(logo whooshing) (grand music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour & Company."

Here's what's coming up.

The ceasefire between Iran and Israel holds.

So could a ceasefire in Gaza be on the horizon?

And what might that mean for the occupied West Bank?

I speak to Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian Member of Parliament and a former peace negotiator.

Then Iran's Supreme Leader emerges to claim victory over Israel, but as the dust settles in Tehran, how will his regime respond?

Middle East Expert Karim Sadjadpour looks at the fallout.

"And the Democratic Party slides into irrelevance," says Atlantic Staff Writer David Graham, laying out his take with Michel Martin.

(grand music continues) (grand music fades) - [Announcer 1] "Amanpour & Company" is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Atwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the Family Foundation of Leila and Mickey Straus, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Could US strikes in Iran pave the way for a ceasefire in Gaza?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to convene a meeting with cabinet ministers and senior defense officials to discuss the latest US framework, which calls for the release of 10 of the remaining Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 more as part of a 60-day ceasefire.

Hamas officials haven't rejected the proposal, but they say they require stronger guarantees around what the end of the war looks like.

President Trump says his representatives are, quote, "Very close to striking a deal."

Meanwhile, the fighting and the suffering in Gaza continues.

Almost 900 people died there even as Israel was bombing Iran.

And in the past month, more than 500 have been killed by the Israeli military while seeking food aid.

That's according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Seven Israeli soldiers were killed in a bombing in Khan Yunis this week, according to the IDF.

Violence is also intensifying in the occupied West Bank, where several Palestinians were killed following a series of attacks by Israeli settlers in a town near Ramallah.

So could progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza help dial down tensions in the West Bank as well?

Mustafa Barghouti is a longtime Palestinian politician, former peace negotiator, and member of the Palestinian Parliament, and he's joining me now, welcome to the program.

It's not often that we get to talk face to face, but this is an important, I think, juncture and turning point.

Do you agree with the, in fact, what Netanyahu has said, what Trump appears to be saying, that this action in Iran could pave the way for a resolution, at least a ceasefire in Gaza?

- It can, definitely, if the American president has the will to do so.

And he has the ability to use the leverage he has over Netanyahu.

It is very clear.

But also, most importantly, the last fight with Iran has shown two things.

First of all, that Israel without the United States is incapable of attacking anybody.

And the- - But that's not true because Israel is the one who, essentially, with its forces obliterated Iran's, you know, air defenses and got control of the skies.

- Yes!

But they needed the United States to defend themselves against Iranian rockets.

- Well, to do the big bunker busting?

- Yeah, in other words, Israel is very dependent on the United States, but also, and that's very important, this whole conflict with Iran, and before that, with Iraq, and before that, with Syria and with Egypt, it all relates to one particular core reason, which is the issue of Palestine and the fact that Israel continues to occupy the Palestinian land.

So the only way to real peace and to a lasting peace and security for everybody is to solve the Palestinian issue and allow Palestinians to be free and independent.

If the American president has the will, he can immediately impose pressure on Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza, a horrible war that is taking so many lives.

- Do you have any, you know, sources and people who, obviously, you're connected with on this very personal and political issue for yourself in the region who are giving you any hope that there might be some breakthrough?

I mean, if President Trump says, quote, "Very close to a deal," and Hamas says, "Yes, but there are other issues," do you think it's possible?

- The deal is quite possible, and actually not only about releasing all the 10 Israeli prisoners or captives, but actually the release of all Israeli captives in exchange of stopping the war.

And I think Hamas has been ready for that for a long time.

The question is, can the United States force Netanyahu to give up his original plan, which is to keep pushing Palestinians out of every place in Gaza into what could become a concentration camp near Rafah and to give up his plan of total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza?

That's the game.

Now, we've heard today, most recently, new information or news that Trump is promising Netanyahu that if he stops the war in Gaza that Trump will eliminate all the corruption cases against Netanyahu, isn't it?

- Well, obviously, it's not in Trump's purview to be able to do that.

- Right, but it could be something that it could convince the Israeli president to give bargain with.

- Let me just play a sound bite from President Trump on the issue of potentially a ceasefire.

- I think great progress is being made on Gaza.

I think because of this attack that we made, I think we're gonna have some very good news.

I think that it helped a little bit, it showed a lot of power.

Yeah, I think it helped, but we're gonna get...

Separately, even before this, we were very close to making a deal on Gaza.

- So we've talked a little bit about the dynamic potentially having changed over these strikes on Iran, a bit of a window for engagement.

What do you think?

I mean, the big all-time question, obviously, for Palestinians is, does Israel leave the Gaza Strip?

Does the IDF get out?

Which was what the Biden administration had thought it was negotiating at the end of its time there.

Does a, you know, an international force, but maybe mostly Arab force come in, you know, and guaranteed by the United States?

And does Hamas lay down its weapons and agree that it is not going to be any member of an official future for Gaza?

- That issue was resolved long time ago.

- Which issue?

- The issue that Hamas would leave the government.

They have told us that many times in our meetings with them when we had a meeting of all Palestinian forces, first in Moscow and then in Beijing.

And the Beijing Declaration, which I personally drafted, speaks about the formation of a technocratic government that is independent from parties, but which would be accepted by all Palestinians, a national consensus government, which would be a temporary government to start the reconstruction of Gaza and then prepare the ground for free democratic elections, which Palestinians deserve, and that we didn't have for 20 years now.

