Will Trump Drag Us Into War With Iran?

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When I was out of the office a couple weeks ago, I was incredibly grateful that Ali Velshi joined Ben to co-host Pod Save the World.

I'm sure you guys loved hearing from him.

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Welcome back to Pod Save the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Ben, how's New York doing?

Good little politics here, Tommy.

We got a little lively mayor's race going on.

The election.

Yeah.

What is that?

Is that today?

It's early voting already.

So for people who haven't been following, this couldn't be like more of a stark choice.

You've got like, you know, Andrew Cuomo representing the kind of restoration of hard-ass centrist politics and some other things, obviously.

And then Zoran Mamdani, you know, 33-year-old on the other direction.

It's never dull in New York.

Actually, Brad Lander got arrested today.

Yeah, that was crazy.

So, you know.

Yeah, and early voting numbers are way, way up.

And for some reason, Mamdani is treated like he is becoming ambassador to the UN and only gets questions about what he's doing.

Mamdani, yeah, like it's actually, I've been trying to, because, you know, I'm in, I'll always be a New Yorker, and, like, I want to know about his, like, plans to, like, make bus-free and, you know, keep the rents down.

But all people want to ask him about Israel.

It's weird.

It's crazy.

Well,

we're going to be in a similar boat today, Ben.

We're going to focus basically the whole show today on the war between Israel and Iran.

So we're going to update you guys on what happened since Friday when we recorded that bonus episode.

How this war has quickly ballooned from being about weapons of mass destruction to regime change.

Sounds familiar.

We'll talk about the voices pushing Trump to get involved in bombing Iran directly, and we'll talk about some of the voices urging caution and the media coverage around all of it.

We're also going to talk about some political considerations for Democrats, and then why we think no one should trust Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu when it comes to intelligence about WMDs or regime change wars generally.

Then you're going to hear my conversation with Congressman Greg Lansman from Ohio.

So Greg is somebody I've known for a few years now.

I consider him a friend.

We profoundly disagree both about the war in Gaza and also about this new war in Iran.

And we argue about it all the time on text until we figured, why not take that to the podcast?

So let us know what you think.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, Tommy.

I mean,

we occasionally air all views here on Pod Say the World.

Doing our best.

Doing our best to air all the views.

All right, Ben, let's just jump right into it.

So, last Friday, we did an episode about this surprise Israeli attack on Iran.

If you want more of the backstory into how that all went down, listen to that episode, but this is going to be more of an update on what things have happened since that time.

So, as of Sunday, the IDF confirmed that they had hit over 170 Iranian targets and more than 720 military infrastructure components.

Bloomberg reported that Iran has launched around 370 ballistic missiles towards Israel with around 30 hitting targets.

As of this recording, Iran has taken about 224 casualties and Israel 24 casualties.

So, some real damage happening so far.

Much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure has taken a beating, like the Natan's enrichment site, the Isfahan site.

There's lots of missile and military infrastructure that's gotten hit.

And Israel has killed a number of additional Iranian military and intelligence leaders.

Trump and Israeli officials now say they have taken out all of Iran's air defense systems, and they can fly over the country at will.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S.

intelligence thinks Israel has set Iran's nuclear work back by about five to six months.

And while U.S.

and Israeli missile defense systems have intercepted the majority of Iran's missiles, dozens have gotten through and they've hit in major population centers like Tel Aviv.

And so, Ben, as of 2 p.m.

Tuesday Pacific time, when we're recording this, this is not just an active war, but one that is growing and one that is clearly now a regime change operation, not just a limited strike on nuclear infrastructure.

We know this because there are all these reports that Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to kill the supreme leader of Iran.

So you don't get more regime changey than that.

And the big question now is whether the United States is going to get directly involved in offensive military operations, meaning are we going to bomb Iran ourselves?

So on Monday night, Trump left the G7 meetings in Canada early to head back to Washington for meetings about Iran.

Earlier today, Axios reported that, quote, Trump is seriously considering joining the war and launching a U.S.

strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, especially its underground enrichment facility in Fordau.

That is the facility we talked about on Friday that's buried deep into the side of a mountain, and military experts think can only be destroyed by a series of bombing raids with America's massive 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, which can only be carried by U.S.

bombers.

Israeli officials tell Axios they believe Trump is going to join the fight.

We'll see.

That could be a wish casting.

But if Trump does get more involved, it will likely because of the inexorable push towards war that presidents of the United States feel because of voices like this.

If diplomacy is not successful and we left with the option of force, I would urge President Trump to go all in to make sure that when this operation is over, there's nothing left standing in Iran regarding their nuclear program.

Well, as President Trump said on Friday morning that he had given Iran 60 days to make a deal, and that was day 63.

You know that.

I mean, mean,

this wasn't really a hard deadline.

He gave them 60 days and on day 61, the strikes began.

You know, sometimes when you see evil, it's actually evil.

Wouldn't Israel be doing the United States and the West a favor by taking them out?

And if we had an ally country that's trying to destroy the regime,

or at least their nuclear weapons,

I think we'd be appreciative of that, don't you?

I think so.

So that was Senator Lizzie Graham, Senator Tom Cotton, and then radio host Fox News personality Mark Levin, who boy, Tucker Carlson is right.

He is a horrible voice.

So Ben, we're going to dig into lots of different pieces of all of this, but I just want to start by asking you about any kind of big picture takeaways from you since we talked on Friday, and then kind of where you are on whether you think Trump is going to get us directly involved in this war offensively or not.

Yeah, a couple of big picture things.

I mean, first, I think it's really important to say that there's no reason that this war had to happen now.

I'm struck, Tommy, that since Israel launched what it called a preemptive strike, they did even go through the exercise of putting out cooked-up intelligence suggesting that the Iranians were just about to weaponize

a nuclear weapon.

Iran has had it, for people who don't follow this closely, Iran has had a nuclear program for decades.

And Bibi Nenyao has been warning about them being on the precipice of having a nuclear weapon for as long as I can remember.

And nothing changed between the day before this strike happened, the day after.

So there was no reason for this to happen now.

Israel was not any less secure, you know, the day that they took the strike than they were the last 10 years, right?

So this is entirely a war of choice launched by Israel ostensibly against a nuclear program.

Second thing is this is very much feeling like a regime change operation.

And we have to emphasize that too, because if they were just hitting the nuclear facilities just even hitting nuclear and ballistic missile facilities you know that would be one thing I still wouldn't think that was a good idea and and you know frankly that would only at this point have set the Iranian nuclear program back a few months they're not hitting just those targets they hit the television station what does the television station have to do with the nuclear program.

They are just killing generals and scientists, including generals that are not involved in the nuclear program.

What does that have to do with setting back the nuclear program?

They were hitting oil facilities, right?

So this feels very much like Israel has a target list that includes people and infrastructure and

aspects of the regime, including media, and they're just hitting it all.

And the fact that they want to kill the Supreme Leader, I mean,

we are in a new world here.

I mean, whatever you think of the Supreme Leader, and

I'm not a fan of his, we're now just in the place where we assassinate the leaders of other governments.

We just decapitate regimes and preemptive wars.

That is

a wholly new place to be here.

It seems like Israel is, again, treating the Iranian regime like it's Hezbollah, right?

Like they're just going through it, like it's a series of personality-based assassinations.

But the problem is this regime runs a very large and important state, right?

With huge resources, with tens of millions of people.

And so this, what you've not heard from Israel is any description of where this ends, where this goes.

I mean, the things that are the most eerie to me, because there's a lot of echoes of the Iraq war here, Tommy, and we're going to unpack some of those.

But you see some people, you know, I saw Newt Gingrich tweeting something like, now is the time for there to be like a secular, moderate, inclusive government in Iraq.

Like,

where is that government going to come from, right?

So to me, it's very alarming.

It we're a week into this thing, and it's just on a rapid escalatory cycle.

And it feels to me like Donald Trump is getting pulled into this thing.

That you know, the common he couldn't stand up to Bibi Nanyao, he's afraid to do that, he was too weak to stand up to Bibi Nanyao.

His own diplomacy got derailed.

That's bullshit that we gave diplomacy a chance, we didn't.

The Iranians were trying to make a deal, and then Israel killed the guy who was trying to negotiate the deal.

And he's afraid, uh, he's more afraid of

Fox News and Lindsey Graham and Bibi Nanyao than he is of his own base, who he promised that he wouldn't do this.

And it's a scary place for us to be.

Yeah, so the Wall Street Journal just had a piece that posted a couple hours ago about kind of where the U.S.

and Israel differ on the intelligence case.

And it said, before launching its attack on Iran last week, Israel provided the U.S.

with intelligence it deemed alarming.

Tehran was conducting renewed research useful for a nuclear weapon, including an explosive triggering system.

But U.S.

officials briefed by the Israelis weren't convinced that the information pointed to a decision by Tehran to build a bomb.

It sounded like they were doing research.

The Times, New York Times, had sort of similar reporting: like the U.S.

is not aware of new intelligence showing Iran is rushing to get a bomb.

And I think that's very important because, one, I mean, obviously, it's the entire pretext for the war.

