Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War

Summary

Breaking History: Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War

Podcast: Breaking History by The Free Press
Date: March 19, 2026
Host: Eli Lake
Guest: Andrew Sullivan

---

Episode Overview

This special episode of Breaking History features an in-depth, wide-ranging conversation and debate between journalist Eli Lake and writer Andrew Sullivan centered on the ongoing Iran war. As the two sparring friends dig into the roots and current dynamics of U.S., Israeli, and Iranian policy, they explore the recent decision by the U.S. and Israel to undertake military actions against Iran, the wider strategic implications, historical context, and the moral and political dilemmas facing America and its allies.

Rather than focusing on the latest breaking headlines, Lake and Sullivan examine the historical trajectories, policy shifts, ideological changes, and recurring debates that underpin the crisis. The conversation is candid, spirited, sometimes personal, and occasionally contentious—offering deep insight for anyone seeking to understand how history shapes the present Middle East conflict.

---

Key Discussion Points

1. Context: Personal & Political Backgrounds

• Early Upbringing and Political Transformation
  • Eli describes growing up with secular, progressive, and Labor Zionist influences in Philadelphia and involvement in left-wing Jewish communities and summer camps, recounting his “God-optional” Judaism and early anti-nuclear activism.

    "So I, I gave a talk on Jewish perspectives on nuclear proliferation... At 13. And I was, it was very left." (10:32, Eli Lake)

  • Sullivan traces his early days in political journalism, noting the distinct difference between his trajectory and Eli’s, with Sullivan reflecting on the shifting tides in left and right political circles over the decades.

2. The American and Israeli Strategic Divergence

• The Oslo Accords and the Erosion of the Peace Process

  • Lake and Sullivan recall optimism of the 1990s surrounding Oslo and the subsequent collapse due to factors on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

    “The majority of liberal Jews were psyched about the Oslo and it was a huge breakthrough and it was the last time I think any of us felt any serious hope for the place.” (20:26, Andrew Sullivan)

  • The “Clean Break” memo and neoconservative strategies are dissected, with Lake pushing back on conspiracy theories about American foreign policy being dictated by Israeli priorities:

    “It's Americans who have a view of the Middle East that are defense intellectuals... it was a reflection of the undeniable connection between authoritarian regimes and the support of terrorism as a tool of statecraft.” (24:43, Eli Lake)

• U.S. Aid and Influence over Israel

  • Sullivan questions the logic of American largesse for Israel compared to other allies, arguing that special treatment persists far beyond rationale, and noting a double standard compared with NATO:

    “Why is there such a difference between [Trump's] relationship to a NATO ally... But when it comes to Israel, it's like, how much money do you need?” (42:41, Andrew Sullivan)

  • Lake argues Israeli military innovation and strategic partnership “pays back” American investments, citing the Iron Beam laser system:

    “Israel has developed a technology known as the Iron Beam, which shoots out missiles with a laser which is far more cost efficient. That is an Israeli technology that will… keep America's military at the leading edge...” (44:12, Eli Lake)

3. Settlements, U.S. Leverage, and Moral Stalemate

• Settlements and Influence
  • Sullivan condemns Israeli settlement expansion, arguing the U.S. has utterly failed at curbing it:

    “We have no influence… on none of the major issues in which we have disagreements have we…” (55:41, Andrew Sullivan)

  • Lake counters that past efforts (like Gaza disengagement) demonstrate Israeli capacity for withdrawal given the right conditions, and notes internal Israeli politics are not monolithic:

    “Sharon proved... Israel was capable of completely withdrawing… If there was a peace offer, I think it would be very painful. It certainly couldn't happen under this current political arrangement.” (59:07, Eli Lake)

  • Both acknowledge the deeply troubling rhetoric from current far-right figures in Israel’s government.

4. The Iran War: Rationale, Process & American Interest

• Diverging Rationales for the War

  • Sullivan criticizes the inconsistency and lack of clear justification for the U.S. and Israeli strikes, demanding to know the real purpose:

    “Why do you think [Trump] says something different every day? That’s my question.” (71:47, Andrew Sullivan)

  • Lake argues that Iran’s continued regional belligerence and missile buildup set the stage for action. He acknowledges the administration’s rhetorical confusion, noting Trump’s impulsive personality and lack of process.

