Iran Out Of Time

0:00I'm RJ Decker, the private investigator, uncovering the sunshine state's darkest secrets. Tuesdays, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. RJ freaking Decker has that live-embrie. He's a private eye. It's an upstandard murder. Some bigger. And a public mess. Trying to get some back to prison today? You're going to prison one time, and suddenly it's all the jokes. RJ Decker, series premiere. Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu. Music Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast. Today is Monday, March 2nd, 2026. And I'm laughing because this is our third effort to start the show

1:03because twice before I said that it was March 3rd. So I am amused that this simple matter of counting as Biammi. Maybe that's because we did two emergency podcasts this weekend with the start of the war. And so I'm there for, you know, I'm living in a perpetual past, present, future, and can't get the dates right. This is not a problem for my co-panelists here. Executive Editor Abe Greenwald. Hi Abe. Hi John. Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi Seth. Hi John. And don't worry, we're all still writing March 3rd on our checks. There we go. Don't let's not get into the checks thing again. We already had a whole podcast that jumped off you making a joke about checks. And also, of course, social commentary columnist Christine Rose of high Christine. Hi John. I was going to make a joke about you all abusing our emergency podcast powers, but I'll just let that one go. I mean, we need to go to Congress to authorize the emergency podcast.

2:05We're two podcasts. I mean, you know, we, you know, the war power is 60 days. 60 days. That's right. Okay. Yeah. To be fully authorized. Okay. So this morning, about an hour before we started recording this, Pete Hegseth and General Cain, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave a joint, press conference, a lot of whining over the weekend about how we weren't getting enough information out of the administration, which is funny because it's like we live in this hyped up 24 hour, you know, like 360 second, 60 minute, 24 hour, you know, like if we don't hear from them every five minutes, it's like they're not telling us what's going on to be fair to Secretary Hegseth and to General Cain, they're running a war. So like give them a break. They, so they did their initial briefing this morning.

3:10And it was very illuminative and instructive. And I want to just go through some of the things that we heard. Pretty much from General Cain, Hegseth started and did a lot of rarer stuff and, you know, attacking previous administrations for not being as brave as we are and all of that. And we can sort of put that to one side. Here are the things that we learned from General Cain. So the General Schwartzkopf of this war, the guy who seems to be running the war, is Admiral Brad Cooper. He is the, he is the, this is his joint command. He is overseeing it along with Fleetmaster Chief Compton, General Pat Frank, who is running sort of the counter missile and counter drone activities. Kurt Renshaw, who is leading the fight against the Iranian Navy and Air Force lieutenants. So the Air Force leader, leader of the Air Force leading figure Derek France,

4:11who is as General Cain said, crushing Iranian targets from the air. The space command, the U.S. cyber command, both heavily involved, particularly at the very beginning of the war or in the hour just before the everything went active in order to disrupt the command control communications capabilities of the Iranians. And what we learned is, I think effectively, that it was a month ago at the very beginning of February, that the command was given to get everything in place to strike. So he said, over the last 30 days, moved our forces to, quote, reinforce deterrents and provide Americans with credible options. And the joint force began to move, to be postured, protected, and ready to respond thousands of service members, hundreds of fighters,

5:14dozens of fueling tankers. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which was elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, redeployed across the Atlantic to set the theater. They took a deep breath and began planning to conduct operations. And then, uniquely, in my experience of these sorts of briefings from Schwartzkopf, and from Powell, and from others, over the last 35 years, he highlighted the work of reservists, the Wisconsin Army National Guard and Air National Guard units, including Vermont and Virginia, said that it was their job to fly F-35s to the region to put them in place, that the reservists here played an active role in preparing and making ready. And he said, he wanted to shout out, the unsung heroes of warfare are logisticians and sustainment force, who are sitting in control room somewhere, watching everything, making sure that, you know, material is being deployed

6:17in the right place, you know, sort of like a kind of supply chain logistics thing. And then he said, at 1538, on Friday, the 27th of February, Sencom received the final go order from Trump. In the region, every element made their final preparations. Operational security was paramount as we sought to maintain and surprise and maintain the element of surprise. That was when cybercom and spacecom started layering non-kinetic effects on to blind Iran and at 115 local, 945 Iran time, the skies surged to light. He said more than 100 fighters, drones, moved synchronously, first Tomahawk missiles closed in on Iranian naval forces, on the ground, precision standoff weapons, a massive overwhelming attack, striking more than 1,000 targets in 24 hours.

7:18And the point that he was trying to make, not only sort of, it wasn't just to be self-congratulatory was, we have spent years learning how to integrate our forces, Air Force Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, reservists, spacecom, cybercom, all of this, working painstakingly, training with allies, not only Israel, but the UAE and others, and all of this training, all of this work, all of this preparedness came together when it needed to come together in what he clearly believes was 57 hours of an extraordinarily successful initial effort to achieve the goals of this military action against Iran. I found it listening to him, as is true when you like here, an extremely assured, extremely competent person laying out what is going on.