- I think the Palestinian people have- - That's because of a lot to do with the leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas.

- Sure.

- Yeah.

- Of course, he has to accept that.

And it is up to him now to start implementing the Beijing Declaration, which means we don't need any other forces to come in.

We are fully capable of ruling ourselves.

- You know, that's not gonna fly, Mr. Barghouti.

There's no way that either the Americans or the Israelis are gonna say, "Oh yeah, here, go for it," after what happened.

There's gonna have to be some kind of international acceptable force to temporarily, or whatever it is, to guarantee the peace.

- They're most welcome to bring any international force to sit on the borders, but not to rule us.

Why should we- - I know, it's about ruling, yeah.

- No, no, we have been under Israeli occupation for more than 57 years.

We've been deprived of the right to be free and to be free from occupation.

I don't think we, as Palestinian people, need another occupation by anybody.

What we need is to have the right chance, like everybody else in this world, to rule ourselves, but also to have a democratic process, something that has been ignored for a long time.

Even when some Western countries talk about reform, they never say that it should be democratic reform.

And Palestinians should have the right to democratically elect their leaders.

The system we are using now, Christiane, is a system of proportional election, which means the percentage you get will give you the same number of seats equal to the proportion you got.

So no single party in Palestine can get absolute majority.

That will create a pluralistic democratic system different from anything before.

- So I've heard quite a few different voices from Hamas.

I've been on, you know, certain calls where certain Hamas officials who claim to be just, you know, politicians rather than militants say, you know, this, that, and the other, "But no troops anywhere near us!

It has to be just, you know, just Palestinians."

And then I've had another voice also from the past really, who's in Gaza and has been under all the bombardments that we all know have happened there since October 7th and said, "Hamas," and this is weeks ago, "should release all the hostages, be done with it, because we are suffering too much, and they're causing us to suffer too much."

So it's, I'm talking about Hamas saying about Hamas.

So as far as you know, and I know you're not Hamas and you don't speak for them, do you think there's still an internal struggle?

- I don't think it's an internal struggle.

Of course, there are different voices and different opinions.

That's normal in any organization that has a little bit of democracy.

Of course, there will be different views, but what we see here is the big question about the right, the needs of the Palestinian people.

If all the Israeli captives are released without declaring complete and total ceasefire, what you will see is that the Israeli army will invade all of Gaza Strip, push everybody into that very small area of Mawasi, in what could become a concentration camp, and then Netanyahu fulfilling his plan of total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

That's the risk we face today.

Every day, at least- - You say it's his plan, has he actually articulated that?

- Yeah, many times.

- For sure, the others, Smotrich, but you know, the others have said, "They're welcome to leave."

- No.

Netanyahu himself used the same terms, saying that Palestinians should leave Gaza, and he called it, "Trump's vision."

- By the way, where would they go?

Because not a single nation offers them visas or God forbid, citizenship.

Where would they actually go?

- They wouldn't go because the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, and I have my colleagues there, with whom I communicate every day, they've become even more stubborn about staying in Gaza.

They don't want to go anywhere because they know they will be humiliated, and their dignity will not be except when they are in their own country.

But even if some of them want to go, no other countries are ready to take them.

- That's what I'm saying.

- And Egypt doesn't want to take them.

- No.

- And Egypt rejected that so many times.

And what we need is to have Palestinians in Palestine, not in another, any other country.

- Do you think it still have the chance?

Because the dynamics show, as you've just described, the, you know, the push of Palestinians in Gaza towards a certain area is highly controversial and deadly.

Food operation, that I said, has been reported, like, 500 have been killed since this started.

And the pressure on Palestinian, you know, farmers and villagers by the settlers in the West Bank.

Do you think you, there is still a window where you get to stay and have a political resolution?

- Yes, absolutely.

Not only we have a window, but we have determination.

Nobody can kick us out of our country.

Nobody can stop us from struggling for our freedom and self-determination.

And you are absolutely right.

More than a hundred people are killed every day in Gaza.

They're all civilians!

30% of their of them are children.

Up 'til now, Israel has killed 20,000 Palestinian children.

50,000 children have been killed or injured.

And you are also right, those, what they call humanitarian foundation centers, people are killed there when they try to go and get humanitarian aid.

More than 560 have been killed already, and 4,000 have been injured.

So this has to stop.

And in the West Bank, the settlers are behaving as terrorist gangs now.

Yesterday, they killed three Palestinians in a village.

There is no day that passes without new attacks of settlers on Palestinian communities.

What we need is not only to stop the war, Christiane, what we need is to end the occupation, to end the suffering, to end this conflict.

And the only way to get there is to allow Palestinians to be free finally.

Enough is enough, this has been too long, and it's bad for everybody.

And as I said so many times, Israelis themselves will never be free unless Palestinians are free.

- I was actually going to ask you that because it's not just enough is enough for Palestinians, which the whole, pretty much the whole world agrees with that they need to have their freedom, independence, sovereignty, dignity, and security for Israel as well.

But clearly, the Israeli people have had enough as well, and they cannot exist with this threat on their borders anymore.

I mean, they just won't.

And you've seen how Netanyahu has, you know, has responded since October 7th.

And sometimes I just wonder sometimes, you know, you just said at the beginning, Israel has shown that it's not as strong as it could be without the United States.

