Should the U.S. Sell F-35s to Turkey? Michael Rubin on Brian Kilmeade

0:00 Michael Rubin joins us now, director of policy analysis for the Middle East Forum. Michael, welcome back. You think the president should sell those uh those No, Brian, I actually think the president shouldn't, but I'll actually give a different reason than Prime Minister Netanyahu. Iran, Turkey has a a growing defense industry and they haven't been shy about their desire to compete with American arms. When President Obama transferred drones to Turkey, they were reverse engineered and now Turkey sells tens of billions of dollars worth of drones not only to our allies, but also to our adversaries. What I'm afraid as Turkey talks about its own stealth jet fighter that it wants to reverse the F reverse engineer the F-35 and use everything which the Americans have invested in for their own industries. I don't think

1:03 that's making America great. They would give it to Iran perhaps because they're friends with Iran, Well, Trump himself said, Brian, that he talked Erdogan out of joining the war on Iran's side. But if we want to go back, the Turkish Air Force has run uh war games without forewarning NATO first with both the People's Republic of China and also with Pakistan. That's not the type of um ally that we should be allowing to have the F-35 joint strike fighter. Do you have you heard that before that Turkey wanted to join the war with Iran?

1:42 Um I'm not sure whether I believe it, but President Trump himself had said that um in the context of talking about how persuasive President Trump was to talk President Erdogan out of this. This was in the same speech when he talked about bringing a big gift bag to Erdogan when he came and visited him at NATO. So you have a recommendation of what Israel should they look at Iran as an enemy. Should they? Um well certainly they already look at Iran but I think they need to look at No I mean Turkey excuse me on Iran. It's Turkey as an enemy. Should they?

2:18 Let me put yes. The short answer is yes. More more directly. Brian I think countries are at their strongest when they calibrate their foreign policy towards reality rather than wishful And what do you think people just say? good member of NATO can't be a problem as opposed to reality how they're Well, you know, it's both how they're acting, but it's also the question of listen to other NATO members. Turkey has been harassing Greece. It's been claiming uh Greek territory. It's been harassing the European Union. Uh it's recently transferred F-16s um to northern Cyprus without in violation of the American end use agreements. It increasingly looks that like Turkey is more intent on harassing European states and Greece, a NATO member, than it is in fighting Russia.

3:13 And remember, Turkey doesn't really sanction Russian oil. It's became become the major money laundering hub for Russia today. So, let's talk about what we learned today. Uh we know the president's now meeting with the Syrian leader. How do you view Syria and this leader? We know about his al-Qaeda background. unfathomable that he's running the place, but he has been more of a stabilizing force than Assad. I'll tell you that. He's not barrelbombing his people. He's trying to stabilize his country. Where do you rank this leader? Ally or enemy? Um, I'm still undecided. Look, Brian, you know, I went to Syria recently and I'm sitting here talking to you from Benghazi, Libya. The fact of the matter is when I went to Syria, what was very clear is that Ahmed al-Shada only controlled certain neighborhoods of Damascus and then Idlib when he doesn't even have control over his whole true faction, the Hayat al-Sham. And therefore, I just wouldn't want to put all our eggs in one basket for someone that's afraid to drive across the city

4:16 of the capital city of the country he says he runs. Well, the one thing we like is Iran no longer has a presence there. Correct. That we do like. The question is whether Turkey is becoming as much of a problem. And you know, while Iran had long cultivated groups like Hamas today, Hamas's headquarters is in Istanbul, Turkey, um just a couple hundred miles from where President Trump is in Ankura, So we believe that they are sustaining Hamas. Correct.