8:19I found it very reassuring, comforting he wanted people to understand. He said, I wish that the American people could hear what it sounds like on the voice communications, as I have from these joint communication centers, as they are transmitting messages across all of these different divisions of our military and elsewhere, how they remain calm and cool as they execute. So professionalism, he said they were steady, frosty, calm, and focused. Our service members are trained, disciplined, and determined. And so, if you, you know, this, what he was conveying was the sense that they know what they're doing, they know what they're doing logistically, they know what they're doing tactically, they are achieving unprecedented levels of success in a mission like this,

9:23which is unlike any other mission that we have actually undertaken. And we got an answer, by the way, to the question which has been raised over the weekend about who hit Hamanay, because there were two different stories going around. The initial story was that the Israelis hit Hamanay, and then Trump said, I got him. And then there were other stories about how actually the Americans hit Hamanay and, in fact, Hegseth confirmed that it was Israel and said they did a great job. And Hegseth was full of praise for Israel, contrasting Israel with other allies whom he was relatively contemptuous of. I assume he is referring to Keir Starmer, whose behavior over the weekend as he desperately attempts to keep his weird labor party coalition together so much of which depends on Muslim support inside, inside Great Britain,

10:27that he was in constant, weird, weak, then finally agreed to participate in some fashion. So if you get a chance to listen to General Keynes briefing, which I think you can go to C-SPAN and find it, or I'm sure it's on YouTube, you should do so Hegseth's behavior was a slightly different matter. So that's where we are this morning with a real sense of, he said we have control of the skies, and that we are broadening our targets and that what his job and the job of the military now, and Hegseth said this too, is to present the president with as many options and to make sure that we know as much as we can to know where we need to go next to achieve our goal, which is they are not saying that the goal is regime change. They continue not to say that the goal is regime change.

11:29In fact, Hegseth attacked the idea of regime change. But what they have said and what they said on background yesterday and what they're saying this morning is that all Iranian military capacity, all conventional Iranian military capacity, is a cover for the nuclear program and that one of the reasons that it was necessary to go to war was that as we sat there trying to figure out what our options were, Iran was sitting there with conventional weapons, those are the ballistic missiles in particular, but that the entire ballistic missile program, which could then be deployed as a conventional strike force, is really there in the end to be ready to deliver nuclear material if and when they get to the point that they can have nuclear materials. So there is no division between the conventional build-up of Iranian weaponry

12:32and the nuclear program of Iran. And so this argument that this was a war of choice, that we didn't have to do it, and there was no imminent threat. As it happens, there was an imminent threat to our forces gathered in the Middle East. If we're steaming in and we're just going to sit there, we could be sitting ducks if we don't go first, which is part, which I think was part of the motivation for going along with the fact that they heard that everybody was gathering in that one side and that Israel could hit that one side and take and decapitate the leadership. So that's my summary of what we learned this morning. Eczema, as unpredictable. But you can flare less with Eczema. A once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe Eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and ten people taking Eczema, achieved itch relief and glare are almost glare skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more glare at one year with monthly dosing.

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14:34that I think the American people still have and that will... I assume will be answered in due course by the administration, particularly because Trump, as we know, has issued these two videos but hasn't yet really faced one-on-one with the media answering questions. As many of our listeners know, I'm not a super fan of Pete Hegseth by any means, but I think one thing he did this morning that was really useful and helpful and I'd like to see everyone in the administration continue to do this is push back on the idea that this was a war of choice by Trump. Trump's war is how it's all being described in mainstream media outlets. He correctly said, there's a whole history. This is an ongoing conflict that we have had with Iran. He listed many of the times when Iran has murdered our civilians, murdered our soldiers and I think it's important to keep that context always in front of any discussion of what is coming next. Because right now we've had some mixed signals. You're right that Hegseth said it's not a regime change war, but the regime has surely changed.

15:35Trump over the weekend is sort of saying things like, well, we don't... they're bad guys, we want them out. But the Iranian people will rise up and take their country back very vague and then the question of how long it will last. We've heard four or five weeks, we've heard lots of different things. That's completely normal in a circumstance like this. I understand that, but it is very crucial for this administration to start communicating sooner rather than later about some of their own goals as they come into more clarity for the administrators and their war planners. But I will commend Hegseth for that. I also think we need to spend a moment saying we... I mean, we're certainly sharing in the sad news that we've already lost a few American service members and General Cain's acknowledgement that we will likely lose more. This is a war, people are going to die. I think that also has to be something that Americans are prepared for because that is not the normal situation for us in this country. Thank God.

16:35But this is something where that question has to be answered by the administration. I think Trump will probably be pretty good at that. And he has a publicly available media thing this afternoon. We'll see if he takes questions on those. And I'm also... I wasn't here over the weekend to share in the emergency podcast, but I'm just... I'm so happy for the Iranian people who have... Although in a very difficult situation right now have this opportunity to have been liberated from a see a critic regime, particularly Iranian women who have been repressed by this regime for so long. So there's a lot of... I hope hopefulness in some of the remarks that Trump will make when he does engage the American people again on this question. Yeah, I mean, I think part of what we're seeing also is that there are so many reasons to hit back at Iran that people who are... When we're concerned, we're hearing conflicted justifications for the attacks. It's not really that we're hearing conflicting justifications.

