A War With No Exit Strategy?

0:00Hello everyone and welcome to the Amanpur Hour, here's where we're headed this week. At a critical juncture for Iran and beyond, former White House and national security spokesman Admiral John Kirby dissected the president's latest address. This war of choice is diverting attention and potentially even weapons from Ukraine's war of survival. Former foreign minister Demetro Kuleva joins me from Kiev. Russia has zero incentive to make a peace now. Then an exclusive with Fidel Castro's influence at grandson, as Trump's oil blockade pushes Cuba further into a humanitarian catastrophe, Patrick Oppmann reports. Plus, lessons from history, what it was like being in the White House during the Iranian Revolution. Former Iran adviser to the National Security Council Gary Sip reflects on the difference

1:04between the hostage crisis then and now. There was no way when the threat, Jimmy Carter added in on the threat. If he had wanted to go to war with Iran, he had a reason to do it, Trump had no such excuse. Plus, from my archives, Iran's revolutionary journey from young people hopeful for change to hardliners refusing to back down. How many people can the conservatives throw in jail? They can't jail the whole population of Iran. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Cristiano Manpoor in New York this week. Unanswered questions, conflicting statements and a vow to finish the job with still no spoken exit strategy. That's what President Trump delivered in his first address to the nation since the war began five weeks ago. We now know, in his own words, the President believed the war would be over in three days. In Iran, civilians pay the highest price with nearly 2,000 people killed in U.S. and Israeli

2:05strikes. Trump's speech did nothing to calm markets. In fact, the opposite. And oil prices spiked again. With no military plan or negotiations with Iran to resolve the crisis over the straight of hormones, what happens next? This repeated threat to bomb Iran back to the stone ages where they belong. This is not only Vietnam war language, but deeply insulting to Iranians proud of their 2,500 year history. Retired Admiral John Kirby has held top communications roles at the Pentagon, National Security Council and at the White House. He shares his serious concerns about this war and the future. John Kirby, welcome back to our program. Thank you. Good to be with you, Cristiano. Can you listen to Donald Trump? Were you actually expecting him to come up with some kind of a more refined plan, delivering a concrete end game and actually what the end would look like instead of just finish the job? That's what I was hoping I would hear when I heard that he, the announcement that he was

3:09going to give a set of remarks here, more than a month in to this conflict. I thought, that's great. You should talk to the American people and to people around the world and explain what we're doing, why we're doing it. And what we're actually trying to achieve. And regrettably we didn't hear that in the remarks. The other thing I didn't hear was any mention at all of the Iranian people. And that kind of surprised me because if you remember when this whole thing started, his message was, hey, we're going to topple the regime and it's up to you. This is your moment to take it and to run your own country. But no mention at all of the Iranian people what they're going through and any idea of what post-conflict governance can or should look like. The emotions of the diaspora and other Iranians are shifting because at first they thought Trump was coming to save them and now they're not. Now what does that mean for the US? Okay, we know what it means for the Iranian people. But what does essentially not winning hearts and minds mean for the United States?

4:09It means that this war is not going to end anytime soon. I mean, now you had the Iranian people behind you when the bombs first started falling and now we're losing that, not only the diaspora, but certainly there in Iran proper, which means that the regime will get new life and will get for perhaps support from the public that they didn't have before. This is a regime they hate. But now they're beginning to hate the United States even more. And I think that that just stiffens the spine of the regime, a very radical regime still, and may give them the resolve to continue to fight. One of the things that we need to remember here, Christiana, is that Donald Trump in the United States doesn't get to determine on its own when this war ends. We can certainly determine when we stop military operations, but the Israelis get a vote, and there's no indication that they're willing to stop. And the Iranians absolutely get a vote on how much more fighting they're willing to do. There doesn't seem to be any negotiations going on. Can you tell whether there's anything happening that doesn't seem to be? I mean, communicating and dealing with the government, the official government of Iran,

