Lawfare Live: U.S. and Israel Strike Iran

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It is an admittedly unusual time to do a Laugh Fair Live, but it has been an admittedly unusual weekend.

“I'm Benjamin Wittis, editor-in-chief of Laugh Fair, and I am here with Laugh Fair Public”

Service Fellow Ari Tabata by joining from Singapore, Laugh Fair Senior, editor Scott R. Anderson, Public Service Fellow, Troy Edwards, we are talking Iran, we are talking major military operations, and we are talking what the heck is going on. So let us start with the now confirmed death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamani, you know, a lot of people have declared themselves Middle East experts and experts on Iranian politics

on social media over the last 24 hours, but we are here to talk to people who may actually concede that they don't know very much about Iran.

“So who was Ali Khamani, and why is it a big deal that he is no longer among the living?”

Yeah, well, good morning, Ben and everyone, yeah, so Ali Khamani was the Supreme Leader of Iran until I suppose yesterday at some point, and we now have confirmed that, you know, the administration and Israel has confirmed that he is dead, and so he was essentially in power since 1989, which is when the last Supreme Leader of Iran died, that individual not to be confused with Khamani, his name was Hamani, he was the founder of the Islamic

Republic, and so he had been in power since 1979, and he essentially led Iran through the

first 10 years of the revolution and the Islamic Republic and the Iran Iraq War.

In 1989, when he died, Khamani was nominated to become the Supreme Leader, he was a lesser scholar than Khomeini was, he was less charismatic as people saw it, and he was generally considered to be a weaker Supreme Leader, which meant that to compensate for his lack of abilities, charisma, knowledge, and credentials, he had to come up with a way to kind of assert his authority over the country, and the way he did that is by consolidating power in

a way that was a bit of a departure from what had happened over the first decade of the Islamic Republic, so he created essentially and matured this ecosystem of institutions in Iran that now comprise the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran, and these centers of power would obviously gravitate around him, and so he really was the person who matured and institutionalized the Islamic Republic over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s. He had a pretty overall bad

tenure in terms of the damage that he did not just to Iran, but to the broader region,

just to highlight a few things, during his Supreme leadership, Iran decided to weaponize first,

its nuclear program, and then paused the nuclear weaponization of the nuclear program at least, ended the sort of consolidated weapon part of it, but that led to all of the international sanctions that were imposed on the country throughout the 2000s, and ultimately led to the joint comprehensive plan of action in 2015 from which President Trump and his first term withdrew the United States. So, you know, the sanctions that were imposed on Iran really, the bulk of them

was personally responsible for. In terms of Iran's regional and proxy activities, which are

“the two next things that the United States has been concerned with over the past 30, some years.”

You know, he really saw, he oversaw the growth of the proxy network, when Homeini died in 1989, Iran had a couple of proxy groups, Lebanese has been developing the chief among them, and you know, was working with some of those proxy groups, but you know, it didn't have that sort of network that came to really characterize Iranian power projection in the region throughout the 2010s, and really until Israel started to kind of go after the proxy network following the

October 7 attacks. So, and then in terms of the broader regional policies, he was also the Supreme Leader, and really personally responsible for Iran supporting the Assad regime in Syria,

and the massacre that, you know, Assad and the his regime committed into 2010s. And finally,

to kind of bring it back to the domestic site of things, you know, the final act that he that he did before his death was to greenlight the massacre of thousands of thousands of people in the most recent protests. So, you know, we really have no idea what the scale of that was, right? And we still are between thousands and several tens of thousands. That's right, and President Trump has said that the number is 32,000. The estimates are still fairly, you know, they range between 10,000,

and the kind of lower of 7 to 10,000, the lower on the lower side, and 30 plus 1,000 on the higher

end. So, you know, this is somewhere between twice as big and 10 times as big as Tiananmen Square. Exactly. Yeah, and, you know, so he drove the economy into the ground. He drained Iran's natural resources. You know, the water situation in Iran has been really bad and largely a product of the mismanagement and corruption in the country. And all of those grievances are what or part of what has had led to the most recent protests anyway. So, again, even though he was a week or supreme leader,

he obviously ended up being there for the majority of the Islamic Republic's time, you know, it's

“for essentially 37 years of it. And, you know, again, his legacy, I think he's going to go down as”

one of the worst figures in the history of the 20th and 21st centuries. And, and how does he compare to homemadey himself? I mean, on the one hand, he strikes me as a, this is a weird analogy, but a kind of Tim Cook-like figure within Apple. You write, you have the founder who's dynamic and kind of an electric figure and who kind of defines the state for good or ill. And then you have this figure who kind of calcifies it over a really protracted period of time, but who doesn't have

he's not as important a scholar as Khomeini, the idea of the guardianship of the jurist, which is the sort of foundational idea of the Islamic state is, or the Islamic Republic is really not his idea, right, it's really one that he kind of inherits. He's kind of a calcifying figure in some ways.

“How do you understand the relationship between Khomeini and Khomeini?”

Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, Khomeini was perceived broadly, although I don't personally understand it as being very charismatic. He was seen as a much greater scholar. He had a much beard. He did. They both did, actually. But yeah, at least among the base of the Islamic Republic, his credentials were viewed as those that underpin somebody who, the charisma and the, you know, of somebody who would preside over who was deemed to be a good supreme leader,

I guess, from from their perspective, he had decades, long sort of following that he had cultivated both in Iran and then later on when he was an exile. And so he was the guy with the vision, right, and I don't mean that in a positive way. He was just a guy who came up with this notion of

following through the course of, you know, several decades. And then, along comes Homeini after Homeini's death, this is obviously a bit of a crisis moment for the Islamic Republic, it's the end of the Iran or Iraq war. It is the moment where the regime, which is still in its

infancy, right, a decade in, is seeing this first transition of power and it needs to get it right.

And so the idea was to go with somebody who was going to kind of be able to lead that transition and not necessarily be a transformative figure. And so he comes along and he is able to kind of, you know, engage in institutionalizing the regime in a more bureaucratic way as opposed to a

“more kind of like charismatic and visionary way. And so that's what he did for for the decades”

that that followed at least the first kind of like two, three decades of his, what two decades of his, of his Supreme Leadership. All right. So based on everything you said and I note that you have

said exactly nothing good about the man, which given that he killed some number of tens of thousands

of people in the last few weeks, I'm sympathetic to. It seems like, often him, with a missile strike, is pretty good idea. Is there any reason to be skeptical of the Israeli American actions yesterday and continuing into today, given that they seem to have resulted in this unalloyed good of this 86 year old monster being removed from the face of the earth? Well, I think that goes back to what you said at the beginning of this, which is that, you know,

we have more questions than we have answers right now. The situation is moving pretty quickly.

“We don't really know where this is going to end yet. So I think part of the answer will come in”

when we know more about what actually happens and where the dust settles. So for example,

if we have a transition of power that is fairly smooth and you have a more open leader in whatever kind of capacity that person may serve, well, that might be that that would be a good thing. If we end up in a much more chaotic environment, with maybe a more radical or equally radical in the vigil or in the vigils taking the range of power, if we continue to see the escalation that we're seeing right now in the region and beyond, I think that'll be obviously a

lesser, a less good outcome. So, you know, I think it's too soon to say exactly whether we're better off or not, it depends on what happens next. But yeah, I mean, in terms of just the issue

“on its own, right? Like the fact that how many is that I think is no doubt a good thing for”

the Iranian people for people in the region? What do we know about? So all, you know, I woke up yesterday and we were bombing Iran and there was already talk that we'd killed the Supreme Leader. What do we know about the US Israeli operation that began yesterday? What's its purpose? What are we trying to do and what do we know about what we're targeting other than Hamenaii? Yeah, so, you know, the messaging coming out of the administration has been

kind of changing quite a bit over the past few days and certainly weeks. What has I think become a bit clear over the past at least 48 hours is that the administration is actually going for, you know, it's obviously gone for a major campaign that is aimed at either overthrowing the regime or creating the conditions for the regime to be overthrown. And here I should pause and say, that could be, that could mean kind of getting rid of the Islamic Republic altogether or doing

something like Venezuela where we're maybe getting rid of, it would actually not be a change in regime, but a change in the leadership and a change in the nature at least of the regime, making it a bit more friendly to where the United States. And I'm not sure if I want to come to that question of what counts as regime change here in a moment? Yeah, I don't know that we have the answer to that yet. The president certainly has said, you know, on the record, look, we started the job,

you, the Iranian people go ahead and finish it. So, you know, TBD, whether, you know, how far Israel and the United States are willing to go. But of course, again, like Venezuela, the regime

to try to institutionalize and create new institutions in the Islamic Republic. So, those all continue

“to exist. And you can take out a few people. The structure is going to be there. So, and that's where”

willing to go and take out the structure, which would require a lot more than what we're seeing right now, then we might still have some of the fundamental challenges that we have with the regime currently. So, okay, but let's get to your question about, what are we actually hitting? It seems like we're going after a pretty vast target set. And we're certainly going after military targets. So, you're looking, you're seeing, and Elti can talk more about that at, so of the missile sites and

sites are associated with other military activities throughout the country. We've also been hitting,

this is not where the facilities and sites that are associated with the Iranian political decision-making bodies within Tehran. And then today, there's been some reporting that Israel, at least, is trying to hit past leaders of the Islamic Republic. Some of whom have actually been kind of isolated from the regime more generally, which is an interesting choice, and we can talk about that later on as well. What I should also note, though, is that what we're seeing is that some of the bodies

that I mentioned that are associated with the political decision-making bodies are actually

“it in within very densely populated parts of Tehran. This is a city of, I think it's like 15 to 20”

million people. Very, very densely populated. We are already seeing civilian casualties. There were

reports that, and I don't think this was the US military, at least, it seems like it might have been to Israelis hit a school killings, that role does in children, probably not on purpose, I would hope not. But again, these are those kinds of things that I think we can expect. If the combat operations continue, the air strikes continue over the next few days, just given how densely populated the city. I mean, just think of it as like Tehran, again, like, you know,

think of it as New York, right? Just a lot of different buildings, official buildings, residents, schools, hospitals, and of fairly small, well, I mean, it's very vast and very large, but like, it's a special kind of New York that collects in the developing world where you have these rapid urbanizations, very quickly, and you get these massive mega cities, Istanbul, Tehran, you know, that are where everything is pushed together, very hard.