    “The Iranians...were rapidly building up their missile capabilities and stockpiles so that they would have what... Rubio was [called] a conventional weapons shield in order to protect their nuke...” (73:49, Eli Lake)

• Did the U.S. Go to War for Israel?

  • Sullivan contends Israeli influence and pressure—especially from Netanyahu—were decisive:

    “It was Israel in the front leading the charge to accomplish something that Netanyahu said he's been trying to accomplish for 40 years.” (92:12, Andrew Sullivan)

  • Lake resists this narrative, pointing to Saudi pressure and longstanding American grievances with Iran:

    “It’s not just Israel that has an interest in ending the Islamic Republic...I just want to push back on this idea that it was just Israel.” (91:00, Eli Lake)

5. International Law, Morality, and Precedent

• Legality and Morality of the War
  • Sullivan is insistent that the war is illegal and morally dubious, especially the decapitation strike, warning of precedents and the breakdown of norms:

    “If the principle now is we cannot object and will not object to any power going into any other country and assassinating their entire leadership, we have no standing...” (84:29, Andrew Sullivan)

  • Lake argues that the nature of the Iranian regime renders “normal” standards of sovereignty obsolete:

    “You are making a category error because you are pretending that the leadership of the Islamic Republic is somehow like any other nation state...it is not the same as simply going and taking out the top leadership of Belgium.” (85:02, Eli Lake)

6. The Ghosts of Iraq and Libya: Process and Outcome

• Historical Lessons & Cautionary Tales
  • Both recall the disastrous fallout from Iraq and Libya, and the dangers of American overreach without congressional oversight or a solid exit strategy:

    “I am desperate not to see another human catastrophe unfold in the Middle East because we intervened militarily without thinking things through…” (120:36, Andrew Sullivan)

  • Lake draws a distinction with the current conflict, credits Israeli intelligence penetration, and anticipates the removal of the Iranian regime could enable a peaceful regional order:

    “The source of regional instability was a revolutionary regime in Tehran...If you remove that, that is a golden ticket for America to finally get out of the Middle East and then focus on the Pacific.” (115:36, Eli Lake)

7. Public Opinion and Domestic Politics

• Sullivan points out that American support for both the wars and the U.S.-Israel relationship is waning and expresses hope that political blowback might reverse the course in future elections:

  “A lot of people who voted for Trump really voted not to have a war like this… they’ve really fucked. And so… this could lead to a real wave in the elections...” (126:24, Andrew Sullivan)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity

  “Israel went nuclear somewhere between Sergeant Pepper and the White Album.” (37:01, Eli Lake)

• On Double Standards of Aid

  "Why is there such a difference between [Trump's] relationship to a NATO ally... And when it comes to Israel, it's like, how much money do you need?" (42:41, Andrew Sullivan)

• On Personal and Policy Dissonance

  “It is the last 20 years that I've just had enough... So I'm in this relationship. I'm done. Right. And I think a lot of us here are done.” (62:26, Andrew Sullivan)

• On Decapitation Strikes

  “This is one of the greatest war crimes... In terms of international law, it’s a geopolitical mitzvah.” (84:16, Eli Lake; 84:19, Eli Lake)

• On History’s Unruliness

  “And all I'm saying is that then you also have the sheer serendipity of luck, timing... That's how history works. So it's a mess. It's a mix of these things.” (104:58, Andrew Sullivan)

---

Important Timestamps

• Backgrounds, Zionism, and Early Political Identity: 10:00 – 17:00
• Oslo, Right/Left Turns, and the 'Clean Break' Memo: 17:00 – 27:00
• US-Israeli Strategic Friction, Aid, & Settlements: 31:00 – 61:00
• Opening Rounds on Iran: Sabotage, Legality, and Pre-War Rationale: 70:00 – 85:00
• Rolling Out the War and Congressional Bypass: 90:00 – 108:00
• Debating Moral & Strategic Outcomes and Historical Parallels: 111:19 – 120:11
• The Future: Hegemony, Uprisings, and Hope/Fear for Iran: 120:13 – end

---

Tone and Dynamic

The conversation is intellectually combative yet marked by mutual respect, candor, and occasional humor. Both speakers’ exasperation—Sullivan’s moral outrage and Lake’s historical realpolitik—lends urgency to the debate. While never shying from confrontation, the discussion’s tone remains thoughtful, personal, and at times self-reflective.

