Joining us now on the Brian Kilmeade Show, Ambassador Dennis Ross, a guy that certainly knows these things inside and out. Mister Ambassador, it's great to have you with us. I played that soundbite for our listeners just so they would hear what the president's saying, the latest thing. And a lot of people think that we're not winning because we are obviously sort of going back and forth between this negotiation, going to strike again. It's pretty clear that the president.
Could resume either before, likely after the midterms, more kinetic strikes. But when you look at the economic strangulation of Iran's economy, and someone like you that fully understands that the IRGC, which has been the non-negotiating partner in all of this, eventually won't have any money. You know they control some forty-plus percent of Iran's economy, but at some point, for Percent of nothing is going to be nothing. What's your read on where things stand and where this heads? Really good question.
And I would say first, you're right about the Revolutionary Guard in terms of how they see things. First point I would make is this is a group. The leadership, Raisi, Bahi, they have been together since the 1980s and the Iran Iraq War. And they remember that correctly, so as life was dramatically worse for Iranians than that it is today.
So that's their frame of reference, and their view is they can endure much more.
Now, of course, they're not the one suffering. The Iranian public is the one that's suffering. You're raising a question that is really crucial, and at this point, is still pretty hard to answer. Which is, at what point do does the loss of Their economic capability does it affect them?
Now, understand they have operated with a black market economy all along. You're right; they control about forty percent of the economy, but it's always been a shadow economy. It's an economy that has actually benefited from the sanctions because the regular economy couldn't operate. They built up a kind of shadow, parallel economy. How long it takes to put them in a position where they really begin to hurt?
That I think is not clear to me. I think it's unfortunately I think it's much longer than we would hope it to be. There's a secondary element, however, which is: at what point does the does the hurt within the country itself begin to affect governmental functions? At what point does the the loss for the public reach a state where the public itself isn't prepared to take it any longer and loses its fear, which is something we saw last December. When they, when this regime then killed forty thousand people in two days, amazing that that gets no particular attention internationally.
The question then becomes more on the domestic side: is there is there a point where we begin to see much more of a collapse?
Now, so far we're not seeing it. We're seeing some signs, some demonstrations right now. We're seeing. Definitely, people hurting. We're seeing the currency having absolutely no value.
You know, at one point a couple years ago was thirty-five thousand reals to the dollar.
Now it's two point five million to the dollar. Yeah, which means if you have a bank account, it means it's worth nothing.
So everybody is going to be feeling that. You have a revolutionary guard that basically still feels it's relatively immune to it. You have the head of parliament, Ali Bakht, who came from the revolutionary guard. You have the president, Peseski, and who seem to be much more sensitive to it. But they're not calling the shots.
So I think we we have to realize this is probably going to take more time than we would like. And the key becomes: Do we have the patience? Does the president have the patience? Because ultimately, in your intro, the real key: You're not going to see a change in Iran if we end up with a deal. With the Iranians, it's not going to transform the Middle East because the deal.
If you look back at the MOU, the MOU was going to give them all sorts of sanctions relief. It was going to give them promises of reconstruction that would have allowed them to have an economic lifeline to the regime. Ultimately, if you want a different Middle East, you have to have a different Iranian regime. The problem is pretty hard to destroy. Bring down a regime from the air.
There's really no precedent for that. Regimes fall sometimes from a kind of internal collapse. It's it's a little bit like corrosion. You never know the corrosion is going to destroy metal until the metal breaks. You can't see the corrosion.
Here we could have corrosion that could bring this regime down in a year. Could bring the regime down in three years.
So that's the only thing that really transforms the Middle East. The president is focused on on the nuclear issue. I think if there is a deal on the nuclear issue, we'll end up providing that economic lifeline. What was done last a year ago, June, the 12 days war that was the we came in the last day, we hit the the most important nuclear infrastructure sites. Israelis hit all of them except one, Fordo.
Forto was a site built into a mountain. We had developed the massive ordnance penetrator exclusively for that target. We didn't necessarily destroy everything that was in it, but we certainly buried it deep underground. The war that we fought before we we moved into this different phase, which is really sort of a no peace, no war. That war, we didn't focus very much on the nuclear infrastructure because.
There wasn't much more we could do to it than was done last year.
Now the president has referred to Pickaxe Mountain, which is actually next to one of the enrichment sites, and the Iranians have sought to dig tunnels there that go 100 meters underground, which is the depth beyond which the massive ordnance penetrator works. There is some. There's been some speculation. I know in Israel there's a view that some of the highly enriched uranium that enriched to 60 was moved to Pika X Mountain. The president has said from time to time that we would hit it.
My point is that we haven't done much more to the nuclear infrastructure than was done a year ago, June, because what was done maybe you know it wasn't all destroyed, but it was certainly extensively damaged. And in a way where we could pretty much monitor anything they might do if they were going to try to reconstruct or rebuild.
So we're at a point where we certainly have set back their their capability of threatening us in a nuclear way. We haven't ended that program, but hopefully we are in a position where whoever is in charge here. Is in a position to let the Iranians know. If we see any rebuilding, we can hit them so they can't proceed very far. That would exist even if there's no deal.