But, two, Netanyahu was on Fox News over the weekend and on

countless news channels just lying and saying that

Israel had to act now because Iran was rushing to get a bomb when the U.S.

intelligence timeline is still like, yeah, it'll take one to two weeks to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuke,

but then you'd have to go through the weaponization process.

It could take much, much longer to get it on a warhead and then to get it on a missile that could hit targets.

So we're talking about a process that would take

six months to up to three years, according to like whichever intelligence assessment you believe.

But Netanyahu is just kind of like yada, yada, yada in those details and claiming there was some sort of imminent threat he had to neutralize.

And the Times also reported, Ben, that U.S.

intelligence, like late last month, figured out that Israel was planning an imminent attack with or without us.

And they say Trump warned Netanyahu not to do anything and not to screw up his diplomatic efforts.

But basically, like Bibi just didn't care, and Trump was too weak to make him listen.

So like all of that bullshit we were talking about last week about how, you know, there was this elaborate ruse between the U.S.

and the Israelis where they were just, it was like designed to fool the Iranians.

That was total bullshit.

Like

the Times reported that Mr.

Trump was still stressing the importance of giving diplomacy a chance and while doing so was not intended to deceive the Iranians about the immediacy of a potential attack, but the possibility that it might deceive them was like a welcome side effect.

So in other words, Trump sincerely wanted diplomacy.

The fact that he kept talking about it certainly does seem to have convinced some of these Iranian generals and scientists and people that they were safe, you know, sleeping at their homes rather than going to a bunker.

But this was not 5D chests as we expected.

Yeah.

And just to put a point on the intelligence thing, because it really is important.

I mean, it's amazing to me that we, you know,

nobody even feels compelled to have to make this case anymore.

You need to go through several steps to acquire a nuclear weapon.

You need to acquire enough nuclear fuel, and that requires its own breakout, you know, that you're, you're rushing to enrich uranium at a high percentile so that you can have enough fuel for a bomb.

You need to know how to weaponize that nuclear material, which we, you know, we don't know that the Iranians, I mean, in the past, the assessment has been that they didn't have the capacity to weaponize.

But then you have, as you said, go through this process, which takes months to miniaturize the fuel, put it on a warhead, all this stuff, right?

The reason that's important is that Israel had plenty of time, plenty of decision space to do this.

And instead, they did it to derail Donald Trump's diplomacy.

And like every now and then we give ourselves this allowance.

Like imagine if a Democratic president got humiliated like that.

Well, I guess Joe Biden did.

So we can imagine it because it just happened.

You know, B.B.

Netanyahu

did to Trump.

an even worse version of what he did to Biden because with Biden, it was just like, I'm just going to ignore what you say about Gaza and take all your weapons and bomb people there.

But here, he wants the U.S.

to come in the war that he started over the objections of Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump feels like he's getting pushed that way.

That story was amazing because basically the reporting was that Donald Trump thought the war looked good on Fox News and that he was watching Fox News.

And,

you know, why?

Because Fox News doesn't tell you the full story.

Fox News gives you this completely airbrushed version where Israel looks like they're in the most ingenious military operation ever.

And Donald Trump's like, well, I want want to be a part of that, you know?

And this is a crazy, crazy way to make decisions about war and peace.

The American people, where are they in this?

Donald Trump has not really spoken at length to us about, you know, we usually would expect presidents to give speeches about what would be our objectives here, you know, what would be the legal basis for launching this military strike, what's the end game, what's the risk, preparing people for, you know, oil prices to go up and for our service members in the region to be at risk.

They're not even communicating any of this.

The only communication that comes from them are in these kind of random, you know, comments to the press that Trump makes in between meetings or on social media posts where they're like navigating their own internal MA fight about this thing.

It's a crazy, crazy, crazy way to launch what could become, not guaranteed, but could become a really long and difficult war because of the regime change component of it.

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It really does seem like Netanyahu played Trump perfectly here, Benners, or at least had a trap by bombing unilaterally, because Netanyahu knows that the bar for this operation being judged a success will be whether the Fordo facility is operational at the end of it.

And he knows that only the U.S.

can take out Fordo with these massive ordnance penetrator, like massive bunker buster bombs.

So either the U.S.

does his dirty work for him and eventually joins this war, or he can blame Trump for it not being fully successful, right?

So like Trump's, like, you know, feels trapped by

the Fox News coverage that I want to talk about in a second.

And just in terms of the implications, like, again, the early days of this war,

it feels like the Israelis are being incredibly successful because they are.

I mean, the Mossad has obviously...

done an unbelievable job penetrating Iran's military and security establishment and their nuclear program, right?

Like the fact that they knew where all these generals and these scientists lived and were able to target them on that first night is like an incredibly impressive intelligence operation.

But now Iran has recovered.

They've been able to launch hundreds of ballistic missiles back at Israel.

And the New York Times just reported that Iran is preparing missiles for a possible retaliatory strike on U.S.

bases in the Middle East.

So we have about 40,000 troops deployed in the Middle East.

And the first people to get attacked would probably be U.S.

service members and diplomats serving in Iraq.

And then

last night I saw this, one of the guys who got fired by Pete Hexeth tweeted out a long assessment of sort of what he knows about Iran's ballistic missile program.

He said it's about 2,000 ballistic missiles.

The choke point is they have more missiles than they have launchers, and it takes time to fuel them and launch them and fire them.

But he said, as far as he can tell, Iran seems to have held back using some of its most advanced hypersonic missiles with the biggest payloads, possibly because they wanted to keep them in reserve to target U.S.

interests if we get involved as some sort of deterrent.

So that is some very ominous reporting from the New York Times right before we started recording.

Yeah, and we talked about some of this a few days ago, but there's what Iran could do in response, right?

The ballistic missile strikes that have already taken lives in Israel.

The strikes that they could do against U.S.

bases and facilities that could endanger our personnel strikes that they could launch i mean one of the reasons why the arab arab states have come out vociferously against what israel is doing i think that's in part because they know that iran could just bomb saudi oil fields as they've you know done in the past to try to just completely disrupt the global economy because if they're going down they're going to take everybody down with them that's still a possibility they could obviously launch terrorist attacks in different places they could attack you know they could look even though their their proxies are weakened they could do things in iraq But even beyond that, I think the important point is mine the straight Hormuz, too.

I mean, there's a lot of things, right?

Just fuck up the global economy.

Exactly right.

But the other thing is, the regime change party is what's so important here because, in a way, the more robust this Israeli war and maybe U.S.

Israeli war is, the bigger the danger.

Because what if you do take out the regime?

What if they do kill the Supreme Leader?

Well, who's going to be in charge of Iran?

And what we've seen in the past, I mean, Trump says that the skies, we totally own the skies over Iran.

Guess what?

We totally own the skies over Iraq.

We totally own the skies over Afghanistan.

We totally own the skies over Libya.

And how did that turn out?

This stuff always looks like, you know, when it looks like a video game in the first few days, the same fucking people.

And it's the same people.

It's like Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and all these people that supported the Iraq war.

Every problem in the Middle East is a nail and they reach for the hammer.

You know, the messier it gets, the more unpredictable it gets, and the more unforeseen the consequences.

And the more you get dragged in, because there's a cycle of logic.

Well, we bomb the Ford thing, and then they, let's say, they take out the Iranian regime, and then it's like, well, we need the US to go in there and help stabilize, you know, make sure that the oil fields are secure.

And then we, are there going to be U.S.

troops in Iran, right?

I mean, these are going to be questions that could be on us soon.

And again, like, nobody is explaining what the end state of this military action is.

By the the way, the Iranian nuclear program would be set back about a year if they blow up Fordo.

They still know how to do all this stuff.

They could take that underground and then what?

Are we just going to keep bombing and we'd just kind of be in this open-ended state of war in Iran?

Never mind how that looks internationally, never mind all the humanitarian issues.

So there's just so many questions that nobody's answering.

And again, we've talked about how Trump shifted the Republican base, the MAGA base, into more of an anti-war direction because he correctly, I think, identified and and channeled anger at the post-9-11 regime change wars.

But the legacy Republican media has not adjusted at all.

Like Fox News, watching Fox this past week, and I watch it most days, all day, has given me flashbacks to like 2003 and the run-up to the Iraq war.

So like if you watch it, Fox, it's non-stop IDF, you know, handed out propaganda B-roll of airstrikes.

It's interviews with hawkish

voices and neocons and like the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

You got Brett Baer doing softball interviews with Netanyahu where Netanyahu is just like spewing lies about the Iranian nuclear program and the timeline and getting no pushback.

And then, Ben, what was fascinating to me though was I caught this interview by Steve Bannon of Tucker Carlson.

We'll play some more of it in a minute, but they were talking about Fox's coverage and this from Tucker Carlson about Fox's coverage jumped out at me.

Some of the same voices that the Fox platform.

You know, the Fox platform is just, it's so disgraceful.

There's so many good people at Fox.

I worked for the Murdoch for, you know, all in over 20 years.

I always liked them.

I like them now.

I'm not attacking them personally, and tons of people at Fox are my friends.