And there you go. I want to come to you on this LT because you have, for a prosecutor, an unusual window on the Iranian target set. So for those who do not know LT was until recently a prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, which we don't think of as a place that you get to learn a lot about targeting in Iran, but tell us a little bit about your last case, and how it caused you to think about Iranian target sets in a military operation like this. Yes, thank you. I was hoping

“to grow EDVA, and I think it will continue to do so into a place where you would fully expect”

that that US attorney's office would take this kind of case because of the extra territorial nature and terrorism nature. So I'll talk about the case, and then I'd like to tie it to your question of what we're seeing in these US strikes because there are specific sites that appear to have been struck, that it seemed to me to be a counter proliferation effort. Perfect. And so the case that I handled for the last two years started in January of 2024 when United States coalition

forces interdicted a maritime vessel traveling from Iran and into through the Arabian Sea down to the coast of Somalia, and there's an island there off the coast called Sakatra. The reason all this is relevant is because it is known by the UN panel of experts and a number of other think tanks that have assessed a lot of this Iranian movement is that these are pathways for maritime weapons smuggling for Iran to arm its proxies in the region, including the Houthis

and Yemen. And last year as we all saw there was a constant campaign of violence from the Houthis

October 7th attacks and Israel's response. And the Houthis appeared to have been using cruise ship missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles coming from Iran. And so historically since 2015, at least, when the Houthis began in Yemen, their efforts to take over the country, the Iranians and the IRGC,

the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is its military wing, both Army, Navy, and Air Force,

developed anti-ship cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, and started smuggling them out both through maritime and land smuggling efforts to these proxies. And so in January 2024,

“these forces entered a vessel of 14 individuals with a significant load at I think SENCOM reported”

it was one of the largest loads the US had interdicted since 2015 or 2019. And two Navy seals tragically died in the interdiction efforts. And the boat appeared to be sinking, and so with a lengthy personnel recovery effort for these two Navy seals, the military, during that, the military ended up engaging in a search and seizure of the vessel and found anti-ship cruise missile,

warheads and ballistic missile components and engines smuggled down and hidden in the

hall of the ship, which is this what they call a doubt. So anyways, at that while at the Eastern District of Virginia, we worked with SENCOM, and we worked with other agencies, and there is this motor process, which is a maritime operational threat response team, which is the significant

“significantly useful interagency process, to work to discover how to investigate and potentially”

criminally charged this group of folks who had been smuggling these weapons for Iran to the hoothies in Yemen. I highlight this case to illustrate a more surgical approach that the US and DOJ had engaged in to attack these ballistic and cruise ship missile smuggling efforts from Iran to their proxies, which is a starkly different approach than we're seeing now. This was an effort to stop these smugglers, increase the cost on Iran, and stop the flow of this weaponry in the area

to this axis of resistance. And that case then lasted two years, went to trial and jury enrichment

and that upfinding the captain of that vessel guilty of all of his charges, including never before,

tried charges 18 USE 832, which is a criminal charge that focuses on prohibiting folks from providing material support to the weapons of mass destruction programs of foreign states, sponsors of terror, which Iran constitutes a foreign states sponsor of terror, and then the IRGC, which constitutes a foreign designated foreign terrorist organization.

“And so that's how does all of this relate to targeting yesterday?”

Yeah, so those, as the legend and kind of all the public filing, the smugglers travel that of a particular bay, Chabahar Bay, which is on the southeast coast of Iran next to the border of Pakistan. And as was reported in a number of think tanks and UN panel of expert reports and the DIA reports that have been publicized, these smuggly efforts often originate from Iran in that bay and out. And so in looking at the strikes and the maps that have been publicly available

now and where we're striking, I was struck by a Konarek and Chabahar being some of the sites in that southeast area of Iran, which appears to me to indicate that not only as Ari was saying is the U.S. and Israeli coalition attacks focused on this nervous center and Iran, but it's also focused on the arms of Iran, which seems to be a natural progression from the midnight hammer operation last year in June when we're focused more on the nuclear efforts of Iran.

The next logical step to me as an non-expert, just from DOJ, would be this... This will act missile technologies. It's exactly right. The Iran and the IRGC are very good at developing these anti-ship cruise missiles and these ballistic missiles as they take historically models from China, the model known as the C802, and then they develop it into their own, which they call a "nor missiles", which is an anti-ship cruise missile component, and Godder

and Gedeer anti-ship cruise missiles. And when I say cruise missile takes the back, these are these kind of lower flying missiles that hover along the surface, the ballistic missiles think larger and think up and then down, and there are short-range, medium-range, and long-range ballistic missiles. The reason all this is important is because that development of that technology in those missiles

seeing now as Iran prepares to respond with those ballistic missiles and those anti-ship cruise missiles.