17:37We're hearing different ones that are all valid, right? I mean, that I think is... There's no question that Iran poses a threat to American troops in the region. Last year, their proxy killed three two American service members two in Jordan. I think you're right. It was three. It was three. I thought of it. So, you know, that's a recent thing that their proxies, you know, during a war against Israel, their proxies also targeted and killed Americans on a base in Jordan. There isn't really a question that that's a threat. There isn't a question that they want nuclear weapons because they keep saying, no, you could give us all the free nuclear fuel and whatever else we... You know, we offered them everything and that they could possibly need for civilian purposes. We offered them to have the energy and the fuel without having to even refine it and make it. I mean, we basically just offered to spoon feed them, you know, whatever they wanted.

18:39And they said, no, we were going to... So, we know that they're building a nuclear... We know that they want nuclear weapons. And then the third one was the proxies. Again, all of this, the Americans that Iran's proxies killed last year, that's two different categories. One of it is Iran is a threat to Americans in the region. And two, Iran's proxies have to be reigned in and have to be stopped because they're killing people. They're killing innocent people. They're killing Americans are obviously killing Israelis. And so, you know, what I think we're seeing is that like, what's the first one that comes to mind when you ask somebody why we're attacking Iran now? You get like the first thing that comes to their mind, but they could list all these different things. And it's not too concerning to me to hear one member of the government say, we don't trust what they're doing on their nuclear program. And a different member of the same administration say, well, they won't rein in their proxies and there are threats to American troops in the region.

19:42You know, what's come to mind for me as this whole war has unfolded, is this idea that, you know, people like us have been saying for a very long time, but it makes it so crystal clear that there has long been in place this kind of absurdity to our posture for decades that we even let Iran get anywhere near to this point in terms of its regional power, in terms of its arms build up, in terms of its saber rattling, in terms of its expanding its power beyond the region, in terms of its going unavanged. Our American deaths at Iranian hands have been gone unavanged for decades. So it seems like a sort of cosmic, not even cosmic, a real world writing of just this crazy thing that we let get out of hand with our fingers crossed

20:49and a bunch of band-aids, you know, 50 years worth of band-aids. Yeah, I'm a pet owner, probably like you, didn't want to be, got a dog during COVID. And of course, now I love the dog, bring the dog to the office, we'll do anything for the dog. And so here's a quick message from today's sponsor, the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. These days, we ensure just about everything, cars that lose value, the second we drive them, phones, we trade in every two years, trips, we haven't even taken yet. But our pets often go unprotected. Well, with ASPCA Pet Health Insurance, you can get help with unexpected vet bills and make sure your dog or cat gets the care they need when they need it. The ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program offers customizable accident and illness plans making it easier to get your pet the care they may need. It's been around for almost 20 years and it's covered nearly 1 million pets in that time. So to explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com slash commentary.

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23:57I mean, the point I think that is important about this 47 year conflict between Iran and the United States is that we there. If you want what would the plural look? Is it would it be Cassie Belli? Like, you know, if you want Cassus Belli to explain the justification for a war, right? The cause of war, the reason that a war takes place. There have been 20 legitimate individual Cassus Belli. Iran has been responsible for that we could have justly according to any understanding of just war have launched a war to fight against not only the taking of the hostages, which was the original, but attacks on our people in Iraq in the in the 2000s direct direct uses of Iranian proxies and and probably regular

25:06Iranian forces inside Iraq to kill American soldiers. I think our count is that 600 Americans died directly at the hands of Iran during the war in Iraq. Remember, the entire war in Iraq was 4,400 casualties. So we're again playing commentary bath here. But that's like, you know, a seventh to an eighth of the casualties in Iraq directly caused or deaths in Iraq directly caused by Iran. And various other incidents, the also the Beirut barracks bombing, which was done by Hezbollah. And in Iraq, they got Iranian material also. So you had non Iranian militias killing American troops with IEDs that they got from Iran. So over and over and over again, they attacked us and we did not respond. But, you know, is there like a statute of limitations?

26:09Is that what would sort of be it's like, well, if you don't do it immediately, it doesn't count. The point here is that Iran as a destabilizing force kicked into high gear on October 7th, 2023. Now, they did not directly attack us. They attacked an ally of ours. But on seven fronts, Iran went to war with Israel on seven fronts. In an effort to, where Israel had to go to war with Iran on seven fronts, maybe another way to put it. But had Israel not prevailed, Iran would have restructured the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. Very much in its own favor in a way that would have been a direct threat to us. I mean, without question, you know, they would have then had dominant, not only sort of reestablished their domination of most of Lebanon, solidify their position in Syria, strengthen their position vis-à-vis the Gulf states that are worried about them, meaning Saudi Arabia and others.