---

Conclusion

This episode traverses not only the circumstances of the Iran war, but the moral, historical, and strategic entanglements defining America’s relationship with Israel, the nature of authoritarian regimes, and the recurring hazards of military interventions. For listeners looking to understand how history and ideology shape the present Middle East crisis, this dialogue is essential, offering clarity, disagreement, and hard-won perspective on a pivotal moment in U.S. and global politics.

Transcript

[Eli Lake]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Paramount and the new original series the Madison, Taylor Sheridan's most intimate story yet. The Madison follows a family raised in a world of digital distraction, forced by tragedy to truly see one another and come together. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, the Madison new series, streaming now only on Paramount. Welcome back, listeners. This is Eli and I am here to tell you that this is a special programming as we prepare our next big series for Breaking History. What you're about to hear is a conversation slash debate with my old friend Andrew Sullivan. He needs no introduction. He is one of the great writers of our era. And Andrew and I have a pretty deep disagreement about the current Iran war. So this is an opportunity to hear me put through my paces, so to speak, as I jab and parry with Andrew Sullivan, who's very good at this kind of thing. And we will see you soon enough as we prepare more content and work on the next season of Breaking History. So enjoy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi there everyone. Welcome to another discast. This one coming to you in the well, who knows? I don't know where we are in this war. I think we are 12 days in. We're speaking on Wednesday, maybe 11 or 12, something like that.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Be two weeks by the time you're hearing this. And so some of the things that we're going to talk about today may be moot by the time you hear this, because things happen fast. But with any luck, we're not going to be talking about the specific nitty gritty of what might happen the next couple of days and more about how we got here, what this tells us about where we are, what the future is, etc. Etc. Thank you for subscribing. If you haven't subscribed, please do. Because if you don't, this conversation is going to peter out at some point when you most want it not to. At least that is the instructions given to Chris Bodetta, who will edit this. With that in mind, we have some great guests coming up. We have Derek Thompson coming on to talk about abundance. We have Matt Goodwin, who just ran for Parliament in the UK on the reform ticket, talking about the political earthquake in the United Kingdom. Jonah Goldberg is coming on. We're going to talk about conservatism, how we've seen it evolve over the last time, over our last couple of decades and our lifetime. Tom Holland is coming on to talk about the Christian roots of liberalism. Tiffany Jenkins is coming on to talk about privacy, the public private distinction which to my mind is intensely important to liberal democracy and she's going to talk about that, too. And Adrian Wooldridge, my old friend from Oxford, actually has written a terrific book on the lost genius of liberalism. Adrian is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. And it sounds like a very invigorating book. Everything Adrian does is invigorating. He's also an absolute trip. So I'm really psyched to have an old friend of mine on the podcast. I always like that. It's nice to have people on that. You know, speaking of which, on the. On the. The question of Israel and the war in Iran and the United States and Trump and all the other issues, it's a pretty tense, difficult time. I think we're all on edge. I think whenever something like this happens, especially when no one was really. Well, a lot of people were not expecting it. It was a surprise to a lot of people on Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago. And there's a lot of anger and. And polarization and tension. It looks like the polling. I mean, it's hard to tell, really, but it's. It's certainly not. It's certainly one of the least popular ones that we've ever started. The question of Israel is hovering over it. This has given people like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens a pretty astonishing little PR opportunity. So. And I needed to talk to someone I wouldn't get too upset with, because, truth be honest, I am upset about this. I can't keep my emotions that under control. I mean, they're under control, but I also don't feel like a writer should disguise if he's enraged. And I think that's roughly how I felt the last couple of weeks and how a lot of other people are feeling. But. So who to talk to? Well, Eli Lake has been my friend for a hell of a long time, and he's a completely lovely person and a mensch, hilarious, funny, whole bunch of interests that you wouldn't believe. He will send me occasional AI songs that he's created that are amusing in their way. He has an incredible mastery of history, and he's. He had a. He's. The podcast. The podcast is still going on, right? Or you.