When I see these strikes on the coast in other areas, it strikes me as an effort to stop Iran's counter-proliferation of that weaponry and their ability to now respond after these strikes. All right. I want to bring in Scott on the law of all of this, but before we do, let's just touch briefly on what LT just referred to, which is the Iranian response, which has been pretty broad and pretty fierce, although probably not fierce compared to what one would expect when you do a

decapitation strike on the leadership of a country, but they have attacked a number of Gulf states. They've attacked Israel. They've attacked U.S. bases around the area. Ari, what can we say about the Iranian response relative to what one would have expected it to be?

“Yeah, so I think it's important to know that Iran generally does these things and phases,”

and I would expect to continue to see more phases of this unfold over the next few days and weeks, possibly even months. So it is not, it is pretty much aligned with what I would expect from, you know, and response to what we did. We've had this conventional phase. I just described pretty well very comprehensively. It has been underway. They've hit essentially every Gulf state at this point, Israel. Obviously, they're going after U.S. bases. They're going after energy,

infrastructure. There's reporting, at least, that they're going, they're looking into blocking the street of Hormuz, which is something that they've, you know, threatened for years and years, but have not really done. And the next phase I would expect would be kind of more along the lines of things were, you know, familiar West when it comes to the Iranian playbook, which is the kind of hybrid side of things. So I would expect to see things and, as a kind of tourist target around the world.

“Precisely, among other things though, and we should actually, the important piece here is that that is”

not going to be contained to the region. That is going to play out all over the world because we know that they've done that all over the world, and that would include the home land. So yes, assassinations of individuals that they perceive to be involved or aligned with the, with the administration, with Israel, kidnapping of Americans, and Israelis, Jewish citizens who are not even Israelis. Again, people who are just perceived to be aligned with the interests of the United

States, and Israel cyber attacks, I would think of critical infrastructure on individuals and

terrorist activities. So, you know, these are, and these are not necessarily going to be things that play out just immediately after this particular round of events. It could play out for a while.

“I mean, just think of, you know, the killing of Possum Soleil money, the IRGC Quds Force commander”

that was in 2020 under President Trump during his first term, and Iran is still kind of going after the officials who were involved with that decision. So, you know, it's five, six years later, and they're still going at it. So, I would expect this to play out for a while. And then the last thing I should really highlight before turning it over to Scott is the nuclear peace. So, you know, one of the things is that Iran still has 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. That is,

you know, roughly six to 10 nuclear weapons worth of highly enriched uranium. I sure hope that in the intelligence community, we have eyes on that. But, you know, the decision to weaponize had not been made, at least, according to Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, and her last annual threat assessment, which granted was from last spring and the President did not seem to like that answer. But, you know, the, I see the assessment was that Iran had not made the decision

to weaponize. Given everything that has happened, and especially given the latest events, I wouldn't anticipate that to change if the regime survives. And so, again, I do hope that we have eyes on the material that Iran has. But, as something else to watch out for is that, you know,

there's going to be sort of second and third order effects that are going to play out. That are

not going to be contained to this weekend or the weeks ahead. All right. We're going to come back to that

malpractice of us not to talk about the law of this. I had thought that there was a pretty solid

international law that says you can't just make war on a country because you don't like their missile technologies and that we had some domestic war powers restrictions on the president launching major combat operations without any congressional involvement. But, apparently, I'm wrong about that.

“So, what is the legal basis or this action to the extent that we know?”

You know, we're still waiting for a clear statement from the administration laying out the legal basis, but we can make them very educated guesses at this point. You know, on international law side, state of Israel has pretty clearly laid out a self defense case. One that I think United States is likely to piggyback on both by making a collective self defense argument alongside

with Israel while also probably making an individual self defense argument. We've heard

President Trump say in his initial announcement of the military operation as reiterated in the SENTCOM statements describing the operation. The strategic objective is not regime change. Something that President Trump brought in with rhetoric later, which we can address in a minute, but was instead focused on military personnel and capacities and particularly technology that poses an imminent threat to Americans and other relevant U.S. targets in the region. None of this would

rise to the level of what most people think international law usually requires. International law

“user requires an imminent armed attack, at least that's how it's generally understood by international”

legal scholars and by international court of justice and by many countries around the world. Oh, no, not all. Notably. United States in Israel have long embraced a very broad conception of what constitutes an armed attack and what constitutes imminent. And they've articulated this for 30 years, dating all the way back to, or almost 30 years at least, dating all the way back to the oil platforms to bait around before the ICJ. It's related to another U.S. Iran conflict

during the 1980s. Can you fit this sort of threat conception, which is that Iran says hostile things about the United States, has undoubtedly been engaged in a various activity that has targeted Americans often through proxies, but none of that for some direct involvement sometimes directly with like maritime conflict, but a relatively low scale. Obviously has developed a military capability with an intent to potentially use it in certain contingencies against Americans or

their allies in the region. Does that all add up to a case where you could see the threads under

“this broad American and Israeli conception of what self-defense allows, where it would get together?”

