Q&A: Trump’s Iran "miscalculation", the bombardment of Lebanon & where’s the “Board of Peace”?

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:02)
This is a Global Player Original Podcast. Hi, everyone. This is our bonus Q&A episode where we hear from you and answer your questions. To me, Christiane Amanpour in London, and…

**Jamie Rubin** (0:14)
Jamie Rubin in Costa Rica.

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:16)
Costa Rica is a long way from Iran. But why don't you ask the first question? We here in the intermediate range ballistic missile range.

**Jamie Rubin** (0:27)
All right, let's start with Steve on email. It's a complicated question. So do you think Trump's apparent miscalculation on regime change might actually be a win-win that benefits his domestic oil interest, aligns with Putin's goals and creates a pretext to distance the US from NATO question? Or is that too cynical a way of reading how this war is unfolding?

**Christiane Amanpour** (0:52)
Well, look, a lot has been said about miscalculations. And I keep reading how actually Trump was warned about many, many issues, including the possibility of instant regime change, even the Strait of Hormuz possibility, but he just dismissed them. Remember, he's been saying short-term pain for long-term gain. At the very beginning, he said, a spike in oil prices won't matter much. We can deal with it. We're the biggest producers in the world. Won't hurt us. It doesn't actually apparently hurt the US economy, but it does hurt the average American, and it is hurting the global economies to the point that even the Bank of England chief has been called into the prime minister's special war cabinet called Cobra for a meeting to figure out how to mitigate the terrible rise in prices. But on the whole other thing, Jamie, I'm going to let you discuss about the Iran, Russia. It's all so complicated and intertwined. It's like a multi-headed hydra, right?

**Jamie Rubin** (1:54)
Well, the questioner is again, trying to imagine there's some logic to this, that there's some long term outcome that's good for the United States. And I wish that the president had all these brilliant ideas in his head before he launched this war. Even assuming the questioners saying that that he wanted to be nice to Putin and give him all the benefits of the oil proceeds that are now available. I just don't see it that way. I think Trump is a short term operator who doesn't think in terms of long term gains. That's precisely who he is. So he thought he was getting another Venezuela.
We may break up with NATO, Putin may get these benefits, but there's no benefit to domestic interests in the United States because now we've seen how vulnerable we are. And if there is one beneficiary, this is how come I know this isn't going to be Trump's motivation. It's the those who believe that we have to get off an oil and gas based economy. This war is demonstrating the risk associated with an economy based on oil and gas and the world based on oil and gas. Those are the people who believe in climate change and believe we need to change our economic beneficiaries. That is not something Donald Trump and his administration intended, and they are the one beneficiary. So, that's why I don't think that was his motivation.

**Christiane Amanpour** (3:19)
Yeah, I mean, I agree with you on that. I mean, if anything demonstrates more clearly how the need to have adapted to this climate change world and to have sped up the renewables so that you're not held hostage by the addiction to fossil fuels, it's this war. I mean, it's plain and simple. Jamie, do you know what? In the United States, apparently, you know, all of this is great for the EV car vehicles. They're giving deals on EV cars because it's costing at least $4 and maybe more for a gallon of gasoline. So the whole thing is asked backwards, but it would have been, I just want to imagine for a moment as I close my eyes and dream, where we would have been had we been really gung-ho and kept to the timetable for a green economy and got it done because we wouldn't be over this barrel, so to speak.

**Jamie Rubin** (4:12)
Let me just jump in there because I think you and I have done this because it was around the time of our move to London. If those 500 votes in Florida had gone a different way in the year 2000 and Al Gore had become president, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq, that's pretty clear, and that caused enormous damage to our reputation, our military, our internal affairs. It probably was one of the factors that led such disconnection that brought us the Trump phenomenon. But more importantly, Al Gore would have led the world in changing our economic beneficiaries to those who are using clean energy rather than those who are using dirty energy. And the United States would be leading that revolution rather than who is leading it, the Chinese. So that's a what if that still boggles my mind.