[Eli Lake]

Yes, Dana, We're. We're taking a. We're taking a little bit of a hiatus, but we're going to do it in season. So you're the next. The next one will be like five or six chapters of a big theme that we'll announce soon.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Oh, good.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I mean, if he knows so much, he's read so much thank you. It's true. Yeah it makes him nerve wracking interview because he's. And also the subject he's. I mean I've taken an interest in this topic because I this part of my job but Eli's been following this stuff like a hawk from.

[Eli Lake]

Well in more ways than one

[Andrew Sullivan]

from the get go. He's the former national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and Newsweek. He's a former columnist for the for Bloomberg View and now he's a reporter for the Free Press, a contributing editor a Commentary magazine and the host of his own podcast the RE Education.

[Eli Lake]

That's why and what's called breaking History now. It was Re Education before.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay. Yes well that's that it's not the same as the rest is history which is Tom Holland.

[Eli Lake]

Yes was very good but here's the

[Andrew Sullivan]

other one that's really amazing.

[Eli Lake]

Hardcore history with Dan Carlin is.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes yes yes OG it is the OG And Chris has got me. Chris was one of the. He got me onto that quite early when we were doing our road trips he would sit me down I'd be listening to all about Sulla.

[Eli Lake]

Incredible.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well.

[Eli Lake]

Oh yeah the. The. The five parter on the fall of the Republic of Rome is.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And that's when I was. I was writing about the fall of the Republic and he's. It's. You know it's also. That period is a lot going on. Yeah. Rome is an incredibly complex society and lots of stuff is happening at once. And now we. We even better understand how climate was also crucial in all of this.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

How in fact the Roman Empire was really. Really benefited from a period of. Of mild fertile climate in the Mediterranean which ended roughly in the 4th or 5th centuries when we had this hideous shift. So climate change does work. We're right. And we're now getting off where we're supposed to start. Anyway, it's nice to see you, Andrew.

[Eli Lake]

Thanks for having me.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Last time we saw each other we was at the Louis CK concert here in town.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

After which I had a. A urinary emergency I thought. I remember. Anyway we. We. I. I decided not to take a pee after the show because the lines were so long and then we couldn't find a car and then we were halfway to fucking Virginia by the time I couldn't find a restaurant so I had to. I shouldn confessed to a crime on the air. But anyway somebody some thing took a pounding from my bladder. Anyway, Eli, we're going to briefly talk about your bio because you've been here before but tell me about your parents?

[Eli Lake]

Well, my. My mother, who is still alive, taught French and Spanish in high school, but she was also constantly educating herself.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Where.

[Eli Lake]

Well, she got a master's and that's what's, I think, called a master's plus 60. But she applied one year for. I think I may have shared this before a Roc Rockefeller grant.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Right.

[Eli Lake]

Where she studied in the Pyrenees with the Basques and learned the Basque language.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Where did she grow up, though?

[Eli Lake]

She grew up in Philadelphia, like I did.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay.

[Eli Lake]

So did my father. So we're.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We're.

[Eli Lake]

We. And I guess that would make me second generation because their parents emigrated from Ukraine.

[Andrew Sullivan]

From Ukraine.

[Eli Lake]

The Pale of settlement was known the Pale.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The borderlands.

[Eli Lake]

Yes. And Lake at one point was Lacker Neck, but it was shortened in the immigration process as it.

[Andrew Sullivan]

As is. Have you ever thought of going back to Laconic? That'd be kind of like a pretty hot, pretty hardcore.

[Eli Lake]

Eli Lake is a great writer's name. It's. It's like very. I. So I kind of. I'm stuck with it.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It's great. It's really simple.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It's got three syllables. You'll always remember it. Eli is a very.

[Eli Lake]

Right. And it's. And it's like, you hear it and you're like, Jewish first name, WASP second name.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No. You think, oh, no, they obviously fixed that.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Maybe Jon Stewart. Yeah, maybe not.

[Eli Lake]

Right. Not.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Not related to the Scottish. Scottish monarchs in any way, as far as one can tell. When did you first think about as a kid, really? What were the first things that you were told about Israel? I'm just curious as to. As to the environment in which you grew up, because I do think that some of the things that. That are not working in our nationalist. Because we don't fully understand the full context of where people are coming from, and they come from very different places and they're going to arrive at different conclusions on that. So I just want to get a better sense of what were you taught? How did you grow up to think of this? It's a foreign country. It's a long way away. How did that come up in your childhood and adolescence and education?