27:18Weakened Israel, strengthened Hamas, and strengthened Yemen. And so that was a direct threat to the United States. Israel dealt with it, and we then dealt with it with Israel by doing Operation Midnight Hammer. And as I think Brett Steven said in his piece, but a couple of other people have said, after Operation Midnight Hammer, the Iranians could have said, okay, we're done. We're not going to reconstit- our ballistic missiles, we're not going to try to reconstit- our nuclear program. We're done, we're licked. You know what, this has been a stupid 20-year effort at nothing, cost us, you know, untold billions of dollars. All of our scientists have been murdered, we've been penetrated, like no country has ever been penetrated by enemy intelligence services. You know what, Genug, we're- okay, we're going to move on. And they didn't. They started buying material from- they're saying importing things from China, buying material from North Korea,

28:25maybe taking stuff in from Russia, and just go- like just, okay, we're up again. And that's a- if you think about it, they didn't have to do that. Like maybe they thought they would have to do it because like Saddam Hussein, they would think that if the Iranian people knew that they were no longer, you know, aggressively pursuing this aim, that that would be the moment at which they would look so weak that the Iranian people would rise up to take them down. But again, counter history, weird. They say, okay, we're done. And then America goes, okay, well, we're- we see you're done. We see you're like, decommissioning all of these planes, everyone's going home and all that. We'll relax some sanctions, you know, we have these like high percentions on you that are all based on this. You stop doing it. And then in December of 2025, the real isn't worth a zero dot, isn't- doesn't go to worthlessness.

29:29It runs in a perfectly fine place financially or not fine, but you know, it's not- and then there isn't an uprising. And then all of this clock doesn't start ticking. I mean, he brought this on themselves. They could have- they could have accepted and acknowledged that their nuclear program and their ballistic missile program was- was something that we viewed as an act of threat and that they should stand down. And they didn't stand down. This- this gets to a- a bigger, larger point and it gets to a topic that no one likes to talk about anymore because then we start throwing around labeled neocon and this and that. The truth is I don't want to share the planet with terrorist regimes. Not merely because they do bad things to other people and that may or may not affect us and maybe it's none of our business and all that.

30:30There is a much more practical aspect to why we should not tolerate terrorist regimes. They don't recognize lanes. You cannot expect them to stay in their lane. Their mission is to obliterate lanes. They are terrorist regimes for a reason, which is that they are trying to break down the system of which we are apart. And if you let that go or if you try to give it a little bit here, take a little bit there, I'm going to over time the problem inevitably metastasizes. And that is what we're looking at. And I'm sorry, you can call it conservatism, you can call whatever you want. It's just a simple fact of history that that is what has got us where we are today.

31:38So let's talk about this question of whether or not this is a war for regime change or not a war for regime change because I remain puzzled by an hexath began. The morning by saying, you know, we're not stupid like other president. We're not going around with open-ended missions of nation building and regime change. You know, Donald Trump is smarter than that and he has other things in his quiver. So I was trying to recreate in my head how regime change became the term of art here to describe our mission after the collapse of the Soviets and the Cold War. We had never this was not a term that was in use. We were not ever before like we were not looking to change to do regime change.

32:38So why was this the term? And I think oddly it was an effort though it now means the opposite to many people at modesty. That is to say we were going into war with a rock in particular with Afghanistan but our purpose was not to defeat the nation of a rock or to defeat the nation of Afghanistan. We Bush said it about Afghanistan and said it about our beef was not with the people. Our beef was with the tyrannical leaders who were oppressing the people and doing bad things to us. So if we go to war with them all we're trying to do is remove the bad guys who threaten us and then you get your country back and we'll give you a hand. When it comes to what happens after we'll help you establish a system of elections will bring in NGOs to help run those elections since you haven't had them in a long time.

33:49Or we can use your local traditions like loya jerga tribal meetings and things like that to try to reconstruct this we don't have a beef with you. Iraqis we don't have a beef with you Afghanis in fact we'd like to help you because we understand what monster you're we have had to deal with the monstrousness of your regimes you're living with it we're going to help you it was an effort at a kind of. You know we don't have to go in and do what we did to Nazi Germany and to imperial Japan and obliterate those break the backs and wills and spirits of the entire country so that they knew they could not get off the floor and try to get off the floor or try to establish counter insurgencies or whatever right that wasn't what we were up to. So in a weird way they're way more hawkish.

34:49Trump and hegseth and these guys are way more hawkish. This is well but this is interesting because one of the one of the mistakes I think looking back on some of the both the first and the second goal for conflicts and then Afghanistan slightly separately but. That inability to kind of understand just how long and punishing we needed to be to get to the point where the people would be able to create their own more functioning way of life and government we miscalculated on a lot of those and I think what what's interesting about this conflict is looking at after the first several thousand targets that US and Israel have struck in Iran. Look at the targets they're doing in the last twenty four thirty six hours these are smaller security areas in the country many of them along the borders of Iran and these are the places where the most punishing security forces who keep the population in line the people who were shooting at protesters the ones who were in regional areas trying to quell these uprisings we are striking those now quite vigorously and intentionally and I think that is a sign of I hope a lesson learned from previous conflicts.