But the one theme that runs longitudinally through the history of Fox is the promotion of wars that don't help the United States.

Why is that?

It's the owners.

are committed to that vision.

Most of the time, it's, you know, it's fine.

But when it really comes down to it, when it's a question of whether U.S.

military power will be exerted on behalf of a foreign country thousands of miles from here, they are all in, and anyone who stands in the way will be destroyed.

I don't think it's personal, by the way.

So that was spot on from Tucker Carlson, someone who would know.

But it's not just Foxman.

Matthias Dopschner, who's the CEO of Axel Springer, which is like the big sort of media conglomerate that owns Politico, he wrote this op-ed.

They linked to it in Politico playbook.

So I read it.

Here's a graph from it.

It is therefore surprising that Israel is not being celebrated worldwide for its historic, extremely precise and necessary strike against Iranian nuclear weapons facilities and for the targeted killing of leading terrorists, but that the public response is dominated by anti-Israel propaganda.

Now, this is a CEO.

I don't think he's like editing a news copy when it comes in or anything, but like, I don't know.

If you work at one of his publications,

you know damn well that critical coverage of this war is not going to be welcome.

Yeah, and this has been part of, I mean, the way in which we got into the Iraq war, which again was not about Israel, right?

That was just the U.S.

doing something really fucking stupid on its own, was in part having advisors who didn't understand

these countries that they were going to invade and, you know, reconstruct, you know, what Donald Trump said, right?

Like, we sent the nation builders over there.

We thought we could, you know, build a government in the Middle East and a culture we didn't understand.

But it was also this kind of xenophobic, cheerleading media that, you know, made, you know, was just 100% behind taking us into war.

And

it's extraordinary that like the exact same people and the exact same platforms are cranking up the exact same play all over again.

And, you know, what's interesting with Trump and the America First stuff is we'll sell Ukraine out.

You know, we'll sell every ally in the world out.

You know, the Europeans are now not our friends.

The Ukrainians are like leeches.

But if Israel wants to bomb, you know, and decapitate government in the Middle East, it's like, well,

how could we not be there?

And it's almost as if, like, you know, the U.S.

is already at war because they make no distinction between what Netanyahu is doing.

It just gives him the authority to take us to war

in Iran, which is what he's trying to do.

And he's using Fox to talk to Trump.

I mean, that's what he's doing in those interviews.

And it's working.

Yeah, he's literally

going on all, not just him, but all these IDF people are going, fox are literally going on that for an audience of one you know i mean it it helps that they get to talk to some right-wing americans too um and it's a really strange thing to see and again to be very clear here this is

you can hate the iranian regime i have i know plenty of iranians who despise the Iranian regime and would love to see, you know, people who are involved in the women's movement there would love to see a new government in Iran who are like deeply disturbed by what's happening in part because some people have family members in Iran who are endangered, but in part because they know that this is not the Iranian people kind of removing their own government themselves.

That if you have Israel and the United States

killing thousands of Iranians and decapitating their government, you're likely to get like really hardcore reactionary IRGC types like running parts of that state, whatever remains, or like just a total failed state or some kind of civil war because you do have different factions that would want to be competing for power.

And that's scary.

And nobody's talking about that.

There's nobody talking about that on Fox.

And all these people that love to spike the football now, you know, they're the people that you kind of can't find to do a Fox hit 10 years from now when, you know, things are a mess in that part of the world.

And so it's just, we've seen this movie before.

Yeah, man.

And The Atlantic, to their credit, had a great piece that quoted a bunch of of members of the Iranian opposition, some on the record who are really brave and some on background, saying, we don't want this.

This is not helping us.

We want to take down this regime, but we don't want it this way, not just because of the political change it could lead to, but also because it's going to kill a bunch of innocent people.

And it's going to lead to shortages of food and medicine and fuel and immense suffering.

And Ben, just even stepping further back out on sort of the coverage, there's a lot of understandable coverage on sort of the impact on Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv and the horrific images of these like crushed civil, you know, apartment buildings and things and people trapped in rubble.

And that's like totally appropriate and understandable and your heart breaks for those people.

But there is almost no coverage of that kind about

the civilian toll happening in Iran.

Now, part of that is because of a lack of media access.

Part of it is, you know, just because there's censorship laws, et cetera.

But I do think it leads to a sense that

people in Iran are somehow complicit in this or, you know, sort of like everyone is a combatant when it's just not the case.

Like both sides, there is immense suffering among civilian populations, just as there is in Gaza.

But I think that kind of like, yeah,

there's just a lack of coverage.

And I do think it's like genuinely damaging.

Yeah, no, I think that's right.

And I think in a strange and dark way, Gaza kind of plowed some ground for this because that has been the experience of Gaza, right?

That

like a single Israeli casualty gets an enormous amount of attention relative to like thousands of Palestinian casualties.

And there's a valuation of life, human life, in how these wars are covered.

And you look at it, and by the way, Iran is, there are challenges, you're right, but it's not Gaza.

I mean, there are journalists there.

There's a capacity to report on this.

There are already hundreds of people, if not thousands, who've been killed in Iran.

There's like apartment buildings that have been destroyed or damaged.

You have Donald Trump tweeting that the city of Tehran needs to evacuate.

That's another theory.

It's terrifying 10 million people.

There are 10 million people in an incredibly densely populated city.

And there are Iranians now who are trying to get out.

They're gas shortages.

People can't get out.

Life is disrupted.

I mean,

the casual way in which we, you know, you know, what's interesting is

the American people, I thought, had come to put a higher bar on going to war.

That we, we, you know, we went, we saw the, the, the failures of the post-9-11 wars.

And again, I think Gaza has weirdly rolled back the tape and it feels cost-free to kill people and to assassinate the leaders of countries or,

you know, or to treat it again like a video game.

And again, let's just name it too, Tommy.

Like, these are brown people in Iran and Gaza.

And it's like, they're all the same.

And like, let's just, you know, it's not, you know, let's read like a heart-wrenching story about israelis in you know shelters in tel aviv and and we don't really look at the iranians who got killed in in the war that the israelis started like so i i don't know i i find the lack of any

that the the default position isn't that war is bad you know like to be pretty pretty you know disgusting frankly Yep, I totally agree with you.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

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All right, so back in March, Ben, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress about the U.S.

intelligence community's assessment of Iran's nuclear program.

She said the following: quote, the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.

So, end of quote.

So, Trump was asked about Tulsi Gabbard's testimony by the press during his flight back from the G7.

Here's his response.

Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon.

I don't care what she said.

I think they were very close to having one.

I got a swan on you.

So for those of you who couldn't hear that, he said, I don't care what she said.

So glad to see our president cares about the facts.

I was notable, Ben, that Trump had this big like Camp David meeting about Iran earlier this month.

He didn't include Tulsi in that.

In fact, the CNN reported that U.S.

intelligence believes that Iran was up to three years away, as we mentioned earlier, from being able to produce and deliver a nuclear weapon on target.

However, again, so Trump...

He says to the press there, he doesn't care what the intelligence assessment is.

There's this big debate about whether or not he's going to get involved.

We don't have many data points because, as you mentioned earlier, Trump has not addressed the country, but he did truth the following things on Tuesday.

This all happened today.

These are verbatim quotes.

Unconditional surrender, all caps, exclamation point.

We know exactly where the so-called supreme leader is hiding.

He's an easy target,

but is safe there.

We're not going to take him out, parentheses, kill, at least not for now.

But we don't want missile shot at civilians or American soldiers.

Our patience is wearing thin.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And then he truthed: we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.

Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment and plenty of it, but it doesn't compare to American-made, conceived, and manufactured stuff.

Nobody does it better than the good old USA.

So he managed to, I guess, fit an ad for Raytheon into that last one.

So, Ben, that feels ominous.

It could be that our last best hope for kind of the anti-war coalition that's out there is Trump listening to parts of the MAGA coalition that has consistently said they want no part of this war.

Here are some examples of people who might make that case to him.

President Trump knows that the Bush-era doctrine of regime change wars in the Middle East is foolish.

It's costly, and it is counterproductive as an anti-terrorism strategy.

I'm old enough to remember the last time Israel coaxed the United States into a regime change war in the Middle East.

Can you imagine what happens in Iran now?

And you would think that they would probably be less likely to want to negotiate at this time, particularly when they may feel that negotiations were a ruse.

I'll call out Fox News and the New York Post.

They're known to be the neocon network news.

We have propaganda news on our side, just like the left does.

Of course, we don't want to see the people in Israel bombed, but they're only being bombed because Israel attacked Iran first.

Do you think we're going to join in the combat, offensive combat operation?

Well, we have to.

We have to, We can't just.

These things are never the product of, like, look,

you've actually helped me.

Television got hit, Tehran's got hit, civilians are dead.

In both places.

And if we don't think that that's sad, then we're not fully human.

Like, you have to believe that's sad, and you have to really mean it.

So, Ben, that was Matt Gates, Senator Rand Paul, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and then Tucker Carlson.

Again, it's weird to hear those guys, that group of people, like sounding the most reasonable, making the most sense, being the most empathetic out of all the Republicans you hear talking about us, about this war.