Personally, I disagree with that.

And most of the opinion around what Israel has done over the last, you know, from destroying the proxies from then essentially neutralizing Iran's military capacity, certainly in the air, now denigrating its nuclear capacity, it's strong, and might makes rights, and there are very few, you know, anybody wanting to hold them back from this.

And I wonder because the, you know, the Biden administration says that it had come to some kind of agreement at the very last days of its existence with the Palestinians, with the Israelis, the Americans, to have a withdrawal plan for Gaza, you know, the Israelis out and the ceasefire.

But I was told that it was the Palestinian prime minister, I think, who was involved in this, who just kept pushing for a little bit more, and the whole thing collapsed, and then Trump got elected.

So my question is, and you know this, Arafat said no to Camp David, you know, with Ehud Barak.

There's been lots of nos.

At what point do you think that has really, really, you know, put you in a very bad and weakened position?

- There are two points here, Christiane.

First, Israel is strong.

Yes, it has a very huge military power, but it's very fragile and vulnerable, why?

We've seen in their war with Iran, for the first time in Israel's history since 1956, the Israeli society itself was affected.

So there is a very big price for continuing this policy of wars.

Second, the Israeli, I mean, it's amazing while they are trying to push us out of the country, many Israeli citizens are leaving Israel, voluntarily, because they cannot tolerate the situation.

What I want to say is that the way out of this, of course, you can always blame the victim.

We had- - This is not about blaming the victim.

- Yeah, yeah.

We had- - I'm sorry, it's really not, I'm trying to be serious.

- No, I'm not accusing you.

I'm saying that frequently, some American people start saying that Palestinians are responsible for not having a solution.

We had also agreement, which I think was a weak agreement, a bad agreement, because it didn't insist on total freeze of settlement activities, but there was an Oslo Agreement, and Palestinians accepted the idea of two-state solution.

Who killed the Oslo Agreements?

Netanyahu.

Who made a law in Israel, preventing the right of self-determination for Palestinians and saying that the right of self-determination is exclusive for Jewish people on the land of historic Palestine?

It's Israel.

Who made a law after the 7th of October not to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state?

It was the Israeli parties, including those in government and those in opposition.

So in reality, Netanyahu, one day, will be judged by his own people as the person who destroyed most of the potential and possibilities of peace.

The peace can happen, but not at the expense of our right to be free, independent, and have the right of self-determination.

- Many, many people agree with you, and most people who are serious about this know that the only way to end this violence, this 75 years of violence, is a negotiated settlement.

And you've worked very hard to make that happen.

So I just wanna know for you, personally, 'cause you've been in Ramallah most of these 20 months, and the violence in the West Bank is really terrible.

How has it been for you?

Personally.

- It's very hard.

Personally, it's very hard on two issues.

First of all, the life in the West Bank is very difficult as well, but we are following our medical teams in Gaza.

We have many, 80 medical teams working there, treating 200,000 people every day, every month.

And they tell us horrible stories, and that moves us a lot.

But also in the West Bank, our economy is suffocating.

The Israelis have imposed almost 1,000 military checkpoints that are blocking freedom of movement.

They are now even punishing the Palestinian Authority, depriving it of its income.

$2 billion of our tax revenue is withheld in an act of piracy by Smotrich and his government.

- Yes, and he actually announced that, didn't he?

Yeah.

- Yes.

And they're suffocating us in the West Bank, suffocating us and killing us in Gaza.

But you know what?

I want to share with you one personal impression.

I've tried to keep my strength seeing all this death in Gaza, all this destruction, which is very painful knowing about the families of my friends who were killed and eliminated, but one scene the other day of a little Palestinian child who was maybe only three years old, hit in the abdomen, and people are trying to stop the bleeding, and somebody is trying to take it, to make it easier for this girl.

And then I looked at her face, and you look at her eyes, and it broke my heart.

It really broke my heart.

I've seen so many deaths, I've seen so many injuries in my life, but that scene of that little child summarized it all, and it's really enough is enough.

Palestinians should not suffer anymore.

- And you are a physician and "Do no harm" is the motto, I think.

I just wanna ask you finally, have you internalized as a Palestinian, and as a doctor, and as a humanitarian, the severe trauma that Israel exists in since October 7th and the severity of what happened on that day, which has rained hell down on the whole region now, and caused them to, you know, hunker down and do whatever it takes- - And become very extreme.

- [Christiane] To make sure that this doesn't happen again.

- I understand, and I understand very well also the fact I am a person who knows the history of Jewish people.

I know how much they suffered during the Holocaust in Germany, how much they suffered from antisemitism, which we were never part of, as Palestinians, since we are ourselves Semites, by the way.

And I know very well how much they suffered from the pogroms in Russia.

I am quite knowledgeable of these things, but I also think, to be honest with you, that Holocaust happened not only because of the cruelty of the Nazis at the time, but also because of the cowardness of many politicians who stayed silent watching the Jewish people being persecuted.

And to be honest with you, it's the same cowardness that we see today from the side of many politicians who watch the Palestinians being persecuted and do nothing.

- [Christiane] This has to end.

- Yes.

- Mustafa Barghouti, there needs to be a diplomatic solution.

Let's hope this moment leads people through that window.

- I hope that, and I thank you for whatever you do in that regard.