I think you can, but I think it stretches the limits of that even by the way, it's usually been put forward by the Israelis and the Americans. You think back to last summer, with the Israeli led-opurasia that United States eventually joined in on the nuclear strikes before kind of pushing them to line it down. There, the justification was much more imminent hostilities between Israel and Iran, much more like active back and forth that they had had, and there's an argument that

people put out that Iran and Israel have effectively been a normal conflict for many years, just a quiet one, one part of it conducted through proxies in Syria and Gaza and Lebanon and other places as well. You can take all these different threads. I think you can tie them into an international

legal argument. I always think we're going to see Israel in the United States trying to do that. Israel

were vocally in this administration probably less vocally, although I wouldn't be, I think we will eventually see something in this regard, because Israel is already doing the legwork, and it's going to persuade some people. Canada and Australia said they support this military operation. So there's somewhat persuaded a legitimacy of this, at least alongside the political factors that may be pushing them to support this. Again, we shouldn't pretend to lawize the single thing that

consideration enters a missed state's highway, how states weigh this. But it was not persuasive to the number of other states, including states that actually have backed the United States on military action and cost. You know, questionable context before here, you cabing the prime case. United Kingdom has an interview now. They've said publicly, we have jets in the region, actively shooting down Iranian missiles, Iranian things trying to hit different target in the region

and response to the U.S. and Israeli military operation, but they declined to let their facilities be used because, for later, the autoscommunist international law violation. And the UK has notably a variety of domestic law requirements that reinforce findings of international long time to the international law before they're allowed authorized different types of military support. So there's a domestic law kind of bull work in there. All that is to say,

there's a case that some people will find persuasive international law here. I think it really pushes to the far extreme of the more permissive vision of what an armed attack is, of what self-defense international law, even by the U.S. and Israeli framing, it's pushing it pretty aggressively.

about regime change, that's a much harder view. Notably, like I said, regime change is

primarily coming in the United States from the perspective of President Trump's rhetoric. But notably, he's not saying, I'm going to commit regime change. He's saying, hey, Iranians step up

“and commit regime change. You should do this. And the Americans haven't actually been involved”

as far as I can tell. I've been trying to track this relatively closely. They haven't actually been involved with a lot of the leadership strengths. They've hit a lot of IRGC command and control centers, so they've definitely hit IRGC leadership. And a couple of these other kind of like paramilitary forces. But they primarily have been hitting, you know, armed depots, manufacturing facilities, port facility, maritime facilities, naval facilities, hitting military capacity. These

rarely seem to be the one doing the more surgical leadership strikes. With U.S. intelligence, notably,

which international all United States would have some capabilities there, but it may help iron over some concerns on domestic law, because they don't have that sort of nexus to self-defense. As clearly regarding some of these officials, those rarely feel like they do. Because these officials are frankly, I think it's really just take a much broader view of who can be targeted, who's involved in these military operations. And we saw in Gaza and other contacts, like they

go for the whole leadership structure. I don't think Americans are as comfortable with that. And here, they don't have to reach that hard question, because these rarely can do it, and I have the sort of partnership. On the domestic law side, you know, there is a question here as to, you know, Jack Old Smith, our friend of law fair on his blog, exactly. Functions put forward you know, a statement saying he doesn't think law really matters, and that's been Jack's theme

for last few years. As certainly to say, I don't think there's a domestic law that's highly constraining on the president here. It's different from saying it doesn't matter, it might be. The Trump administration just issued an OLC opinion in the context of a dero operation, that says quite expressly, actually in a way that's clear, the prior presidents have, if this is a war, but it leads to war by nature, scope and duration, sort of standards.

That, you know, would lead to a major conflict, the president doesn't have the authority to do it. That's notable. But here, I suspect we're going to see them lean on the idea that this is still limited military operation in those quite broad, even though President Trump has described it elsewhere. U.S. soldiers are not really at risk, just, you know, limited air operations, and that Iran's capability to respond while meaningful around the region doesn't rise to a

level that's going to implicate the United States in a Korea or Vietnam type war, which is roughly where the line for a war for constitutional purposes has been drawn. And notably, the, you know, this sort of test, which has become a little more test-like than it was really conceived of by the obstacle council executive branch 30 years ago, you know, originally incorporated a whole realm of factors that is nature's scope and duration, including like the number of foreign nationals killed,

“potential consequences for a region to hear. That's what it weighs really, really heavily.”