But

it is what it is, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, there's always been an internal inconsistency because Trump always campaigns as this anti-war guy, this America-first guy, but he also tries to be like this tough guy, you know, who's like the biggest Israel supporter.

You know, he used to brag in the first term about, you know, getting rid of civilian casualty restrictions on ISIS or dropping the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan.

So he's kind of, he's never really been one or the other.

And

this is a real substantive divide, as you hear there.

I would say to people who are listening to this podcast, you know, if you made it this far and you're like, you know, these guys, you know, why don't these guys care about Israel and Israel shouldn't have to live with this threat?

Again, I think the substantive point I would make to you is that Israel did not have to do this at this point, that they could have seen how the Trump diplomacy went.

It seemed like Iran wanted a deal.

Even if that didn't go well, they had potentially years before they needed to make this decision.

You should not launch a war unless you have to.

But I want to raise another point, which is that let's say this doesn't go that well.

Let's say that the U.S.

gets into this thing and it's clear this time that Israel started it and kind of pulled the U.S.

into it.

This could be dangerous for Israel, right?

Because I'm telling you where some of those people are going to go, right?

They sound reasonable now, but like a Marjorie Taylor Greene will suddenly

be turning against Israel, right?

And so this kind of normalization of Israel just, you know, they went to war in Gaza or the West Bank or Lebanon or Syria or they're bombing Iraq or they're bombing Yemen and now they're going to war in Iran.

And then the U.S.

gets dragged into it.

That could be really bad.

in the long run for

not just Israel standing in the world, because the rest of the world is looking at this and being like, this is some

fucked up shit shit that's happening here.

There's no international law that says that this could happen.

But also, if it goes poorly, that's a huge risk in terms of this kind of right wing of the United States turning hard against Israel.

Yeah, and Ben,

the thing they're kind of hanging their hat on now is Trump suggesting that

he had given Iran 60 days to negotiate and then they didn't do it.

But we know from all the public reporting that the Trump administration couldn't get its own position straight for part of those 60 days.

Remember, there was a big sort of fight between Steve Witcoff and Marco Rubio and other hawks within the administration about whether Trump's position was whether Iran would be allowed to have like a low-level enrichment program or no enrichment, right?

So, you know, the idea that like there was some clear set of talks happening and Iran just wasn't being a constructive participant seems kind of unfair.

Also, you know, Trump had Steve Steve Witcoff do it, someone with no experience for like a very highly technical set of talks.

So, again, I mean, like the idea that day 61 we had to bomb seems crazy to me.

The thing that I have been thinking about and worried about, you're right.

I agree with you that the political ramifications of this going south

for Israel within the Republican Party could be very consequential.

I'm worried that we here in the West and our media, they're going to kind of assess this thing on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis.

And the war could look good for a month or three months or six months or even a year.

But then three years from now, a bus full of American or Israeli tourists in South America blows up and it's Hezbollah or some sort of IRGC-backed something or other, right?

And it's like

the timeframe over which this could play out and the fact that

U.S.

civilians could be a direct target because we are now perceived as being a party to this war is something that is just not, it's not even being discussed in the coverage.

That's right.

You know, one thing I think about, Tommy, is, because look,

here's the best case scenario, even.

The best case scenario is

if Trump bombs Ford O,

the best case scenario is the Iranian regime just kind of wants us to end and they kind of capitulate and

that somehow stops, somehow the Israelis accept not going full regime change.

And you've set the Iran nuclear program back.

And yes, there's been some war, but

that could happen.

Even in that scenario, though, I think you could still see the kind of consequence you're talking about.

And here's the example I'd give.

Do you remember in the first Trump administration when they moved the U.S.

embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

And me, and I think you and a bunch of people were like, well, this could be dangerous.

You know, this could kill the two-state solution.

This could lead to violence.

And I remember that when they did that, there was some violence.

A bunch of Palestinians got killed because they charged the fence in Gaza.

And I think several dozen Palestinians got killed.

But there weren't like these huge terrorist attacks, you know.

And I remember all these people dunking on me online, like, oh, you know, look, you warned that this is going to be terrible.

And look, it turned out fine.

Well, you got October 7th a few years later.

Right.

And I honestly think that, you know, killing the two-state solution, moving the embassy, doing the Abraham Accords, cutting the Palestinians out of everything,

you know, led to October 7th.

And

these people don't understand that when we're warning of consequences, we're not saying that like next week the world is going to end.

And so then what they do is they hold you accountable to next week.

They're like, these guys said that this is going to go poorly, but look, they're bombing everything and it looks great on Fox News.

And then two years later, something horrible happens, like you said, and

it's like time starts then.

And it's like, well, we have to go bomb them because this horrible thing happened, and we never take responsibility for being the ones who contributed to this chain of events, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Um, a couple important uh sort of political considerations, Ben, or political points.

There's a movement in Congress to try to prevent this war.

So, Congressman Thomas Massey, uh, conservative Republican, and Democrat Ro Khanna have put forward a resolution that would prohibit the United States from getting involved in the war.

I think AOC is now a co-sponsor.

They correctly argue that a war with Iran would have to be authorized by Congress.

That's also gone from the debate.

Tim Kaine has a similar resolution on the Senate side.

Bernie Sanders has a no war against Iran act that he's introduced.

So good folks are doing some good work there, but I don't have a lot of hope that the Republican-led Congress will pick up those pieces of legislation.

But Ben, more broadly, just on the politics of this, I mean, you and I were talking about how you can kind of feel some Democrats who who you know are opposed to the war in Iran, who have been warning against it for years, starting to get a little squishy because the early results look favorable for the Israelis.

And like to them, I would just say, first of all, stand up for what you believe in, for God's sake, or what's the point of being in politics.

And then two, again, remember how Shock and Haw looked in the first few weeks and then how it morphed into something very different.

Like this war has not even been going on for a week.

The idea that we know the outcome and should just like capitulate and follow Bibi and Yahoo's lead is crazy.

And there was some polling out today.

The economist YouGov had a new poll.

They asked, do you think the U.S.

military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran?

16% said yes.

660% said no.

And only 19% of Trump 2024 voters support U.S.

military involvement.

53% are opposed.

So like the point, it's just crystal clear that no one in this country wants to be involved in another regime change war in the Middle East.

Yeah, I'm really glad you framed it this way.

Because, you know, first of all, a lot of these people, they're just kind of looking out the window.

And what they're forgetting is that the very things they warned about, you know, Iran could go underground, try to get a nuclear weapon.

The regime could collapse and you could get a failed state in Iran.

Like, there could be terrorist attacks.

There were never things that were going to happen in the first week or two.

You know, like, so it's not like objectively, the military operation isn't going quote unquote better than was anticipated when people had that sense.

All that's happening is you have the normal juggernaut of political and media momentum towards this is great and we have to support this and look at this war that things are blowing up and let's watch on television and you're weak if you don't support it.

And I would say to Democrats, there are a lot of people.

who spent the rest of their political careers regretting their position they took on the Iraq war.

You and I worked in the White House, Tommy, and probably have this podcast because Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War, you know, which probably seemed like the safe thing to do in 2003.

And that's how Barack Obama was able to beat her in 2008.

So there's a whole host of ways in which this could go wrong in the medium term.

And by the time Democrats are thinking about who they're going to support as the party standard bearer next time, those consequences are probably going to be happening.

But even if they don't, right?

And this is a really important thing.

And I hope any Democrats listening at least hears me out on this.

Even if they don't happen, even if somehow, you know, they

destroy Fordo and

there's some kind of messy de-escalation and everything kind of settles down, you should still be against this.

We're Democrats.

Do we really support preemptive wars in which you try to kill the leadership of other countries, no matter how odious those countries' governments are?

Do we really regime change authorizations by fascist Israeli right-wing leaders based on intelligence no one has seen.

No legal basis for the United States to be doing this.

No basis in international law for this to be happening.

Civilians getting killed in Tehran and civilians getting put at risk in Israel.

You are so afraid of getting called weak that you're going to go along with something that is that immoral and unethical and against every principle that the Democratic Party as people that are supposed to value the equality of human beings cares about give me a break i would not support any democrat like who who for president president

who capitulates to that kind of thinking.

We've been there before.

We're better than that.

And we should stand for something and not be afraid to be dunked on by the same group of Lindsey Grimms that are going to dunk on us anyway.

So

get some backbone, Democrats.

Yeah.

And look, on the merits, what is happening in Gaza is deplorable and evil and immoral and just wrong on every level.

But there was also part of my frustration with Joe Biden's policy towards Gaza and in dealing with Netanyahu was that he allowed the United States to be pushed around by Bibi Netanyahu.

And the listeners of the show know that we are not big fans of Bibi Netanyahu.

He's corrupt.

He's a liar.

He puts his own political considerations ahead of the security of his country.

But on top of that, Despite calling himself like Mr.

Security, he was catastrophically wrong about the most consequential foreign policy decision of our lifetime.

This is a clip of Netanyahu giving quote-unquote expert testimony to Congress about Iraq before the invasion.

