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Of any purchase of $100 or more. That's promo code Brian. For Iran, the Straits for Moos is a strategic asset. No matter what happens here, they will continue to want to take it back from us because it's number one. They don't have.
A nuclear power capability. They're not even close to developing a weapon now. This is their number one strategic asset. It gives them leverage over the Gulf states in a region, and they truly want to have an element of control here. And they are willing to fight us for it, and we have got to take it away from them and prevent them from ever getting it back under their control again.
General Jack came with me on Fox and Friends an hour ago, and he says, This is Operation Freedom that stopped in 36 hours because the Saudis didn't want us using their bases. They were nervous about the retaliation. And now he said, screw that. We're going back. You saw that we tried to talk and you saw the results.
I don't know the inner workings. That story will come out soon, I imagine.
So now we're in day six of extreme and strategic bombing in Iran. Joining us now is Kian Taj Bakish. He's a visiting professor of international relations at NYU, Iranian-American scholar and former political prisoner released as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, an author. Of the Iran Crisis notebook, and you can see that on Substack. Kian, how do you feel about the six-day strategic hit to take back the straight-up amuz?
Is it working?
Well, good morning, Brian, and thank you so much for inviting me on your show. Uh Well, I, you know, as I don't have up-to-date, obviously. uh military intelligence to be able to assess whether it's going to meet its final objectives. But the first thing I can say as a civilian and as an expert on Iranian and US foreign policy is that for American interests, it was the right thing to do. That is to say, it it it was Clearly The MOU that was signed in June was not.
to the advantage of the United States. It was a, let's say, some kind of Hail Mary. I mean, I've written on my. In my X.com post, I do refer to it as a disastrous. document, I think it was a misstep.
And I think that President Trump is trying to now um trying to address or redress that misstep. Because uh whatever Goodwill, the United States extended, either naively or not naively. During that MOU, it was not reciprocated by the Iranian regime. And so there really is no option. for US strategic interests to continue the pressure, both kinetically.
and economically and in across the whole Military options like cyber and other kinds of psychological and perhaps even support to Iranians inside the regime. I think you told us that, Kean, and I thought so too, but you're the expert. You live there. You were in prison there, essentially. You were, yes.
So I couldn't believe how bad the MOU was. I thought, okay, maybe in the end, if it ends up good, we're not going to remember what the MOU was. But they were allowed to trade oil right away for 60 days to begin to set operations to take over the strait. I could easily have read it that way, even though the American intention was they said not to write it that way.
So J.D. Vance was asked to defend it. And tell me what you think of this. Cut 15. And then, can I just say one other thing about this?
Because there are people, you know, you see Mike Pence, who's sort of a superhawk, my predecessor. Who says this? There are people who are super hawkish in the American system who have attacked the deal and, frankly, in some ways, have tried to derail the deal. And what I always say to those people is: what is your proposal? What is your actual argument?
So I wanted you to take him on.
So he was defending his MOU.
So, what do you say, Keon? Yeah, well look, I think there really is no defense of the MOU. It was a it was a complete misunderstanding of the Iranians. I mean, Brian, I think we talked about this earlier. Listen, and I wrote about it in my substack.
Day one. in which the Iranians I mean, I'm I'm not nitpicking here. When I know the Iranian mindset when it comes to negotiations, when the Iranians asked the US to change the location Of the talks that ended up in Oman. I said to myself, It's over. When the Americans accepted that, I said it was over.
What the Iranians were doing was setting the parameters. They were testing J.D. Vance and his team about how far they could manipulate him and push him. And it was in my view, and I warned this in public. I mean, I'm not a senior official with, I don't have the ear of the officials, but I but if anyone had asked me, I said, please do not, and I think I may have even said this on your show, Brian, you do not send.
The second most powerful politician in the world. Who represents The entire American people You don't send him to meet. A fourth-level Iranian politician. In Islamabad, Where he has been drawn that, you know, why Islamabad was decided by the Iranians. Why Pakistan?
Because the Iranians knew that the Pakistanis We were against Israel, that the Pakistanis would support them. Look, the Pakistanis have supported the Iranian nuclear program. They gave them the secrets, the Khan Q. Um uh a network years ago, it was a Pakistani rogue scientist that gave Iranians nuclear secrets. Um Yes, that's right.
That's right. AQ Khan. And they were in touch with the North Koreans and then the Pakistanis.
So the very acceptance of the vice president to even go along with the Iranians in changing the location and then even more embarrassing, and I warned this, Brian, over again. is that We should never accept This is undignified for the great superpower of the United States. We should not accept a childish arrangement. Where the Iranians say, We will not meet you. Face to face in public.
And we'll work, and we'll, it'll be like, you know, you're in this room, and I'm in this room, and we send little notes to each other. All of this, Brian, was an attempt by the Iranians to see how far they could push around the American delegation. And what they saw was the Americans went all the way, they changed it. And then there was this other indignity. Remember the first night that they were supposed to go to Switzerland?
You know, Dadi Vance, our vice president, was sort of on the tarmac. And then the Iranians said, well, you know what, we're not coming. And that he had to say, well, I don't know, maybe I'll just hang around on the tarmac until the Iranians let me know when it's good to come. We should be setting the parameters. We should be setting the location.
We should say we will not meet with anyone except in public and face to face. What are we? We are untouchable.
So I think the whole thing was a disaster from the beginning. And then the actual content of it was even more shocking. And I think that it came from the fact that, unfortunately, that delegation led by JD Vance was inexperienced and also naive and did not have good advice. And then, unfortunately, in this very disturbing, I think, conversation with Josh Rogan, I mean, I mean, there are two things about that. First of all, to peddle anti-Israel, typical, anti-almost anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about well-funded secret groups that are trying to undo my MOU.