5:15is not the same as dealing with the IRGC and the Supreme Leader in his offices. You know, the elected leadership of Iran don't actually determine the course of Iran, certainly in domestic or foreign affairs, in order to make any ground, and you have to speak with somebody that has authority and accountability, and that's going to be the IRGC and the new Supreme Leader. Okay, so let us talk about what goals look like and were enunciated that seem to have been pushed off. How did you read just leaving the highly enriched uranium to take care of itself? I saw that very much the same way that it was an attempt by the President to pull back a little bit from the threats of actually going after it with ground forces. Now, that could be a faint, and he was, you know, sowing some disinformation to mask his intentions, perhaps. But the way I took it was it was him walking a little bit back from the idea of putting ground forces to go get it, and reasserting that, as these railies have,

6:18that it is buried so deep that it would be very, very difficult for the Iranians to recover it anyway, and the President is not wrong. What is he saying, do you think, as a military person yourself, needs to happen to make sure that they've finished the job as they keep saying? Well, it depends on what you mean by finish the job, right? I mean, if your goal is to eliminate every offensive capability that Iran has, every missile, every drone, every ship, and every boat, I mean, that's a tall order, and I don't think even the U.S. military would say that that's possible. But if your job is to degrade their capabilities, so that they no longer pose a threat to our interest in the region and our allies and partners, that is an achievable goal. And the U.S. military and the Israeli military have been working very hard at doing that. They have had immense military success. There's no doubt about that. But the one goal, the other, the goal that I think is much more difficult, and this gets back to your issue about hearts and minds, is eliminating Iran's ability to export terrorism in the region. As you know, they work through proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and these

7:22militias in Iraq and Syria that are not in Iran proper. They still have a measure of control and influence over those groups. And eliminating that as a threat, the terrorism threat, is a much more difficult thing, and it can't be done just through military means alone. Iran is certainly not the threat to the region and the world that it used to be based on all the bombing and the strikes. There's no doubt about that. The regime's military capabilities have been severely degraded, and that's a good thing for the region and for the world. I also believe that there are nuclear capabilities and their ambitions have certainly been severely curtailed, starting with the strikes back in June. There's no doubt about that. But you can't bomb away knowledge and you can't necessarily bomb away intention. And how do you see the relationship between the Gulf Arab states, which American allies have American bases and Iran going forward, given what's been happening? And also the relationship of America with those Gulf states, would they keep having American bases there, do you think? All of this depends on what's left at when it's all said and done. And if the regime is left

8:25in power, if that's the way this ends, then we are definitely going to have to rethink our footprint in the Middle East and perhaps even our arrangements and agreements with our allies and partners in the Gulf in terms of what sort of facilities the U.S. occupies and to what extent and at what scale. One of the things that they did before they launched the strike was disperse American military power around the region. It's going to be interesting to see when this is over. Does that disbursement stay in place or do we re-aggregate where we once were? I don't see if their regime is in power. I don't see how we do that. I mean that is truly reshaping the Middle East then in a way that presumably neither Israel nor the United States intended. Thank you very much for your very unique perspective. Coming up, the United States diverts its attention and weapons away from Ukraine while also helping fill Russia's war chest. Former Ukrainian foreign minister Demetro Kuleva joins me on their four-year fight for survival. What does Europe need to do to fill this gap?

9:30Make weapons and begin to believe that if the war comes, it will have to fight without the United States. To have I got news for your ears, the podcast. I am your host, Michael Ian Black, big episode of how I got news for your ears. Fan favorite, Anthony Ataminik. We're going to be talking about what are we talking about? The war, obviously, a little bit of Cuba and also a little bit of Cuba good in junior, not as much. Also, the ballroom, the library. Tony's going to break out his Robert De Niro, which is surprising. Have I got news for your ears? Check us out on Apple, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcasts. Even better, you can watch the podcast on Spotify. Welcome back. With the world's attention focused on the war against Iran, Russia's war against

10:33Ukraine grinds on. This week, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met virtually with US and European officials to discuss the stalled peace talks. But on the ground, there is more escalation than negotiation. And as Russia continues to devastate Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, fears mount that the weapons Ukraine badly needs are being diverted to the Middle East. To discuss all of this, I spoke to the former foreign minister, Demetro Kuleba, who joined me from Kiev. Let me ask you about the real sort of what Ukraine really wants and you know this more than anything on a, not to be forced to give up territory that it hasn't lost and b, proper security guarantees. So you might have seen President Zelensky has just tweeted after a virtual conversation with the two American negotiators, Whitkopf and Kushner, along with Senator Lindsey Graham and in fact, Senator, or rather Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutto standing by. Zelensky says,