35:58Where you can't just take out the guy at the top and one or two of his henchmen because there's this entire superstructure in in countries like Iran of enforcement and some of its quite localized but it reports to the top but you do have to take out those units as well because if you're going to rebuild and this is another question I think Americans should be asking who will be leading Iran in the near future and in in the long term. You have to take those people out and we were unsuccessful in doing that in some of our previous conflicts we stopped too soon we withdrew too soon and there's lots of arguments about that over the years we've all had but I think in Iran I hope to see that lesson continue to be pursued because the people of Iran will have no choice and have no options if those if that level of security state intervention and they are armed and they are perhaps willing to shift their loyalty to someone new if they're willing to continue to enforce the theocratic regimes vision for what Iran should be in the region then we're going to be right back where we started I just want to say I think there's something kind of silly about or that's exposed that silly about this this regime change knock you know because everyone's no regime change no regime change unless you go to war with another country for a piece of land

37:25like the Azerbaijan and Armenia or or or or to capture the entire country like Putin and going into Ukraine. Every other war is a regime change war in the sense that if you have a problem with another state power you're not going to go to war. You're fighting to change that regime either either in personnel or when you're done it's a different regime we could be the same people but it's not acting as the same regime that is the point of an actual war with another country unless I said unless it's about land. That is that is what that is the end goal of of fighting your enemy I mean you don't you don't you don't want to end the fight with the same enemy in place so it is by definition regime change that you're looking for.

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39:55If you're paying with Shopify and their purple shop pay button sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash commentary go to shopify.com slash commentary that shopify.com slash commentary. The all new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota with a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The new RAV4 come standard as a hybrid providing smooth efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys enjoy the legendary reliability Toyota is known for in the all new 2026 RAV4 learn and shop more at toyota.com Toyota let's go places. Basically I mean if you look at the literature on this is basically not the brain political science but it's the only way wars have ended right. It's not it's not even just the goal of the war it's the only way wars end if you look throughout history the way to when end a war is to change regime and get a more

41:02more client regime in place that is willing to play by the rules that you want them to play by now you can argue you know whether that's right or not blah blah blah. The point is that that's how wars end and that in the real world that that's how wars end and so the forever war argument against regime change runs into a problem because the truth is that we're getting forever wars because we don't change the regime and that's how you usually end the war that's very important. I mean I'm sorry the whole history of Iran the Shah instantly we have in the past exercise that power in ways that have ended badly perhaps not the goal but we have often put our weight behind regimes that we've you know held up. I think that a little bit in Iran too and the people turned against that that well I don't think that's right about Iran but I do think for example that we did weird things in the in you know in the early days of our conflict in Vietnam you know we

42:05interceded to remove DM and in 63 and change the government in Vietnam to one because we didn't think that they were in the right frame to do what we needed to do that was clearly a catastrophic error but that was regime change in pursuit of a that was a friendly that we were on they were on our we were on their side and then we wanted to do regime show we've had we've had that like we worked to change the political culture in El Salvador while we were helping El Salvador fight fight the communist rebels in El Salvador successfully as it happens so there is regime there have been regime changes often friendly the other sometimes it works sometimes it's it's really bad the United States is unique probably in world history in that almost all wars are fought for you know like two or three different reasons right either seizure of land because of because that's what you do you want to you want to glorify yourself and make your country bigger and grander and dominate your neighbors and that's you know what that's Alexander the great you know like you go out in order that's that's that's your purpose or you want resources you want to take somebody somebody's got something you want you want to take it from them because it's valuable

43:27either you know let's root to the sea for trading and in the in the 90 as the industrial revolution progressed getting hold of raw materials that are necessary for the creation of the modern industrial state we in the last 40 years have been fighting wars in a totally unique fashion you know we go into we got we staged this massive war against Iran Iraq in 1990 for the purpose of pushing Iraq out of a third country that it had invaded which was great but then we stopped because we had defined the war as Saddam Hussein needs to be out of Kuwait we didn't say as Seth which is why that war ended up being a failure long term obviously since we had to go in we went in 12 years later we didn't say well because he did this he's got to go because if we let him stay there he'll do a lot of other bad stuff he's a bad actor he's been a bad actor for 20 years he started a war with Iran you know like we're not just sending in 500,000 people to fight in the Gulf to take out

44:43to remove him from Kuwait and then and then Colin Powell says to George Bush we should stop now because then we're just going to you know like get everybody mad or something like that you know so that's like the original the original sin in some ways was not doing what Seth says which is the obvious logic is we just had to go fight a gigantic war do this something we didn't want to do and the person who was responsible for it can't be left standing it's crazy if you go back and think about it what 47 countries go to war to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and then Saddam Hussein is still in power 12 years later what the hell was that about that's not rational because we are not imperial power despite what everybody thinks because we were so worried that that would look like imperialism that we stopped and then we're like oh yeah it's okay go kill the Kurds as they try to rise up against you

