Fmr. Trump NSA on the murder of Khashoggi

The meeting that took place last November where MBS is welcomed into the White House. You commented on that meeting in any event and just absolute cold-blooded national interest terms. We’ve got a lot at stake in Saudi Arabia. Trump defended the kingdom and MBS. I think that’s the right thing to do. What is cold-blooded national interest when talking about Saudi Arabia? >> Well, national interest means fundamentally protecting the security of the United States and its people and its vital interest around the world.

There are a lot of things that we prize because of our value system. But in international affairs, it’s not the same as personal relations. Sometimes you have to make unpleasant choices and the right choice to make in difficult areas is often to do what your interest dictate and maybe not what moral scruples dictate.

>> Why is Saudi Arabia important to the United States? >> Well, the the Saudis, their role in the international oil business, their position in the Islamic world, make it a country that has been critical to the US in one way or another since Franklin Roosevelt met the Saudi king on an American destroyer in World War II.

 And there have been changes obviously since then, but the importance of the kingdom really has been a fixed point in American foreign policy now for getting on to 80 years. >> You talk about back in April of 2018 when you came in, the one thing that was underway was a pressure campaign against Iran. And you had said that MBS remained was pivotal to the administration’s pressure campaign against Iran.

 How so? >> Well, the Saudis have uh for almost the entire history of the production of oil been the leader of the Gulf Arab countries often in opposition to Iran from the very earliest days, but the leader of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the the biggest producer, the most important and stability in the region really depends on some kind of ability of the Gulf Arab states to counter Iran and to hold together and uh since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and and provide an alternative source of oil and political stability.

>> In the beginning of the administration even before they took office, uh the Saudis reached out to several of the top officials in the incoming administration and especially to Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner becomes an important person in the administration, a kind of point person. Uh and people have looked at this and >> [clears throat] >> criticized it because they said that the administration was skirting uh traditional protocol.

Uh sidelining people like the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for example. Was that ever something that raised your eyebrows? >> Well, Jared could perform whatever function he wanted to because his father-in-law was the president and he had different interests at different times. He flitted in and flitted out of issues.

Uh it was not a problem for me because the National Security Council process uh rolls along uh without regard to people who flit in and out of it. He was much more a problem, I think, for Mike Pompeo at the State Department. >> And before that, Rex Tillerson. >> Right. >> Right. Uh but he admitted uh in an interview that I’ve seen that when he was first approached by the Saudis, he said, “I don’t really know much about Saudi Arabia.

” The Saudis um had filed a report back to the uh deputy crown prince at that time saying, uh “This is a guy who really is fairly naive about what’s going on here.” Did you ever uh have any concerns about his ability? Was that an issue? >> Well, it depended on what he was doing. Uh and since a lot of it looked to be more dilettante’s interest in this issue or that issue or the other issue, as I say, it didn’t didn’t really uh distract my attention.

 He did get into some things in terms of immigration policy, for example, uh to try and help Trump out. Um but it was really very hard to define what he was there to do until he began to work on his Middle East peace plan, which during my tenure was a a work without end. Um and we finally saw the light of day after really after I left when it looked to be a business plan for investment in the Middle East, which conveniently was what the he went into after he left government.

>> That was the Abraham Fund. >> Through a variety of uh different permutations, the the whole idea was to attract investment uh into the region and to use that investment uh in the West Bank and uh Gaza for the Palestinians. >> But the criticism is that this guy comes in, he has no foreign policy experience, uh and that he is essentially the point person in the administration.

 Why would that not raise concerns at the National Security Council? >> Because I don’t think he did anything substantive. >> That was a quick answer. >> I I don’t know what he was doing for himself, but he didn’t do anything substantive. >> But he had a very close relationship, did he not, with um Mohammed bin Salman, the closest of any official. He did.

 I’m sure they had many conversations. That’s why what interference was caused was more with the State Department because a lot of those conversations I think never made it back to the State Department. >> There was a debate over that first trip that was made. And again, I’m I apologize, we’re back in 2017, before your time, but there was a healthy debate in the administration over whether or not that should be the first visit of President Trump to a foreign country.

Were you Were you aware of that debate? >> I was not. I thought it was unusual. There there are a number of options for presidents. You can go to Canada first, you can go to Mexico first. Whichever one of those you go to first, you go to the other one within a few days. And then your first trip outside the hemisphere can be to Europe, it can be to Japan.