11:34I'm grateful to everybody for their work in finding the right decisions and Ukraine appreciates every effort America is making to forge a dignified peace. We agreed that our teams will remain in close contact and they say they are trying to strengthen the notion of the security guarantees document between Ukraine and the United States, which is the only way he says to pave a reliable end to this war. What do you know about the existing talk around security guarantees and whether you think it will be strengthened on behalf of Ukraine? I regret to say it, but I'm afraid you will be quoting many more tweets of these kinds in the coming weeks and months. President Zelensky is trying hard to keep everything together, to move towards peace, towards negotiated peace. The problem is that I think Russia has zero incentive to make a peace now, to make peace now. The United States are not doing anything to change their approach to peace,

12:34which is, as they believe, if Ukraine gives the territory, the rest of Donbass to Russia, Russia is going to stop. Ukraine has zero evidence that would make it believe in this assumption. It doesn't matter how many more conversations there will be in video conferences, as long as there are no driving forces for peace on the Russian side and for the change of attitude on the American side, Ukraine will be, you know, Ukraine's tweets will be falling on death years. Tell me something, do you worry when you read President Trump's posts, like, like right now, he's, as you know, very angry with NATO allies, believing that they should join the war of choice that he started in order to open the strait of homos, and he called NATO a paper tiger threatened to consider pulling out. Given that you want Trump to put pressure on Putin, how does Trump's perpetual attacks and belittling of NATO affect Ukraine and affect the

13:40balance of power in this war, in your war? The biggest risk Ukraine is facing in relation to Trump's mood towards NATO is that if President Putin decides to grab the opportunity and attack a NATO ally in Europe, Europe will be so focused on pulling itself together in order to repel that attack that Ukraine will not be able to receive substantial amounts of volumes of weapons from our European partners. So we're experiencing problems with the United States now. Our second largest source of weapons is Europe, and if that one is gotten as well because they will have to keep to focus on their own war, will it be in trouble? Are you getting enough help from the EU, given that the U.S. is occupied elsewhere, including the reports that they are diverting weapons, maybe even eventually, that being a long-term diversion because of needing

14:45to replenish their own cupboards of ammunition and weapons? EU is doing a lot, but as long as the war greens on, they will never be enough. History is ruthless, it doesn't judge us by the effort, it judges us by the outcome. And the outcome is something that we're discussing right now, it's the fourth year of the war, the year of destruction and atrocities. There is a long way for Europe to go. I do believe they're trying their best, but there are some issues they have to address immediately if they really want to build up their deterrence muscle and survive without present, without the backing of the United States. Well, I'm going to ask you what kind of muscle do they need to bring to the table, because this is what the President actually said to this issue. Let's take a listen. We do that all the time. You know, we have tremendous amounts of ammunition. We have them in other countries like in Germany and all over Europe, we have, you know, we're packed

15:46and we take sometimes, we take from one and we use for nothing. I mean, he sort of makes it sound as if it's, you know, not not a big deal, but clearly Europe is worried, you're worried. What does Europe need to do to fill this gap? Make weapons and begin to believe that if the war comes, it will have to fight without the United States. Okay, so you're sounding probably more pessimistic than I've heard you in a long time, and I want to know therefore, do you, like a lot of people are now looking to China to help, including President Zelensky, is that a goer, do you think? I do strongly believe that Ukraine has to engage with China, and it is no secret that President Trump, for example, also believes that China has to be on board when it comes to making peace in Ukraine, but I don't see why China would be interested in that effort under these circumstances. Dimitra Kuleber, thank you for being with us and we'll check in with you again. Thank you so much. Important to remember that this week marks a gruesome anniversary four years since Russia's

