94. Trump’s Taking Us To War: US Bombs Iran

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Hey, welcome to the Rest is Politics US.

I'm Katie Kaye.

Back in Washington, D.C., just in time.

Anthony's in New York.

and since I landed of course well all of this happened about two hours before I landed the strikes against Iran we're going to talk about the political fallout of those strikes what it means for MAGA world

how Democrats are handling it and what Donald Trump's options are.

I know Alistair and Rory have already also done a emergency pod on this too so you can listen to that.

They had some of the good international reaction on that.

But obviously a very busy time here in Washington.

Anthony, I don't know about you,

but I am having flashbacks to 2003 and George W.

Bush standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier with a huge big sign behind him saying mission accomplished.

And this was in May of 2003.

The invasion of Iraq, shock and awe, had taken place, started three months beforehand.

And it was that moment where America thought it was in total control, had total dominance, was very powerful, had managed to topple Saddam Hussein and was going to get out of this fast and quick and easy.

And I'm not saying that this is the same proposition, but

there is something about this morning where we're sitting here and we've just listened to Pete Hagseth saying that the nuclear facilities in Iran have been, the nuclear ambitions of Iran have been obliterated.

And

I think we're at that moment where we don't know.

We don't know the fallout of this yet because we don't know what happened in Iran.

We don't know where those B-2 bombers did obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities.

We don't know how Iran will retaliate.

And we don't really know, and I think this is important to stress, we don't know what Donald Trump's end game is.

We don't know what the strategy is.

We've seen the tactic.

We've seen the

strikes, but what's the strategy here?

Do they want regime change in Iran?

Do they want more than they've already got?

How sure is he that America is not going to be pulled into what George W.

Bush was pulled into, a forever war war that derailed his presidency.

I don't know what you're thinking this morning.

This happened, what, 12 hours ago, almost exactly 12 hours ago.

So, what are you thinking?

What are you hearing?

So, the first thing I would say, Caddy, I did not want them to do this.

I think I was pretty clear with that

on the last time we were here.

As an American, I will say that I'm glad that the troops are out of the harm's way and the planes have reported back because, obviously, I've traveled with American servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I don't want them in danger.

I don't like the strategy personally.

I'm not even sure that the intelligence is right.

They may or may not have a bomb.

Remember, there was an earthquake in September of 2021.

It was roughly a 6.3 Richter scale earthquake, very similar to the earthquake that the North Koreans had when they were detonating underground nuclear bombs.

So, again, I'm not saying they have nuclear weaponry or how close they are.

And the Iranians are saying they moved all the enriched uranium.

The Iranians are saying they moved it, so therefore there wasn't anything there, thank God, because we don't have the risk of any type of water contamination.

At least we hope those things are true.

I guess, you know, Sun Tzu once said that the greatest act of war is putting down your enemy without a war, right?

And figuring it out through diplomacy.

So

a couple quick things.

I know these bunker buster bombs, some of them have missed targets before.

So maybe they hit the targets, targets, maybe they didn't.

I'm wearing my Batman shirt, Caddy, intentionally.

Remember, we want to be Superman.

We want to be truth, justice, and the American way.

We want to be Superman.

He's our normative myth.

But Batman is who we really are.

Okay, we're dark.

We're ugly.

We make secretive decisions.

We do things that sometimes

lead to unexpected outcomes.

So I'm just going to say quickly three things, get you to react to them.

I hope the Americans through the State Department are now back channeling in the Middle East.

I hope there's an opportunity to have peace and possibly even lift the sanctions on Iran.

People say, what does he mean by that?

Well, if they don't have a nuclear threat and they're no longer capable of threatening us that way, and we can reduce levels of hostility, which would reduce the threat to American citizens abroad, maybe we could do that.

Other people think that that's naive.

But I'm telling you, there were 46 years, Caddy, and there were many presidents that did not do that.

And now we have a president that did that.

And

the right-wing media is saying this was the greatest thing ever.

There's a group of MAGA people that are saying, no, this is not the greatest thing ever, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon.

I think Trump has muted Tucker Carlson.