This was the first time it was someplace other than those destinations. >> And by this time Jared Kushner has a WhatsApp texting relationship with MBS. You come onto the job at the National Security Council. And as you said, that this was more of a concern for Pompeo at State or Tillerson at State. But it it’s clearly a factor in shaping US-Saudi relations, right? >> Right.

 There’s also nothing that you can do about it. John Kelly, the chief of staff, had tried to do things like make sure Jared has a legitimate security clearance, that he’s gone through a background check. They didn’t give Jared a clearance initially. Trump decided to give him one anyway. So my attitude was there’s nobody who’s going to discipline that.

And I’m just not going to take ownership of it. I could have shortened my tenure in the Trump administration considerably if uh if I had really focused on it, but I didn’t see what it was doing to real issues of national security. >> Right after that initial trip uh that Trump takes, uh the blockade of Qatar takes place.

 Uh there’s a lot of speculation, people trying to connect dots that somehow uh Kushner uh would have been briefed on that beforehand, the intentions of the of of the Crown Prince. Same with the Ritz-Carlton affair. I mean, so in that way he had played perhaps a a pivotal role at least in understanding and maybe approving cer- certain of these moves of the Crown Prince.

>> Well, those pre-dated my arrival. I don’t know. It’s uh it’s certainly a way to cut out the president’s chief advisers uh on matters that could be important, and to the extent you’re cut out and don’t know about it, you don’t really know what the effect has been. Uh but to have any specific lasting effect uh somebody has to communicate to the rest of the US government that something has happened.

And uh I found very few things came out of whatever Jared was doing that indicated that something was actually happening. >> It’s kind of amazing to sit here and listen to you say that um you know, this was just something you had to accept. I mean, it’s like visiting somebody’s home and their child is on, you know, running and making a nuisance perhaps, or perhaps not, but you just have to accept that.

>> Well, let me give you an example. Towar- toward the end of my tenure uh Trump visited uh Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea. In Seoul, that’s when he later went up to the DMZ to meet meet with Kim Jong-un. And so we were having the formal bilateral meeting between Trump and Moon. Uh I was there, Pompeo was there, a few other, uh, advisors, and in came Jared and Ivanka to sit in the meeting.

I I’d never seen anything like it. Uh, nobody said anything. What were you going to say? Tell them to get out? Have the president then overrule you? So, you just had to accept it. Well, or or you could resign at some point. I mean, I didn’t resign over Jared Kushner, but eventually, uh, that’s what happens. Right.

Uh, so we get up into 2018, um, and you have this, uh, huge test of the United States, uh, relationship with Saudi Arabia when Jamal Khashoggi is murdered. Um, you’re there at the time. Uh, you are, um, in a meeting in the White House. You’ve written about it, uh, as to how to deal with it.

 Can you take us there? Put us in the room? The The reaction, obviously, was blowing up around the world to, uh, to what had happened to Khashoggi, and and we had to decide what our posture would be, to decide what what we thought the cause of the, uh, murder had been, and, uh, uh, I was surprised to find almost immediately, without discussion, that Trump had decided that we were going to stick with the Saudis on it.

 Uh, not uh, berate them in public, but that we were going to support, uh, the Saudis. We talked about a number of things like, uh, suggestion Mike Pompeo and I talked about that he go to the kingdom, uh, to express our concern and do a little fact-finding, as it were, which he did. And that was accepted, but the president, uh, was determined to put out a statement very quickly.

 Uh, he, uh, had Pompeo drafted, uh, Pompeo sent me a draft. I thought, uh, it was, uh, it was not what it should be, and I said, “Look, we’ve got to try and hold this back a little bit.” Pompeo said, “No, he said he wants a statement. I’m going to give him the statement.” And indeed, it was issued pretty much as drafted.

>> That was a statement, I think, called the standing with Saudi Arabia. >> Uh I don’t remember the title, but if I wrote it in the book, I’m sure that’s what it was called. >> Right. Well, it’s it’s um >> I’m not sure when we saw it it had a title. >> Right. So, you thought we should do what instead? >> I I just I thought the statement was inappropriate.

 I’m not sure how I would have drafted I don’t remember uh at this uh at this divide, but um when you come down to it, the choice is do you ostracize the Saudis for what was likely behavior committed at their behest, uh or uh do you try and move past it and keep the critical interests of the regime uh for the United States in mind.