If there is a deal, a meaningful deal, I'm afraid will would require a different regime in Iran. It's such a great insight, Ambassador Dennis Ross, with us on the Brian Kilmeade show. And you know, Ambassador, I actually have tried to tell our listeners and viewers when I'm on TV about something you touched on, which I think is so important, which is to understand who you're dealing with. And you know, just in the case of the the guy really in charge of the IRGC right now, a guy named Ahmad Vahidi. You mentioned him.
It's worth noting that. When the current Ayatollah Khamenei's father, who we've since taken out, he back in the '90s really set up the Kudz Force to export terrorism to places like Hamas and Hezbollah, and he put a young general Ahmad Vahidi in charge of standing up that Kudz Force. He then moved on to become the Defense Minister of Iran and put Kassem Soleimani. Control. We, of course, obviously, President Trump took out Qasem Soleimani, but the fact that you've got this guy Ahmad Vahidian, you look at the history, you wonder, Ambassador Russ, is there any deal that this guy's ever going to even do?
Well, he might do a deal. The problem is the kind of deal he would do would be one that requires us to surrender, not one that requires them to surrender. That's we're at a point right now where they, Vahidi and Rezaei were together. As I said before, during the Iran Iraq War, Rezaei was the longest serving head of the Revolutionary Guard. You're quite right about Vahidi.
Vahidi was someone who was responsible for the export of terror. He was responsible for setting up the proxy network. And in a sense, arming it, financing it, training it. The reason for that. One of the reasons that they came up with that, especially Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader, not of blessed memory, he wanted to keep the fight away from Iran.
One of the things he learned was don't fight the United States directly because that could threaten the regime. He was president of Iran when. When Khomeini, the original leader, Ayatollah, original supreme leader, when he made the decision to end the Iran Iraq War, something he said he he would not do, and he the reason he did is because he had they then had a prime minister named Musavi, and Rafsanjani, who was a senior figure, they came to Khomeini and they said. Look, we we can't fight directly the U.S. That would threaten the survival of the regime.
And Hamani was was present then. His view was okay.
So don't fight don't fight the Americans directly. Come up with proxies who can who can build leverage on every other regime, threaten every other regime in the region, but not expose us to the risk of a direct war with the United States.
Now he was taken out, as you said, in the first day of the war. He never closed the straits because he understood what that would mean.
Now, once the straits were closed, people like Vahidian, Vahid, Vahidian wasn't the the head of the revolutionary guard. He was number two. He became number one when the leader was killed along with with Hameneh.
So, what you have are those who said we got. A, we got nothing to lose. B, once we we can the Straits can be a lever for us, and that's what they sought to do.
Now, the good news for us is we seem to increasingly be devaluing that lever for them because we're getting oil through the Straits. It's not a perfect situation. They're still they've been shooting at ships over the last week. The numbers, the amount of oil that's come out, has dropped over the last few days, but it's still substantially higher than it was earlier in the war.
So this, for them, as they lose a kind of trump card, as they lose that, and they and the blockade continues to squeeze them, and what we're doing in terms of sanction now, greater sanctions for them, it is squeezing them more and more. The problem is that the Hevi and Rezai still think they can outlast us, and the key—I'll tell you what I believe. I believe the key is. If there is a resumption of fighting, the key for us is going to be to be able to take out as as much of the remaining stockpile of missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, as much of the remaining production capability, so they reach a point where they realize they don't even have a military option any longer. And I raise this because it's very interesting to me.
They have not; they have chosen not to hit Israel. And they and even after they threatened two weeks ago, they threatened to hit Israel if Israel went in and took out a huge Hezbollah command post underground under a ridge called the Ali Tahta Ridge in in southern Lebanon. There were at least a dozen IRGC officers there in that underground facility. The Israelis went in and took it out, and Iran did nothing. And it tells you, okay, there are limits they're respecting because I think they're afraid.
Of losing what they have, that's left. They've been able to get about ten percent of their of their missiles through the defenses around the the most important energy infrastructure in the Gulf states. That we don't want to lose that. The Gulf states don't want to lose that, and they have been holding that in reserve. But you reach a point where if you can reduce the numbers low enough, then that threat.
Becomes much less of a formidable, credible one, and I just I I can't tell you I don't know what our intelligence says today about what they have in reserve, but the fact that they're not hitting the Israelis tells me that they're afraid of those targets being hit in a way that could reduce their military option to the point where basically then they've really lost even the threat. That's the point at which they would begin. I think that even Bakhti and Rezaei would look for a deal.
Now they're clearly not there right now, right? And I don't know. You know, I don't know. Are they? Do they have forty percent left?
Do they have thirty percent left? Yeah, if they were at ten or fifteen percent, we might be in a different ballgame.
Well, you and I don't know, but I'm guessing there's some intelligence and folks that do know, possibly including President Trump, Ambassador Dennis Ross. Great, great insight and knowledge as always. Thank you for taking time today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