But I'm just really worried about the outcomes of this because I saw the outcome of the wars that you're referencing.

I saw the outcome of the bombings in Lebanon in 1983, October of 1983.

And this never ends easy.

It doesn't end surgically.

It doesn't end as the battle plans are designed to have them end with that mission accomplished banner that you're referencing from 2003.

So Donald Trump clearly thinks it can do.

My understanding is that he doesn't believe that strikes are war.

So in his mind, there is no incompatibility between saying he is the president that is going to end wars and even more so not get America into more wars, which is what he promised an increasingly isolationist American public during the campaign trail.

which is part of the reason he got elected.

And he doesn't see that there is a discrepancy between that statement and the strikes that were launched last night.

He clearly

takes quite a lot of pride in these strikes.

He spoke quite weirdly and graphically last night, as he tends to in superlatives, about arms and limbs being blown off people and that being America, Iran's favorite tactic.

Both he and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, had just spoken,

sounded very confident about the success of these strikes,

saying that the capacity, as I said, they both use this word obliterated.

But I've been speaking to people in Israel and people in the national security community, what Washingtonians like to call the IC, the intelligence community here in DC,

who are saying the single biggest question as you and I are talking, Anthony, on Sunday morning is how successful these strikes were.

And we need the details of that.

Were the facilities damaged, only damaged?

Were they obliterated, as America's saying?

Were the stockpiles

destroyed?

Were the weapons manufacturing areas also destroyed?

Have the Iranians moved some of the stockpiles and the manufacturing capability and the facilities to a site that America did not hit last night?

So all of that, I think, is what we are waiting to find out.

And I think, as you and I are speaking, when it comes to this big question that has divided MAGA world between should he have done it and should he not have done it, and that is dividing the Middle East experts that I've been in contact with and some members of Congress.

I just heard from one this morning about whether he should have done this or not.

Everybody is slightly on pause this morning in Washington, waiting to find out how successful these strikes were and two, waiting to see how the Iranians retaliate and what sort of capability they have left to retaliate.

And until we find out those two things, I think it's too early to call whether this was the right thing or the wrong thing for America to have done.

I know that you were much more skeptical of it when we spoke last week.

And of course, I think many Americans feel as you do, and there is a tendency in America to rally around the flag in these moments.

And I think that's what we're seeing from even some of the MAGA crowd, who actually this morning are being pretty quiet.

You're not hearing Tucker Carlson railing against this.

You're not hearing even Steve Bannon railing against this on Sunday morning, 12 hours after these strikes.

I think everyone, even in those who oppose these strikes in America, are kind of on pause, waiting to see what happened and waiting to see how.

It's bad etiquette, you know, know, like Hakeem Jeffries.

It's bad etiquette.

You're right.

Hakeem Jeffries is going after the administration.

You know, one of the reasons why these political leaders like war is it consolidates their opposition.

It's very hard to go after somebody when you're putting American citizens.

When they're a wartime leader.

Exactly.

You're putting American citizens in arm's way.

So Bannon will tone himself down.

I find it ironic that I'm in agreement with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon.

I feel like I'm in that Ben Affleck meme where I'm smoking the cigarette with my,

how did this happen to me, right?

Is this the party that I really want to be in?

No, 100%.

By the way, that will change.

This rallying around the flag and the troops and the president will change if this operation has not been as successful as America needs it to be in order for this to be an in-and-out strike that takes the risk of Iranian nuclear threats off the table.

The public is fickle.

Let's talk about a path to success, right?

A path to success would be diplomatic overtures are being made to bring Iran back into the family of nations.

They try to rapprochement with the Saudis, which apparently has been successful.

And maybe now that if this is really true, that the nuclear proliferation is off the table, is there a way to bring them back into the family of nations and to potentially even improve their economy and the health and welfare of their citizens?

Again, I don't know the answer to that.

I'm skeptical of that.

Are they going to retaliate?

This is a prideful, nationalistic group of people.

It would make more sense to me that they would figure out a way to retaliate because, again, as political leaders, the country has just been attacked.