 And I thought ultimately, it was important to keep them close. And in my mind, I had that verified some months later uh when I met with uh Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and the subject of Khashoggi’s uh murder came up, and uh we had a brief discussion, and he said to me, “Well, if the United States doesn’t want to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, we’ll sell them arms. That’s it right there.

” >> Yeah, that underscores what you mean when you say that there are interests besides human rights. >> Right. >> But you say that you wouldn’t have done it that way. I mean, the president uh was quite uh I guess I would say uh casual or flippant about it. He said, “Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Uh but we’re going to stand with Saudi Arabia.

” What would you have suggested they do instead? >> Well, I thought we should have waited and maybe found out a few more facts. Um uh this was at a time when Ivanka was coming under criticism for using her uh private cell phone for perhaps for government communications and uh was pretty clear that putting this statement out about Saudi Arabia would overwhelm news coverage of that issue.

>> Do you think that was behind it? >> Wouldn’t surprise me. >> Wouldn’t surprise you. I mean, did you have any doubt as to who ordered that murder? >> Well, I think it was somebody in the Saudi government. Now, whether it was uh an official with the authority to do it or whether it was somebody who said as in the murder of Thomas a Beckett, will someone rid me of this meddlesome cleric? I don’t know the answer to that.

>> You spoke with uh MBS. Can you recount that conversation? >> Is this the one where Jared comes in and puts him on the phone? >> Here’s what you wrote. Kushner asked how we should respond to the growing Khashoggi storm. My advice to the Saudis uh was to get the facts out immediately, whatever they were, and get it over with.

 Kushner agreed and the next day we spoke with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman emphasizing how seriously the issue was already viewed. >> Yeah, Jared had him on his cell phone. >> And recount that conversation, what you said to the Crown Prince and what he said in response. >> Well, I said my advice would be to find out what the facts were and get it all out as quickly as possible and get it behind us.

>> How did he respond to that? >> I think he sounded affirmative. >> I mean, he was at the beginning of this after this murder coming up with alibis. Jamal Khashoggi walked out of the embassy alive or the consulate, excuse me. Um other such things. Um and then they settled on a a rogue operation theory. >> Well, Trump talked to the king himself, which was a rare conversation.

And uh the king said quite emphatically, I uh I’m appalled at the murder of any of my uh subjects and uh we’re going to get to the bottom of this. And uh I listened into the conversation. I don’t speak Arabic, but I heard the translator and Trump came away convinced of the king’s seriousness. >> But yet they had determined even before there was an investigation that the Crown Prince was not involved, which is doesn’t make much sense.

>> Well, you know, you can you can decide to get into the specifics of it or you can do basically what Trump did, which is to say we’re going to stick with the kingdom and the you know, commentators can commentate. >> And that’s the I mean, you would say the bottom line that was correct that we had to consider our interests over the death of the murder of this one guy.

>> Assuming everything turned out to be contrary to what the the official line was, it was still an American interest to keep the relationship with the Saudis. I think when Biden came into office, he damaged the relationship seriously. And and and I think that harmed American security interests. >> How so? How did he damage it? >> Because he he he gave the Gulf Arabs, and not just Saudi Arabia, but all of them the impression, as had Barack Obama, that reaching an agreement with Iran on their nuclear program was more important than

the concerns of the Gulf Arab states, more important than the concerns of Israel, more important than the concerns of friends and allies of of ours right in the same region. And it took a while to get that back. There were other things that Biden did basically coming out against, you know, petroleum as a source of energy that also pushed the kingdom away.

 And I think those were mistakes. It’s a one of the one of the clichés of American history is when Franklin Roosevelt, speaking of uh the then ruler of Guatemala, I think it was, uh said, “Well, he he uh he’s he may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB.” And I’m with Roosevelt on that. >> At the end of the day, Project 2030 succeeds, um will Saudi Arabia be vital? >> Well, I think it’s going to be vital for a long time uh given its geographic position, given the continued importance of oil and gas in uh the global economy.