By the way, you're quoting him, Tian. Yes, I'm quoting him. And then what I wrote in x.com was not about the content. I said, my goodness, Mr. Vice President, take responsibility.
He said, and I quoted him, and he said, Um He said, and I quoted this exactly in my ex-Doc Compost, what used to be called Twitter. I said, you know, what he said was this: he said, What really bothers me is when American politicians allow themselves to be influenced by foreign forces. And I pointed out very simply, I said, you know, come on, Mr. Vice President. Can you hear what you're saying?
If you allow someone to influence you, be a man and take responsibility. Own it. You don't have to do it. In the first, in President Trump's first. Term, the Israeli prime minister and his own inner circle, including people like Ambassador Bolton, who writes about this in his memoir, they went to President Trump and they said, I think we should launch regime change and military operations against Iran.
And President Trump said, no, I don't agree with that. And then in his second term, he was open to it. That is to say, it is the US President's responsibility in the end to decide what advice, what influence he's going to allow to influence him and to shape his decisions. It's our decisions. We are the superpower.
And so I was just very disturbed. By the entire approach and the lack of ability to take responsibility and to say that, okay. We were essentially played by the MOU and it was going to unravel and it did unravel. Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Foxnewswineshop.com with code FN Radio20.
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And I could say, you know, there's a misinterpretation on rule number five and number 14. That's not the way we, and you could say that. But the bottom line is, they left open the management of the strait to Oman and Iran after the 60 days. And they weren't even waiting 60 days. They were shooting at chips for not listening to them right away.
So I want you to hear what General Keene said. And I thought this was conventional wisdom, but I loved your perspective of going inside the Iranian mindset. This is what Cut 11. I've never bought the fact that there's that much of a division. The guy that was ahead of the political side of his Gailobov, look at his best friend in life is Qasim Soleimani.
They joined the IRGC together. They became generals together. He then moved to the diplomatic side and moved away from the military side of the IRGC. Qasimani went on to fame, obviously, and became, established a professional relationship and a personal one with the Ayatollah and nobody in between. And he ran, obviously, the entire foreign policy instrument.
of supporting the proxies. I believe these guys are much more on the same page than people think. They are committed to what Iran has always stood for.
So when people say, I'm talking to the foreign minister, I'm talking to the speaker, much more moderate than the IRGC, which is led by Fahidi, I think. That's why we're done. And they're dealing with them as if they're the good guys and the bad guys are the IRGC. General Keene does not buy it. He thinks they're speaking from the same hymn book.
Brian, I cannot believe. We're falling for the same Play that the Iranian regime has been using for 25 years. I've been writing about this, I've been talking about that, I've stood. I have been in many meetings with people like Galibov. The previous foreign minister, the deputy minister, the IRGC, when I was in prison and being interrogated, I was interrogated many hours by very senior.
I couldn't see them because I was blindfolded and facing a wall, or sometimes I think I once was, possibly, I can't prove it, but I think I was. Interrogated either by Ghassem Soleimani's deputy, who was sat behind a one-way mirror. And uh, and he wanted to know, and he wanted to ask me who in the White House and the CIA and all those things I was in touch with. And I said, You don't really believe that I'm a member of the CIA, do you? And he looked, I I I heard a silence, and then the person who was sitting next to him that I could see by the wall, he said, Look, actually, we don't believe you're a member of the CIA because if you had been, we would have killed you already.
And he was absolutely serious. He said, you would be dead. And so I cannot believe that this play is still going on. And a lot of it has to do, Brian, with, unfortunately, I wrote a very long critique. These so-called Iran experts, who I have referred to uncharitably as the useful idiots.
uh of the Iran think tank world. They're the ones in Washington that peddled this distinction between hardliners. And think over and over again. And I cannot believe that we're still falling for it. Look.
Look, I'll tell you one simple thing. I told this on national TV. And no one seemed to take this seriously at the time. When Vaz went to Islamabad. I said, where is the photograph?
There was no evidence up to this day, Brian. I, you know, it's like a scoop, but I'm a scientist, I'm a political scientist, I look for evidence. Where was the photograph of Vance and Gollyboff in the same room, let alone shaking hands? There wasn't.
Now I'm not being a conspiracy theorist. What I'm saying is that Two things are possible. One is actually they never met in person. Second, Second, Um if they did meet in person. Why on earth would the American delegation not agree?
to keep That photograph. Hidden. And the reason is because of a very simple rule That unfortunately, American policymakers who have unfortunately not enough knowledge about the complicated psychology of Iranians and the Middle East, look, Brian. In the Middle East. What Politicians say to you.
In private. in English is meaningless. It's only what they say in their own language Publicly, that is meaningful.
So interesting. That's the exact opposite of what you would think.
Well, no, so listen. That's why the Americans who don't have experience get caught out. It's exactly the opposite of the way political culture works in Iran. In the US, politicians lie in public, and then off the record, they'll tell you the truth. It's exactly the opposite in Iran.
And Vance fell for this. He talked about side agreements, gentlemen's agreements. This was just nonsense. I could have told him, please. Waste your time.
Don't buy that. It's unbelievable, Kian. You're 100% right. Kian Taj Bakish, visiting professor at international relations at NYU. And of course, you were held political prisoner as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal you were able to get out.
And author of the Crisis Notebook on Substack. Keon, always great to talk to you. Hopefully, we have good news to talk about soon.
