Leon Panetta speaks on the U.S.-Iran conflict, regime change dangers with KION’s Scott Rates

MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV) -- This is part two of our interview with former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta about the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. Kion’s Scott Rates spoke one-on-one with Leon Panetta about the dangers of regime change and about the future of Iran’s nuclear program.

SCOTT: We saw the Operation Hammer, Midnight Hammer there. Now the Supreme Leader is coming out saying, "That’s it, no more deals we’re not doing this anymore." What kind of message does that send to other countries? Countries like North Korea, Libya, other countries, even Russia and China? What kind of message does that send when Iran comes out, their Supreme Leader comes out and says, "No, no more deals. We’re not, we’re not dealing with the United States anymore?"

LEON: Well, you know it there are a lot of uncertainties that we’re dealing with now. I was Secretary of Defense, so I really thought that Colon Powell had the right approach when it came to any kind of military action. That number one, you have a very clear objective, that number two, you have a force able to achieve that objective, and number three, you have a clear time for when you get out. That’s the Colin Powell theory, and I believe that.

And I think one of the problems is that there was never a clear objective here on the part of either Israel or the United States as to what would be achieved. Both of them said that ultimately, they were going to try to wipe out Iran's ability to do anything with regard to their nuclear capability. But the problem was that unless you’re really you’re willing to go after a regime change, or you’re willing to put boots on the ground, you were never gonna be able to totally wipe out their ability. And so here we are after 12 days of war, and Iran is essentially saying, "We’re going to move forward, and we’re gonna continue to do what we were doing before." So there’s gonna be a lot of questions raised about just exactly what was achieved after these 12 days of war. 

SCOTT: I'm glad you touched on regime change because I want to talk a little bit about that now. You know, people in Israel and the United States say, "Oh the people of Iran want a regime change." We don't know for sure, necessarily. And now, after the bombings, it could be completely opposite of that actually. In Iraq, we had a regime change. We've seen several regime changes in the Middle East, and to this date, we still have US troops over there because in a lot of cases, it doesn't work or you have civil wars to break out in these countries. How realistic is a regime change right now in Iran?

LEON: It's not very realistic, that's the problem. You know, we've engaged in nation-building in the Middle East for a long time. We fought a long war in Iraq over that issue. We fought a long war in Afghanistan on that issue. The reality is that if you're really serious about regime change, you've got to go in and go after the regime that's there and make sure that they're out of power, period.

But unless you're willing to do that, to put boots on the ground to go to a full-scale war, then the best you can hope for is that you can try to delay Iran's ability to move towards a nuclear weapon for a number of years. I think that's a realistic goal right now. But it's really difficult to say you're going to be able to totally turn Iran into a peaceful and democratic nation without being willing to go to a full-scale war.