Uh we’ll see what happens in Iran. Uh but uh e- even if if we return to pre-1979 friendship to the United States, uh the position of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs as a whole will still be critical to our foreign policy. >> But what I meant is if he achieves his goal, which is to wean Saudi Arabia off of oil, then what will be his leverage and his importance to the US? >> Well, I don’t think they’re going to wean themselves off the importance of oil, and I think that’s already been recognized. I I I look at Project 30 as

a way to modernize Saudi society. And a daring gamble given the Shah of Iran once tried to modernize Iranian society, and we got the Ayatollah Khomeini. >> And that story is playing out. You had said um you wrote in your book uh that Trump uh wanted to call bin Salman to tell him uh the statement was coming out, the statement of standing with Saudi Arabia.

Um and stating that whether or not he did or he did it or not, we’re standing with Saudi Arabia. And you wrote in hard-nosed political geopolitical terms, Trump’s was the only sensible approach. No one excused Khashoggi’s murder, and few doubted it was a serious mistake. But whether you liked it or not, we had significant uh interests at stake.

>> Sounds good to me. >> Yeah, you go by that. Okay. You also wrote, which I which we highlighted here, uh Trump wasn’t necessarily deciding on the basis of geostrategic reality, but on the US jobs generated by the arms sales he ended up in more or less and he ended up in more or less the right place. >> Well, Trump Trump’s view of uh international affairs is it’s based on personal relationships between heads of state and it has manifested itself in individual economic transactions.

 That’s how he sees the world. Uh the arms sales to Saudi Arabia are an important component uh of our uh defense aerospace and defense industry business uh and a secure Saudi Arabia is important to us in the geography, the political geography of the Middle East. But there are larger strategic questions as well that go beyond rolling up arms sales for a couple hundred million dollars, however important that may be.

>> You took a lot of uh a pushback when you commented to the press corps, it got quoted, perhaps uh well, that that why should I listen to the tape? You seemed uh equally or you were seen as equivalently equally flippant uh as the president when he said, “Maybe did, maybe didn’t.” >> What what was the tape going to tell you? >> Well, it was going to I mean, >> He was dead at the time.

>> He was dead at the time, but we we know that the guys that carried out the murder at the time, um were reporting back to the royal court. >> I I don’t speak Arabic. >> Yeah, but you work you’re you’re you work with translators. >> I I know what was on the tape. I just didn’t feel I had to listen to >> I know, but there are optics.

 There are there are considerations. I mean the president when he >> I I just think that’s violence porn. If you want to listen to the tape, listen to the tape. I understand what was on the tape. >> But did the president ever in your presence bring up to the crown prince the murder? >> I don’t think Trump spoke to the crown prince.

 He spoke to the king. This is at the time shortly after the murder. I don’t think he spoke to the crown prince. >> Did human rights come up when Trump spoke with MBS? >> Not at the meeting I was at, no. >> Not at all? >> I don’t think so. >> I mean this is the criticism that yes, there are American interests at stake here, but there was also American values.

 Um and that the President Trump uh yourself didn’t do enough to stress uh that side of the equation. >> Well, it It It’s It’s a fair criticism if you think that uh you have to mention everything in a relationship when you sit down with a foreign head of state. It was clear Trump wasn’t going to raise it and uh I don’t think he did. >> Well, right, but the critics look at human >> It wasn’t just on uh on Saudi Arabia.

 In other words, he wasn’t talking about human rights to everybody else, but not to MBS. He didn’t talk to anybody about human rights. >> What does that tell us? >> Well, it tells you a lot about Donald Trump that that’s he he wanted to talk about transactions. >> Can you say a little more about that? >> Um It It His idea of international affairs is the personal relationships of the heads of state uh and being able to say I made deals on economic [clears throat] transactions.

 That that really is the bulk of of his approach to things. And it meant that a lot of other issues, including critical geostrategic issues, uh, didn’t get talked about. And including human rights. Uh, I I don’t I don’t recall him speaking about human rights in in any of the meetings he had. >> Would you have advocated that that come up, that pressure be put on the Crown Prince to clean up his act? >> I I think, uh, when Pompeo went out to the to the, uh, kingdom, that that he made those points.

 I think others made those points. >> I mean, that was after the Khashoggi murder, but I mean, there’s more than just that murder that took place. Many people who had tweeted something that was seen as critical of the Crown Prince got put in jail, uh, academics, uh, writers, others. There was a bad record before the Khashoggi murder, uh, that perhaps got more, uh, attention than anything else.