45:55we're going to let you fly your helicopters because you say you need to get around so then you'll just you know kill thousands of Kurds that was our contribution to the good working order of the world after we had succeeded in this mission to get him out of Kuwait so you know we didn't pursue regime change there ruinously had to go back and similarly we only we've never gone into Afghanistan in a million years except that they hosted Al Qaeda on their territory and that's the other reason you go to war which is you have to go to war to revenge an injury that has done you or to and revenge I use the word revenge honestly like for some reason people think revenge is bad I don't think revenge is bad you know we say in Judaism when somebody is murdered make God make God avenge their blood like you don't treat a murder as though it is the same as a natural death and you don't treat and you know an aggressive act of war against you or you know murder of thousands of your people as though it is something for which you know you should mourn and then feel sorry and think that the people who did it should ask for forgiveness

47:10so there's revenge but then you want to then do something more you know useful or like better for the world so you you have to go in you have to take out the Taliban and then the question is what what what follows that and as Charlie Wilson I quoted yesterday as Charlie Wilson representative Charlie Wilson said we did great and then we f'd up the end game because we went in we helped them we set up elections we did this we did that and then we took our eye off the ball and we kind of left and then the Taliban so are we constantly themselves and then at the end of the decade we had to go back in with 150,000 people to try to get Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban and then we we were in this war of attrition for another decade until Biden made the catastrophic error to pull us out thus leading Putin to believe that he had a green light to go into Ukraine and that that that's the 2020s turned into the what the 2020s turned into

48:10Well and we are we are projecting forward a lot because right now I think Trump is going to do fine doing what he's done so far which is saying you know I think he told CNN this morning like beating the crap out of him knew a wave is coming and he can he can talk about the ongoing attacks and hits and what what we're achieving strategically but very soon he's going to have to speak to the domestic impact of this Americans are usually going to be pretty tolerant for a few days or weeks about that but then you know oil prices are going to probably increase already have started increasing you have questions about whether whether and how many troops will be in the region they have announced that they're sending more troops to the region and they're KG on you know troops on the ground versus you know support troops so those are completely legitimate questions for the American people to have of this administration and that's where I think it's been interesting to see how much control over the public messaging they've had over Trump for the last few days

49:11but he will have to talk about that he will have to say these are our goals when we reach these goals this will be will consider this a victory we're doing this this and this and we can expect you know some loss of life we can expect some turmoil in the markets the stock market is down so all of these are issues that come up in any conflict that we start to pursue but he has to be a good spokesman in these times this is literally the president's role as commander in chief is not just to lead this extensive strategic mission with our allies but to talk to the American people about what he's doing and why I want to point out one other interesting thing that Kane said that speaks to a different political issue that people have been raising it seems to me a disingenuous thing I mean I believe it constitutionally but I don't believe in the in the serious sense of purpose of the people who are making the claim that Trump needed to go to Congress for an authorization of this effort he should have gone to Congress either gotten a declaration of war or some version of the authorization for the US military force like we did with Iraq

50:18Kane if I can find the quote because I stupidly close this file Kane basically said that they needed to maintain operational security paramount as we sought to maintain and protect the element of surprise so here's the question I want to ask you while people say should have gone to Congress and you know Josh Shapiro said he should have gone to Congress and David French said he should have gone to Congress and and in McCarthy said he would have preferred that he went to Congress and you know did all these you know centers they should have gone to Congress okay imagine he goes to Congress are we maintaining operational security and surprise well and he did go he briefed the leadership both Democrats and Republican in Congress they were briefed before this event it's not as if they were caught you know by surprise

51:18they were literally literally if we are with true with forces in the region then Trump says high Congress please vote on an authorization of military you know do it now do whatever and this was the point that was made in this background briefing that which is extensively detailed in Axios by Mark Caputo and Barack Reved that if you go to Congress like they have all these ballistic missiles and our ships are sitting there and our bases are sitting there and the Israelis are saying and we're not moving so in a circumstance like this you want to move first to take out the offensive material that might hit you once you know that a war is starting if we had a two week period in which we had a national debate over whether or not to undertake this mission a national debate which is what essentially people are trying to use as a cover

52:25for their keeping themselves at arms length from saying whether or not they support what we're doing that is jeopardized as the safety of American forces worldwide and the ones in the theater from surprise Iranian attack number one and number two and let's now talk tochless like you seriously expect that it wouldn't leak out of a meeting if there was like a big briefing of the Senate or of the house of what's going on and what we might do I don't trust those guys I don't know if we were in a better position and this weren't the world that we live in right now they wouldn't but you think Elizabeth Warren wouldn't go out and tell everybody what was being planned or Chris Van Hollen or some of you like that they can be allowed to know our secret the office of legal counsel in previous conflicts has given a lot of thought to the legality of these sorts of strikes

53:30my colleague Jack Oldsmith at AI writes about this a lot he has a good sort of summary of where the legal justification is for this regardless of what you think about whether we should be there or not there are plenty of legal justifications for the short term it's got some time and some leeway as a commander in chief I do think that if this is going to extend into a conflict of many months and more troops and more lives are lost then that actually is where congress needs to assert itself and say you got to come here and you got to talk about and lay out for us strategically what the plan is and that so we will see if this is a sort of quick I think Trump's preferences administrations preferences for something quick and done and we're out of there but we'll see if he wants to send more troops and he's going to need more munitions and it's going to look more like a traditional war yes he has to go to congress but for now he's got a window of time where I think you're right John a lot of those claims are actual weasel words to prevent members of congress themselves from taking a stand on what we're doing in Iran