- Thank you for being here.

Now, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emerged for the first time since the ceasefire to claim Israel was crushed under the blows of the Islamic government.

(Ayatollah Ali speaking in foreign language) - I would like to congratulate the great nation of Iran.

I want to congratulate them for a few reasons.

First, I would like to congratulate them for victory over the fake regime of the Zionist regime.

- Despite the bravado, the cost to Iran of Israel's and America's attacks are considerable.

Israeli jets knocked out air defense batteries, ballistic missile launchers, and a lot more.

Israel assassinated the top echelon of Iran's armed forces.

While it's not clear how extensively the nuclear program was set back, the damage is considerable and more than 600 Iranians were killed across the country, according to the authorities there, which raises a key question, will this war strengthen the Islamic regime or help lead to its demise?

Karim Sadjadpour analyzes US policy on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and he's joining me now from Washington.

So Karim, you're also an expert on Ayatollah Khamenei.

What did you make of the tone of his voice and you know, the defiant statement?

- Well, Christiane, this is a leader and a regime, which in my opinion, has reached a dead end in that they continue to believe that their ideology, "Death to America, Death to Israel," hijab, is critical to their survival.

But that very same ideology is imperiling their survival.

What do I mean by that?

We saw in 2022, 2023, they detained a young woman, Mahsa Amini.

She was killed in custody for having bad hijab.

That set off six months of nationwide unrest in Iran, which had the regime on its heels.

This time around, this hostility toward America and Israel has led to a ruinous war, which, you know, has led Khamenei to be living now in a bunker.

He's 86 years old.

He doesn't have the physical and cognitive stamina to be leading a war against Israel, the United States, and his own people.

His regime, I would describe, is a Swiss cheese regime.

It's been totally penetrated by Israeli intelligence.

His top military commanders have been taken out.

His regional proxies have been destroyed.

A nuclear program that he spent perhaps upwards of a half a trillion dollars on has been significantly damaged.

And yet, through all of this, we saw today that, you know, his worldview hasn't changed and is not going to change.

He will continue to subject his population, a population which, in my view, has enormous potential.

Iran could be a G20 nation, but it'll continue to subject them to enormous hardship rather than compromise on his ideological objectives.

- So to that point, I obviously agree with you about the population.

And the President Pezeshkian, who came into office, was elected, you know, last year, promising to make Iran more prosperous, open socially, more engaged with the West, he signaled it was time to change how the country is managed.

And I'm quoting now from a New York Times article.

He basically said, "The war and unity amongst the people has created an opportunity to change our views on governance and the behavior of our officials."

He said, "This is a golden opportunity for change."

What do you think he actually means?

- You know, for years, internally, there's been this struggle among Iranians between state and society and within parts of the regime whether they should continue to act as a revolution or a country, whether to prioritize these revolutionary objectives, antipathy toward America and Israel and hijab or the national and economic interests of Iran.

The problem is that the revolutionaries have all the guns, they have all the coercive power.

We've seen over the decades that there have been senior officials in Iran, even presidents like Mohammad Khatami, who've tried to reform the system, and the system is proven impervious to reform.

And the reason that is, Christiane, is back to the ideology of Ayatollah Khamenei.

You know, we call them hardliners, but Khamenei calls himself a principlist.

And what that means is that he's loyal to the principles of the revolution.

And he believes that if you reform those principles, if you abandon them, it's not going to actually prolong your shelf life.

It's like taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of a building.

It's gonna collapse on top of their head.

And the example he's obsessed about is Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet Union.

He said, "That didn't extend the shelf life of the Soviet Union, it hastened its collapse."

And Christiane here, I actually believe Ayatollah Khamenei is correct, that this is a regime which is built on such rotten foundations that it can only be sustained with significant repression.

And some of the great political philosophers like Machiavelli and Tocqueville have also observed that the most dangerous moment for any bad government is when it tries to reform itself.

And so I think as long as he's leader, and it's not going to be that much longer because he's 86, you know, we should not expect an Iran that's going to change its identity.

- So, you know, obviously there's been a lot of talk in the air about change and regime change.

You've heard it outwardly spoken by the Israelis.

You've heard Trump muse about it on posting, and now, he's sort of backtracking on that.

You've written, "The chasm between Iran's static regime and its dynamic population has arguably become amongst the widest of any society in the world."

And we know that there is a huge amount of dissatisfaction, the vast majority of the people just want freedom, and, you know, something completely different, and a release from the terrible economic hardship and pressure they've been under for years, and years, and years.

But the question is what comes next?

You've outlined that Khamenei is old, people have been predicting his death for a long time, but is it, you know, a militarized Iran?

Is it the, you know, Islamic Revolutionary Guards?

Right now, the Basij are out on the street and human rights organizations report that they're busy arresting a lot of people, executing people, obviously looking for spies in that, you know, Swiss cheese that has been heavily penetrated by Israel.

So what do you think comes next?

Or is it, you know, something, somebody or someone, or some group in exile?

- You know, Christiane, you and I are both of Iranian origin, and we both want Iran to transition into the nation it has the potential to be, you know?

Liberal democracy, prosperous, but one of the things you learn is to be mindful of not conflating your hopes and analysis and emotions and analysis.

So on one hand, I truly believe that Iran is a society ripe for representative democracy.

It can be a G20 nation just like its neighbor Turkey.