16:53slaughter, rape and plunder of butcher, the village near Kiev. Coming up, a CNN exclusive with Fidel Castro's influencer grandson, Ysandro Castro, is for making a deal with the US despite trolling President Trump online. That story after the break. Welcome back, energy blackouts, medicine shortages, surging food prices, and preventable deaths, just a few of the issues plaguing Cuba, as it grapples with an energy crisis since Trump cut it off from its Venezuelan lifeline. But this week, the US did allow a Russian flagged oil tanker to break its own blockade, the first through in three months. The Trump administration is trying to squeeze Cuba in order to acquire its next sculpt, which would be the toppling of the communist regime there. But Fidel Castro's influencer grandson has also been trolling Trump online

17:59and he explained his strategy to CNN's Patrick Opman. Mysterious family that has held power in Cuba for nearly seven decades. At an interview in his apartment in Havana, Sondro Castro says he is a sign of the changing times on the communist run island. And what would your grandfather Fidel Castro say that you're more capitalist than communist?

18:59But all the capital is said to leave Cuba, but when we arrive for the interview, the neighborhood Castro lives in is in a blackout. And your constant condition these days with US oil blockade and power plants breaking down. Sondro Castro's apartment is lit by an intellectual generator, but from his balcony, the surrounding houses are in near-told darkness. He shows me his one bedroom, bachelor pot, how he lacks peace for the way, how his fridge is nearly empty, except for the Cuban beer he's always drinking. I point out that the appliance is a form that most Cubans could never hope to afford. His famous last name, Sondro Castro wants people to know, doesn't come with any special treatment in Cuba on the edge of economic collapse. We have to fight for all the Cuban beer, it's hard, even for Castro,

20:05even for Castro, it's hard. It's hard because it suffers with thousands of difficulties. But big a Castro must help you. Cuba faces unprecedented US pressure to open politically and economically. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban American, has been reaching out to Cuban officials, including members of the Castro family. In one of his videos, Sondro Castro pretends to receive a call from Rubio, who he then hangs up on. Rubio has said Cuban needs new leadership, and that could include Cuban Miguel Diaz-Canel stepping down. Despite Fidel and Raul Castro's support for Diaz-Canel over many years, Sondro Castro says he is no fan. Do you think President Diaz-Canel is doing a good job?

21:09No, he's not doing a good job. Because he's a weird guy, he had a lot of things he's done to us. And today, he's not as arrogant as usual. Cuba's leaders reject attempts to blame them for the crisis, and Sondro Castro says officials have questioned him about his often surreal and critical postings, as well Cuban exiles regularly attack him online, he says. Sondro Castro says he supports Trump's calls to open the economy, if not his threats against the island. At the end of his video, he takes a U.S. leader on a tour of Ivana. Hope from at least one member of the Castro family that historic deal with the U.S. in opening on the island are

22:15possible. Patrick Othman seen an Ivana. He's still got to wonder why Trump allowed Putin to bust his blockade and allow him into the hemisphere he claims for the United States. Coming up, he's been in the room with three American presidents and one Iranian Shah. Former White House aide Gary Sick gives me his take on Trump's war. People who know a lot about Iran would never have done what he has just done. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. In his new documentary called 50 Years of Apple, my colleague and friend Bill Weir, he's going to look at how these devices we carry every day didn't just transform technology, but they helped reshape our entire culture. I actually met some researchers and met a woman Emma Durden who has been studying the screen time effects on young brains for the last few years now and it comes down just to the power of these

23:20things. I see to my own kids the addictive qualities in it. At very young age especially, and when that young brain is you know better than most is not equipped to process these things, there's a cost to this. Listen to Chasing Life streaming now wherever you get your podcasts. My next guest has seen up close the transformation of Iran and how it got to its terrible relationship with the United States today. Gary Sik was the principal White House aide for Iran during the late 1970s, before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution. He served in the U.S. National Security Council under three American presidents, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, witnessing and advising on

24:21major foreign policy decisions. He joined me here in New York to share his warnings from history and where he sees all this heading. He's 91 years old now but still keen to give us those vital lessons for today. Gary Sik, welcome back to our program. So you have served every president practically in a specific era, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and particularly on this issue of Iran. What would you be telling this current president about how to deal with this thorny subject which is bedeviled every administration for the last nearly 50 years? Well, I think in the first place he wouldn't hire me. He doesn't. He's not looking for expertise and that's one of the real problems is that people who know a lot about Iran would never have done what he has just done. And I mean, it was clearly done on Whim without a lot of thinking, without a tremendous amount of preparation