But to paraphrase some of the human rights advocates that I’ve spoken to, we essentially enabled him to feel like he could get away with whatever he needed to do, and in fact, he got away with murder. >> Well, people can say that, but the question is, what what effect do you think you’re going to have? There are certainly some situations where, uh, talking about human rights is important.

Uh, I think in this case, it wouldn’t have made any difference, and indeed, if the Biden experience is any indication, it would have impaired our ability to achieve other interests that we were after. >> It wouldn’t have made any difference. >> I I I I’m open to the suggestion of what the difference would be.

>> I don’t know. Um, you would know better. >> No, I I can tell you how this goes in meetings, not on human rights, but on a lot of subjects. You can sit down and you can say, “Here are our talking points.” And the other side says, “Here are our talking points.” Then you can turn to the next page in the briefing book. I I consider that a waste of time.

If I had If I had had another meeting with the Chinese official a counterpart, where I listened to the 5, 10, or 15-minute version of how Taiwan belonged to them, uh I would have been happy never to have had to meet another Chinese official. It just is It just It’s pointless for them to raise it. Uh but they do it anyway, and I I just don’t believe in doing pointless things.

>> Do you think that there should have been more emphasis on balancing American interest and values, civil uh human rights? Um that there should have been more emphasis on that with the Crown Prince? >> Well, I think the United States, including in the Trump administration, argued for a lot of uh things that uh MBS was doing and has done that have opened the kingdom up very considerably.

And indeed, I think there’s a substantial argument that only somebody like MBS, young, uh un- unconstrained by many of the traditions, could have cut through uh a lot of the uh uh the existing social structures in in Saudi to get done what he’s done. And I think uh the the proof for everybody is the extent of his popularity with young people, young men and young women in Saudi Arabia, for what he’s done.

 Uh is his record perfect? No. Uh but but he has accomplished more to change Saudi Arabia uh than any of his predecessors. >> How do we know about his popularity? There are no polls. >> Well, I think there are polls, and I think the the impression and reporting of our diplomats in Saudi Arabia, uh and my own experience is, indeed, he is very popular.

>> And so, on balance, he is a he is a good thing in your view? >> Look, on balance, he’s an important part of the political geography of the Middle East. He’s been by and large a very loyal ally of the United States over the years. >> Just to come to today’s news, you’ve expressed concern over how Trump has gone about um his uh move on Iran.

What’s your What’s your criticism? >> Well, I think the case for overthrowing the regime in Tehran is very clear and very compelling. Uh we are legitimately worried about their pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems. We’re uh very concerned and rightly so about their support for international terrorism, their own state terrorism around the world.

 Um and uh the uh the way they treat their own people. Uh we don’t need to wait for that threat to be imminent uh to protect American interest. And we have learned painfully over nearly 30 years of negotiation that the regime can’t be trusted uh either to give up terrorism, which it refuses to acknowledge that it’s doing, or to give up its nuclear weapons program.

 So, faced with those threats, faced with the reality that uh the regime’s behavior is not going to change, the alternative is change the regime. And I think that’s what we should be doing. Uh I’m not sure whether that’s what Trump is doing. Uh his communication of his purposes has been unclear. He failed to generate public support.

 Uh he didn’t roll the pitch, as the British say, to get the public ready for it. He didn’t do the preparatory diplomacy. He has not coordinated sufficiently, in my view, with the opposition itself inside uh Iran, which will bear the brunt of the repression and a brutal repression as we know from recent events uh if things go wrong.

 So, there are a lot of ways this mission can fail uh and uh I think uh that ultimately will be to our detriment. I hope it succeeds. I believe the fact that the Israelis are very much involved is helpful because I believe that the Prime Minister’s number one priority is the overthrow of the regime and that that will keep us moving in that direction.

>> What role does the um Kingdom of Saudi Arabia play in this? >> Uh I think uh across the Gulf, in all the Gulf Arab states, the view is they would be better off and the Middle East would be better off with the change of regime in Tehran. But like uh like uh all people, they they uh hope that that would happen without any pain and strain.

Uh I understand why they think that, but that was never going to be possible. And we’ve seen in the early days of the uh uh US-Israeli effort that the Iranian regime has responded by attacking civilian targets and I believe every one of the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Uh that brings them into the war whether they wanted to be in it or not.