You know, remember, they lost 8 million people.

They're in the Iraqi-Iranian war in the 80s.

Even if the regime, even if there's an 80% disapproval rating in the country of the regime, When you're getting attacked, people have a tendency to consolidate with each other.

So there's those issues.

But just quickly, because there's a woman on our stream, Kathy, is asking a really good question.

Every Wall Street person thinks about this every day, Kathy.

So I want to answer the question.

And it's, will they close the Strait of Hormuz?

And just for what is every, what is the Strait of Hormuz?

It's in the Persian or the Arabian Gulf, 21 miles in width.

The Iranians could flood that.

They've got a tremendous amount of naval vessels there.

U.S.

has naval vessels there.

Other nations do as well.

The goal has always been on both sides of that strait to keep that strait open.

Closing that strait would be a cataclysm for the U.S.

economy, cataclysm of the global economy, because it would shock the oil markets.

You'd strain all the supply that's coming from the eastern province of Saudi Arabia out through the Iraqi and Kuwaiti facilities as well, even in the UAE where they pump oil closer to Abu Dhabi.

So this would be a very big problem for the world.

And if that strip gets closed, you're going to shock markets.

It'll hurt people come wintertime, et cetera.

We're going to take a quick break and come back with more of your questions.

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It's interesting that you mentioned the Straits Four Moves because actually I just saw that the Gulf markets are up this morning in early trading there on, which suggests Sunday trading, of course, open in the Middle East on a Sunday,

which suggests that they are kind of shrugging it off, which is interesting.

We'll see whether this expands.

Maybe that's because they think that actually America won't get retaliated against.

The Iranians, of course, as we're speaking, are saying that they will hit back, but

the reason that they had such big capacity to hit back before, many of those reasons have gone.

Hezbollah has gone in Lebanon pretty much.

Iran's air capacities and air defenses have gone pretty much.

Their capacity in Syria has gone.

Hamas has gone.

They've had many of their own leadership taken out, military and political, in the last eight days of Israeli bombings.

So it's not clear whether and how they can retaliate.

I spoke to somebody who was

who had worked on the Middle East in American intelligence who said the biggest threats at the moment are against American bases

with Iranian missiles, but those bases, of course, there's been a lot of force protection efforts undertaken in the last few days to try and protect those bases.

There is a longer-term threat of some kind of terrorist attack.

They do have the capacity to launch some kind of cyber attack against the United States or some kind of terrorist attack against US or other foreign interests around the world.

This person from the intelligence community pointed out to me one of the problems of the Trump administration is that actually, since Donald Trump came into office under Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, a lot of the units apparently in the FBI that were dealing with counterterrorism in the United States have been disbanded and those people have been moved against, guess what, the immigration threat at the border.

So I don't know that America has, and this speaks to Donald Trump's kind of long-term view and planning process.

First of all, he has a team that is not particularly experienced around him.

We spoke about that in the podcast last week.

And why, if you are going to launch a strike like this where there is any possibility, and we know that Iranians have hit through terrorist activities, American assets in the past, why would you downgrade the terrorism units that are in the FBI?

You'd think, right, I mean, I would want to go into something like this as well protected as I could be, not less well protected than I was four months ago.

Those are the concerns.

How competent and capable, how much knowledge is there?

No, they're making ideological decisions.

They've decided that the safety and the welfare is superseded by their ideological decisions.

You know, the FBI is corrupt and the FBI went after Donald Trump erroneously and unfairly.

And immigration is the only game in town.

Yes, and I'm bringing my team in to gut that.

And we're going to focus on immigration.

We're going to focus on dishwashers and eliminating dishwashers and getting them deported from the United States and not focus on terrorism anymore.

So, you know, that's what's going on.

It's just limited and narrow thinking.

But just on this topic, because I think it's important, Vladimir Putin last week says

that there's 2 million Russian-speaking

people living, citizens or expats, et cetera, living in Israel.

I also, I think you and I both know that the Russians got tipped off that there was going to be an imminent attack.

Any of the Russian nuclear scientists or people that were working in those facilities left the area.

