Did Lindsey Graham “goad” Trump into this war?

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1:24I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, March 9th. A seventh American has now been confirmed dead. In the war against Iran and President Trump keeps moving the goalposts for work. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, March 9th. A seventh American has now been confirmed dead. The goalposts for when he will declare mission accomplished. The Iranian leadership, as you may have heard, has now named Ayatollahamine Sun as the new supreme leader, which means a new person, but not regime change, right? No more democracy, just as much theocracy. And Trump, who has gone back and forth on whether regime change is a goal or just weakening around stability to build nuclear weapons and rage regional wars, is now saying any new leader, quote, is not going to last long, unquote,

2:28without his approval, according to ABC News, who Trump said that to. Here's Trump's UN ambassador, Mike Walts, kind of backing that up, but maybe also fogging it up again on ABC this week yesterday. He wants to see leadership in Iran that no longer threatens the United States or allies in the region. That isn't attacking civilian airports, ports, shipping terminals, hotels, and lashing out in the way that it is. That can't hold energy supplies hostage in terms of the rest of the world. And certainly, isn't going to continue to do everything that they can to build a nuclear weapon. So it has to be someone that we can deal with. It has to be someone that doesn't threaten Americans, attack Americans, and try to attack us and our allies at any given chance. So that's UN ambassador, Mike Walts,

3:29on ABC yesterday. But is that digging in on regime change or just saying the US will destroy their capabilities enough that no new leader can threaten in the ways Humanae did? In our Brian Larishaw Newsletter this week, we invited you as readers to say why you think the US really went to war against Iran and if you support the war, we asked, of course, because President Trump and his cabinet members have been all over the place in saying why or what their goals are. We got about 90 responses, most opposed to the war. Here's a sampling of your theories as to why we're doing this. One person simply writes, Trump's ego, they were a lot like that. That put it succinctly. Another, because in Iranian, tried to kill Trump, one that came up a lot, in addition to Trump's ego, one person just wrote the Epstein files. We had various versions of that. Another common theme is captured in these responses. One person wrote, Trump wants to be a wartime president, egg-donned by the defense and IT contractors

4:31who profit from war and by Netanyahu, who needs war to maintain his hold on the Knesset. Another like that, add Saudi Arabia, says Trump's megalomaniacal hubris and king aspirations, coupled with undue influence of the Arab states and Netanyahu. And one more with a three-part answer. One, distract from the Epstein files. Two, BB forced the hand of Trump using USA-provided intelligence about Ayatollah's location, very specific and reportedly true. And three, nothing like focusing on an external enemy or rally the base for the midterm elections. One interesting response in support of the war from one of our readers also had a caveat. It said, I support the war, because the Iranian clerics have viciously ruled the country and supported proxies who dominated neighboring countries. But that person added, I oppose Trump's disregard

5:31for Congress's role in going to war. Another two-part thought, this one from an opponent of the war wrote, absolutely against the war, while recognizing that the death of Hamine is to be applauded. So there's a sampling of responses that some of you wrote to our newsletter question. We'll have another newsletter out this Thursday. They come out every Thursday. Now here's another factor in why the US went to war. There wasn't in the newsletter responses, because this reporting is new. The Wall Street Journal has an article today called Graham's quest to sell Trump on striking Iran. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham's quest to sell Trump on striking Iran. It says some Democrats and even Republicans point the finger at Graham who they think goaded Trump into a Middle East conflict with little plan for how the situation will play out long term

6:31that from the Wall Street Journal. And here's the South Carolina Senator on Fox. Arguing for the president to go even further. I am a big admirer of Ronald Reagan, but I'm here to tell you that Donald Trump, in my opinion, is the gold standard for Republicans, may be any president in what it comes to foreign policy. Madura, everybody talked about him? Well, Donald Trump's got him in jail. Cuba's next. They're going to follow this communist dictatorship in Cuba. Their days are numbered. The Iranian regime. The mothership of international terrorism is about to collapse. You get that part tucked in the middle there. Cuba's next. Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox. The Wall Street Journal article says Graham quote, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coaching him. Coaching Netanyahu on how to lobby the president for action. Now, that article was by Wall Street Journal political investigations reporter Josh Dawsey with us now.

7:34Wall Street Journal national political reporter Sabrina Sidiqi, who's been covering the war policy and developments. Hi, Sabrina. Thanks for coming on with us for our listeners, while you're having to cover things simultaneously. Welcome back to WNYC. Good morning. Great to be on with you. So that Lindsey Graham article was by your colleague, Josh Dawsey. What does it tell you about how the president might have decided? This was a series of risks worth taking. Well, I think it's a really fascinating look at how president Trump has been willing to entertain someone like Senator Lindsey Graham, who has long wanted a regime change in Iran. And just more broadly has a much more hawkish, kind of traditional neo-conservative approach to foreign policy. That Trump had in some ways, but at least rhetorically moved the Republican party away from in his first term. And I think what Graham's motivations were here were to try and influence