This is from 2002.

Let's listen.

This is a tyrant who is feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

And today, the United States must destroy the same regime because a nuclear-armed Saddam

will place the security of our entire world at risk.

It is simply not

reflecting the reality to assume that Saddam isn't feverishly working to develop nuclear weapons.

If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the regime.

The more victories you amass, the easier the next victory becomes.

The first victory in Afghanistan makes a second victory in Iraq that much easier.

The second victory in Iraq will make the third victory that much easier.

Catastrophically wrong about could not be more wrong.

Everything.

Everything.

Every single point he made there was catastrophically wrong.

And we weren't cherry-picking from that.

He was fucking wrong about everything.

And now he's making the exact same arguments for a regime change war based on some real, you know, at least for now, secret intelligence about WMD in Iran.

The fact that anyone would follow this fucking guy into another regime change war is insane to me.

Is that who you all want to follow?

I mean, he guaranteed it, right?

It'd work out so great.

And the only other thing I have to add to that, Tommy, because it's so clear, is so clear the third victory he clearly had iran in mind back then like of course he did he didn't stop at the second victory he said that victory in afghanistan which didn't turn out to be victory will lead to the second victory in iraq and then to make the third victory easier he was thinking about iran in that testimony right and this is someone you're going to follow into a war i don't think so Like when Donald Trump was elected, I was despondent on every single level.

The one possible silver lining was I thought there was a chance he would have the fucking balls and the political leverage to stand up to Bibi Netanyahu.

But to watch him get led around like this and just become Bibi's little lapdog in the face of a catastrophic regime change war in Iran is just, it's so unbelievably pathetic and disappointing.

He looks so goddamn weak.

Yeah.

And look, you know, Bears, we should keep repeating it.

I mean, I hear you guys on Positive America Sonnets talking about like the need to repeat, you know, the tax cuts to the billionaires.

He said he'd end the war in Ukraine on day one.

That war has escalated.

He said he'd end the war in Gaza.

That war has gotten worse.

He said he would stop this war and make a deal.

And now we've got a war here.

Like this, this is just more chaos.

And it's weakness in this case.

It is weakness.

He's afraid to stand up to Putin in Ukraine, and he's afraid to stand up to Netanyahu in the Middle East.

And that's ultimately potentially going to put us at risk.

It's just, it's just.

Terrible.

It's completely demoralizing.

All right, Ben.

That's all I got.

Anything else you want to get off your chest about this war, Netanyahu?

Anything else going on?

No, no.

I mean,

we definitely covered the waterfront on this one.

It is, it is, like, the only thing I will say, Tommy, is that as people who are old enough to remember the Iraq War debates, it's kind of interesting to watch what it would have been like if Twitter existed in 2003.

You know what I mean?

Because I saw like John Poderhertz or whatever his name is, like dunking on you.

And I was like,

I haven't thought about that guy since the Iraq War when he was like the biggest cheerleader for that.

Dude, John Pudhoritz tweeted out an article his father had written 15 years ago about how he needed to bomb Iran.

He was like, thank God my 90-year-old dad is still alive to see this.

I was like, oh, intergenerational bloodlust.

What a beautiful thing.

But it's been fascinating.

Like the media changes are fascinating in that, yes, social media exists.

Fox News is exactly the same, but it's like the far-right networks, like the OANs where like Matt Gates is a host, suddenly are anti-war.

There are these interesting new dynamics.

Unfortunately, none of them are strong enough to push back of the like kind of Tom Cottons of the world and the Netanyahu's and the inertia of of Washington just being a city that is just has bloodlust and is just horny for war at all times.

That is a bipartisan criticism.

Yeah, I told you.

I've been going down to this kind of Vietnam book rabbit hole and it's eerie that it was like that decades ago.

I mean, the one last thing I'd say is it's interesting, like for all the talk of Trump, you know, completely transforming the Republican Party, and in many ways he has,

he is not.

It's interesting on this stuff.

These are the same cleavages that have been in the Republican Party for decades, right?

There's always been these isolationist America firsters, and there have always been these kind of neocon hawks.

And Trump, turns out, didn't resolve that.

Yeah, he's stitching them all together to win a couple elections.

The question is whether this could rip it apart.

I don't know.

We'll find out, I guess.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, you're going to hear my debate with Congressman Greg Landsman about the wars in Iran and Gaza.

He is a supporter of the Israeli effort in Iran.

He has been someone who's been a pretty strong backer of the war in Gaza.

So we debate it all and let me know what you think.

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My guest today represents Ohio's first congressional district, Congressman Greg Lansman.

How you doing?

I'm okay.

How are you doing?

Good.

A little background for listeners.

So, Greg and I met, I think, in D.C.

a while back, and then we hung out in LA.

I can't remember which was first, but we've been friends for several years now.

You're someone I'd consider a friend.

It's weird to be friends with elected officials.

I still feel like a

little teen staffer at the back of the room, like intimidated by the title.

But often our friendship has entailed intense, passionate debates about the war in Gaza.

We've had some pretty profound disagreements.

But what I always really truly respect and appreciate about you is how thoughtful you are in those conversations and how decent you are.

And so, I think we both figured, like, I don't know, let's take this thing live, right?

So, let's

talk about not just Gaza, but also this brand new war with Iran.

Sound good?

Yeah, of course.

And I've the feeling's mutual.

I mean, I, you know, this is one of the most complicated, if not the most complicated, issues in the world.

And

to

have legitimate debate is really important to be able to talk about this with people that you trust, who I think ultimately have the same,

you know,

goal, right, or goals, which is you want

security and peace and something that's sustainable in the region for Palestinians, for Israelis, for the Lebanese, for Syrians, for everyone

and for Iranians.

And how you get there is

not at all clear, or it's not simple.

It's not simple at all.

And I think just, you know, having a conversation that both of us know is in good faith and coming from a good place, I think sort of the best we can do.

But first, I know that on Sunday, you were told by law enforcement, by the Capitol Police, I believe, that your name was included on a list being carried by that lunatic guy in Minnesota who murdered Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, who wounded two others.

I can't imagine how scary that was learning that, knowing, you know, at the time the suspect was still at large.

So just, you know, how you doing?

And like, do we know anything more about this guy's motives or what the hell he was doing?

Yeah, no, I'm good.

I know what you know.

And, you know, this is clearly an unwell person, you know, who targeted Democratic lawmakers.

He had a list, multiple lists.

And for whatever reason, I was on one of the lists, the list in his car, the quote unquote hit list.

I found out about it Sunday morning.

We were called by Capitol Police and

at first you're just,

it's sort of bizarre.

And then you start to do the math.

You know, the drive time between Minnesota and Ohio is probably 10 hours,

12 at the most.

I don't know exactly where he was.

And at that point, you know, no one knew where he was.

And there was a point in the evening, you know, we beefed up security and there's a cop outside and he texted me and just said, you know, can you turn on

the outdoor lights and turn off the indoor lights?

Jesus.

And it was just precautionary, but,

you know, I didn't know.

And I thought, maybe he saw something.

And it's hard to get that picture of that guy in that mask out of your head.

Yeah.

uh and so you know there was probably a 30 minutes 40 minutes where i thought maybe this guy's in my backyard yeah

um in any event they ultimately got him at 10 30 and at that point you're sort of like all right well that's it i'm so sorry that you had to go through that it's terrifying for you it's terrifying for your wife for your kids everyone around you that image is horrifying like that guy in the mask is terrifying and then i'm like mike lee like making jokes about it and he's do you know crazy that's how i saw the picture i I saw the picture

from Mike Lee's tweet.

Somebody sent me Mike Lee's tweet, and that's where I saw the picture.

So the only reason I had the image in my head was because Mike Lee decided to be an asshole and

make light of this matter, further politicize it, which is the last thing we need.

And I hope Mike Lee wakes up tomorrow morning and realizes what an asshole he was and says, look, I'm sorry.

I want to be part of the solution.

I shouldn't have said that.

I shouldn't have been so cavalier about the fact that people were murdered.

Well, I'm glad you're okay, and I'm grateful for you talking to me about it and still doing the show.

Okay, so

let's talk about the war between Israel and Iran.

Listeners will just heard, you know, Ben and I do a whole sort of show about the latest developments.

So I'll skip the big wind up.

But why do you think that this Israeli operation against Iran is the right thing to do, is necessary?

I was just hoping you could kind of make the case.

Yeah, I mean,

the initial goal is to diminish, derail the nuclear capabilities of Iran.

And,

you know, that's all the above-ground stuff.

And to do something similar to Iran's ballistic missile program,

you know, ultimately ending

their...

you know, nuclear capabilities

is what should happen.

That involves, as you know better than anyone,

below-ground stuff that Israel may or may not be able to do on its own.

But

if you get to the point where Iran is no longer an existential threat, not just to Israel, but to others in the Middle East and to the United States,

because of this regime, not because of the Iranian people, but because of this regime,

then, you know,

you're talking about a fundamentally different landscape in the middle middle east and the pathways to peace become uh

much uh much more straightforward i mean it just it i i i think it is the end-all be-all in terms of getting to peace that iran is the last remaining this regime

is the last remaining big barrier to peace and i i

understand

that people have very strong feelings that there are other big barriers to peace.