4:48 They absolutely are sustaining Hamas. Not only sustaining Hamas financially, they're allowing Hamas to plan terrorist attacks from on Turkish soil. Where would you say the Gaza rehab is right now? The Gaza rehab is certainly out of the limelight, but look, when we're talking about the deal and the peace agreement, the second item that was supposed to be accomplished was disarming Hamas. If Hamas isn't disarmed and if we don't hold their feet to the fire, then ultimately they're going to reconstitute. While I'm a little bit pessimistic about Gaza, this is why I'm a little bit more optimistic that President Trump isn't allowing the Iranians to do the same thing when they're purposely testing the red lines of his memorandum of understanding.

5:36 So when we look at Hezbollah's presence, how have they got rearmed since the devastating pager attack and the walkie-talkie attack? uh you going after their missiles, killing Nasarella. How have they been able to sustain themselves? Is have we been watching money and arms flow through even though Iran has been under economic distress? Let me tell you this, Brian. You know that I go to Lebanon quite often. Um I went to Lebanon in the wake of the beeper attack which you said I went to Dia, the main Hezbollah neighborhood in southern Beirut and I was counting people with one eyes and missing fingers from that beeper attack. And there was not a Hezbollah flag in sight. That was last November. I went back a week and a half ago. There was Hezbollah banners all over the place. On the airport road, there were big signs, billboards that said thanks to Iran. I saw flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I saw posters of Kasamsmani, the late head of the Kudz force that Donald Trump had killed in Baghdad back on January 3rd,

6:40 2020. The point of this is I didn't see a single Lebanese flag. And so from a Lebanese point of view, a Hezbollah point of view, they've been looking at this memorandum of understanding as snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. And that's why uh perhaps Donald Trump is right to reconsider. Now last last year I went to Kotivvoir in the west in western Africa and of course across many of these West African states the largest business leaders are actually Lebanese diaspora and what I was looking at was money laundering going into Lebanon from West Africa from South America. Here's the point. While Israel had taken out much of Hezbollah's military they hadn't taken out the economic network nor had we. I was meeting with a senior Lebanese official a week and a half ago and he said the biggest problem he has with the United States is that the US Treasury Department because of its own bureaucratic inertia is so slow at designating Hezbollah money launderers

7:44 when the Lebanese government provides the Americans with information about it. So I do think we need to be much more serious and um holistic if we expect to have a victory over Hezbollah. So, here's President Trump on how he feels about Iran right now after they hit five merchant ships in two days. Cut Is the ceasefire done? Is theou dead? It's a very interesting question to me. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people and they're vicious, violent people. and if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.

8:29 I'll speak to our negotiators. So, uh, and then he said, you know, negotiators want to talk, they can talk. I look at it as over. The markets don't like that. Down 500 points. Uh, the president says, I'm going to hit him again tonight. What do you think, Michael Rubin? Well, you know, I think the president is right to do this uh in this case. You know, Brian, that from time to time I talk to the Iranians. And what I've always told the Iranians is that President Trump is different from every other president because he's much more willing to talk to people. But unlike Joe Biden, unlike Barack Obama, he's also much more willing to walk away if he senses insincerity. He walked away from North Korea. He's walked away from others. In this case, the Iranians were testing him. and he's going to teach the Iranians a lesson. That said, I think that President Donald Trump's negotiation with Iran was bound to fail for a simple reason. He was negotiate I mean to make a real estate analogy, he was negotiating with the doorman of a

9:32 skyscraper rather than the owner of the skyscraper. The fact of the matter is Muhammad Bakar Kalabah, the speaker of the parliament doesn't have the power. He's not in charge inside Iran or in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. and therefore any promises which he makes were meaningless. So who do you deal with? Who would be dealing with? This is what I would deal. The person in charge of Iran is Ahmed Vahidi. Uh who used to be the minister of defense. But you really have two choices. He's with the IRGC now, right? All of these guys are somehow affiliated with the IRGC. But you're absolutely right. He's with the IRGC. Now you have two options. One is if you want to deal with Muhammad Bakar Kalabaf, you have to understand that the knives are out for him inside Iran and you have to eliminate all of his competitors. So he's the only person in the room.