8:38Trump's thinking away from the more isolationist figures within the MAGA movement. And it really, this article, which I'd encourage people to read, impacts the efforts that Graham went to, not just in terms of his lobbying of Trump to take what is a very risky gambit in his presidency, but also frequently traveling to Israel. And as you said in our article, really coaching even Benjamin Netanyahu on how to proceed in his own efforts to lobby Trump to back military action in Iran and essentially try and ensure that Trump was listening to more of the pro-interventionist wing of the party and not people within the White House who Graham refers to as the non-entanglement crowd. So it's just a really striking look at who had the president's ear in these pivotal moments. I didn't see in the article and tell me if you have anything on this,

9:40how Graham may have coached Netanyahu to convince Trump to go to war was it by telling on these the greatest world leader in human history, Trump likes to hear those things or some other way? You know, I do think that some of the messaging was surely in line with that. Graham, his own messaging to Trump, and I'm sure he urged Netanyahu to echo this, did sort of suggest that you would be the only president who's willing to do this. There are no even Republican presidents have not been willing to go this far. One thing that Graham told my colleague is part of his reporting is that he traveled to Israel several times in recent weeks and met with the country's intelligence agency and suggested that there's really government and intelligence agency told him things that even the U.S. government wouldn't tell him. And so, you know, what he was, I think, what he persuaded Netanyahu to do

10:41was to show President Trump the kind of intelligence that would persuade him to move forward and another interesting tidbit in that piece is that Senator Graham also spoke with the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, to make sure that he was aware of what was happening behind the scenes. The exact quote from Graham was, I went to MBS to say, okay, I think this is going down. So, you know, this is part of Lindsey Graham's long game. He's kind of advocated for military intervention in Iran for a long time. And it looks like he was able to convince Trump that this could be a real legacy defining moment even if it comes with all the risks that the White House is now facing when it comes to the political reaction to the war. Yeah, he's been advocating it for a long time. I should have pulled this clip, but it made me think of way back maybe around 2007,

11:43something like that, when Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain were sort of the big hawks during or two of the biggest hawks during the Bush administration. And McCain got caught on tape, and it didn't help him in his presidential campaign in 2008. Kind of doing a takeoff on the old Beach Boys song, Barbara Ann, but instead of Barbara Ann, McCain was singing, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. And that was embarrassing when they got leaked. But McCain and Graham were on that page even way back then. And it's interesting what you say if Graham was coaching Netanyahu to tell Trump that, hey, no other president, not even other Republican presidents would do this, because that's exactly what we heard coming out of Trump's own mouth on the Saturday morning video, last Saturday morning, where he announced the start of the war, right?

12:43No other president, and he was addressing the Iranian people. No other president would do this for you. I'm doing this for you. So it's interesting if that was a game of telephone from Lindsey Graham's brain to Netanyahu's lips to Trump's lips. And I think that is actually very much what we've seen, right? Is that when it comes to President Trump, a lot of the lobbying that people try to do in order to persuade him to take steps in any kind of direction is to really appeal to his ego, because that's how he talks about himself, right? He has this very self-aggrandizing tone and just attitude more broadly. He's the greatest that everything, all ever, right? So I think that there's just a way of appealing to him in the way that I think Republicans know works. I think they're coming back for a second to the piece about the isolationist within the Mago Wing.

13:46I think that's also just a very interesting part of all this, because there's been this idea, right, that Trump is more of an isolationist, that he's always talked, again, rhetorically, about scaling back U.S. involvement in military conflict overseas. But his actions have not actually necessarily matched the rhetoric. He has been willing to show both in his first term and in the second term right now, sure, to a greater extent in this term where he'd had the raid in Venezuela. We have this war in Iran, they're eyeing Cuba. But in general, President Trump has shown a willingness, and this was true in his first term as well, to use military force when needed and to continue and back U.S. military campaigns in other countries. And I think that that's important, because yes, there are a lot of prominent right wing influencers who are criticizing the President over Iran and who disagree with his decision

14:47to take military action in the region. But Republicans give him a lot of latitude on these issues. And so because of this way in which he projects, he tries to project strength. He tries to frame this as an act of showing that America is still tough, that America is still leader on the world stage. You actually still see strong support from Republicans when it comes to the President's decision to go to war in Iran. The reason the polls, yes, most polls are showing that a majority of Americans oppose the war, at least the initial polls. But the reason it's fairly split and why it's not an overwhelming majority that's against the war is because Republicans are driving up the numbers of those who favor what the President is doing. So I think while a lot of people have focused on the split from some of the more prominent mega influencers, or between the more prominent mega influencers in Trump over Iran, it's also true that Republicans are willing to give the President a lot of leeway

15:50when it comes to foreign policy and national security. And so I think that you're not seeing a significant break up when it comes to Trump and his base in the actual numbers so far, how long this continues? And if it spirals out of control, that's something that could absolutely change the equation. Some of the things coming in and text messages from our listeners. One has another theory about why Trump might have launched this war, provoke terrorism to justify election interference. I guess they mean some kind of state of emergency declaration. Another listener who's more supportive writes, isn't it smart for the U.S. to fight Russia in a proxy war? Fight Russia in a proxy war? By removing Iran's weaponry that it was selling to Putin to kill Ukrainians. And actually that's another angle of the last few days, or something related to that, is that Putin has been giving Iran intelligence about the location of American targets in the Gulf.