54:31and just quickly just quickly Mike Johnson has said or said last night that the House would take up the War Powers Act on Thursday I believe so that and the War Powers Act as it as its concert you pass the War Powers Act and the president has essentially 60 days to go and ask for a formal declaration of war that was that was how it was sort of like written in the 70s in an effort to make sure that we did not repeat the Vietnam situation in which we were at war and a conventional standing war with hundreds of thousands of people and congress had done nothing to say that it was that it was except appropriate money to say that it was a war that we should fight so as it happens the War Powers Act kind of worked in reverse basically giving presidents a free hand to act because they're having a defensible claim as Jack Goldsmith says that having a defensible claim that the thing

55:35the congressional role is only necessarily triggered 60 days after or you know the full involvement of the legislative branch is only triggered 60 days after the beginning of hostilities so that may happen this week you know what the Senate is up to or will be about and but that's on the table I was just going to say it's not just that Congress doesn't want to have to take a stand on the war it's that the Democrats and a few Republicans want to preserve the ability to attack Trump over it should anything go wrong that's yeah I mean or or to jump on the bad and wagon should everything go right let's let's do it in reverse here or let's let let's flip the script like bush in 2002 said weirdly enough he said I don't have to go to Congress over a rock

56:43because the what what was passed in the wake of 9-11 gives me authorization to go into a rock but you know what I want to go because I want he said very like ominously he said I want the Senate really or basically but I want the I want Congress to be a participant I want them to say gay or nay like if they say nay and we don't go I want the public to know who said this was a good idea and who said this was a bad idea now this may be amazing to people thinking about it 23 or 24 years later but that's scared the Democrats half the Democrats voted to authorize the war in a rock right 24 25 Democrats voted it was a 77 senators voted to authorize the war in a rock

57:44so it worked that was then when it looked like if you didn't do that and obviously we would win they thought so you better jump on the bandwagon that was safer than not and then of course it turned out that it was politically vastly more complicated and Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama oh of course didn't have to cast a vote or not cast that vote because he wasn't in the Senate yet but that that was the politics then now Congress irresponsible refusing to play its proper role Republicans are worse as bad about this as Democrats were under Biden terrible set of circumstances but you know yeah so they've now gotten to this point where it's like what can I do to keep my hands as clean as positive or like to not get you know to not get have to sully myself with actual politics all I want to do is performative stuff that's all anybody wants from me anyway

58:50right so you know maybe that this will back them into a greater sense of responsibility though I don't there's another interesting difference between the Bush and Iraq and what's happening today and that's in the international politics in terms of international institutions we're not even pretending that they have a legitimate role to play here right Bush despite the cowboy cowboy diplomacy knock was actually very very desperate to get the UN on board to get Europe on board with inspections in Iraq really thought that if we wanted to avoid war desperately so we went multiple resolutions to the UN that we need to get inspectors back in there

59:51we're hearing that Saddam has everything over and you know Jock Sharok and Gerhard Schroeder you know European let's just said you know they they they pushed by by killing these resolutions they pushed Bush into this into the into the into the final last ditch after which was which was which was war we're you know the at the UN we saw people fighting over this over the war after the fact or this weekend but it was beautiful though it was beautiful because it was Danny Denon taking a two by four and bashing it over the head of the Iranian guy sitting there who said stop yelling at me and he's like stop killing your own people you piece of garbage like it was one of the great moments of all time finally and Israeli gets to like bang his shoe on the podium you know in a position of total moral high ground with an Iranian you know hack creep

1:00:53you know my company is the complaining that they that Israel was being uncivil yeah much better use of the UN than trying to get crooked European leaders to do something yeah right and there's also how we define multilateral right I mean yeah there's plenty of what was going on you ain't he's not siding with Iran no they're siding because you ain't being sired like and we have a multilateral coalition that includes the Arab states and the Jewish state that's multilateral to me it's it maybe it didn't go through the UN but it's like okay so you know starmer is not part of it but care starmer is not the you know that that's not my you know barometer for whether something is unilateral multilateral he's free to stay out of it but I think they did this to Bush wrongly to I think Bush what he put he was putting together a multilateral coalition and in Afghanistan we obviously had a multilateral coalition I mean that we had NATO in our back we had

1:01:53but we you know he he was the war began the war responding to 9-11 began with an undeniably multilateral coalition countries saying we are all America we're you know we all have your back NATO there you know everybody sending troops all this other stuff and so I think honestly Bush got a bad rap on the unilateral stuff too I don't think it was ever really true but I and I think now it's like if you can look at this and say you know it's unilateral because the US and Israel agree or something like that but the truth is that these people these critics especially on the left because of the split this weird part is in coding of the Saudi Iran split in the Middle East where you know Republicans felt you know they were going to support the Saudis Democrats supported the Iranians this was during the the Iran nuclear deal negotiations it really became a partisan flashpoint and just kind of stuck there you know this situation