But what we also know from authoritarian transitions is that only about one in four of them results in democracy.

More often, it results in another form of authoritarianism.

In Iran's context, obviously though, some of the people who are well placed to inherit power are the military, the Revolutionary Guards.

That could also take the country in different directions because the Revolutionary Guards are 190,000 men, not a monolith.

You have some among them who want to continue this "Death to America" revolutionary ideology of 1979, but you have others who want, who aspire to be kind of Iran's Deng Xiaoping, to put the economic interest, national interest, before revolutionary ideology.

I think what the Iranian, as those Iranians that aspire to liberal democracy, the challenges that, you know, the folks that usually win these authoritarian transitions are not those with the best ideas, are those who are, you know, highly united, organized, oftentimes with coercive power.

And so obviously, Iranian liberals don't believe in coercive power, but that means that they have to get more united, more organized, and harness this popular energy toward a more liberal outcome.

At the moment, you know, that doesn't exist.

I would estimate perhaps 80% of society disliked the regime, but a regime which remains highly armed, organized, and willing to kill en masse can continue to prevail against the society, which is, you know, unorganized, unarmed, leaderless, and not willing to die en masse.

- I wanna just shift now to the aftermath of the strikes on the nuclear program.

President Trump has indicated, although I don't think we've heard confirmation from the Iranians, that there are going to be talks on the future of the nuclear program, et cetera.

So I wanna play what President Trump said about this when he was at the NATO summit.

- We're going to talk to them next week, with Iran.

We may sign an agreement, I don't know.

To me, I don't think it's that necessary.

I mean, they had a war, they fought, now, they're going back to their world.

I don't care if I have an agreement or not.

- I don't quite get it, do you?

I mean, what does that mean?

"I don't care if I have an agreement."

And you, have you heard anything about maybe talks next week?

- Well, President Trump has said there will be talks next week.

And I think the challenge here is that I don't think President Trump is clear in his head what the precise end game is for him.

So if it's not clear in his head, I don't think anything clear has been articulated to the Iranians.

You know, when I think about President Trump and Ayatollah Khamenei, I'm reminded of that wonderful essay which Isaiah Berlin wrote in 1953, "The Hedgehog and the Fox."

He said, "Essentially, there's two kinds of leaders, two kinds of intellectuals.

There's hedgehogs who really have one big idea, one great passion.

And then there's foxes who do and say many different things."

And Khamenei is this quintessential hedgehog.

He's only going to repeat this ideology of resistance.

And what we've seen from President Trump over the last month alone is, you know, last month, he was in Riyadh, he denounced interventionists, he denounced those were in the business of nation-building.

A month later, he became an interventionist himself.

You know, he even came out one day and advocated for regime change.

Now, he's talking about a deal.

And I think if it's not clear in his head what the end game is, obviously, that hasn't been communicated clearly to Tehran.

And that's a recipe for disaster because, you know, if the Iranians feel, if the takeaway from the Iranian regime at the end of all of this destruction is that their problem wasn't pursuing a nuclear program, it was not pursuing a nuclear weapon more rapidly, then we're going to be in for a real challenge.

If they decide they're not going to allow any access to inspectors, there's no accounting for where their highly enriched uranium is.

And it's imperative that we have a clear sense in Washington what our end game is.

- You know, on that issue, the president, you know, he's literally livid about the preliminary leak of that preliminary intelligence.

And all day, they've been trying to just talk about the process of the bombing and this and that, but they still haven't said what they think actually happened to the centrifuges, to that stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Let's say a lot of it, a significant amount of it was removed and saved before any strikes began.

Do you feel like some that the, you know, the result of all of this could be paradoxically to say to Iran, or Iran says to itself, "I have no more deterrence, I need now to go for a bomb."

- Well, that's you put your finger on it.

That's a real danger.

That the big takeaway from those hardliners around the leader and the Revolutionary Guards is our problem wasn't that we were too radical and had a nuclear program, our problem was we didn't move quick enough to get a nuclear weapon.

The examples of North Korea and Pakistan show that that gives you a cloak of immunity, whereas Libya, Iraq, and Ukraine show that if you don't have that nuclear option, you're vulnerable to external intervention.

- Thank you very much indeed.

It's great to talk to you.

Now, to a party at a pivotal crossroads.

33-year-old progressive Zohran Mamdani stunned the Democratic establishment this week after securing a historic victory in New York City's mayoral primaries.

In a new piece for The Atlantic, Journalist David Graham argues that party leaders are failing to keep pace with the moment as he explains to Michel Martin.

- Thanks, Christiane.

David Graham, thanks so much for talking with us.

- My pleasure.

- So lot of people will remember, maybe they even attended one of those big No Kings marches, protests that happened, you know, all over the country on June 14th.

And if you were thinking about it or maybe part of the coverage, or you attended yourself, you might have thought, "Hmm, where were the Democrats?"

And it turns out that a lot of them were at a very fancy wedding in the Hamptons.

It kind of led to a piece that you wrote for The Atlantic saying, and it's a tough title, I'm just gonna say it, "The Democratic Party Slides Into Irrelevance."

That's kinda tough.

So what makes you say that?

- I think it's a few things.

I mean, one, you had these huge protests, some of the largest protests in American history with millions of people out, showing opposition to the Trump administration.