And And

my position is that

if you can get Iran off the table, this regime, where they no longer have existential,

the ability to

drop an atomic weapon,

that you have dismantled their terror networks,

Hezbollah is gone, Hamas is gone, the Houthis are gone, terror cells in Syria and Iraq are not being funded,

You then are liberating not just Iran, but Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Iraq.

Well, so, okay, so part of what you were talking about there, like this, this bigger picture goal where Hezbollah is gone, Hamas is gone, the Houthi is gone, that's like

a bigger, spicier meatball.

So let's get to that in a second.

But just on the nuclear program,

I guess I'm...

I don't understand the timing.

Netanyahu was suggesting that Iran was at the cusp of getting a nuclear weapon, that there was some new new intelligence

that indicated that they were about to break out.

The New York Times reported that the U.S.

knows of no new intelligence that sped up the timeline or that Iran was rushing to get a bomb.

The Wall Street Journal has a report that there might be some sort of good faith disagreement on the intelligence picture.

But I think most experts believe, yes, Iran could enrich enough nuclear material to weapons grade to have what you need for a bomb in

a week or two, but then it would take months, if not years, to fit it into a warhead, to weaponize it, and then even longer to get it onto a missile to deliver it to various places.

So I don't understand the sort of imminence of the threats.

Also on the timing, I mean, you've got the IDF has just fought this 20-month war in Gaza.

They have talked publicly about like severe ammunition shortages.

They've lost a huge number of armored vehicles.

There's this big drop in reservists showing up.

I saw one report that said over 100,000 Israeli reservists failed to show up.

The The ones who do are exhausted.

You've got thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Israeli reservists calling for an end to the war and the ceasefire.

The Israeli economy is taking a big hit because of the war, both because of a reduction in tourism and the cost of the direct action.

And then, like, the Israeli people are exhausted.

Iran itself is sort of diplomatically isolated.

And Trump was in the midst of this diplomatic effort.

And so,

I just don't get why he would rush this and why this was necessary now

and whether but or whether you think it was sort of appropriate to move this quickly.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two schools of thought.

There's always been two schools of thought, at least in the last, I don't know, 10 years

or longer, 15 years.

Like one is there is a diplomatic pathway for, you know, with Iran.

And that was obviously something that you all pursued, and there are strong arguments for that pathway.

There's also also

the argument that

there are no real diplomatic plays with Iran.

Iran isn't going to

play by the rules in the end because of who this regime is and what their intentions are.

So, yes, they were meeting, but they weren't making any real progress,

as we understand.

And this is about as weak as Iran has been.

And so, you know, when you have an existential threat that close to

breaking out,

you know, you can easily make the case that this is your moment

and that you've waited too long.

There are some Israelis who believe that.

There are obviously some people who believe that Israel should have done this sooner.

And

now,

whether it was

the right time or not, it has happened.

And

I think think the big question has to be, you know, as Israel focuses entirely on these

military targets,

and if there is the possibility of ending what's happening, the enrichment work that's happening underground,

does Israel get the support they need to finish this?

I would hope so.

And I understand.

So you want the U.S.

to directly get involved.

I mean, basically what we're talking about is the U.S.

B-1 or B-2 bombers bombers dropping the massive ordnance penetrator, this 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb on Fordo or other buried sites.

You think that's what should happen?

I think that Fordo has to go.

And how they do that, you know, whether it's something that, you know,

if Trump decides, well, we'll just give them the bombers and let Israel do it.

Okay.

I mean, but I think this is, you have a moment of truth.

Like you can finish it.

Finish it.

Now, if Iran comes back and says, okay, we would like to negotiate, and they get to a real

place of legitimate

desire to be done, to shift to a civil program, to have real inspections.

And I think it has to include any deal has to include dismantling these terror armies so that Lebanon can be free, Gaza can be free,

Syria,

that they are done.

They have to get rid of uh Hamas and Hezbollah, you know, and, and, and the world is, would be for that.

The world would all jump in and support those efforts and help those countries rebuild.

There would be enough money for Gaza, enough money for Lebanon, enough money for Syria, I would, I would think.

On the negotiations, I mean, there, there's this sense, BB keeps saying, like, oh, Trump gave him 60 days, you know, we got to 61, so I bombed.

I just think that's like self-evidently bullshit.

Like, Trump had scheduled talks for day 63 with Witkoff.

There are some reports that Witkoff was kind of like unwilling or unable to engage

in real detail at some of these meetings.

And also, like, he's sending a real estate guy with no subject matter expertise to lead the effort in the first place.

I think it's going to slow things down.

So, I sort of like think holding to that timeline is a little bit unfair.

That said, it does seem to me that Trump was sincerely pursuing a JCPOA-like nuclear deal.

And to me, I think that's obviously a better path for a few reasons.

The first is that the Obama-era deal deal worked.

From 2015 to 2018, the IAEA issued over a dozen reports showing that Iran was complying.

Iran shipped out their nuclear stockpile.

They disabled this, dismantled centrifuges.

They gave inspectors more access.

They disabled this heavy water reactor at Iraq.

Trump's staff, his own team, testified before Congress that Iran was complying.

And then when Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, Iran still stayed in compliance for a while until we started sanctioning them.

And then ultimately, when the U.S.

killed Qasim Soleimani, Soleimani, I think they started enriching again.

And they also at that time ramped up support for proxy groups in the Middle East like Hezbollah and the Houthis.

So I guess where I'm coming from is like, I hate this Iranian leadership.

I think they do horrible things, not just to Israel, but to their own people, right?

Like they've thrown friends of mine in jail for literally years.

But I think the record shows is that the best way to deal with them is through diplomacy.

And I think history shows that the way you can permanently, verifiably get countries to get rid of their nuclear programs is through diplomacy, which is what South Africa did in the 90s.

It's what Ukraine did after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, I think we could bomb the shit out of Fordo.

We could hit it with every bunker buster bomb in our arsenal.

Basically, what Iran needs is like a couple advanced cascades, centrifuges,

a couple weeks, and they can enrich enough nuclear material to have what they need to build a bomb in some other covert facility.

Like you can't, we can't bomb the know-how out of them, even if the U.S.

and Israel kill all of these nuclear scientists.

Yeah, you can do an enormous amount of damage, and they already have.

I mean, Israel has done an enormous amount of damage to

Iranian air defenses, to their ballistic missile program, and to

the nuclear capabilities.

A couple of things.

One is on the time, I want to come back to it because

I have seen

reports out of CENCOM that

there were very serious concerns.

You're right that it's about how you read the intelligence.

And obviously, the IDF is going to read it one way, as opposed to the way our folks are.

Two,

I want to believe that Iran would get, this regime would get to a place where they could...

they could negotiate honestly and that it would include all of the things that you and I would want included.

And maybe this is the path to do that,

that

the sword

is an incentive enough,

the damage that has been done and just how weakened Iran

is, this regime is, based on the events of the last year or two and the events of the last couple of days, that they are so weakened that they will do an actual, a real deal.

Now,

I want to be incredibly respectful for the work that you all did.

The argument against, you know, and I, because I'm sure you've made it, but I know the argument that you hear when you're in the region, they say

that it was time bound, you know, the

original agreement with Iran.

And we could have just renegotiated it all along, right?

And never let her out to enrich to where they got to.

So that's a huge mistake of Trump's book, in my opinion.

Okay.

Anyway, it was time-bound, but

they got a lot of money up front, right?

Because a lot of the assets were unfrozen.

And that money ultimately made its way to, you know, arguably to Hezbollah and Hamas, that the inspections weren't as great as

people wanted them to be, that there were serious holes, questions, mostly because Iran is known, or this regime is known as

a bad actor when it comes to some of this stuff.

So, you know,

there were issues.

And I think you have to put yourself in the shoes of the people who are the most vulnerable to us being wrong.

And that is

the Israelis.

And,

you know, part of the challenge here is that Netanyahu has lost a lot of trust with a lot of people.

And so you come to a moment like this where,

you know, I think it makes sense to go and say, we're not going to let you get any further in terms of enrichment.

We're going to put our foot down.

We're going to stop this.

The timing

is questionable because people have lost faith in Netanyahu, right?

You know, his government was potentially about to dissolve.

We don't know.

You know, he had serious issues with his father.

Honestly, I bet he isn't a survivor.

The guy's a survivor, but sorry.

Yeah, like no, no, no, you're right.

I mean, they call him the magician because like he like

finds himself in these.

Yeah, so I get the skepticism, and this is this is a thing that Israelis talk about, which is like, you know, you talked about the exhaustion.

There's also this frustration with the leadership.

And I will say this: I think we can get to peace, and I think that this ends hopefully in a way where

we have a path

to no more enrichment in Iran, that they're going to pull back from the terror army

work, all that stuff.

I do believe, and I think most people believe, that you're going to need a new regime.

Like, it's not going to be this regime, and you're going to need a new coalition government.

It's not going to be this coalition government in Israel.

