NEW YORK – Secretary John Kerry, do you think that Iran constituted an imminent threat to the United States, or was the military intervention unjustified at this stage?
"The Administration hasn’t briefed me. I can only rely on public reporting. I believe some of the confusion at home and with our Nato allies stems from the lack of explanation with respect to whether it was an imminent threat. President Trump said last October that Iran didn’t "have a nuclear program" because his previous military campaign left it "obliterated." There is mass confusion. The world wants to know how we went from the President saying he’d "obliterated" the nuclear program, to Iran being on the cusp of a bomb so that there was no alternative but war. What changed? That is the case to bring to your allies and to the public. Here’s the long-term problem: you can’t bomb away the knowledge of scientists. You can’t bomb away the ability to reconstitute a nuclear program and dig down deeper into mountain bunkers…
NEW YORK – Secretary John Kerry, do you think that Iran constituted an imminent threat to the United States, or was the military intervention unjustified at this stage?
"The Administration hasn’t briefed me. I can only rely on public reporting. I believe some of the confusion at home and with our Nato allies stems from the lack of explanation with respect to whether it was an imminent threat. President Trump said last October that Iran didn’t "have a nuclear program" because his previous military campaign left it "obliterated." There is mass confusion. The world wants to know how we went from the President saying he’d "obliterated" the nuclear program, to Iran being on the cusp of a bomb so that there was no alternative but war. What changed? That is the case to bring to your allies and to the public. Here’s the long-term problem: you can’t bomb away the knowledge of scientists. You can’t bomb away the ability to reconstitute a nuclear program and dig down deeper into mountain bunkers. You have to negotiate your way there - and flood the country with inspectors so that you have precise clarity about whether Iran is cheating. That’s what we did with Europe and the world by our side ten years ago. That’s what we need to get back to somehow."
President Trump has threatened to destroy the electric infrastructures of Iran and erase a whole civilization. Would that be a war crime, as Pope Leo alluded to?
"Those words were chilling. Sickening. It goes without saying that words matter, especially when you’re speaking for the most powerful country in the world. He didn’t say he’d destroy the regime. He said he’d destroy the civilization. He said a civilization would cease to exist. That’s the kind of statement that the United States and our friends and allies have always condemned when it’s been made by others. It’s not what America stands for in a world where, at our best, we have stood up for the rule of law and stood against pledges of indiscriminate violence against civilians. Now, the next time Vladimir Putin says he’s going to end Ukraine, or the next time China is treating Uyghurs like they’re not human beings - or when the Ayatollah says, ‘death to Israel’, some people will say that the United States has lost our own moral clarity because we too threaten to wipe out a civilization. That’s just unacceptable from a president of the United States. Of course, there’s another dimension of the President’s statement that goes beyond the moral authority component. If you’re truly trying to reach the average Iranian, who is deeply proud of their Persian culture and their civilization, why would you ever invoke that phraseology? How self-defeating. Think of the audience of the young Iranian who is listening to the President’s words. A lot of them hate the regime in Tehran. But I can’t imagine how that statement landed on their ears."
Is it true that during the Obama and Biden administration Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu asked the US to launch a similar military action but the US refused?
"I’ve known Bibi Netanyahu for forty years, before he was even Prime Minister. We used to get together in Massachusetts, and obviously I spent hundreds of hours with him during the Obama Administration. He’s remarkably consistent! He’s been arguing for thirty years that Iran was on the brink of having a nuclear weapon and it was an imminent threat, that the answer was military action, war. In 2002, he came to Congress and testified at a hearing suggesting Iran was helping Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. He made that case during the Bush, Obama, and Biden years. President Obama had a fundamentally different view. We believed and argued that a bad deal was worse than no deal, but that a good diplomatic agreement was far more effective than war. I don’t know what the conversation was in this Administration. I only know what I’ve read in the news about it. Harry Truman famously said, ‘the buck stops here.’ I don’t blame Netanyahu for making his case. But I’m very confused by the decision of a President who campaigned on a platform of staying out of wars and making life affordable, and whose choice on Iran effectively did the opposite."