And so one has to ask the question, how much did the Russians know about this attack?

When did they know it?

And what is their response to the attack?

So far, they've been pretty silent on the attack.

They have not condemned the attack, which you would have predicted that they would have done.

The Chinese have yet to condemn the attack as well, Caddy.

So, what are your thoughts there?

Look, I think we're going to have this meeting between the Iranians and the Russians on Monday.

The Iranians have grown closer to the Russians, they've been supplying them with drones that the Russians have been using in Ukraine.

Iran is in a weak position at the moment.

This is not where they want it to be.

They are used to being in a much stronger negotiating position than this.

And the offensive of the Israeli offensive of the last eight days, combined with the

Israeli decapitation of Hezbollah around and the collapse of Assad in Syria, have really weakened the Iranians.

So they need their friends right now.

And so that's why they're going to go to the Russians.

I don't know what they can get out of the Russians.

I don't know that Vladimir Putin, I can't see a world in which Vladimir Putin is suddenly going to want to get involved in retaliating with the Iranians against the Americans at this stage.

He has enough on his plate already trying to manage the war war in Ukraine.

And the Iranians will also try to

get closer to the Chinese during this process.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

It was the Chinese, remember, who brokered the agreement between the Saudis and the Iranians last year.

So the Chinese have had a role, they have a relationship with the Iranians.

But I think that Iran, my takeaway from this is that Iran is in a weak position.

There is,

I have spoken to people who are not particularly hawkish, who believe that the degree to which, and they are skeptical of Bibi Netanyahu's motives, they are skeptical of Donald Trump's strategy capacity, and they are all saying, look, we don't know how this is going to turn out because we don't know if this is a one-and-done in and out, if that's even possible.

American history recently in the Middle East has not suggested that is very possible, or at least that's not where America has gone in the recent decades.

But

there are people who are saying that Iran was so weakened, and Iran's nuclear threat was a real threat to not just American interests, but to Western interests.

And that if Iran had got a nuclear weapon, you'd have seen a race in other Gulf states for a nuclear weapon as well.

So this would have been the beginning of a arms race, a nuclear arms race in that region.

And

so if there was a chance this worked, then it was a chance worth taking.

I just don't think we know that.

And sometimes when I

get nervous when I hear kind of jingoism and triumphalism mixed in right at the moment you're still conducting and assessing military strikes because we just don't know.

It would be better for them to be a little,

I understand why they came out and said it was totally successful, why

Trump speaks in superlative, so that was the way he was going to speak.

But they have to be a little careful about this because we don't know the outcome of this.

When the administration, the Trump administration, is saying this isn't about regime change, your reaction to that is what?

I think for the Israelis, it's clearly about regime change.

When I spoke to Israelis last week after the bombardments began, they made it pretty clear it was about regime change.

I think for Donald Trump, if it was possible to have regime change and a pro-Western government installed in Iran, what's not to like.

Most Western governments would like that, which I think is why, by the way, listening to European leaders,

they are being surprisingly temperate in their responses to what the Americans have done.

You're not having European leaders come out and say this was illegal or against international law or a terrible thing for America to have done,

because they also see Iran as a threat.

I just don't know that that is what this will lead to.

There is not much organized opposition within Iran at the moment.

And they, even though the Iranian leadership and the current regime has been hit hard in the last week, they are still more organized than the opposition is.

So I don't know that regime change is going to be, we don't know.

That is one of, as Donald Rumsfeld looking down on us from up above would say, that is one of the great unknown unknowns.

Well, I mean, it's like saying, though, when somebody says it's not about something, it's usually about something.

Do you see what I mean?

When they deny it, you mean?

Yeah, exactly.

Like, doubt does protest too much.

This is where America needs more savvy in the region and a sense of history.

And this is where they need to talk to you, Anthony, and recent history, because

America was championing, we were all championing the Arab Spring, right?

We watched in Egypt,

we watched Saddam Hussein get toppled in Iraq.

And

the Arab Spring didn't produce a period of governments of democracy who are pro-American necessarily in that region.