And although there were elected Democrats involved, this is something that was organized by outside groups and by grassroots groups.

And the Democratic Party itself was kind of on the sidelines.

In fact, while this was going on, they were, as you say, attending the wedding of Alex Soros, whose father is a major Democratic donor, or they were also having splintering of the Democratic National Committee as longtime members were resigning.

- So is the issue that they went to this wedding or is the issue that they really did not have a big role in these massive anti-Trump protests?

- I think it's more the latter.

It's an unfortunate confluence for them.

And it's maybe symbolism more than anything that they weren't skipping.

I don't think that Democratic involvement necessarily would've helped.

I mean, what we see is there is robust opposition to the Trump administration.

It's just not coming from Democrats.

You know, we have Democratic leaders in Congress, who seem a little bit unsure on the message.

And we've had, you know, Hakeem Jeffries saying he doesn't know what they can do.

We don't see a national party leader.

You know, Joe Biden is off the scene.

Kamala Harris is considering a run for Governor of California.

Barack Obama has spoken occasionally recently, but is not a very visible presence.

So it's a party that doesn't seem to have a clear leader and doesn't have a clear agenda, even as opposing Trump is something, I think, is very popular.

- So tell me about that.

I mean, is it unusual for the party out of power to have a visible agenda or a visible leader?

Or is this just normal, if I can use that word?

- I think some of these are the normal result of losing an election.

A party that has lost is going to wanna find out what happened.

It's going to have to sort of go over those things again.

And what's striking to me is that as they've been trying to do that, they're still re-litigating the 2024 election.

And they're also dealing with internal party turmoil.

You might expect the Democratic National Committee to sort of step up and fill that void in the absence of another leader.

And instead, you see them, you know, arguing over whether David Hogg, the 25-year-old anti-gun activist can be a vice chair or should leave.

Whether he's going to lead primary challenges and what the role of the Committee Chair Ken Martin should be.

I think it's true that although you can have a lot of opposition, you can see a widespread grassroots movement, it's hard to turn that into national success if you don't have a party apparatus that works well.

And you know, Democrats say that even as there have been these disagreements, they're raising money, they're preparing a 50-state strategy.

You know, they're getting back on track is what they say.

But you know, we haven't seen a lot of the concrete signs of that, and what we have seen is a lot of infighting.

- What are some of the other data points that suggest to you that the Democratic Party is not just sort of floundering, but they're irrelevant?

What's your evidence that the Democratic Party is irrelevant except, other than the fact that they don't hold either party of Congress and they don't hold the White House, which means they have a harder time getting the attention of the public.

- I think that is a major problem for them.

And you know, you see that in the debate, for example, over the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, where Democrats, you know, had a bid to sort of try to slow things down in the House and were unsuccessful.

In the Senate, they're entirely on the sidelines and don't have a whole lot of role to play at this moment, but you also don't see much of a clear message from Democrats other than, "This isn't something that's good."

You know, you see Democrats succeeding at the state level.

I think that's true, but you don't see a clear message from the national party.

Another example of this is on Iran.

I think it's very hard to understand what the Democratic Party's message on the bombings in Iran is.

Some of them are saying that there should be congressional authorization of force, some of them are opposed, but overall, there's no party message.

Even as you see a robust debate going on inside the Republican Party over whether strikes on Iran were the right choice.

- You know, couple members of the House said this is unconstitutional.

And the president, as he does, immediately called him names and threatened to, you know, run a primary, an opponent against him.

Really, is it, you really call that a robust debate?

Or is it really more of a robust debate among in the base as opposed to the Republican Party?

- I think it's hard to draw lines between the base and between the conservative media establishment, more importantly, and the party because you have these factions inside the conservative media.

Basically, a Fox News faction and an ex-Fox News faction led by Tucker Carlson debating these things.

And when you see the influence that those people have on the administration and on members of Congress, I think that constitutes a debate inside the party.

- Hmm, so let's talk a little bit more about your piece.

One of the data points that you cite is the fact that the party apparatus in the end was in so much turmoil over David Hogg.

Just say a little bit more about who he is and what all the adjective was about.

- Yeah, so David Hogg is an activist.

He famously was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when the shooting occurred there, and he's become a major activist.

And he ran for vice chair of the party at the beginning of this year and won.

And then certainly thereafter announced that he was going to be running primary challenges to Democratic incumbents, which is a highly unusual thing for a leading party officer to do.

Ken Martin, the chair has, you know, tried to dissuade him from that, tried to argue that wasn't something he should do.

And ultimately, what's happened is Hogg was removed from his post over a challenge over whether he'd been elected according to the rules of the party correctly, and he declined to run again.

So he's now gone, but in the meantime, he has taken up a lot of time and a lot of energy.

And in a leaked recording, Ken Martin said he felt like David Hogg's sort of distractions had made it very difficult for him to lead the party and made him question whether he wanted to stay as the chair.

- It was a big deal because why?

One reason that showed that they were so in turmoil over David Hogg, and what else?

What other conclusions did you draw from that whole, you know, episode?

- So I think there's two things.

One is it's a bad sign if a party that is trying to take on a figure as powerful as Trump, with as powerful an apparatus as him, is having a hard time negotiating what to do with a 25-year-old activist with a relatively small amount of money behind him.

That doesn't suggest a party that's able to decide quickly to move decisively into plan.

