MS NOW's live breaking coverage with Rachel Maddow of U.S. attacks on Iran

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having apparently started a war with Iran for some reason. Your guess, your personal guess, sitting at home watching me right now, your personal guess is as good as any as to why the President of the United States has just started this war. In terms of pure rational deduction about what he is doing here, we can basically rule out all of the reasons he has said he's doing it.

“Is Iran on the precipice of having ballistic missiles that can reach the United States?”

Absolutely not.

The United States is very far from Iran.

And I might even say it's a whole continent away, which means a ballistic missile launched from Iran to hit us here would have to be an intercontinental ballistic missile. Does Iran have ICBMs? Does Iran have intercontinental ballistic missiles? No, it does not.

And there was no known evidence or even serious allegation that Iran is anywhere near developing that technology anytime soon. Trump's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has recently admitted that admitting that the threat is only that maybe, quote, one day, Iran might have that kind of capability, one day, just like URI might one day learn to fly or to time travel.

Is Iran a weak away from industrial grade uranium enrichment as the President's diminutive real

estate friend Steve Wittkov asserted this week when he was asked about the Iran talks. He is inexplicably part of on behalf of the United States government and the people of the United States despite his only relevant experience and training being that he is an old real estate friend of President Donald Trump is Iran as Steve Wittkov says a week away from achieving industrial grade uranium enrichment for their nuclear program.

No, they are not. No, they are not. Not only has there been no American or international evidence or intelligence made public that suggests even that they are doing that, but even the Trump administration says explicitly that that is not happening.

Marco Rubio on Wednesday at a press conference in St. Kits and Nevis told reporters quote, "They are not enriching right now." So why is this happening? Have we just started a war with Iran because they have got some

“advanced nuclear program that's rushing toward a bomb?”

Ask President Donald Trump who insists that the last time he ordered the bombing of Iran in June that quote, "todily obliterated their nuclear program." It's hard to say that anything totally obliterated, gone, pulverized erased from the earth, right now, suddenly be back again, and so therefore a war must urgently start today. So what are we doing here?

It's not that they're about to get us with intercontinental ballistic missiles. It's not that they are enriching uranium to such a degree that it is dangerous and we must stop that. It's not that they're nuclear program, which Trump says he obliterated, has somehow unobliterated itself and is now a pressing danger again. Why did we just go to war with Iran?

The President has said a couple of times in recent days that he just wants the Iranian government to save the words that they are not pursuing a nuclear bomb, suggesting that if they would just save that, that would be enough to stop the United States from starting a war with them. The Iranian government actually over and over again, keeps saying that they are not developing

a nuclear bomb. They will say it whenever you like, they say it whenever they are asked. So that does not appear to be the reason, either.

“So why do you think President Donald Trump has just done this?”

Why do you think he has just started a war with Iran? Is it because his heart bleeds empathetically on a human level? For the protesters in Iran who have been killed by their own government in such huge numbers, in January and February of this year? Is it because Donald Trump really feels for the Iranian people?

the right of people everywhere to protest against their own government and not face violence because of you. Now we think?

“So good morning, I hope you have slept well for this past decade in which you've been”

dead to the world. But I mean, just suspend disbelief for a moment. Just suppose that the reason the United States of America has just started this war with Iran is because, as the President said today, in his weird pre-recorded video message in a baseball hat and a suit jacket, the White House released it 2/30 in the morning,

the President said in that still-tid strange statement squinting at the camera with his eyes shaded by the gigantic white hat he was wearing. He said that he's doing this because he wants the people of Iran to rise up and overthrow their despotic government at his instruction. And maybe they will, maybe they will try, but Iran is a huge complex country.

It is 92 million people.

“That is more than triple the population of Iraq or Afghanistan when we started our disastrous”

regime change wars in those two countries to decades ago.