So maybe they've relearned the lessons and they watched Assad fall and thought, oh, it's easy.

Look what happened in Libya.

Look what happened in Syria.

Listen, I was at the Bagram Air Base in

October of 2015.

One of the generals said to me, Yep,

we took the base over from the Soviets.

We built it up.

Then we were building it back down as we were trying to withdraw troops.

Then we had a surge.

We built it back up.

I said, so what did you spend?

So maybe 15 billion building it up, taking it back down.

Again, 20 years.

Regime change in Afghanistan was the Taliban returning to the Taliban 20 years.

You know, Patrick on this stream is saying something that you said last week, Caddy.

I think it's important to reference because I think you have very good instincts related to Trump's behavior.

You said last week that the Israelis are scoring battle successes in Iran

and he's being goaded, meaning Trump's being goaded by Bibi Net and Yahoo.

Hey, join in the fun, you know, slap the

beast alongside of us successfully.

And Patrick is bringing this up.

I mean, let me just throw this back at you.

Do you think that was part of the equation for Trump?

Hey, you know, I want to jump on this bandwagon.

It makes me look strong because I'm uptight about my masculinity.

Did you hear BB last night?

I listened to him last night talking.

I mean, God, that guy speaks Trump fluently.

You know, he could not have looked happier.

And he starts by flattering Trump as, you know, the greatest president ever.

And only Donald Trump could have done this.

And I think there is something in Donald Trump where he saw what, you know, Andy Day is pointing out that five days ago Trump was pushing the idea of a deal with Tehran and now the bombs are falling.

And we had, you know, go through the administration figures who have said they were not looking to bomb Iran.

This was not part of them.

Rubio's immediate instinct was to distance America when Israel started bombing.

So then when I think when Donald Trump saw the success of the Israeli mission, he wanted a part of it.

He liked what he saw and he thought, right, okay, we can, we, you know, you don't want just the Israelis to have the glory of what they're doing and have that historic opportunity.

We want to be part of it too.

I would say one thing: that

it's not going to be easy for him now to try and claim that Nobel Peace Prize, I think, when you've just launched three big bunker busters.

If that was what he was going for, he's gone a different route now.

Are people smart outside the United States or only the smart people in the United States?

There's no one or two smart ones out there.

Okay, so there are no smart people in Iran, and there's nobody in Iran that said, okay, if the U.S.

does this to us, because we positioned the U.S.

as the quote-unquote great Satan for the last 46 years.

Has anybody drawn up a counter-response, a military counter-response, a terrorist counter-response?

They've been working on this for 10, 20 years.

They haven't at all, right?

So they're just sitting around.

They're smoking the hookah pipe.

They're putting some opium in the pipe.

And they're like, yeah, drop a couple bombs on us.

We're going to do absolutely nothing about it.

And you guys go jingoistically beat the drum of your success.

We're going to do nothing about it.

Is that how it goes in the Middle East, Gatty?

No, they can wait to retaliate.

Don't expect this to be all over in the next three days.

And there is an impatience in Washington that wants it to be.

When you're sitting in the Kremlin, or you're sitting in the Forbidden City in China, or

wherever the leaderships are meeting right now you're saying okay

how how are we thinking about the US

what are we saying now the US is a benevolent country that doesn't believe in unilateral strikes and the unit and the US is what exactly what is the US now define the brand the brand is that

might is right

And that very fact of force is the guiding principle.

And Donald Trump's belief that strength wins out and therefore has a right to strike weaker powers.

Almost, and he, you know, that is why we've seen this equivocation, I think, on Russia-Ukraine, that Ukraine was a weaker country.

He said this, they didn't have the missiles to win this war.

Why did they start the war?

He said.

They didn't start the war.

Russia started the war.

Russia was the stronger country.

And somehow, in Donald Trump's mind, that gave some latitude.

If I were sitting in Taipei right now, I would be worried about this.

this.

I would be worried about the signal that this sends of you are the big country, you can go for this.

That's what I would think.

Okay,

we have to run in like a minute.

I just want to take this question.

It's for you, Anthony, from Navreen.