 I think it was entirely foreseeable that uh that would happen, although I think it’s a cat- catastrophic mistake that the Iranians have actually gone so far as to attack their near neighbors across the Gulf. I think it will hasten the fall of the regime. >> This seems to me a matter of mathematics that if they run out of uh weapons uh and launchers uh missiles and launchers uh or we run out of interceptors or the Gulf states run out of interceptors, whatever happens first um determines who wins, who loses.

>> Well, I don’t think we’re going to run out. I think they’re wasting their assets by attacking the Gulf Arab states, but we’re not going to wait to see how many they have. We are in the process now of determining where their stockpiles are, where their arsenals are, destroying them on the ground, destroying the launchers, destroying the production facilities.

 That’s what we should do. If they never fire the missiles, we don’t have to worry about interceptors. >> Our record, I was listening to Turki al-Faisal, Prince Turki al-Faisal, talking. He was very critical of the approach that the United States is taking. He says he doesn’t know quite what the the goal is here, and he worries that there’ll be disintegration of the state, civil war, and that we will somehow walk away.

>> Well, that’s that’s a potential criticism of Trump that I don’t disagree with. Uh but the regime’s been in power for 47 years. It’s not going to go easily. Uh and that’s why coordination with the opposition in Iran is so important because they’re the ones working to pry apart the regime at the top, to fragment the leadership, to convince people in the regular army, not the Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the regular army to come over to the side of the opposition, and hopefully minimize the violence.

Ultimately, it will depend on how much the opposition really wants to be uh living in a free country. We’re not going to deliver it to them on a silver platter, and they’re not going to get it without bloodshed. >> There’s no Nelson Mandela here. There’s no figure that leads this opposition. It’s an amorphous uh protest movement with many currents in it.

 How do you negotiate a uh or how do you uh reach out to that opposition? >> Well, I think uh the administration has already done that by public reporting they delivered 6,000 Starlink terminals during the demonstrations in January. [clears throat] they must have delivered it to somebody. There are plenty of groups in the Iranian diaspora around Europe and the United States with their own ideas.

 Uh I don’t think it’s a situation where you can pick somebody in advance who’s going to be the leader. Uh and uh it may well be chaotic. It was certainly not clear when we started the American Revolution what our government was going to look like, but we did it and we won. >> That’s that was a a a clear point in Ken Burns’ uh series.

 I don’t know if you watched it, but >> I haven’t watched it. >> they didn’t have any idea who was going to win that and it was very chaotic. Um so this is going to be a long um a long haul. >> Well, I think it could be a long haul until the regime collapses, but uh no one should underestimate how unpopular it is. Uh it’s at the weakest point, I think, uh since it took power in 1979.

It’s unpopular from manifold reasons. Uh the economy is a disaster. The country is running out of water. Uh the economic uh pain is felt in all 31 provinces. Uh the young people, 2/3 of the population are under 30. They know they could have a different life when the internet is turned on, they can see it across the Gulf.

Uh the women for now nearly 3 years since the murder of Masha Amini, the young Kurdish woman, uh are uh alienated from the from the regime and and their protest is not simply about a dress code. Their protest goes to the very foundational legitimacy of the regime itself because the regime says it speaks the word of God and the women are saying, “No, you do not.

” on the dress code. And once you say they’re wrong on the word of God on one issue, they’re they can be wrong on every issue. And then on On of that is the ethnic discontent. Uh Persians amount, depending on whose census you believe, between 50 and 60% of the population. Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, Arabs, uh all have uh separatist uh critiques.

That’s not necessarily good for the country, but it shows how uh fragmented that this regime already is. And uh uh uh I I I can’t make any predictions as to how quickly it will fall, but everybody said before this uh action started that when the supreme leader died, and he was 86 and ailing, that there would be a succession crisis.

He’s only the second supreme leader. They’ve had one transition before this. We have now accelerated the succession process not only by killing uh the Ayatollah Khamenei, but Khamenei, but by killing a lot of the people who would have been decision-makers and killing them down through successive levels of government.

 So, what I think could happen inside is that ideology becomes much less of a factor than good old-fashioned personal ambition, animosity, uh uh family connections, money, and and a whole range of things that that can further uh fragment the regime. >> Can you name a successful regime change in the Middle East? >> Well, I think I think it’s been it’s been hard over a long period of time uh because the regimes are not stable.