Iran has considerable regular military forces, but it also has a huge revolutionary guard

force, which has effectively its own army, its own navy, its own intelligence service, its own special forces, it also plays a huge role in the massive, suffocating, brutal domestic security services that are happy to terrorize the Iranian people in the best of times and to massacre the Iranian people in the worst of times, which they have done in the last eight weeks.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has massive economic interests, they have a huge hold on multiple sectors of the Iranian economy and to state the obvious, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is not the kind of force that is going to go poof. If a Donald Trump air strike manages to kill Iran's Supreme Leader, if they do kill the Supreme Leader, which appears maybe to be what they tried to do earlier today, then what

will happen? This isn't Venezuela, there's no Vice-Iatullah who's going to step in and take over the top job except she'll take calls from Marco Rubio. What will happen then? If you voted for Donald Trump for President, because you believed the hype that he was

America first, that he was against foreign wars, that he was definitely against regime change

wars in foreign country. Well, again, good morning. I hope you slept well, but the president in this case says explicitly that this is a war, we are waging for regime change. And the existing leader, Kamehini, who has been in place since 1989, there is no other

person of that stature to just pop in place and say, okay, it's done, we've made that change. And so if you really did want the Iranian people themselves to rise up in some kind of popular uprising and totally change their form of government. If you wanted the beleaguered and oppressed Iranian people to organize very quickly into a new populist political force to rise up against among other things, the security services

there that have been massacring them by the thousands this month and last. If you wanted that to happen, you probably could have taken some steps to help that happening

“to make sure they can organize and can communicate, right?”

Maybe you would have turned the internet back on. And when you Donald Trump in your baseball hat proclaimed on that weird taped message

today that the Iranian police and the security forces in the revolutionary guard must surrender.

They must lay down their weapons as Donald Trump said this morning at 2.30. If that was what you wanted to happen, because you wanted the domestic security situation to become less dangerous for the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government. If you actually wanted to make that happen instead of just saying it, you as the US government, maybe you as the US government in coalition with other allies that you might have bothered

to bring on board, you might have given the Iranian police and revolutionary guard and security services some instructions on how to surrender and lay down their weapons. Some path to do that, which Trump did not, as I say, you might have taken steps to turn the internet back on in Iran. So the people there, the people, the Iranian people could reach each other and the world

and so the world could reach them too.

has oppressed them for so many decades, you might not have gutted the crucial farcey language

“voice of America communications platform and put it in the hands of a soft-focused election”

denier local news anchor who is most famous for proclaiming the fraudulence of American elections. If this is a regime-change war, as Trump says it is, because Trump is seriously hoping the Iranian people will complete the job for him. It is worth knowing that there has been no serious or even unsurious effort by the United

States to make it possible, let alone plausible for any uprising by the Iranian people to succeed. And so why did Donald Trump just start this war? Why is this happening? We both know, right?

Who benefits?

It's always useful to start that question in any country.

Who benefits?

“Who wants Iran bombed off the map and further own reasons?”

Who are Iran's rivals and enemies? Perennially, it's the Gulf Arab States, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. You know, Qatar, the country that just gave Donald Trump a really, really nice $400 million plane, really a gilded flying palace for his own use both during the presidency, during

his presidency, and after Trump plans to take that plane with him and keep using it after he leaves office, if he ever leaves office. And you remember the United Arab Emirates, famous for recently structuring a totally pointless crypto financial transaction so that $2 billion of it would be stuffed into the Trump family's otherwise worthless brand new crypto financial firm.

And of course you remember the Saudis who stuffed another $2 billion into the pockets of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, just as Trump's first term in office came to a close. You might remember enough people were alarmed about that when it happened that the Trump

“folks actually sort of bothered to come up with an excuse for what made that okay.”

They said, "Don't worry, Jared will never again work for the US government.

He's never coming back to Washington." So it's okay that he's taken all this money from the Saudis now. We will never have to worry about having somebody involved in US policy who has also just been given billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia apparently for no reason. Well, that was the explanation when he took all that money from the Saudis at the end

of Trump's first term. And now today, who has been leading the negotiations on behalf of the United States government with Iran before we just started this war with them today, I mean Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in St. Kitz this week, it wasn't him, no it was Jared Kushner, President's son-in-law, recently paid billions of dollars by Iran's chief rival and

nevertheless sitting there alongside Trump's tiny real estate friend Steve Whitkoff, who has sought recently to improve his considerable family fortunes by going to Qatar to seek money from its sovereign wealth fund. Weird that those talks didn't work, right? It's like if you were having a backyard dispute with your neighbor, you know, "Hey, you're

a new fence crosses over on the property line, comes over into my yard." That tree just cut down that head, you just cut down, "Hey, that was mine." You're having a neighborly dispute with your neighbor on your block. And the cops break down your door with a battering ram, they arrest you and your whole family, they ransack your house and then they light it a fire and bulldoze it and they

tell your neighbor, "Hey, it's all done. You can take his whole backyard and you can take his house now too." And as you're trying to figure out why this has just happened, you come to learn that your neighbor has been paying massive bribes to the police in your town. Oh, that's what's going on.