1:02:55is like you they've just been ignoring the allies that are part of multilateral coalition you put a Canadian scrambled to shoot down Iranian rockets at Israel during the first you know a year and some ago or whatever it was and they did and they did it this weekend too 50 from Jordanian territory 50 Iranian ballistic missiles were were shot down so that of course is a science fictional multilateral coalition we have going here the United States Saudi Arabia Kuwait Qatar UAE Bahrain and Bahrain Jordan Egypt and Israel and Israel and Israel with the space with the space lasers if you want to make the science fiction coalition really yeah you know right anyway so I mean you know the hell with you and like this is this is the formation of an entirely new understanding of what it means to make alliances in the 21st century the UN is a is an artifact and a relic of the post-World War II

1:04:01you know how long ago that was the UN was established it's like you know almost 80 years ago and this is the reason this is the theater right the theater of war there on our side part of our coalition people miles out of it who are not participating right are grumbling about it but that's a ridiculous thing is to replace the people who are sitting there having missiles fired at them by Iran and have you know the French or the British say oh I don't know about firing back but this thing because we'll use Starmer as the example then we can we can we can but I mean this is a domestic political problem for Keir Starmer who is in a domestic political crisis in which having won this colossal landslide only a year ago is seeing his entire coalition collapse and he may not survive much longer and his only hope is to somehow stanch the bleeding of the far left

1:05:09and the Muslims who voted him in and so he's not making decisions based on Britain's national interest as is understood in terms of the world order that's a no-brainer you know like siding against Iran I mean Iran just shot 30,000 people in the streets it's not a hard call unless you're worried about your burrows going to the greens as happened last week while the anti-immigration party that isn't detouries surges into the lead I mean it's a very you know this is a very odd situation which there's no no principle attaches to what Starmer is up to he is a desperate effort to cling to power so it's pretty dismissible it's not like oh you know what Bush is doing to cowboy diplomacy and dead of Trump

1:06:10even though you could say that about Trump much more readily that's why I said that Trump's anti-regime change logic ends up being way more hawkish than the regime change logic does and I just want to cite one unexpectedly I'm going to cite a publication I would not have cited before but which has been crushing it over the last six weeks and that is compact under the leadership of Matthew Schmitz Schmitz is a piece they called Trump was always in a Ron hawk and he goes through systematically I think I strongly recommend you read it everything Trump said about Iran since 1980 in 1980 what historians Charlie Laterman and Brennan soon subscribe as Trump's earliest recorded statement on foreign policy to a national audience Trump said in the interview with NBC that America no longer commanded international respect because the hostage crisis and Trump said we you know we should have gone in there he was asked should we have gone in there with troops

1:07:10and brought our boys out and Trump replied I absolutely feel that yes and he went on 87 88 2000 it's like we need to go in crush those Iranians and take their oil he has had this view for 45 years it hasn't changed it's a consistent opinion that he has had about Iran that Iran played us for fools and suckers and it did and it has and he's right and now you know so I said very interesting I think it's such an important point because a lot of what we're seeing on the right on the disaffected right is all this I didn't vote for this and then they play as I said on Twitter this they sort of overlay real world politics with their dungeons and dragons idea of what's happening Trump got co-opted by the Israelis Vance was always a crypto neocon you know in hiding and all this yeah right

1:08:15and they're just not looking at any of the actual real world circumstances and contingencies here and pressures and they're missing the entire picture and it's the childish childishness that they're advancing is astounding they also seem to forget Trump's age and that he narrated in the popular culture of the 80s which was just full I mean I remember pictures in my high elementary school yearbook of all the high school guys with like get the Ayatollah signs I mean this was part of popular culture too and he was very much in the mainstream seeing iran is a constant villain I mean the Shi'ai Muslim was always the villain in all these big blockbuster movies so he's old just because his methods of politics are quite new to our system and of recent vintage they have forgotten and actually many of them on the new right were never you know they were not even a spark in their parents eyes I do want to just to just to piggyback a little bit on set and john's absolute wonderful raking over the coals the uselessness of the UN

1:09:22an old recommendation I think I made it years ago but if people are interested in understanding just how long this rot has been going on there what the UN's found and what 1945 in 1967 the wonderful novelist Shirley Hazard who had worked for the secretary yet wrote a wonderful book called People in Glass Houses that's just tears to shreds the UN bureaucracy and everything she diagnosed then has only gotten worse since so if you're interested in a kind of a picture that is an amazing that is an amazing book thank you yeah thank you for that all right so there we have a recommendation Shirley Hazard yeah I'll speak up but yeah I might have recommended this before so I think you did and then we had a conversation about how Shirley Hazard played a key role in the outing of Kurt Volpheim as the Austrian chancellor as basically as a Nazi he had been a secretary general of the UN yeah she's a great novelist in general if you haven't read her work it's well worth well worth reading her novels too yes yes okay so we'll we'll be back tomorrow for Abe Seth and Christina jump out or it's keep the camera burning

1:10:39you