These are These are countries that were uh not formed in the nation-state building process. Uh some have been more successful than others. Uh certainly uh regime change that uh uh that that that we have uh not agreed with, like the fall of the Shah, didn’t turn out very well. It doesn’t require American involvement for the for the change not to go well.

 Uh but given the strategic interest we have at stake, I think it’s worth trying what we’re doing here, trying to overthrow the regime, try and get another one in place. And because the alternative can hardly be worse than the Ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard. >> But one has to be sobered by the fact that we have not had a successful We have not engineered a successful regime change in the Middle East, have we? >> Well, we did we did engineer successful regime changes.

 They just We In the case of Afghanistan, if you want to call that the Middle East, I think our mistake was leaving. Not not >> there for 20 years. >> Well, we’ve been in Germany for for 80 years. And we By the way, speaking of regime changes, that was a successful regime change. >> I said in the Middle East. >> Yeah, well, you know, you don’t want to limit your geographical focus on this question.

>> So you’re you’re you’re thinking that it’s possible that this uh Well, anyway, I this isn’t a program about that. I just was curious and and appreciate being able to go into that. >> Yeah, I mean, look at look at Egypt. So they overthrow Mubarak and they get uh uh the Muslim Brotherhood in. >> Morsi. >> And that lasts until they realize, “My God, he’s Muslim Brotherhood.

” And then you have el-Sisi come in and and it’s So there were two failed regime changes that we had absolutely nothing to do with. >> Right. Regime changes are hard. Regime changes result in chaos, disintegration, and civil war. >> didn’t disintegrate. They didn’t have much of a civil war. >> Okay. >> So if if that’s what bothers you, then you say, “The more autocratic and theologically extremist you are, the better you are, if you The greater your duration in power.

” >> Saudi is seen as critical to US interests. And but during your time, can you provide an example of what they did that benefited um America? >> Well, I think as we tried to turn the pressure up on Iran uh after uh withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, uh we withdrew in May of 2018, uh and the Saudis and the Gulf Arabs as a whole, for their own reasons, but uh were very supportive of putting maximum pressure on Iran right right through the entire time I was there and thereafter.

>> So, they stood with us on that initiative, but what really what kind of critical support on any front did they give? >> Well, we have bases and facilities in uh in in uh different kinds in all the Gulf Arab countries, and that’s critical to our ability to project force in that part of the world. >> And Peter Baker of The New York Times uh said uh to us that there’s been no president in history that has monetized the office like Donald Trump.

You were out of office. Uh you came to part ways with him, but you’ve seen the monetization, the payments into uh Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, and hotels, and licensing deals, and crypto that the Trump organization has been involved in. As a person who has conducted uh policy uh for the United States, how do you feel about this? >> Well, I think in the second term in particular it’s just gone completely over the top, and uh uh I think it it has diminished the office of the presidency and the United States in the eyes of the world. There

are those who can uh make uh advances on their own interest off of it, but uh I think it’s really set a new low in the conduct of the office. And uh we’ll we’ll see after the 2026 elections uh if Democrats can get control of one of the other houses of Congress, there’s no doubt among all the other hearings they’re going to hold, they’re going to hold a lot of hearings on the corruption issue.

We’ll we’ll see how good they are at it, which is always an open question. But if if they are, then that may well be very damaging to the Trump family. >> I mean, tell me what is so detrimental about these deals? >> Well, Trump doesn’t have any sense of the separateness of his personal interests and his government interests.

And I think it’s of a piece with him saying saying that that everything deals with the personal relationship between him and foreign leaders. And so if you have that relationship, whether you’re dealing with a governmental issue or an issue of personal finance, really doesn’t make that much difference. >> He raised this issue about business interests, and he said he was not held to these strictures, these traditions of separating his own personal business from his performance of the presidency.

>> Well, technically the Ethics in Government Act does not apply to the president. And other presidents tried to behave in an ethical fashion. I think many of the strictures in the Ethics in Government Act are ridiculous and overdone. I can tell you about how people have struggled to fill out the financial disclosure forms that are nearly incomprehensible, at least they’re incomprehensible to me.

 For for purposes of disclosure that that didn’t didn’t affect anybody. But in general terms, other presidents have tried to separate their professional responsibilities as president from their own personal fortunes. And I think that’s the right thing to try and do as a as a general proposition. And I think Trump couldn’t care less about that.