I mean, there's a lot of attention on Israel and indeed Israel in the United States have worked together in the bombing campaign, not only the one that started today, but the campaign against Iran in June. But it is the Gulf Arab states who are arrayed against Iran, who want Iran removed as their regional rival.

It is those countries that have been assiduously buying up members of the Trump family and the Trump administration with just astonishing amounts of cash in recent years and particularly in recent months. And now for that low-low price, they appear to have rented the services of the United States military.

To start a war that they want, but that the American people do not, and that our American government hasn't bothered to explain in terms that are even internally consistent little-own rational are sound. Why did Donald Trump today just start a war with Iran?

The New York Times editorial board writes today that in this second term, Trump's quote, "appetite for military intervention grows with the eating." And that seems just observably true. Iran doesn't have ballistic missiles that can reach us.

Iran has not achieved some kind of breakthrough in nuclear enrichment that is a new

sudden emergency. Iran isn't about to have a nuclear bomb.

“And I think it's fair to say this is not about Donald Trump's emotional desire.”

To provide support to the Iranian people. If it were, we might actually be supporting the Iranian people. So why is it maybe it's for oil, as the President daydreams himself into another 19th-century war fantasy of conquering some foreign land he doesn't understand or care about, but he would like to rob them of their natural resources?

Maybe he thinks Iran and its proud 92 million people will happily and easily become a new colony in an empire, an empire helmed by an American emperor. Maybe that's what he thinks. But as this now becomes the seventh country Trump has bombed, just since being back in office for one year.

Louis Bono, who benefits, it seems like a disturbingly easy question to answer. Why is the U.S. government been pushed in this direction, follow the money? Why is Donald Trump willing to let that happen? Well, with this President, sadly, we keep learning over and over and over again that

the easiest answer is almost always the truest one.

He does not play for dimensional chess.

“There's just him and what we know he's like, right?”

This President appears to have grown his enormous and excitable new appetite for military intervention in just this one year back in office. Apparently because he just thinks war is easy, it's exciting. It earns him not only close attention, but even occasionally plot it from the very serious people who are professionally inclined to believe that there's some rationale, some

good thinking behind the start of every war, particularly in the Middle East. Starting a war, launching air strikes, doing the sort of thing. It gets him a ton of attention. He gets to do it unilaterally. He contends, naturally there's no question that he would seek a declaration of war from

Congress or even an authorization for the use of military force. He sees war as something he gets to do on his own, say, so in a baseball hat from home

“that is exciting, that is controversial, that it's all about him and not for nothing,”

it's the world's greatest change of subject. Today, Saturday is a weekday, it's a school day in Iran. As we start to get reports of the damages inside not just Tehran but elsewhere, and Iran. The internet is off, and Iran, and government in Iran hasn't advised its own people what to do as American air strikes start bombarding multiple cities.

Donald Trump, when he was a private citizen, repeatedly in 2011, in 2012, in 2013, said that then President Barack Obama was about to start a war with Iran. In order to help his political prospects, he kept saying over and over again that Barack Obama was about to start a war with Iran in order to get reelected, in order to help the Democratic Party's political prospects.

Donald Trump was wrong about that, Barack Obama didn't start a war with Iran. But we know why Trump thought Obama should have done it. He said so. He said that was exactly what Obama would need to do in order to get reelected. In order to put wind in his political sales, we know what Donald Trump thought would be

the salutary domestic political effect of a U.S. President starting a war with Iran. And now today, as he is facing domestic political disaster in this year's elections, and now today are wildly unpopular U.S. President has started that war himself. Why do you think he did it? Stay with us, reporters and analysts standing by on day one of Donald Trump's new war

with Iran. We'll be back in 90 seconds. A lot of short, daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now, you probably need more.

On up first from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in

under 15 minutes, because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big,

Listen now to the up first podcast from NPR.

“Welcome back to our ongoing coverage here at MSNow of President Donald Trump's new war”

with Iran. Let me bring you up to speed on what we understand is happening at this hour. We actually have a new statement from U.S. military-central command just in the last few minutes. It says in part, quote, "U.S. and partner forces began striking targets at 1.15 a.m. eastern

time to dismantle the Iranian regime's security apparatus, prioritizing locations that posed an imminent threat."