25:22and we're seeing the consequences. I think that Trump really, he plays a tactical game. He's got problems and he deals with them impulsively, one after another. And if something gives him a tactical advantage, he's a deal maker. He's not a history maker. Let me ask you about Trump's deal maker, transactional, tactical kind of guy and not a strategist. All the things that he's been saying, which appear often to be contradictory, what do you think that public messaging says to Americans most importantly to the Iranians at this crucial time? I think the Iranians don't trust a single thing that they hear from him or the Americans. I mean, I think Iran's relationship with the United States. I mean, we've been disappointed. They've disappointed us. They've done things that we didn't want them to do and took us by surprise. And we've done the same kind of thing.

26:25And I would say both sides look at this and think the other side is completely untrustworthy and unworthy of even serious attention. Let's get back to the history. Now, you served Carter Reagan forward on this particular issue, right? The revolution. President Carter, who you served, went to Iran famously on the Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, 77 into 78, state visit in Tehran and declared the Shah was the guarantor of an island of stability in the Middle East. Those were his words. And eight days later, the revolution started bubbling. You guys, you're an intelligence official. Clearly got it wrong. The cables that were going back and forth from the embassy in Iran to Washington were like, no, no, there's no sign of revolution on the horizon. How badly did you all disservice your government? I've spent now 40 more years looking at that

27:28and thinking about it and considering what really went on. And I would say, unequivocally, that this was one of the greatest intelligence failures in American history. You've got to start with Kissinger and Nixon, who came to Iran and talked to the Shah just before all of this started. The Shah told them, I will be happy to act as your representative in the Gulf and take care of your interests. But don't go looking over my shoulder. If you want to know what's going on in Iran, ask us. Ask me. And I'll tell you. And of course, he didn't know what was going on in Iran part of the time. But more than that, he wouldn't tell us if it was really a crucial issue. Did you meet the Shah? I met him. What impression did you have of him? Why do you think he said no? When he was operating according to a script, he was very reliable and really quite good.

28:31When he departed from the script, he was really uncomfortable. He didn't know what he was doing, and he did trust his own instincts at all. Trump's apparent pivot to actually war and military intervention, whether it's in Venezuela, whether it might be in Cuba, but whether it's in a big way now in Iran. How does that sit with you? Because there's been no legal effort to get consensus around going to war. War seems to be now the default action or some kind of military intervention seems to be a default action for the United States. I think with everything we do, we are undercutting the laws of war and basically over the past several centuries, we've gradually been accumulating and growing laws of war about how you behave in a war,

29:32and it doesn't keep us from going to war, but it does mean that you only do it under certain circumstances. When there's an imminent threat, there was no imminent threat. Jimmy Carter had an imminent threat. If he had wanted to go to war with Iran, he had an excuse. He had a reason to do it. Trump had no such excuse. You don't act disproportionately. So if you get hit and two of your people get killed and you wipe out a village, that's not proportional and it's against the laws of war. And there's a whole series of things and we're breaking those laws every day. You're 91 years old. You've had a lifetime of public service. Did you ever think that you would see your country in this position? No. I've been around enough to know that you can't predict the future and that it surprises you, but I would never have believed that we would find ourselves

30:34in the position that we're in as the the rogue nation in the world. Gary Sink, thank you so much for your unique perspective. Thank you. Great to see you again. A troubling indictment indeed and coming up more lessons from history, a look into my archive at the long struggle for freedom and reform and democracy in Iran and my own experience living through the revolution there. It was at this precise moment in this room 21 years ago that I developed the first inklings of political awareness and this is where my life changed. Welcome back. The irony of this war is that instead of toppling the regime, it's so far is empowering the hardliners in Iran who are cracking down using a familiar playbook, deploying security forces to the streets and threatening mass arrests and executions.