16:56Have you seen that one, Sabrina? Because Trump is perpetually soft on Putin. But now if Putin is giving Iran intelligence on where to find American targets and destroy American things, possibly kill American people, does that drive a wedge between them in any meaningful way? I think it could. It is true based on the reports that Russia is providing Iran with information that would help them target and attack U.S. forces in the Middle East. And it's yet another sign that there's another U.S. adversary that is taking part, even if indirectly in this war. And it also shows the ways in which this conflict is very quickly expanding, given Russia is, of course, one of America's main competitors, nuclear-armed competitors,

17:59and has very extensive capabilities when it comes to intelligence. So I think what's interesting about Trump and Putin is that in President Trump's first term, he was, as we all know, famously very friendly with Putin. And you know, you stood next to him in Helsinki and took Putin's side on the question of whether or not Russia had meddled in the 2016 election over the findings of the U.S. government. And he was willing to give Putin a lot of leeway in his first term. In the second term, it's been a little bit different because I think as we were talking about President Trump and legacy building and his focus on foreign policy in the second term, the President and his administration have also been pursuing an end to the war in Ukraine and been very extensively engaged in peace talks. And there has been a slightly tougher approach that Trump has taken toward Putin as part of those peace talks.

19:05He has grown very frustrated with Putin. So I think this could add to that frustration without question. I would say it's not exactly the same relationship it was in President Trump's first term. And in President Trump's second term, where he's very eager to have been able to strike a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and his patience with Putin was already waning on that front. This is something that I think would drive even more of a wedge between Trump and Putin. I'm not so sure about patience was waning on that front. I mean, he went to war against Iran, which really was no immediate threat to the United States. Everybody says, even if it was an ongoing threat to some other countries in that region, talking about going to war against Cuba, which is not any kind of threat to the United States, but people are dying by the tens or hundreds of thousands in Ukraine. And Trump keeps kicking the can down the road and not really doing much to actually pressure Putin.

20:11He denounces Zelensky as much as he denounces Putin and all of that. But that's really for another show. I want to touch one more thing before you go. And it is about civilian infrastructure, because another major issue, and I know you've been covering it, is the widening of the war in various ways, how it's involving the Gulf Arab states generally, how both sides are now hitting civilian infrastructure, like water desalination plants and oil refineries. It even brings us back to Lindsey Graham, oddly enough, who, despite being such a hawk, who, as the Wall Street Journal reporting today, indicates, goaded the article's word, goaded Trump into this war. He now tweeted a warning to Israel, who, of course, Lindsey Graham considers an ally, to be careful what they hit, because they've been hitting oil refineries. That Graham says the Iranians will need, after regime change, to rebuild their country and rebuild their economy.

21:17Both sides now hitting desalination plants in one country or another that could lead to fresh drinking water, shortages, both in Iran and in some of the Gulf states. And you reported before the weekend that foreign ministers of the Arab League were planning an emergency meeting for Sunday to discuss Iran's attack on several countries in the region, meeting requested by Saudi Arabia, according to Arab officials, you quoted. Do you know if that meeting happened? That meeting was held on Sunday, as you said, and there were a couple of readouts, and it didn't give a whole lot of information beyond saying that the meeting discussed the Iranian attacks and territorial integrity of several Arab countries. And the serious risks that this conflict poses to the security and stability of Arab states and the region more broadly.

22:25But I think to just to your broader point in the run up there, this has really already inflamed a lot of old tensions. Saudi Arabia and Iran have long been engaged in this proxy war. And now you're seeing this escalation in tensions, the U.S. urging Americans to leave Saudi Arabia. And importantly, because we were talking about the regime change question, if the American military effort does not actually end in regime change, if it does not actually change anything about Iran's behavior, then there is a lot of concern among countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar and others that they would, in essence, have to then live with the consequences of this war

23:27and what would most likely be a wounded but also resentful Iran, given the whole of the other. For example, and revengeful to go to the war begins. So in many ways, it's just underscores the enduring risks that a lot of countries in the Gulf have felt for some time. And that is why they had actually, for a long time, tried to pursue a strategy of reproachment. And of course, now the U.S. has pulled everyone in another direction. Sabrina Saddiki, National Political Reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for giving us this much time today. Thank you so much. Great to be with you. Brian Lairr, a daily politics podcast, is an excerpt from my Live Daily Radio Show, the Brian Lair Show on WNYC Radio, 10 a.m. to noon Eastern Time, if you want to listen live at WNYC.org.

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