Target's included Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Command and Control Facilities, Iranian

air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields. So following the initial wave of U.S. and partner strikes, St. Com forces successfully defended against hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks. There have been no reports of U.S. casualties or combat related injuries. Damaged to U.S. installations was minimal and has not impacted operations.

The United States and Israel have launched strikes on what Israel says are hundreds of targets in Iran's capital city and across that country, about an hour ago, Israel's military announced that it began a second wave of attacks on what they said were Iranian military targets in central Iran. We have very little insight into what's happening on the ground in Iran.

We have no clear picture of how much damage has been inflicted.

“How many casualties have been inflicted at this point?”

Strikes have been reported near the President's Residence, extensive damage has been reported at the compound of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamani. We should say that Khamani has not been seen publicly for weeks. His current whereabouts are unknown. Iran's Foreign Minister told NBC News earlier today that Khamani is alive, as far as I know.

We can also tell you that Iran's state news agency says one strike on a girl's school in the country's south has killed at least 57 people. U.S. Central Command says it is aware of those reports and it's looking into them. Adding quote, "The protection of civilians is of utmost importance and we will continue to

take all precautions available to minimize the risk of unintended harm."

Iran has responded to these attacks with a barrage of missiles that has fired at Israel and at U.S. allies in the region.

“Iran claims to have hit several U.S. military bases in the region.”

There are reports of Iranian strikes or of interceptions of Iranian missiles and drones in multiple places, in Dubai and Kuwait and Qatar and United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. In Jordan, UAE's government says at least one person was killed there by falling debris from an Iranian ballistic missile attack. The Fairmont Palm Hotel in Dubai caught on fire after being hit by a projectile of some

sort local authorities say the fire is under control. Bahrain's Interior Ministry says several residential buildings in its capital were targeted and that firefighting and rescue operations were underway. Meanwhile, Israel says it has intercepted multiple waves of missiles and drones from Iran after it claims to have struck 500 targets inside Iran today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

is expected to deliver a statement in Israel any moment. Iran says it has closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which fully one fifth of the world's oil is transported. The U.S. government's maritime agency has advised American commercial ships to stay away from the Persian Gulf region.

Hundreds of flights have been canceled across the Middle East amid widespread airspace closures. The U.S. Security Council is convening an emergency meeting at 4 p.m. Eastern today. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has condemned the attack on Iran. State Department official tells us now that the State Department has set up a task force

to assist American citizens in the region, though it's not clear what that consists of. Unlike the last time the Trump administration bombed Iran this time around, there was no order to evacuate nonessential personnel or families from embassies and bases in the region. This is obviously a fast moving, fast-changing situation will keep you updated as we know more, but joining us now live from Jerusalem is Adam Parsons, his Middle East correspondent

for Sky News. Adam, I really appreciate you being with us, thank you. Yeah, no problems at all, evening from Jerusalem. A tense city, as I speak to you now, I can hear the sound of the fighter jets going ahead for adding in that direction, which is towards Iran today, tonight, seeing Israel launching

This has been a day that has, as you've been outlining, they're escalated very, very quickly.

“Adam, what can you tell us about the scale of these strikes?”

We obviously have very limited visibility on the ground in Iran in terms of the impact of these strikes, but from what you are understanding of these really governments action, these really militaries actions, and what you can compare about what the US has done now, say compared to what happened back in the summer, how could you characterize for us the scale of this attack?

And when you certainly, when you look at the images that have come out of Iran, there are of widespread attacks, and this is not just on, on Tehran, it's on site across Iran, going all the way down to the south. So this is a heavy attack, it is involved really significant military, might, of course, the American buildup here has been enormous, the biggest for decades.

So I think also, underline this is some of the rhetoric. When you look at the words of President Trump a little early, it is absolutely clear what he wants is regime change in Iran. Israel clearly wants regime change, even though there's rallies are talking about three things are talking about nuclear, talking about ballistic missiles, and they're also talking about

ending Iranian support for proxies, notably has below an Lebanon, and of course, Hamasin and Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. But those are three things we've heard a lot before.