10:24 Otherwise, what you need to do is have a list of people ranked by power. You ask Ahmed Vahidi, will he negotiate? He says yes or no. If he says yes, you negotiate. If he says no, you eliminate him and go to the second in the list. I guarantee you by the time you get to point person 3, four or five, you're going to have someone who's either who's going to negotiate with you. And if you have someone who's not going to negotiate with you, then ultimately you shouldn't pretend that they don't exist because as we saw with three ships getting attacked, they do exist. One other thing I would do if I were um Donald Trump Brian is I would ask or I would have Steve Whitkoff uh his chief envoy ask Muhammad Baker Kalab who was the one who gave the order to hand him over and either Kalabaf can or he can't.

11:16 But if he can't, that's a sign that Kalab is the wrong person. So who gave the order to hit the merchant ships? Um that's interesting. The only people that are really good at eliminating Iranians are the Israelis. The presidents who are reluctant to maybe get the Israelis back in the fold at this point, even though I think they're going to act on their own behalf at some point when it becomes clear where what we're doing. So, what would be your next move?

11:49 Well, I always try to remind people, and I say this as a military analyst, um, that the Israelis drive more German submarines than the German Navy does. So, the Israelis are capable and they have the intelligence to do what they're going to do. Um, what I'm told is that during Operation Epic Fury, the Americans and the Israelis worked together with such interoperability, it even exceeded the way the United States and the United Kingdom worked together during World War II. We were that close. And if President Trump wants to farm out certain missions to the Israelis in the ven diagram of national interests, I have no doubt that the Israelis could probably accomplish what's needed. So, Michael Rubin, in the weeks that they were fighting together, was there something wrong with, and I asked Netanyahu this, the prime minister this on Tuesday, was there, in retrospect, was there something about that battle plan or about the Iranians resistance that surprised you or that fell short?

12:51 Okay. Um, first of all, the there was a discrepancy between Trump and Netanyahu on what came next. Um, Netanyahu really liked the former crown prince, Reza Palavi. As far as Trump was concerned, that guy failed his audition. Number two, there was genuine surprise that Iranians didn't come out to fight in the street. Number three, however, was strategic patience. The Israelis had it, the Americans didn't. Now, you know, I actually talked to some American targeting officers and war planners about this and they said, "No, we disproved this notion that Americans have no strategic patience because for 30 years we had been updating targets and we managed to decapitate the regime in the last weeks. So maybe I'm wrong to talk about strategic patience, but we certainly didn't have the political patience." And look, when you have a hornets's nest, you have two good options. One is to leave it alone. The other one is other good option is to get rid of it. But you don't want to come down the middle lightly tapping it with a stick and then walk away. And it seems

13:55 unfortunately that's what the United States did in this case. Even when we were fighting as opposed to when we walked away while we were fighting you thought we could have hit Um while we were fighting the problem was political statements that gave uh the Islamic uh revolutionary guard corps confidence that they could outlast us and that impedes any notion of surrender or people defecting. Interesting. Uh, and now that the internet's back together, if you hit them again, you wonder if the people will be able to communicate if that had something to do with it. Also, Michael, in the defense of the Iranian people, they're not armed and between 20 and 40,000 were just killed in cold blood.

14:31 So, that does tend to dispirit a You're absolutely right. I am reminded of what happened in Serbia when Bill Clinton, however, um, bombed Serbia back in 1999. When that bombing campaign ended, Sloan Mallosvich remained in power. But the next year he was overthrown because Slobadam Malloich wasn't able to pay his salaries and many of its constituencies, the top generals have been killed. I sort of wonder whether something could happen in that case. But my biggest fear is what you just voiced, Brian. We've never seen a regime aside from North Korea with the degree of cruelty that Iran has.

15:07 They are the worst. Michael Rubin, thanks so much. Every word you said was valuable. Truly appreciate it. Thank you. Back in a moment.