But also the fallout from that has been a little bit concerning.

So we saw the resignations from the committee of Randi Weingarten, who's the head of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, who's the leader of another powerful union.

And these are people who've been important in the party for a long time.

And they're leaving and criticizing Ken Martin.

And this is a time when the Democratic Party has already been losing labor support, not only among union voters, but also among union leaders.

We saw the Teamsters, for example, declined to endorse in the last election, which was seen as a major victory for Donald Trump.

So if Democrats are losing labor leaders at this moment, that's a problem for them electorally, and it's also a problem in terms of the coffers for the campaign and in terms of the sort of feet on the ground, boots on the ground for running a campaign when it comes around to 2026 and to 2028, - What is your sort of bottom-line analysis of what ails the Democratic Party?

'Cause you know, John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania argues that Democrats have become too precious.

You know, they'll fight with people over whether you drank a single-use plastic water bottle at a public event, and then they fight among themselves over kind of rulesy things, and that they're kinda losing the plot.

But other people feel that that's, you know, that these rules matter, that trying to fight out these issues and is kind of a symbol of what the party stands for.

What do you think?

- I think in some ways, we're just seeing a long-running identity crisis.

And after the 2016 election, Democrats could say that it was a fluke.

And after 2020, they could tell themselves that in fact, Trump was clearly a fluke and that things were back the way they were.

The 2024 election made it very hard for them to believe that anymore.

And they don't know yet what they might look like on the other side.

I mean, I think on some level, Fetterman is right, there is a preciousness to the party.

And it's not necessarily about the issues themselves, but about the way they're expressed.

You don't see leaders who seem able or ready to take bold stances and to simply be interesting.

And it's very hard when the leader of the opposite party is somebody who, more than anything, is very good at grabbing attention.

It's hard to be relevant when you can't get attention.

And that's where Democrats seem to be right now.

- So here's the question I have for you is, could it also be true that the Republican Party is also irrelevant because the main character here is Donald Trump, and the party follows his lead, and that the real issue is figuring out how to deal with him?

- I think that's exactly right.

The Republican Party was sort of in an identity crisis of its own before Trump entered the scene.

He fills that vacuum for now, but he will not be there always.

And I don't think the Republican Party has a good sense of what it will be in a post-Trump moment.

We know some of the people who wanna be there, but really, they've been just coasting on Trump's popularity.

And overall, we've seen decades in which the two party committees have become less and less powerful.

So in that way, what we're seeing now from Democrats and from the Republicans is the kind of the culmination of a long-running process.

- Is this a problem?

I mean, you know, the Constitution doesn't mention political parties, right?

They're an organizing principle.

They're an organizing principle that, you know, arose when, well, there used to be more political parties, more major political parties than there are now.

I guess what's replaced them then?

I guess would it be media organizations, ideologically-driven media organizations?

What's replaced them?

- I think part of it is those ideological media organizations, but the other part is candidates who have a lot more power.

People like Trump who are driven by personality, but also more extreme candidates.

When you have a party committee, it tries and tends to drive people towards the most electable candidates who they think is electable, which tends to be more moderate candidates.

But in an ecosystem where it's ideological media and no strong party organization, it's very easy for a figure like, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene to get a lot of money from grassroots donor and to grab a lot of power.

And I think we can see that in the sort of extremity of and polarization in both parties.

A good party apparatus can help maintain that.

And in the absence of that, we have more polarization, more partisanship, and more of this affective partisanship, where people are driven by opposition to the other party, but not really by any kind of organization around a clear identity or a clear agenda.

- So what reaction did you get to your piece?

I'm sort of dying to know because it can't have landed...

It can't have been, well, it can't have been like, "Wow, I'm so glad somebody wrote that."

Like, so what were some of the things that you heard, especially from, perhaps, some of the people who were in that piece?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, what the Democratic Party said is, "Look, we understand that we are trying to reorganize here.

We think that the David Hogg thing has been a distraction, but we have good fundraising, we're getting on track, we're building for the next election.

Basically, wait and see, we're gonna be there."

I also heard from a lot of people complaining that they, you know, they feel like they are organized.

They are doing things on the ground.

They're making things happen at their local party level.

And I think that's true.

And what I told them is that is all important.

That's especially important for midterm elections, but you cannot win a national election without a national party.

- And so who are they looking to then?

Is it the governors?

They've got a handful of governors that are impressing people, like the Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Maryland, I guess Wes Moore, and I guess Gavin Newsom, he's a two-term Governor of California, can't run again.

He's term limited, I guess.

Is that about about it?

Is that the slate?

- I think there's a lot of excitement about Pete Buttigieg from some quarters too, and then the same hesitations about him that we have seen in the past that he's too young, or he doesn't have a clear political base, or he's too polished.

You know, a lot of these are questions that I think can only be answered by a primary.

And there are clearly a lot of candidates who are not ready to put their name in, but are making all the steps you would take if you were going to run for president.

- I was wondering if your piece provoked people to rethink again or to re-litigate the whole Biden-Harris dynamic because there are people who fault Joe Biden very much for not stepping off the scene sooner, not giving Kamala Harris an opportunity to kind of get herself in a better position.

But there are other people look at that and say, "No, really what they needed to have was a primary."

They needed to have a real primary so that people could kind of fight it out, sharpen their messages, and really kind of galvanize the public.