Do you think regime change is the real objective of the operation? Do you consider it possible and would it require a ground invasion by the US?
"It is not clear to me what the end game objective is at this stage. I think that’s something that would help the allies and partners to hear clarification. Events - or non-events - on the ground may clarify the objectives themselves. The hopes that some had expressed early that the Iranian people would rise up and take over haven’t occurred. Many believe that if regime change really was the objective, the moment to support the opposition was when people were in the streets months ago. Many worry that the regime’s brutality had a chilling effect on that kind of mass movement, and the military action hasn’t reenergized it. Historically, Iran has spent so many years defining itself as a resistance to outside interference, it would be in keeping with the regime’s tactics to use this moment to its advantage in squashing dissent. From what I’m seeing publicly, the Administration is now focused mainly on the nuclear question, which was the place of broadest agreement to start."
The European allies were not consulted or informed about the attack. Were they justified in refusing to join the war and what should countries like Italy do now?
"Obviously it’s very hard to persuade allies to join you in a war that you began without talking to them. It’s doubly difficult to persuade them to jump in alongside you when you’ve insulted them for a year and a half. I’ll share something else which doesn’t get enough attention. When we were doing negotiating the JCPOA, Europe and the world were with us. We had great unanimity to make sure the agreement was enforced. But we also had something else in our favor. With the nuclear issue resolved, we had unanimity from Europe and from our Gulf partners that the job wasn’t finished and that we needed to leverage the same kind of tenacious diplomacy and sanctions to press Iran to curb its support for Hezbollah and restrain its missiles programs. We could’ve marshaled that effort to press those other issues the last ten years. Instead, the United States shredded the nuclear agreement, and we lost a decade that could’ve been invested making progress on the other tough issues, joined at the hip with our European allies."
You negotiated the JCPOA deal that Trump withdrew from. Do you think that if there will be an agreement, it will in the end be similar to the JCPOA and why?
"It sounds that way. Now President Trump says he wants an agreement that means Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon, and that we don’t take their word for it, we get proof. That’s exactly what we had 10 years ago under President Obama. President Reagan famously said, ‘trust but verify.’ We said, ‘don’t trust - just verify.’ We negotiated and secured a commitment from Iran to, under no circumstances, ever seek, acquire, or develop nuclear weapons. We had used a combination of sanctions and diplomacy to push them farther away from a bomb than they had been in more than a decade. Iran agreed to allow hundreds of inspectors - forever - into the country to make sure it was not developing nuclear weapons. The agreement was working. There was not a shred of evidence - by anyone, including Israeli intelligence - that Iran had violated the agreement. So now I hope Donald Trump should be able to get Iran to put in writing the same ironclad commitments it made 11 years ago. But we are only here today because in the single most reckless diplomatic action in American history, he ripped up a deal that was working and he put us on a road to war. We are now worse off: No inspectors in Iran every day to verify compliance; few allies lined up with us to pressure Iran; China is emboldened; and Iran has weaponized the Strait of Hormuz and sent your gas prices soaring every time you fill your gas tank. The Administration has had a merry-go-round policy: they went round and round just to end up back where they started, just trying to get Iran to agree to terms it had already accepted more than a decade ago. Our allies are dizzy from being forced to ride the merry go round with them. But lets hope they get a good agreement. I’m rooting for success. It’s in the best interests of the world."
What would be the geopolitical and economic consequences of a protracted war, and the impact on the relations with China and Russia, particularly if in the end Iran will have the control of Hormuz?
"It’s very dangerous that the Straits have effectively been weaponized for the first time. It’s sending prices skyrocketing. It’s emboldened Iran which has always been a master of asymmetric warfare. But it’s also not in anyone’s long term interests, except maybe China and Russia, for this to drag on. I believe the Straits will be resolved because it’s a shock to the global economy that no one benefits from remaining unresolved. It is not a healthy thing for geopolitics to have this paying out. It’s a gift to Russia, given their petro-economy, and given that it distracts from the war in Ukraine. It’s a bit of a gift to China, which is likely sitting there thinking of what a dry run looks like if they ever make a move on Taiwan and close and weaponize the freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait."
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