Q&A: Is this America's most humiliating war in history?

**Jamie Rubin** (0:02)
This is a Global Production.

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:04)
President Trump called the Iranian regime scum, called them sick, but he's done that before, and then he says, oh, they're strong, they're good negotiators, they're, you know, some of them are nice people. And they just don't want any deal with the United States. They say this is a betrayal. They say that we're just going to show them once and for all. And even the person who's negotiating with the Americans, Mohamed Barak Halibaf, he put out a statement today saying, the era and the age of bullying Iran is over. So what should we make of this escalation?

**Jamie Rubin** (0:41)
Christiane, you'll be very pleased to know I'm down to two cigarettes a day.

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:45)
Oh my, but that's not including vapes.

**Jamie Rubin** (0:48)
I didn't say that I've cured my nicotine habit. I merely pointed out that I'm down to two cigarettes a day.

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:54)
Well, I'm very pleased to hear it. I actually thought you had completely cured your nicotine habit and we're only vaping. So on the one hand, on the other hand.

**Jamie Rubin** (1:01)
Yeah, it's two steps.

**Christiane Amanpour** (1:03)
All right. Let's get serious because we're about to start.
This is, as we all know, the Q&A episode of The Ex Files with Jamie Rubin, who's down to two cigarettes a day in New York, I think, and me in London, as you can see, from the very realistic backdrop behind me. So let us get started. There's a lot going on. Let's talk first, Jamie, Chris on e-mail. Donald Trump says the ceasefire between the US and Iran is over. How seriously, he asks Chris, should we take this? Do you think there could be a return to a hot war? Well, I'm just going to say, as we speak, which is around lunchtime UK time on Wednesday, Donald Trump is sitting talking to the press in Ankara where he's been attending the NATO summit, and he's pretty upset. He's not in great humor. This is obviously not the way he wanted to go. He, we think, wants an end to this war, and Iran keeps trying to assert its prerogatives as the US keeps trying to assert its prerogatives. And now we're back in a tit-for-tat shooting match.
President Trump called the Iranian regime scum, called them sick, but he's done that before. And then he says, oh, they're strong, they're good negotiators, some of them are nice people. So what should we make of this escalation?

**Jamie Rubin** (2:21)
Well, that's a good question. First, I think all of us in a situation where we're dealing with a kind of autocratic leadership run with really by one person.
And we also don't know what the Iranian position is. It's very difficult to assess exactly where we're going. But let me do my very best. We've had tit-for-tats before. We've had occasions when the US has felt the need to use airstrikes to prevent Iran from asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz, which is what they were trying to do over the weekend in the last few days.
And the Iranians have responded, as they always do, to ensure they say they're not going to stand by. But they have responded in what I would call a limited way, attacking the poorer countries of Kuwait and Bahrain, rather than Saudi Arabia or Israel or other countries that might be more likely to respond themselves, like the United Arab Emirates. And so I do believe that neither party wants a return to full-scale war. Because in a very weird way, each party somehow seems to think they got the better of the other side. The United States thinks it destroyed a large portion of Iran's military, which it did. And the Iranians think that it withstood that attack and survived, and is a resilient country, and now has new powers in the Strait of Hormuz they didn't have before. So they think they are in a better position. But none of that gives us a solution to the problem of trade and the end of the conflict. And so I think what we're in is a neither war nor peace situation, where it's going to be day-to-day watching what's going on. I think there are divisions and for the first time, the majority of American divisions. Yeah, let me just talk about that.

**Christiane Amanpour** (4:17)
Oh, in America.

**Jamie Rubin** (4:18)
Both in America and in Iran. But let's start with Iran. Why don't you mention those?

**Christiane Amanpour** (4:22)
Well, because I think certainly for Iran, this has been a moment where they just don't want to go on with war. And you're right, it might be tipped for that. But they don't want to do this. They want to end the war. They want to restart their economy. They know, in fact, that right now some of the existential threat to them from the inside, from the people of Iran, is the economy. And this is happening as millions of people over the last six days have been turning out in Iran and across Iranian cities and even wending away through the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq to bury the assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated four months ago at the very beginning of this war and will be buried on Thursday as this episode drops in the religious city of Mashhad where he was born. All to say that this huge outpouring, whether it was orchestrated or not, is a demonstration to Iranians and to the world that there is still a big contingent for the regime and they are trying to use this imagery to again flex their muscles, not just at home but also on the international stage. Furthermore, I'm told by analysts that Iran just doesn't trust the United States and believes that somehow this 60-day Memorandum of Understanding was designed to help the US just shore up its defenses again, get its ammunition up and running again, get its ducks in a row to just start war again. So some of those, we were talking about divisions inside Iran, there are a contingent of even harder hardliners than the ones who've been empowered because of this war. They just don't want any deal with the United States. They say this is a betrayal. They say that we're just going to show them once and for all. And even the person who's negotiating with the Americans, Mohamed Ghalibaf, he put out a statement today saying, the era and the age of bullying Iran is over. We need to sort this out once and for all. So in a way, that's what's happening with this exchange and volley of fire as they try to figure out where it's all going to land. But Jamie, interestingly, and I don't think they're in the majority, but these hard, hardliners in Iran are basically saying, where is Mojtaba Khamenei? Whose side is he on? Does he agree really with the negotiators? Or does he think that we should, like his father said, treat America as the great Satan and never go into any negotiating position with them because we can't trust them? So I think this is a very interesting point and time. And some people even shouted at the foreign minister, Araghchi, who's also a member of the negotiating team, you know, traitor, traitor, at these funeral outpouring. So it's very difficult in there as well. But let's carry on, Jamie. There's another question.