- Yeah, I have heard a lot of that.

And as you say, I think it's never gone away.

I mean, I think that's symptomatic of part of the problem.

In some ways, there is an accountability issue.

A lot of people in democratic politics vouched for Joe Biden and then quickly changed their mind after that first debate when it became clear he could no longer do the job.

But in some ways, it's a bit of a irrelevant question.

I mean, I can't imagine a situation where the Democrats are running an 80-something-year-old candidate in the same way.

And so while that accountability is important, trying to understand what happened, election has a limited utility because it's a one-off election.

The question is what they're going to do in 2026 or 2028.

- You said it's easier, you said this, "It's easier to diagnose the problem than to solve it," but based on what you've seen and based on your reporting, what are some of the key steps you think that Democrats need to take?

- I think Democrats need to take risks.

They need to take positions that are interesting.

They seem very cautious.

And I think there's a real focus on a moderate-versus-left question.

And I'm not sure that's necessarily the most relevant way to think about it.

It's more important to take a position that's gonna be interesting, that's gonna be against the establishment, whatever that is, and they can grab attention.

And we saw this, for example, in Cory Booker's filibuster on the Senate floor.

That wasn't a particularly moderate or leftist statement, but it was something that grabbed a lot of attention because it was interesting and it was somebody standing up.

That's just not something we've seen from a lot of his peers.

- So before we let you go, as we are speaking now, you know, the Middle East is very much in play.

And so there's a lot of skepticism in the American public right now about, you know, further American involvement, especially from a military, sort of robust military presence kinda standpoint.

So does this offer an opportunity for Democrats to say something to articulate what a lot of Americans think anyway?

Or does it further make them irrelevant?

Because at the end of the day, foreign policy is still the president's call.

- I think that's a choice for them.

I mean, foreign policy is unlikely to be the deciding factor in any election, but it is a chance, like any number of these moments, for them to take a position.

And as you say, this is something that's unpopular on both sides of the aisle.

You know, Democrats are concerned.

Some of them, like Ro Khanna, have been saying that, "Party is seen as the party of war."

There's a chance for them to distance themselves from this to criticize Trump for overreach and to establish themselves as a real alternative.

But so far, I don't see the party as a whole doing that even though there are individual voices who have been speaking up.

- And what about on immigration?

Do Democrats have a coherent message here?

And is that an opportunity or is it yet another sidelined yet again because the president controls this apparatus?

- I think it is an opportunity, and it's a twofold opportunity.

Democrats are still so shell-shocked by the last election, and they're, you know, they believe that they lost partly on immigration, and that's true, but I don't think that means they can't say anything on immigration, or it doesn't mean they have to embrace the president's positions on immigration.

And what we see is that polling shows there's overreach by the Trump administration.

People are in favor of closing the borders, but they're not in favor of the kind of invasive enforcement we've seen.

They're not in favor of sending the National Guard or the Marines to Los Angeles.

This is not what they believe they voted for, and it's not what they like.

So Democrats can speak out against that.

And as what we've seen in the case, for example, of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, if there are violations of the Constitution and violations of court orders, that's not only a matter of politics, that's a matter of what's right.

And Democrats, if they wanna show they're authentic, should stand up for that and say something about it.

So there is a double opportunity there, but you can see them still very nervous about taking anything that might be seen as getting on the wrong side of the American public.

- Any sleeper opportunities that we haven't mentioned?

Is there anything that we haven't talked about so far that you think offers an opportunity for Democrats that we should keep an eye out for?

- Well, I think the bad news for Democrats is they have a hard time driving the news cycle.

And so it's hard to know where things are going, but anything that happens, as we've seen from the No Kings protest, there is a robust opposition to Trump.

Trump will make new things happen.

He does this, you know, every few days.

And each time he does something that's dangerous, unpopular, another chance for Democrats to strike an identity.

- David Graham, thank you so much for speaking with us.

- Thank you.

- And finally, the happiest Emmy win ever.

My team and I are absolutely thrilled and proud that our conversation with World War II legend Jake Larson won a golden trophy last night.

I spoke to the young-at-heart centenarian and D-Day veteran at the American Cemetery in Normandy, France last year, the 80th anniversary of the historic beach landings he took part in that would, of course, turn the tide of that war.

Here's what he told me about what motivated him and his comrades.

You were all kids.

- We were all kids, yes.

- And did you know then what you were fighting for?

- Oh, oh, definitely.

That, we knew, every one of us.

- Tell us.

- Every one of us was prepared to give our life to kick Hitler's ass outta Europe.

- And you did.

- And we did.

- I mean, just amazing.

The biggest winner, of course, from the Emmys, is undoubtedly Larson himself.

He sent us this message when he heard the news.

- It's not only amazing, it's unbelievable!

- [Interviewer] You're seldom speechless.

- How can you even expect to win something like that?

It's phenomenal!

And here I am, a little country boy that joined the infantry at 15 years old.

And I come here now 102, going on 103, and I'm winning something like this.

There is a God, there is a God.

- So thank you, Jake, for your incredible strength, your humility, and your humor, which continues to inspire across generations.

Incidentally, he goes by Papa Jake on TikTok, and he has 1.2 million followers.

And his well-deserved Emmy statue is winging its way to him, hopefully, as we speak.

And that's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/amanpour.

Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

(relaxing music)