You know, with Ben Gavir and Shmolch, like, it's not going to happen.

Look, I think you're getting something really important, which is this, this just isn't about WMDs.

This is a regime change operation.

We know that Donald Trump vetoed a plan from Netanyahu to assassinate the supreme leader of Iran.

And I think if you look at the recent couple decades of regime change wars, Iraq, Libya, Syria was a catastrophe for 15 years.

I see the same kind of neocon voices arguing, oh, it'd be clean and simple.

And then, you know, like flowers will bloom across the Middle East.

And I just, I find that very hard to believe.

And I also like, I see Trump saying, okay, you know, we're going to bomb them, and then that'll force the Iranians to cut a deal.

But if you're the supreme leader, like, this isn't just about your nuclear program, this is about your survival, this is about regime survival.

And how can they trust us to implement a deal?

You know, like either Trump was too weak to keep BB from bombing in the middle of his diplomatic efforts, or those diplomatic efforts were insincere.

Trump pulled out of the JCPOA.

Iran has been burned by the U.S., you know, sort of in these hostage deals that the Biden cooked up.

Trump posted a message just this morning about how he could kill the supreme leader at any time.

So, like, I just, it's very hard for me to like, you know, I agree with you.

You have to put yourself

in the shoes of the people most vulnerable.

I think we also have to try to put ourselves in Iran's shoes sometime and understand where they're coming from and that innocent civilians are dying there.

And that, you know, a regime change operation is very unlikely to lead to a government that is more friendly to Israel, in my opinion.

I think you're more likely to see the guys with the guns, like the RGC and others,

in control.

We don't know.

I mean,

look,

the regime change, the way in which you described it is boots on the ground.

No one's talking about putting boots on the ground.

I mean, we're not invading Iran.

No one's invading Iran.

I mean, they have invaded the airspace.

They've taken over the airspace.

But this is different than

what we saw in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And although we don't know where this is going, but I wouldn't advocate for

troops on the ground

or anything like we saw in

those wars that you mentioned.

Yeah, I think

regime change is very difficult.

In Israel, to be clear, which is a democracy, there's going to be an election next year.

So whether, you know, his coalition, and for those who

don't know this, to be prime minister, you need 61 members of the Knesset

to join your coalition.

I think

Netanyahu is at 68, 69, maybe

it's something like that.

He could lose eight or nine people, and then that immediately leads to a new election, right?

But next year, there will be an election

in any event.

And so you're going to have, presumably, new leadership and new government in Israel.

Iran, obviously not a democracy, a theocracy, you know, this crew took over in 1979.

And it is entirely possible to imagine a scenario where because of how weakened they've been, there is a domestic

uprising and there's going to be a change

because they don't want to continue to live like this.

I do think that the actions, while unsettling and frustrating for some,

and

also like Israel is targeting military

and oil and gas infrastructure.

And they're hitting in urban areas.

In the same way that Iran is like targeting the Israeli MOD, which is in Tel Aviv and hitting urban areas, like the same thing is happening, right?

No, right.

So

the IDF is targeting very specific

strategic, you know, whether whether it's oil and gas or

it's the, you know, the weapons, you know, stockpiles, whatever it is, they're not indiscriminately lobbing missiles into Tel Aviv or into

Jerusalem.

I mean, you know, Iran is just, yes, Iran has focused some

of their missiles on military targets, but it is indiscriminate.

I mean, think about what happened in April last year.

I mean, two, 300

objects in the air, killer drones,

you know, missiles.

That was indiscriminate.

All civilians or mostly civilians, right?

So it is different.

Well, no one was killed.

I mean, like 10x more people have been killed in Iran than have been killed in Israel.

Look, I hear what you're saying.

You're making a point that I agree with, and I think is in some senses valid.

I don't know what exactly each side is targeting.

I agree with you that you're seeing like apartment buildings in Tel Aviv getting hit, and there's just no discernible military value there, and that is clearly a war crime and unacceptable.

We're also seeing reports that the IDF in their early decapitation targets were going after senior military leaders in these buildings that flattened the whole thing.

So, I don't know who else was in the building and what civilians had been killed.

There were some early images of like a little girl who had been killed.

So, the war is horrific, right?

Like, horrible things are happening because of this conflict.

Well,

let's get to Gaza because In the days after October 7th, obviously Israel had to respond militarily.

1,200 people had been murdered.

There were hundreds of hostages sitting in Gaza.

There was literally ongoing rocket fire, right?

The idea that Israel would not respond militarily to that is insane.

20 months later, I just cannot understand any argument for continuing this war because, in my view, Hamas is decimated.

There's absolutely no chance they could pull off another October 7th.

And frankly, I think

it should have been prevented in the first place.

The IDF had the plan, right?

Like Netanyahu took his eye off the ball.

He had IDF troops off the border and up in the West Bank dealing with settler violence.

The Israeli, the senior Israeli officials like Yov Galant, who I know you know extremely well, the former defense minister, has told hostage families, quote, there's nothing left in Gaza to do.

The major achievement has been achieved.

I fear we are staying there just because of their desire to be there.

Ehud Elmer, the former Israeli prime minister, said the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning, with no chances of success.

Even Steve Steve Witcoff, Trump's emissary to the region, said: Israel is prolonging the war, even though we do not see where further progress can be made.

And then, you know, to civilian casualties, I mean, the death toll in Gaza is staggering.

The reports are 55,000 Palestinians dead.

I personally believe that is likely to be a severe undercount.

90% of housing units are destroyed or damaged.

22% of the population faces catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Top Israeli government ministers are calling for the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

So I just, I hear you.

Like, yes, Hamas is not a partner for peace, but they are an idea and a political organization as well in a group that sort of like exists to resist

and to try to kill Israel.

I just don't think we can eradicate all of Hamas through this war.

And I don't understand the argument for continuing it at this point.

Yeah, I mean,

as I said, I was able to, and I try to, because I'm in the position I am,

I try to do all my sort of complaining and arguing directly with folks.

And so, you know, and I built up trust to where I can go and sit in a room with Netanyahu and say, like.

like the humanitarian aid situation isn't at all where it needs to be.

Like you got to surge humanitarian aid.

You got to, you know, and this is something that Galam pushed for, you know, a long time ago, which was what we're seeing now, which is essentially these humanitarian bubbles.

You know, because of the technology that Israel has, what they found in the tunnels, they can separate Hamas from the Gazans,

facial recognition, all kinds of stuff, and create these places where Gazans are completely safe

and they're getting food.

and medicine and everything that they need.

And how that is

not just the Jewish thing to do, not just the right thing to do.

I'm Jewish.

Not just the right thing to do.

It's also the strategic thing to do.

Separating Hamas from

Gazans

is a strategic imperative because then you can

further

dismantle or disarm, demilitarize the rest of

Gaza.

I think

ending this war, getting the hostages home is the priority.

I am with Galant and others that you got to get that deal done.

And I'm also with Galant that I wish that deal done, and this is where I'm going to, I I wish that deal got done a long time ago for a lot of people's sake.

And, you know, Netanyahu's argument was, you know, we have to secure the southern border along Egypt because that's where Hamas is continuing to get arms and the Philadelphia corridor.

And

there's some truth to that, but Galant would make the argument you can go back in pretty quickly.

Yes, it's harder, but you got to get everyone home.

I don't know what to say other than yes, I agree.

However,

the issue of Hamas still has to be addressed.

Let's say that Netanyahu gets an agreement and they end the war tomorrow and all of the hostages come home.

There is still a big question about what you do with Hamas.

And yes, Hamas can't do another October 7th.

But that's not the only

goal here.

I mean, Hamas,

in part, you're thinking, I'm thinking about the Palestinians.

Like, they need a legitimate governing authority that allows them to leverage all of these resources that I think are going to be brought to the table from the Saudis and others to rebuild.

You want to rebuild with a new governing authority, not with Hamas.

And so there is a legitimate strategic question of what does Israel and everyone else do with Hamas because we can't go back.

You can't go back.

You can't, you know, have all of this awfulness happen and then go back to what was happening pre-October 7th.

I mean, one, you're not going to have long-term stability.

You're not going to get to peace.

Two, the Palestinians in Gaza are going to have, what, another 15 years of awfulness?

Yeah, I hear you on you.

You can't go back, but you also have to face the reality that Netanyahu is pissed away 20 months without thinking about the day after, right?

Like

there's been no effort to create or empower a political entity that can be representative of the Palestinian people, whether they're in Gaza or the West Bank or anywhere, and can serve as that representative and kind of like take the mantle, right?

And so this we can't go back kind of argument, which I totally understand, I empathize with, and I hear on some level, is being used to justify like endless.

wheel spinning and pointless war and just like the slaughter of Palestinian people.

And I fear that that is fueling anti-Semitism around the world.

Like there is a hard to quantify like moral damage that happens to any country, whether it was the U.S.

and Iraq or Afghanistan or the Israelis with this war in Gaza when you're kind of like a part of this, something so awful and

cruel happening.

And like, what's the end game then?

Like, how can we as Americans

help push to end this?