But in a recent decades, it's increasingly focused just on the threat to U.S. forces. The threat to us forces here in Americans is not nothing, it's not meaningless, but it is limited. I suspect that's what we're going to see. I mean, I want to, I want to challenge that. The, the lesson of the recent or one lesson of the recent result of Ukrainian war is that offshore ships are vulnerable to small drones that, you know,

the Musk-Vi is sitting at the bottom of the Black Sea right now. That's the flagship of the Black Sea fleet. You know, what, how many troops have to be at, how far of a standoff position before you really feel comfortable saying that the risk to U.S. forces is, I mean, we haven't had any

casualties in the first 24 hours, but, you know, Putin was expecting to be in Kiev in three days too,

right? Like, what, isn't our, do we have that much confidence in our ability to plan what the scope of our involvement in something really is going to be? The standard is, are you going to be compelled to enter into a war for constitutional purposes? I mean, the war is nature's combination rises to a level where the usual line of executive branches drawn is the Korean War of the Vietnam War. In the Maduro context, in the O.S.

the opinion they expressly said, we could lose every soldier involved in the Maduro operation. Everyone could be killed in action, and that will not be a war for constitutional purposes. So the threshold is substantial. It's not, it's not a restraining test. Like, this is not a test that really restraines very much. That's kind of the point, right? And particularly when you just focus on U.S. risk to U.S. forces, which again, O.S. is sometimes the executive branch has brought

“another factor that I think are much bigger concerning here. But if you really are just going to”

focus at threat to U.S. forces, you can look at military operations like this and say, yeah,

people's lives. When American airmen like, we got air superiority, we didn't really know threat to them.

You make stuff for specific vitalities in the region, for rocket attacks, and terrorist attacks, but it's not going to rise to the level of Korea or Vietnam. That's the nature of the test.

“It's highly, highly permissive. And I think this really, by pushing that two among its further”

limits, I think this is really going to serve a case study this. Because this is, I think, probably the most substantial military action we've seen, a president take under the authority since Libya, probably like, I suspect is going to end up being bigger than Libya. It's more consequential in a way, because more because of Iran's regional role, I think.

You know, you think back to like Panama, right? Intervention where you had 10 to thousands of

U.S. troops on the ground somewhere. This is different because it's, you know, air forces, but it's, it's a substantial consequence. It's really pushing one line of logic of what the president can do. I think further than we've really seen it pushing a meaningful way in a while. And nobody is all happening in a period where we know Congress, like, isn't a fan of this. We had bipartisan support. People teamed up to vote on a resolution this week

“before these strikes started. That's now being moved up, I think, to Tuesday's the last data.”

I saw for a vote on the, um, Masi, co, uh, uh, kind of sorry, kind of Masi, uh, resolution, uh, in the house. I think there's a Senate companion as well. So, you know, you're doing the really doing this not just without congressional authorization, but in the face of, it looks like opposition from Congress potentially or what could have ended up being opposition from Congress that, um, makes it particularly intention with the usual factor. We would think about the

president can take into consideration for when he can do stuff. Um, it's pushing those things to the limits in a lot of regard. Let's talk about, um, the international law basis for this for a moment because it seemed to me that that was the area where the administration was, uh, on the least tenuous, on the most tenuous, uh, you know, footing, uh, uh, uh, the least offensively footing. And yet they don't seem to be getting, uh, I mean, they have, uh, Britain,

now seems to be on board. Canada seems to be on board. No. No, the, so the brits of the Europeans generally are posture and away where they've, they've expressed, they said, we don't, they haven't quite condemned with the United States matured doing, but they haven't joined it. They said, people need to come back to negotiating table. Um, this is not productive action. It is the sort of thing. You would, it's as far as Europe is going to go and condemning something done by the

Americans or these really, probably, um, uh, in coordination with the Americans. So, you know, I think this is, I think they're, they are pretty clearly not supporting us. The Australians at the Canadians are the two that have actually endorsed it. Um, as far as I know of the major powers, the only ones that, um, uh, are major US allies. The only ones have really fully gotten on board. The UK now is helping defend people in the region, uh, in two is Iranian responses, which I

think the vast international community will say, Iran, you're responding in a horribly unlawful and inappropriate way. You cannot just attack civilians targets around the region, because you're attacked by United States and Israel, you know, Manama Dubai, luxury hotels and

“those cities are not valid responses. And that's what the UK is responding to, but I don't think”

they've got on board with, um, with, uh, with the US original operation. Gotcha. And, um, all right. So, let's talk about, uh, come back to the question, are you of what this is really about? Um, you know, uh, there's attention in what Scott is saying between is this really self-defense measure vis-a-vis missiles and a nuclear program, or is this a

regime change operation? Uh, the president has sort of said both, um, you know, he's, uh, never a

model of clarity about what the objective is here. Do you have any sense of what the objective is here? Yeah. The president has said both and the president started, uh, a few weeks ago talking about potentially striking around to support protesters at the time, um, and, you know, said he wouldn't negotiate with Iran. He would potentially go in, uh, if Iran didn't stop killing, uh, the regime didn't stop killing its own people. Uh, then he talked about going in and striking, uh, the nuclear infrastructure

if Iran did not negotiate in a serious manner. Um, we should say that there were negotiations that were ongoing, uh, at the time of the attacks. Um, the homonies who were kind of mediating between the United States and Iran came out and said, you know, it seems like we're making progress, uh,

it a bit more time and then strikes started happening. Um, and then, as of, I think yesterday, the

president was citing, uh, Iranian interference in the 2020 and 2024 elections for, um, at least part of the rationale for going in. And then, you know, we've, we've talked about this, uh, he's also said things to the effect of, you know, we're, you know, we're doing, we're starting the job, you, the Iranian people go and finish it. So the messaging has really been all over the place in terms of what the actual objectives are. And, you know, I, I don't think we have a ton of clarity