[Eli Lake]

Well, I. My parents were on the left and we grew up in a neighborhood in Philadelphia called Germantown, which was. There were many co ops. There was. And it was very nice. Like, all the parents would get together and they would put on like, Halloween shows. And I did not go to a traditional. We didn't belong to a traditional synagogue. I belonged to. We were secular humanists, which is a version A kind of God optional version of Judaism.

[Andrew Sullivan]

God optional version.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah. My bar mitzvah was not traditional in any way. You would kind of give a. A presentation, a talk. And so I, I gave a talk on Jewish perspectives on nuclear proliferation.

[Andrew Sullivan]

What?

[Eli Lake]

Yes. At 13. And I was, it was very left. And you know, you have like a mentor.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Scratch the record, right? Yeah. So what have you been taught up to the age of 13 that has you able to give a lecture about Israel and nonprolife radio?

[Eli Lake]

It wasn't Israel. It was. It was during the Reagan administration. It was like, you know, I was parroting at the time dovish talking points about the need for direct negotiations with the Kremlin. So, you know, this would have been 1985. So.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Wow. Right before peacenikami in the night of the Cold War.

[Eli Lake]

But at the same time, I went to a summer camp called Camp Galil, which you could probably guess from the name was part of the Labor Zionist tradition. So this is something that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Tell me about the name.

[Eli Lake]

Galil is for the land, for the Galil in Israel.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. So this is part of something called Habo Neem Dror. They still exist. These are kibbutz model camps in America where there is a strong emphasis on, of course, a kind of Zionism, but it's the Zionism of David Ben Gurion and not one of my personal heroes, Menachem Begin. So it's not the revisionist Zionism, it's

[Andrew Sullivan]

teaching, in the words of Hitchens, teaching

[Eli Lake]

Jews to be farmers, something like that. No, no, it's true, actually. So that we all had. I mean, I'll just to give you an example, there were two things that were very much emphasized. Not just Israel, Zionism, but also collectivism. So if you, you know, I don't know if you went to sleepaway camp when you were a kid. Okay. So when you go to sleepaway camp, your parents send care packages, but this became known as Koopa, which was shared with the rest of the bunk. So nobody. So your parents sending you, you know, cookies or candy or whatever was not your personal property, be put into a collective pool for your bunk. So, you know, and, and, and the bunks were, you know, there was bonim, which is builders or Khotrim or rowers. It was all emphasis.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And why.

[Eli Lake]

On the idea of workers and physical labor.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why is this in a foreign language?

[Eli Lake]

That's Hebrew. Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You're in Philadelphia, correct?

[Eli Lake]

The camp. But we didn't speak Hebrew in the camp. But it just, it was the name of the camp. It was. Okay, it's part of the Labor Zionist movement. And it's. And it's, it's. It is a.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And that's still going on in the 80s?

[Eli Lake]

Yes, I think it might still be going on now. I don't know if it still exists now, but I know that. And weirdly I didn't kind of getting back to the theme of my bar Mitzvah, I became completely freaked out by the day after and threads, you must remember.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yeah, that was. A lot of people were scared.

[Eli Lake]

So I was like convinced there was going to be some nuclear holocaust. I mean, and so I couldn't stop talking about it. And I was for that reason unpopular in the camp.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Let's go swing on a rope. Well, Eli wants to talk about the non Proliferation Treaty. In the meanwhile there's a little, there's a little gathering over there for the NPT people.

[Eli Lake]

Right. There's of one. Right. So. So yeah, so this was. And then looking back at it, it was, it was. I would say there were all kinds of levels of indoctrination, but not just Zionism is a very left wing indoctrination. So that we had, you know, I mean we had an activity one day, I remember was stock market day where we were told the camp is being taken over by a corporation and you all get shares in the camp and they set up a stock thing and of course all the values of the shares crashed and we were told, speaking of coupa, I should say that was what you could redeem your certificates for at the end. And you know, these are so you, you. These are like 9, 10, 11, 12.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They were indoctrinating you in levels of capitalism.