31:36It's just the latest chapter in the long fight over what change could look like in Iran. Back in 2000, at the high point of Iran's reform phase, I covered the hopes and dreams of the young people there who insisted on democratic and economic freedoms. Back then, like today, there remains an iron core of revolutionary religious loyalists and I spoke to some of them too. Jenna, everywhere I go in Tehran, I'm an object of curiosity for these young people. They're eager to ask questions and to tell me all about their freedom fight and I am stunned by the symmetry. Just a generation ago, there was another youth movement, the one that sparked a revolution forcing the shower of Iran out and bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini in.

32:37A generation after the revolution, these students are telling me that they want everything, real democracy, the right to have fun and even friendly relations with the United States. For me, the young people's struggle is especially personal because I was their age when the revolution happened. But back in 1979, I was living a carefree life, taking all the personal freedoms for granted when I was a girl growing up in Tehran. This was my house. The revolution records of Iran took custody of our house after my family left the country in 1980. Only recently we were able to reclaim it. This used to be our living room. This room, for me, is kind of significant because it was here 21 years ago that my father was sitting in that corner and I was standing here and all of a sudden he said, you know, life as we

33:42used to know it is going to come to an end because the revolution is going to happen and it's just going to be completely different and it was at this precise moment in this room 21 years ago that I developed the first inklings of political awareness and this is where my life changed. Somebody in the West looking at you with a charred eye on your face, obviously very religious, they might be surprised to hear what you're saying about the freedoms and the reforms that you want. Should they be surprised? No. No, they shouldn't be surprised. The fact that I wear a hijab or some people wear a hijab should not imply that we do not want freedom, that we want restrictions. What happens if you don't get what you want? The reform movement of President Khatami has started and it cannot go back. How many people can the conservatives throw in jail? They can't jail the whole population of Iran because all over the country the reforms of Mr. Khatami

34:46have taken hold. But those reforms are running up against a wall of resistance from men like Mova Hedee, Savoji, a member of parliament and one of the hardest of all the hardliners. I've been talking to many, many Iranians since I've been here. I've talked to religious people, I've talked to more secular people, I've talked to young people, to old people, village people, city people. They say they want freedom of expression, freedom of political expression. They want political reform and they say they've had enough of hardline conservatives like yourself. Our people have been free since that revolution. Of course I believe that Ms. Amanpur has spoken to a limited number of people. So every time I asked a hardliner, a conservative, this same question, they tell me that I'm asking

35:47and talking to the wrong people. 80% of the people of Iran voted twice in presidential elections and in municipal elections for reform and for freedom. So are you saying that 80% of the people of Iran don't know what they're talking about? They voted for Khatami because they hoped he could solve the economic problems. In other words, they didn't vote for Khatami so that he would bring political changes. To me you sound slightly out of touch. Everybody we talk to says they want freedom and if they don't get their freedom there's going to be an explosion in Iran. There's too much pressure building. Do you accept that? Even if the hardliners appear to be in deep denial they face a generation that won't be denied. What I said back then stands today. When we come back

36:52two-time Academy Award-winning actor Adrian Brody tells me about the thrill of his Broadway debut. And finally two-time Oscar winner Adrian Brody is known for his gritty performances in films like The Brutalist and The Pianist. But now for the first time he's treading the boards on Broadway in the fear of 13 written by Lindsay Ferrentino. It's an extraordinary true story in which Brody plays Nick Yaris and in May to spend more than two decades on death row for a crime he didn't commit and who was later proven innocent. It is devastating, sometimes darkly funny and yet also manages to be oddly life-affirming. I spoke to Brody and Ferrentino about the project. For me as an artist or an artistic capacity to be able to explore and help open the conversation and consider these grave issues and ailments within our society

38:03are very important and meaningful. Lindsay wrote an incredible play, incredible work. It is incredible and the words were so moving that they told me out of my own apprehension of doing theater for many years. The play is on Broadway right now and you can tune into this show next week for more of that conversation. And that is all we have time for. Don't forget you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com slash audio and on all other major platforms. I'm Christian I'm on pour in New York. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week. I'm Eva Longoria and I'm setting out to really experience France to save her its world celebrated cuisine and explore the country's rich history. Eva Longoria, searching for France,

39:03premieres April 12 on CNN and next day on the CNN app.