Where is Saudi Arabia and Qatar on this?

Two different countries, by the way, with different alliances and different allegiances.

But where are they both on this?

I'm sure that they are worried about this.

I'm sure of that.

And I think the Saudis were trying to create a rapprochement with the Iranians.

And in a weird way, this may help that rapprochement.

And people say, well, what do you mean?

Because the Saudis are closer to us.

Yes, I understand that.

But they may be reaching back channels now into Iran saying, we really wish the Americans didn't do this.

Too much

distraction in the region.

And I will say this to you, October the 7th, if Trump was going to win a Nobel Priest Prize, maybe it would have been over the Abraham Accords.

And prior to October 7th, there was a normalization where Saudi was going to potentially normalize with the Israelis.

And many people in that region said, well, the Iranians don't want that.

So they helped the Hamas and they helped Hezbollah.

And they had this terrorist attack, which created now this outcome.

So when you go back to October 7th and you say, well, what's going to happen?

The first thing the Hamas thought they weren't going to get that deep into Israel.

The second thing they got into that deep in the issue was absolute unmitigated disaster.

So now the Israelis have to go decimate the entire area.

And everything that you would have expected to unfold as a result of that attack is now happening.

So the Israelis have bombed Iran twice.

The Americans are now involved in the bombing of Iran.

And so if you're the Qataris and you're the Saudis, you are very, very worried.

Now, if you're the

UAE, the Emiratis, the Iranians are likely not going to attack the Emiratis.

They have many of their princelings and many of their sons and daughters living in Dubai and living in Abu Dhabi.

So they're probably not going to attack those buildings.

But could you attack the Qataris?

I don't think you're going to attack the Saudis because I think there's a rapprochement there.

But if you're sitting there right now, you're saying to yourself, I got to get closer to China.

I got to get closer to Russia because there's a a level now of unpredictable policy that's coming out of the United States.

And somebody asked, was that strategic?

It may have been strategic, the head faking, sending bombers this way, that way.

We're going to do this in two weeks.

That's what the Pentagon is saying.

Do it overnight.

It may have been strategic, but is that strategic?

That's a tactic.

It's not a strategy.

You know, strategic is when Reagan says, hey, I'm going to pull all the Pershing missiles out of West Germany in the 80s.

I'm going to go to a zero option if the Russians are willing to go to a zero option.

That's strategic.

Okay, that's peace.

Okay, now Reagan did bomb Libya after

they blew up a nightclub in West Germany that killed American soldiers.

Okay, that's a tactic.

I think this was a bridge too far.

I'm glad the troops are okay.

But

there's nothing that we've done in the Middle East over the last 25 years.

People are saying, well, I predicted he wouldn't do it.

I didn't think he would do it.

I got this wrong.

And so whoever said that I predicted he wouldn't do it is correct because I'm a rational person, and I guess I think rationally.

And

I think Caddy fingered last week something that we need to always consider with Trump is the, he's got very, he's a short-fingered Vulgarian.

Okay.

That's what my buddy Graydon Carter called him 30 years ago.

He's a short-fingered Vulgarian, a result of which he's going to have to do things to make people think he has long fingers.

And I think it's a very dangerous time for America.

I think it's a very dangerous thing to be doing.

I wouldn't have done it, but I do think the Qataris and the Saudis are worried.

This is a huge story.

We don't know where this is going to end.

There is an opportunity here that this could work out.

I am

less in the camp than Anthony is that, you know, this was de facto the wrong thing to do.

Someone is saying think fascistically.

Someone is saying on the fascist feature.

Okay, all right.

Think like a fascist

as opposed to rascal.

You have that sinister streak in your personality though, Caddy.

You were right on this.

You were right on this.

I gotta, I gotta, I gotta have like, you know, I gotta have like mirrors.

Make sure I watch you because you are right on this.

You have a little bit of a sinister nature, Caddy.

You were like, oh, no, he's got to prove his muscles.

He's got to prove his beer muscles to BB.

Okay, guys, we're going to leave it there.

We'll be back, of course, later this week when we know more.

So stay tuned.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks, guys.