[Eli Lake]

So then. Yes, and then at one point it's all worth nothing. And then there are breakout discussion groups and say what have we learned? Anyway, that's a, that's a real thing.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Good God.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah. No, but I mean and it's interesting as you go back and you realize that there's a lot of. I mean, you know, summer camp is. Can be quite political. Not just, apparently not just for Zionist Jews, but as I said, it was the kibbutz model.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And so you wouldn't call yourself a red diaper baby. You were more like a peacenik hippie baby.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, I mean we, but we. I mean I grew up where we had people, we had neighbors who would. Who went to Nicaragua and stayed with Sandinistas and came back and told us about, you know, the civil war in Nicaragua and the evils of the Contras and things like that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So. Well, I was Embedded in the New Republic, writing about why the contrasts need to be supported.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You are not in the same position as I was.

[Eli Lake]

No, I mean, I was.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Although actually, no, I wasn't for the Contra. I remember that was one of the very earliest things, that New Republic. I was like, I don't agree with this, but everyone else did.

[Eli Lake]

In retrospect, I do agree with the contras, but.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay, right.

[Eli Lake]

Like, I'm going back.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, you can imagine 1985, the new republic is not. It was actually this scandal that the New Republic came out and doors date the contrast that if you.

[Eli Lake]

Right, right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It was like at the time, you could see cartoons in the Washington Post of people being directed to the contra section of a restaurant and the anti contraception.

[Eli Lake]

Right, right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

That was the. That was the polarization of that period. So here's. Here's a question, just a very basic quick cut to the chase. How then does a peacenik hippie become such a ferocious defender of the state of Israel and a defender of war, the wars that you believe are necessary to defend the state of Israel. How did that transition happen? I'm just curious as to when that began to happen. When you began to.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I think it's a process. I mean, one thing I noticed in the early 90s when I was an undergraduate was that I came into college identified as very much on the left. I mean, you could dig this up if you went through the Trinity newspaper, the Tripod archives. I wrote a column once called why I'm a Socialist.

[Andrew Sullivan]

There's nothing like. It's so weird. There's so many people, so many neocons who once wrote essays like that.

[Eli Lake]

Sure. Well, I think I'm one of the last, though.

[Andrew Sullivan]

One of the last. It was a tradition, though.

[Eli Lake]

The younger, like my friend Matt Continetti never went through this space. I've talked to him about it. Like, he never went through it like a. But it's also some of. It's of age. I mean, I'm 53, so I actually have a memory of what it was like to live in a world with the Soviet Union, to understand the ideological conflict and to be around people who still had. Who believed in the idealism of socialism. And then I think a big part of it was kind of living through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And so that kind of cured you of the.

[Eli Lake]

I want to say that there's a difference though, because being raised kind of on the Jewish left, I should say, one constant vigilance about the refuseniks the Jews were not allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Natan Sharansky was a hero in my household, deservedly so. Absolutely. He's one of the great figures in my view of the 20th century. And then I think there was also this sense about Israel where you really begin to see it. I think after the 67 war, particularly the European left. But then by the 90s when I'm in college, I become uncomfortable with the direction of things, although it was not nearly as pronounced as it is today about where if you wanted to be a good standing member of the left, you kind of had to be anti Zionist or against Zionism. But I Also, in the 90s, wouldn't

[Andrew Sullivan]

it be more expressed as support for the Palestinians than anti Zionism? I mean, I think, I think the bulk of it didn't want to. Wanted a two state solution. I would say that.

[Eli Lake]

Well, that's what I was going to say once we have the beginning of this two state solution. I supported it in the 90s like as many people did.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The two state solution was proposed in 1947. I mean it's a lot older than.

[Eli Lake]

Sure, no, arguably proposed in the Peel Commission for that even. But my point is, is that once you had renewed emphasis on it after the Madrid conference and then obviously Oslo, like everybody, I don't, I mean it was, it was a weird thing because I come to Washington in 94, at the end of 94. So you, I mean, I'm sure you remember this. I was not writing about it at the time but like everybody was pretty much. I mean, who were the holdouts? There were a few, I guess. But you know, you had AIPAC briefing conservative think tanks on the importance of the Oslo solution.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, I, I just remember a moment at the New Republic where, where Charles Kravigner wrote a column saying this is why the Palestinians will never agree. This, that and the other. And the day before it went to press, they did. He had to write a column just scrambling. And I just remember that particular moment.

