanistan, half the population doesn't have food security. We're in a pretty bad place. So it's important for the international

community to not just, you know, give out aid, but it's also important for them to provide basic needs or development. It's important for them to talk to the Taliban because I think that they can make the Taliban understand, not in a very condescending way or to give them lectures, but to make them understand, you know, if they want legitimacy, they have to do certain things. They have certain obligations as, you know, if they want to become members of the UN again or of the international community. They have, Afghanistan is a signatory to, you know, thousands of different, you know, conventions that, you know, requires them to respect women's rights and so forth. But again, us Afghans, we also have an obligation to make the Taliban understand why it's

important for women to don't disappear from the public. I mean, I mentioned some of the other day. We've done over 2,000 stories on girls' education since 2022. So I think it's something that we need to do as Afghans, but the international community needs to also support us as we move forward. And I mean, last question. So as you're continuing to cover this, it sounds like you're in this interesting position where you kind of can't do everything you did before 2021, but you're still doing stories about women. You still have women employees. I mean, what's that transition been like for you? It's very painful. I mean, it's very painful to go back, you know, to sort of pre-Taliban era. But it's important for us for as long as we can to stay in the country because we not just

inform the Afghans, but we also get information out for the international community. And, you know, we do really interesting stuff like education programs for boys and girls and, you know, four major subjects. And this is having a huge difference in terms of, I mean, for us, we're a bridge between, you know, pre-2020 and then the ban. And we're hopeful that one day our girls can go back to school and we're providing that bridge. And that's important for us to remain.

We don't take that for granted. We could get kicked out or we could get shut down any day. Yeah. Well, look, anybody's interested in the history of Afghanistan over the last couple of decades and also just a remarkably compelling story about building this incredible media enterprise should check out Radio Free Afghanistan. And I really want to thank you for joining us today. And where can people check it out?

Why don't you direct people to how they can kind of follow your products? Well, we're on YouTube, we're on Instagram, Tolo TV. Tullo News, the books available on Amazon and all good bookstores, as they say. We're pretty active. I mean, we're the primary providers of news and information from Afghanistan. Yeah, no, I remember meeting you in my very small White House office because Tolo was, like, let's just say, it was, you know, better source sometimes than certainly, you know, no offense of the U.S. intelligence community, but you could do a lot by watching Tolo to understand what was going on. Well, thanks so much for the book and thanks for

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