“as to what, you know, is, is the goal. And I think there is an added piece here, which is that,”

and this is a question. I don't know the answer to this. Um, the Israelis and the United States

might have different, um, objectives in mind. Um, it is not clear to me that we have, uh, fully aligned

expectations goals and, um, and hopes for for this. So, uh, that's something else to, to sort of consider. But to, what I, you know, what we talked about at the beginning, it does seem to me that at least we are trying to create the environment for the Iranian people to overthrow the regime, which, of course, is a little complicated because it's not as simple as, okay, we're going to go kill the leader and then the people get to replace him immediately, uh, because there is a regime

infrastructure in place. There's already a transition process that is underway, um, and we can talk about that sort of transition of what that looks like. Um, we might have an answer as to who

might replace the supreme leader, uh, today or by the end of this weekend, um, or at least in the

days ahead. Um, there is also the piece where, you know, there's been, um, there hasn't really been a strong, kind of unifying candidate for, uh, leadership with Iran. And that's part of the reason why we haven't seen the, the various protests sort of lead into a movement to, to really over throw the regime entirely. Um, so, you know, there's a lot of kind of different pieces that need to come together, uh, in order for this to actually be that sort of transition if we're, we're trying

to, to bring that about, um, so, you know, again, I think the best we can do right now is guess with the information that we have, uh, we, we have more questions than I think we have answers. Scott. Yeah, I just go to say, I think a useful analogy here is operation, uh, Odyssey Dawn, uh, I think it was called the original, uh, US military operation in Libya and

“2011. Um, remember that was a military opportunity for the United States and a number of European”

allies protrude into a UN Security Council resolution with specific objectives. He like humanitarian objectives and no flies on an arms embargo. I think that was the scope of what was authorized. And in theory, all the military actions of pursuit there were pursuant to those objectives. But coincidentally, that dramatically weakened the get-off, he regained, particularly the no flies on right, because all of a sudden they didn't have the ability to actually put down, uh,

deliverable force around the country. I think you're seeing something similar here in terms of trying to parse legal arguments and lead to these broader outcomes, particularly because President Trump frankly, like, as we know, wants to sound like he's doing big dramatic things and frame it. And he's saying, yeah, we're going to we're supporting regime change. We encourage you to do it. But I think the legal arguments that actually technically describe what the United States is doing

and its objectives are, are going to be narrower than that. And Trump's rhetoric is, is mudding the

“picture. No, it'll be his rhetoric. I think it's really important to hear, he's putting the impetus on”

the erotic. So if it doesn't happen in whatever timeframe he thinks is appropriate, he can walk away and say, all right, Iranians didn't want to badly enough. All right, I think there's a very plausible outcome at the end of this, once the political costs and real costs of continuing military operations get to expensive. I do too, but I also want to note that, you know, if you come for the king and you don't miss, but you leave the entire infrastructure of a hostile state in place,

that's not necessarily where you set up a situation in which the successor over whom you have no influence becomes their whole basis for legitimacy is revenge for the circumstances in which they take power. And it's not, and I will add that the codaufi example is not exactly a good one from the overseas engagement point of view, right? You you decapitate or enable the decapitation of the regime, and you leave 10 years of chaos in response. So, Ari, I want to come back to you on this. What

it seems to me the range of plausible possibility here is really, really vast.

there really isn't any, I mean, there's many opposition people that seems to be the vast majority

“of the country, but the organized opposition is chaotic and not very organized. So, what does it mean?”

I want to come back to this question of what regime change means. Presumably, we're not talking about a Venezuela like situation where you gank out Maduro, and then you find the nice Ayatola underneath who is now, you know, going to report to Marco Rubio, you don't, there's it's not obvious that there's a foreign opposition-based option, whether you think of it as a Reza Palavi option or, you know, Ahmad Chalabi option, right? Although I do remind everybody

that the Islamic Republic itself hasn't origins in just such a thing, which is Ayatola, how many showing up from Paris and declaring himself the the jurist. So, what if we talk in the language of regime change? What does that realistically mean and involve in the context of a very

complicated country with 70 million people? 90 million, yeah, it is, it is, it is, it is, yeah,

it is a large country, it's a very diverse country, there are different ethnic groups, it is