[Eli Lake]

Charles was right the first time it seems, but we can get into that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But there was, and you could tell honestly that Marty at the time was also. You could feel just horrified at the idea of peace in the Middle East. It's just like this is I witnesses. Well, no, I'm, I'm, I'm being a little facetious there obviously, but the idea that this might be settled in some two state solution really unnerved I think a lot of Israel supporters at that point.

[Eli Lake]

I don't know about. Well, okay, you know, I, it's hard for me to say because, well, I just heard them. I don't, I wasn't.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I heard them.

[Eli Lake]

You were, you were there at the New Republic.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I listened to the conversations and this was, there was.

[Eli Lake]

911 was my kind of, I'm like a post 911 new republic. So I don't, I was in that period. I was not, I, I wasn't in that world. I was covering, I was a newsletter reporter covering General epa.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So the majority of liberal Jews were psyched about the Oslo and it was a huge breakthrough and it was the last time I think any of us felt any serious hope for the place. But there was a faction quite clearly quite deep that saw, saw Iran especially as, as the future enemy.

[Eli Lake]

Correct. Well, Rabin the Great, the martyr, you could say of Oslo was absolutely ringing the alarm about Iran.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and

[Eli Lake]

its, and Hamas in Gaza, Islamic Jihad. And these were organizations that were also against the peace process on, you could say, the behest of Iran.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And, and he, because for obvious reason, Iran was a real rival to Israel in the region. It actually has the potential to be a real, you know, it's a big country, it's got a big economy, it's a serious player. If they are dedicated to, to hostility towards Israel, it's a problem for Israel.

[Eli Lake]

Well, yeah, I would slightly say it as we're going to get into our disagreement soon. But I would say the problem with, because in this period, officially, Saudi Arabia was also against the recognition of any Jewish state. And in a serious way. Not in, I mean, in theory it is now, but I mean, we know that there's enormous cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. There's a kind of secret alliance. But in that period of the 1990s, this was still the aftermath of what are known as the Three Nos after the Six Day War from all the Arab states. No peace, no recognition. There's another one which is not occurring to me right now. I feel embarrassed.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But there was a sense, let's say in the mid-90s, late-90s, that the threats to Israel were coming from Iraq, Iran and Iran's proxy. So when you, you go back and see that document, the Clean break document, which was a sort of neoconservative document from 96.

[Eli Lake]

Let's, let's discuss.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, well, I say let's discuss because there you have it. You have this, you have this grand strategy. Let me finish. Okay, let's just explain what this is, a grand strategy from Israel that we have the problem of Iraq, which we need to get rid of because Saddam is. But we mainly have the problem of Iran. That's a third. But Syria was another place they wanted to deal with. And so they came up with a strategy of absolutely fuck the Oslo Accords. They're a non starter. Assume that they're not going to work. Now we need to aggressively clean break from Oslo. That's what, that was the context. That's what they meant by clean break in order to really create a more resilient Israel that was strategically much more secure, militarily much more secure, and could do what it wanted in the occupied territories. And that was its core dynamic because they also wanted to populate the occupied territories to take them over at some point.

[Eli Lake]

I have to go back. I have not read the clean break memo for many years, but I remember writing about it because it was a big story in the aftermath of the Iraq War and the argument was, and you see it now revived by people like Dave Smith, the comedian podcaster, that this was the roadmap. And lo and behold, look, all these countries were taken out. To which I have to say it doesn't. It's kind of ridiculous because the Iraq war was explicitly about the failure of Saddam Hussein to comply with all of the previous UN Security Council resolutions having to do with disarming after the first Gulf War. As you know, I don't think anybody's

[Andrew Sullivan]

saying that this document was. Every government official in America referred to it every time they made it. No, no, no, no, no one's saying that. No, no, neither am I saying there's some grand plot here. I'm just quite obvious from the 90s onwards.

[Eli Lake]

Also, it's not, it's not an Israeli document. It is a.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, it's a, It's a US Document.

[Eli Lake]

It's not, It's a think tank document.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Right. Okay.