“Now, I think what we have is an American president saying to the Iranian people, this is”

the chance for regime change and saying this is a once in a generation opportunity. And what that means is that for the Iranian regime, they will see this as a truly existential threat, as a fight for their survival. Now, what we do know is that Iran has said for a while that if it is attacked to then it will respond in such a way to turn an attack on Iran into a regional conflict, and

that is what they appear to be trying to do by attacking not just here in Israel, but also in countries throughout the region. So far, really, it is one who allies of the United States and attacking France in the US-based and Bahrain, but this is about Iran flexing its muscles. At the moment, I have to say, it is really sources saying they think that the Iranian

response is actually not less than they anticipated, but they also expect it to be stepped up. As one of the rhetoric coming through on Iranian telegram channels echoes that.

“So I think there is a feeling that this is the start where we're nowhere near the middle”

of this. This is the way it has kicked off.

This has been a large scale, but we are simply seeing the first act of what is going

to be a long drama. Adam Parsons, Sky News Middle East correspondent joining us from Jerusalem, late where it is late there tonight. Adam, I really appreciate you being here with us. Please stay safe.

Thank you. Joining us next is going to be Ben Rhodes, who is Deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama. We've got a lot to get to this hour. Stay with us.

We'll be right back. The U.S. military deployed on the streets of America, whole communities targeted for removal. There was tremendous anxiety as they saw neighbors and friends being taken. And when accountability finally came knocking, the burn order to cover it all up.

I never believed that America would be doing this.

A stain on this country, one that we said we would never repeat. This is from Senator Tim Kane, who is a senior Democrat who is on the Armed Services Committee. Senator Kane writing today, quote, "has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East is he too mentally incapacitated

to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check until he ripped it up during his first term." Senator Kane saying today that these strikes on Iran are quote, "a colossal mistake" and quote, "a dangerous, unnecessary, and idiotic action." An idiotic action, Senator Tim Kane calls it.

Here's Congressman Jim Himes, who's a member of the gang of eight, the top Democrat, on the House Intelligence Committee. He says, quote, "Everything I have heard from the administration before and after these strikes on Iran, confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame. It does not appear that Donald Trump has learned the lessons of history."

Ben, thank you very much for being with us today for this fast developing story.

I really appreciate you making time. Yeah, good to see you, Rachel. Let me just ask your reaction in general, for me, I would put to you specifically the point that the president is explicitly saying this is a regime change war. This is intended to change out the government of the nation of Iran, what your reaction

to what he's done and why he's saying he's doing it. Well, you're exactly right, Rachel.

“I mean, you and I have been talking about Iran for over 15 years, I think, and this was always”

a scenario that people were concerned about in terms of where conflict between the United States and Iran could go. This is not a limited strike on nuclear targets. This is not intended to kind of course the Iranian government, some negotiation, a Trump made clear in his words and they're making clear in their targets that this is an effort

to remove the Iranian regime. What is astonishing to me is not only is this illegal, but it's totally unnecessary. The Iranian regime posed no greater threat to the United States yesterday than it did two years ago or four years ago or five years ago. If anything, it posed a less of a threat and was involved in negotiations on the issue

that the United States has always seen as the most important security interest that we have,

which is the nuclear program.

“And absent from that bizarre statement last night in which he kind of casually referenced”

the potential deaths of U.S. service members. Because any notion of what comes after the regime change, you know, he made a call for the Iranian people to rise up and then what? Because we've seen that even if you decapitate the regime, even if you remove the regime, that often, in the case of Iraq, in the case of Libya, in the case of Afghanistan, leads

to civil war. They can drag on and have all manner of unintended consequences, human and geopolitical, with the cost being born by the American taxpayer. So we are in a deeply, deeply uncertain point here right now, and we don't need to be here. In terms of what might happen next, and if we take the Trump administration, I can't believe

I was saying this, and we take them at their word that they are trying for regime change. I mean, if they were trying to make possible, make plausible, some sort of populist uprising of the Iranian people to take over their government, to throw out the regime to confront and defeat the domestic security services and to displace the Aitola and his regime and to install something totally new, presumably there would have been things that the U.S.

and its allies could have done to try to build up the capability of that kind of a domestic populist force. Is there any sign that we've done anything like that to actually support the Iranian people

“toward the type of regime change they seem to be fantasizing about?”

I really can't see it, Rachel, because look, this isn't like in Venezuela, where you took out the leader and essentially left the regime in place, and Delsi Rodriguez, the Vice President becomes president, they are targeting not just the Supreme Leader, they seem to be targeting all manner of regime targets, so it's not even decapitation, they seem to be trying to kind of destroy the key edifice of the regime itself, and that leads a vacuum in place.