Because in my book, I feel like I'm a taxpayer.

I don't want any more of my tax dollars going towards this war.

I don't know why we're shipping 2,000-pound bombs to Netanyahu to use in Gaza, right?

But like, it seems like there's a real reticence to use any of that kind of leverage.

Well, a couple of things.

One is, in order to,

you know, be done with Hamas,

the tunnel system does have to be, you know, destroyed, not entirely.

That would be impossible.

But, you know, part of what you're seeing is the destruction of infrastructure.

And it looks terrible and and i get uh how bad this war has been but not but period a lot of it is infrastructure that the idf uh believes has to be destroyed in order to uh limit what hamas is able to do um

and and get to a point where Hamas is so weakened that they are willing to accept a deal.

I mean, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, their frustration is that there were so many deals

and so many opportunities.

And Hamas, you know,

said, no,

we're not going to give these last remaining hostages up.

And

that is a frustrating position to be in.

And

I do get frustrated that while there is a...

plenty of when you're at war, there's plenty of

awfulness to be talked about

and people should sit in it and feel it on both sides.

And I have.

I mean, I can't get images of October 7th out of my head.

I never will.

I've seen

hours of footage and I can't get images of what has happened in Gaza out of my head.

And I never will.

And I don't want to because

I want to be somebody who's there at some point as part of the solution, that is there

working through a sustainable peace, that's building it all back.

You can't fight a war, any war, and not make mistakes.

And some of them have been awful mistakes.

Why it is so frustrating that

the international outrage for Hamas just has not,

didn't last longer than 24, 48 hours.

And the same with Iran.

It is so clear to me that, and maybe this is unfair, and maybe I'm being

naive, but

if the world would just Europe and and and and and and I think the Gulf states are closer than anyone, but Europe, uh, you know, uh, you know, the the the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian movement here in the United States, if they just say, look, we are going to take a a beat and we're going to leave Israel alone, we're going to stop saying Israel is the worst, and we are going to focus all of our

attention and outrage on

this Iranian regime and Hamas and just say, look, you have to be done.

You have to be be done.

You have to be done.

I just don't understand

why that isn't the

at least something that folks who have been saying Israel's the worst.

Israel's the worst, Israel's the worst.

Can I explain?

Yeah, yeah.

Because Hamas is a fucking terrorist organization.

My expectations for them are rock bottom.

They are evil motherfuckers.

What they did on October 7th was evil and unjustifiable, and no civilian should ever be killed.

But I just think we all have to live in, like, kind of

look at the recent history, which is that the only way we're going to get these hostages out is through

a negotiated ceasefire that's going to be imperfect, just like the Iran deal was imperfect.

Like, not everyone's always going to get what they want out of these deals.

And like, that's diplomacy.

But I think part of what you're seeing about the reaction to Netanyahu is that he's a fucking liar.

Like, we played earlier in the show

audio of Netanyahu testifying before Congress in what, 2002, 2003, about what a cakewalk cakewalk the Iraq war would be, about Saddam's WNDs, lie.

I watched him lie to Obama's face during the Obama administration.

He's a fucking liar.

And I think a lot of my frustration with like the Biden administration's Israel policy was the sense you always got from him because he said it all the time was that he still thought we were living in gold of my years Israel.

And there was this like bygone era of a liberal, democratic, progressive Israel.

But Israel under Netanyahu is very different.

And there's literal extremist terrorist sympathizers in his cabinet.

Like Itmar Ben-Gavir had a photo of a mass murderer of Palestinians on his wall.

And I just think like U.S.

policy is just not adjusted, right?

So I think

that I agree with.

Hold on.

That I agree with.

U.S.

policy has not adjusted.

And I think

that

the

understanding how the coalition government works is so hugely important for American politicians and American

policymakers.

He needs 61 votes.

And he decided in part, he claims, and I agree,

he's a difficult guy to trust.

So diplomatic.

But he says that he tried to go in a different direction and folks on the left said no.

And so he ended up with a coalition that included Ben Gavir and Smoltridge.

And it's absurd.

Those people should be out of his government.

And he has assured us over and over, oh, oh, no, they don't,

they talk a lot, but

I run the show.

They're not running the government.

And I've pointed out instances to him, like, no, no, no, buddy.

There are moments where they seem to have the wheel

in terms of what they do with the police and moving money around because one of the guys is in charge of the money and why money isn't going into the West Bank and to the Palestinian Authority.

Oh, we're taking care of that.

I mean, all those things.

But our folks have to appreciate that every time you come in hard on Netanyahu, you know, he, he, his coalition sort of strengthens around him.

And so it isn't so clear.

It isn't so like, oh, let's just, I'm going to go and I'm going to be tough with BB.

Because like you can do some of that stuff behind the scenes.

Some of that stuff, if you play out publicly, it only

strengthens the guy.

It only helps

the existing coalition.

If you start to play the politics and understand the Knesset and figure out how to get get a deal done where he can expand his coalition or change or shift his coalition, I think you could get to a place where

he has a fundamentally different governing coalition that does not include Ben Gavir and Smoltrich.

Yeah, look, I think you make a lot of good points.

I think you're right in your analysis.

But I think at the end of the day, Netanyahu's not committed to a two-state solution.

He's not committed to peace.

He's never delivered on any of the things people hoped he would.

So I think kind of fish rots from the head down is my take on this one.

I mean, listen,

he is very, I mean, the politics in Israel are so complicated, as you know.

The number one issue is security.

It's, it's just like the, you know, you go to America, anywhere in America, the number one issue is, is, is the economy, and then it's border, and then it's public safety, and then it's, you know, people care about climate, people care about this.

In Israel, everyone, it's security, security, security.

So whether it's him or somebody else, the situation remains very complicated.

So even if it's not Netanyahu, whoever comes in next is going to have a difficult task.

Now, I would get the war done.

I would search humanitarian aid.

I would build the biggest coalition ever for peace.

I do believe that if he had the politics on his side, Netanyahu would 100% say, yes, we're going to put ourselves on a path to getting to,

I think what they're comfortable with at the moment is Palestinian self-determination or self-governance.

because there is a

every day you get from October 7th it's it's easier to say okay we can head in that direction but if October 7th was this awful terror attack you know and and the reward is a Palestinian state that that is a that is a challenge for a lot of Israelis who say wait wait wait wait wait I'm all for peace and and I've I'm all for getting to that at some point but why are we talking about that now no I I totally understand that

And that's the damage, right?

Like October 7th is going to reverberate for years, if not decades, if not generations.

And I hope that the exact kind of feeling you're describing, which is totally understandable, which is we can't let this horrific, evil, unjustifiable terrorist attack feel rewarded.

I just hope that that doesn't block a pathway to peace in perpetuity.

I want, and this is,

you know, here in the United States, because I'm a 90s kid, so I grew up in the 90s.

I remember getting excited about politics in part because I saw the Rose Garden ceremony where Clinton was

shaking hands with Arafat and Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, head of the PLO,

and how close they got to peace.

And

I want to see

that kind of leadership here in the Middle East, people who can step out onto the world stage and

bring people together around something bigger than

what we have now.

And

I've pushed the prime minister to be that kind of leader, like Zelensky has, which is like rallying the world around your cause.

And

I want to see that for Israel.

I want to see that for the Palestinians.

I want to see that for us.

And I hope we get to a point where the situation in Iran

gets resolved,

where the conflict ends very quickly, that hopefully there is a diplomatic path, that it was sort of

helped along by the awfulness of the last couple of days because they do respond.

They do respond to these kinds of attacks.

They are worried.

They don't want war.

in the end, the Iranian regime.

They don't want war.

They want to stay in power.

And so maybe this is enough.

I hope it is.

I hope it's enough for them to say, you know what?

Let's get a deal done.

And I hope we get to a point where the Israelis have the kind of

leadership that can step out into the world stage and bring the world together.

And

not just for Israel,

but for Palestinians and everyone in the region.

I think that's a great place to end it.

I hope that

the most optimistic version of whatever the hell both of us said throughout the course of this 45-minute conversation is what comes true.

But as always, I'm really grateful to to you for making the time

for pushing back.

And see you on the text chain soon.

Okay.

See you, buddy.

Thanks again to Congressman Lanceman for joining the show.

And thanks to you, Ben, for doing this from New York.

I mean, oh, God, I feel like I've been preparing for this podcast for 15 years.

Yeah, I just feel depressed, man.

Glad to join you.

I know.

It is.

There's just not a lot of good news out there.

We just got to level with the world those here.

There's just, there's not a ton of good news out there.

The Knicks can't even hire a coach, too.

Well, I'm just seeing on Twitter now, first of all, there's all these videos flashing up as we speak of

Israeli interceptor missiles over Tel Aviv, you know, trying to beat back the next barrage of Iranian missiles.

So, like, hopefully, no innocent people die.

And there's also a report that Trump and Netanyahu just spoke on the phone.

So, hopefully, that's not a fucking USA green light call, but we'll see.

Maybe looking at another bonus pod here.

Yes,

subscribe to YouTube.

God damn it.

All All right, buddy.

Talk to you soon.

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