“a relatively young country, the vast majority of the Iranian population does not remember”

of free 1979, does not know what life was like before the Islamic Republic, there are a product of the Islamic Republic, right? So, yeah, it comes with a number of challenges, one of which is what you discussed, which is that there is at least so far, we haven't seen the emergence of a coherent sort of organized leadership that has, and that could happen, but we have not seen that yet. So, there is a range of things that can happen,

some better than others, some really bad, just to kind of, you know, talk through a couple of those scenarios, one is that yes, or there is a possibility that we will see the emergence of

“a leader or at least a rallying around a leader who's already kind of there, but maybe has not”

kind of emerged as the leader yet, and that is democratic leaning, that is friendly to where the United States, that wants to have peace with Israel and its Arab neighbors, sure that that can happen, does it the likelyest scenario and the short term not in my mind? There could be individuals who were formerly even within, you know, who were leaders within the regime who may kind of, you know, who've been isolated from it, who may re-emerge and kind of become those leaders, kind of like

what we saw in 2009, right, with Musavi essentially becoming the leader of the green movement with, you know, the youth, especially at the time, rallying around him, and he was sort of an unlikely candidate because, you know, he had gone from being this kind of, like, fairly hard-line guy in the 1980s to becoming this reformist. And again, I mentioned earlier, there's some reporting that Israel tried to actually hit his house, his residence, and that Israel might be trying

to get rid of other former regime officials who may have been isolated from the regime who may

have had a change of heart, if you will, and become more critical of the regime itself.

There are other way less good scenarios, one of which would be sort of the IRGC takeover is one that people talk about pretty often, and that would be the more radical elements of the regime. There's a non-zero chance there. We're, we're already seeing the promotion of the IRGC cuts force commander, Vahidi, to become the IRGC commander. He is a fairly radical guy. And when you say radical, what do you mean by it? Does radical mean radical with respect to compulsory

hijab and Islamic observance or does radical mean radical with respect to projection of force

what does radical mean in the context of Iran? All of the above, in this case, and often those are kind of mutually reinforcing beliefs. When we talk about the more hardline, more radical elements of the regime, we're talking about people generally who believe that the Islamic Republic should not have given up some of the things that are given to the concessions that it's made to the people that does certainly count toward the loosening of the laws around the hijab. It certainly

means being much more belligerent toward the United States and Vahidi is certainly of that persuasion. So, there is that kind of challenge as well. And some of the individuals who might be potential successors to harmony are also kind of of that mindset, right? Somebody likes Sadek Sadek Larajani, who was the forehead of the judiciary, a very hardline cleric. He's been a feature of the system for a long time. He is not by any means somebody who would make concessions to

the population domestically, and he's certainly not going to be making concessions to the United States and to Iran's neighbors in the region. And then the old Supreme Leader's son, himself, Mustafa Hamanay, who has been kind of floated as a potential Supreme Leader candidate. He's somebody who's also, you know, number one, extremely corrupt, was very influential, was his father,

“as somebody who I think would not be particularly flexible as well. So, you know, that that is”

with the kind of mindset of the regime structure staying intact and kind of changes happening

within it. I think those are some of the things that could happen. And then finally, you know,

Iran's own history shows that transitions of power have been fairly chaotic by and large. But if you long go back 500 years, they've been fairly chaotic. You've had rebellions brewing in various borders. I said this is a very diverse country, ethnically religion-wise majority as shea, but there's other religious minorities that are in the country. So, we could also see something, you know, like a civil war. I don't think, again, I don't think it's the likeliest scenario,

but it is not, it's a non-zero chance. So, you know, that is kind of the range of options that exist, again, some better than others. One last question, how should we interpret the celebrations that there are videos of all over social media of Hamanai's death? Is this a show of enthusiasm for the U.S. Israeli action? Or is this just a set of spontaneous

“rejoicing at the death of a tyrant? How do you understand it?”

Again, it's a vast country, very diverse country. People are going to have all kinds of different opinions. I do think that by and large, the regime has irreversibly lost its whatever legitimacy had had left and Hamanai specifically given the recent protests and the crackdown and the massacre that happened. So, yeah, a lot of people are really happy that he died. I don't know that when it comes to the U.S. Israeli operations, I think it becomes a bit more complicated, right? And

that a lot of people might be very happy to see Hamanai dead. They may want the regime gone.

They may not want their country to be attacked by foreign powers, ultimately. And then I think

what happens in the days ahead is going to kind of shape things a bit more, right? If we continue

“to see civilian casualties going up, I think that is going to shape public opinion,”

with Iran. If there's a transition of power fairly quickly and it goes in a better direction, that is also going to shape public opinion, perhaps more toward the United States and Israel. So, what happens in the next few days and weeks is going to shape a lot of that, which just don't have all the answers yet? We are going to leave it there for now. We will be back if need be over the coming days and we will try to keep on top of events both with written material

and with law fair lives and the podcast. This podcast is part of law fair's live stream series, law fair live the now. You can subscribe to law fair's YouTube or substack to receive an alert.

The next time we go live, our audio engineer for this episode was Anne Hickey of law fair as always.