And Iran, now inside of Iran, the people that are most heavily armed and therefore prepared

to seize the vacuum are the more hard-line revolutionary guard core.

If you look at the only potential play that has been made about some future government, it was outside of the country with some of the engagement with Reza Palavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran, who has some support outside the country, but if you talk to analysts inside of Iran, the idea that you're just going to re-import the son of the Shah into a country of 93 million people with a deeply ideological and entrenched regime, heavily armed factions,

and have some transition to democracy. By the way, with probably no foreign forces on the ground, it doesn't seem like Trump has a lot of appetite for that. I just don't see the plausible scenario where this leads. I mean, I could see a situation where Iran is fighting back, their leaders getting taken out. There's some kind of capitulation, but even in that scenario, you still have the elements of a broken regime and power vacuums in Iran and the potential for violence and civil conflict.

There's their separatist regions in Iran with ethnic minorities. The country itself could fracture. If you talk to people in the region, one of the things that you hear in terms of concerns is what we're seeing is that Iran will create chaos in the region in its responses as they've done. But you also hear a concern about a pinch of fracturing of Iran that leads to significant refugee flows into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, up in the Europe. There are a lot of things that could

All right. When people talk about this blossoming into some sort of region-wide conflict,

it's not necessarily that it is a region-wide war. It may be region-wide instability and chaos. And that's part of the reason why Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben, I know we're going to be calling on you over the course of the day and into tonight for further advice and analysis on this. It's really helpful to have you here. Thank you. Thanks, Richard. All right. When we come back, we're going to be talking with the Iran Project

Director for the International Crisis Group, his real expert in Iranian American relations, that particular question that Ben Rhodes was just zooming in on there, which was even in the case of a successful regime toppling effort. What would happen next? What in particular happens to the largest best-organized and best-capitalized armed group in the country, which of course is

“the Revolutionary Guard Corps? That's really key in terms of what happens here, what happens next”

and what might happen very soon. That's all I had to say with us. This is the fair-mont poem hotel in downtown Dubai in United Arab Emirates. This is it on fire after that very fancy hotel appears to have been hit by a throne or by debris from an interception of a drone or missile today. That's just one of several strikes or interceptions across the whole region as Iran has started retaliating

against what it sees as U.S. targets or Israeli targets or U.S. or Israeli allies in the region. Joining us now is Ali Viaz. He's the Iran Project Director and senior advisor to the President at the International Crisis Group. Mr. Viaz, thank you very much for being with us. I appreciate your time. It's great to see you, Rachel. We've been trying as best we can to keep track of not just the damage inside Iran as U.S. and Israeli strikes there continue, but also

the way that Iran has tried to retaliate across the region. What should we understand about Iran's

“military capability to inflict damage in other countries?”

For sure, Iran has significantly weaker than the United States and Israel in terms of conventional military capabilities. It can only engage in an asymmetric kind of warfare. It can spread the pain. It can try to affect the global energy prices by closing the straight of hormones, by putting pressure on energy exports out of the region. It can spread the pain by targeting the Gulf countries that as it has already done and hope that they would then in turn put pressure on President Trump

to back off and basically signal that if they don't have security nobody else in the region has security and they can target Israel and U.S. bases in the region as they have already done. But all of this one has to remember a huge part of Iranian strategy is not to win necessarily ratio. It is to survive. And so for them, this is a game of endurance.

“In terms of the survival of what we I think sort of lightly call the regime here, we've all seen”

those dramatic images of the compound of Iran supreme leader, which is apparently targeted and hit badly in the initial strikes of this attack. The survival of the regime, the survival of the

supreme leader himself, the survival of the rest of the government, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard

Corps, what should we understand in terms of what what toppling the Iranian regime, if that's the aim here, might look like and who would be most likely to carry on there in terms of continuity of government and continuity of control? I have several points. One is that this is a deeply entrenched regime just like in the case of Venezuela and there the Trump administration decided to decapitate the regime but work

with the rest of the structure. This is also a very deeply benched regime in the 12-day war last year is remanaged to eliminate a few dozen senior Iranian commanders in the opening hours of that conflict and yet most of those commanders were quickly replaced and Iran managed to get back on its feet and start punching back. In order to get the regime changed at President Trump once so that the running people can come to the streets and finish the job from below, you would have to completely

dismantle the repressive capacities of this regime and there we're talking about a 200,000 strong

revolutionary guards which has a million strong militia in addition to hundreds of thousands

month against Iranian protesters not like in the case of Syria using fighter jets and tanks and

battle bombs and chemical weapons but with small arms. So to destroy all of that force and the limited capacities that they have to contain and request a population that is unarmed, unorganized and fragmented requires weeks and weeks if not months of ministry engagement which would have an enormous civilian cost for Iran and disastrous regional implications. Inviting the Iranian people to rise up and do it now without having done anything to suppress what you described as that

repressive capacity against its own people is just a harrowing prospect. Thank you for helping us understand that Ali Vias, Iran project director and senior advisor to the President at the International

Crisis Group. Thank you. All right, Congressman Jason Crowe is going to join us next day with us.

Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of the brand new US war in Iran Congressman Jason Crowe said today in response to this new these new actions by the President that President Trump has quote learned nothing from decades of endless war. Congressman Crowe says quote, "I went to war three times for this country." Quote, "Working class folks will pay the price of his military adventurerism, Americans are sick of it, and I'm sick of it." Joining us now is Colorado Congressman

Jason Crowe. He is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He serves on the House arm service committee. Congressman, thank you for your time. Thanks Rachel. Let me ask you to just expand on that statement to how do you learn about this and what what you are take on what the President is trying to achieve with this war. Yeah, well here we go again. As you just pointed out, I learned about this when I woke up and opened up my phone and looked at Twitter, right,

which has its own set of problems. The fact that Congress wasn't engaged and involved, but

“listen, my statement, I think captures the sentiment of tens of millions of working class Americans”

who have seen 20 years of endless conflict, trillions of dollars spent, thousands of American lives, and you know who wins, the defense companies win, the oil companies win, the elites, and the billionaires win, and the working class folks that I grew up with that I went to war with, we're left holding the bag. And this is the same thing, right, over and over again. And how may Nana miss a Donald Trump to get up there last night and say, you know, tough stuff

happens in war and maybe they're going to be some Americans that will die, but that's a cost I'm willing to take. Really, that's a cost he's willing to take because last time I checked it wasn't him or his kids or his daughter's kids or the other elites in the White House that are having to jump into planes or pick up rifles or sitting here in military bases around the Middle East being bombed right now. They, you know, shift that burden on to the rest of us.

Strategically, the question that emerged from the debocals of the Iraq and Afghanistan

war, the most potent questions that were never able to be answered by any US government,

“by any US president was, how does this end? Strategically, do you understand how this ends?”

What the United States is both trying to do and whether what they're doing gets us anything, gets us anywhere closer to those aims? Of course I don't, right? I mean, the rationale for this changes by the hour, right? And sometimes in the same speech they give different rationale. It's going to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon, it's regime change, it's to protect Americans against some unnamed undefined imminent threat that, you know, by the way, as I remember

the intelligence and our services committee, I'm not aware of and they haven't briefed us on. So, well, the real rationale for this please stand up. But we can talk all we want about notification and debating and war powers and resolutions, and I think a lot of Americans is kind of good, you know, glazed eyes when they talk about the procedure. Here's why the procedure and that stuff is important to me, as is somebody who went and had to fight these wars in the past.

It's about accountability. There has to be an accountability loop here. And the reason why we went

“to war, I think for 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, is because we stopped taking votes on it,”

we stopped debating it, the trillions of dollars that we spent was largely debt financing. Nobody was held accountable unless in 2% of Americans had to actually go off and fight the war. So, for me, it's important that we actually have these debates in Congress step up, so that I have to go to a high school gymnasium. I got to go to a rotary club. I got to scan it front of my constituents

why working class folks should send their sums and daughters in their money to fight this war

“any other work for that matter. It's exactly what you're describing, exactly the reason the founders”

structured the division of labor in our government, so that it was Congress that had to declare wars, thus forcing the decision to be a difficult one, and one that had to have multiple levels of

“accountability for everybody taking part in it. Colorado Congressman Jason Crowe, combat veteran,”

so thank you for your time. I really appreciate you being here tonight for your insight. Our coverage of the U.S. attacks on Iran continues live right after this. Do stay with us here on MSNow.

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