[Eli Lake]

It's the Project for a New American Century.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes.

[Eli Lake]

And some of those people.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Is that Israeli or is that American or is it. Oh, come on, can you not tell the difference?

[Eli Lake]

It's Americans who have a view of the Middle east that are defense intellectuals or secure policy intellectuals. And some of those people, like David Worms or Paul Wolfowitz went into the next administration. But that does not, you know, every time this brings up, just to give you a sense, at the same time that Project for a New American Sensory was writing, you know, issued the clean break memo. Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton and he was part of a, of a group of business interests called USA Engage. And his and that thing, that organization had a policy prescription that said, let's lift every sanction on all of these countries because more American investment will ultimately lead over time to liberal democracies. Now, Dick Cheney ended up overseeing policies that were the opposite of that in many ways. So I don't know what, you know, it's very kind of date and time specific. I think it was a reflection of the undeniable connection between authoritarian regimes and the support of terrorism as a tool of statecraft. And I think it was addressing those things. Again, I have not read it in a long time.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, I'm not trying to, I'm just trying to say that there was a faction, let's call it a faction that clearly saw the possibility of a settlement of the Palestine situation as a threat. They did all they could to undermine the peace process and Oslo and wanted a strategy whereby, as I said, Israel would eventually knock out all of its, become supreme in the region.

[Eli Lake]

I would counter on that as well, because one of the, I mean, the Israeli prime minister for two years in the 90s, Benjamin Netanyahu, who emerges after a wave of terrorist attacks following the assassination of Rabin, and you have the Likud government is somebody who's on the Israeli right. And the Israeli right is sort of skeptical of Oslo, but he ends up as prime minister, even though I know you're going to mention that he said something that was recorded to some supporters at one point in like 2001 or something, but he ends up signing the Y River Accord.

[Andrew Sullivan]

What was that that he said?

[Eli Lake]

What he said is we can move the American public or something when he, however I want.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They're just, they're just putty in my hands.

[Eli Lake]

Listen, why would he say. Politicians say all kinds of things at different course. Yeah, I don't believe, by the way, and we'll get into this, that Israel can do that. And I think there's plenty of examples of recent and, you know, recent history and not so recent history of Israel not getting what it wants. And we can, we can kind of list them, including under Trump. But the point is that he, as prime minister, signs the Y River Accords and is still very much within the Oslo paradigm. And so that when he loses the election in 99 to Ehud Barak, Barak has an Oslo peace process that he then tries to kind of finish the deal. And so when you're talking about enemies of peace or people who wanted to get rid of it, I mean, I think we have to then also count Yasser Arafat in that equation. Who does not ever give a counter offer as Ehud Barak gives according to Bill Clinton and almost everybody, with the exception of Rob Malley who is a junior guy in the peace team, the most attractive offer that Israel could possibly give. And even if you want to say well that's still not good enough, but there was no counteroffer at the second Camp David talks from Arafat. And then what's worse is that then this is followed by what's known as the Second Intifada of which we can debate about. I don't want to get into whether it was planned, but it was certainly Arafat did not use his influence to try to rein it down.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I think you can say there are plenty of factions more dominant actually on the Palestinian side than on the Israeli side that didn't want to a two state solution to work.

[Eli Lake]

Right. Let's just, let's including the leader of, of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority and the person.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I don't think Netanyahu ever, ever even at the start of his career thought a two state solution was where he, he personally wanted Israel to go. But, but look, there are differences of opinion within Israel on this.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, well, okay, what I'm saying is that, that Arafat was attacked by Sharon in the post Barack elections for his agreement to kind of I guess codicils or addendums to the Oslo agreement known as the Y River Accords. He was painted as somebody who was not a true opponent of the two state solution as Sharon was Mr. Security. And that had a resonance with Israeli voters during this horrific period known as the second Intifada in the aftermath of the ashes of Oslo. Now, do I think that Netanyahu desperately wants a two state solution and understands that issue the way. Of course he doesn't. He doesn't agree with it. He doesn't think it's particularly important.

[Andrew Sullivan]

His entire party doesn't.

[Eli Lake]

Correct. However, there's a coalition.

[Andrew Sullivan]

There are people.

[Eli Lake]

I would also point out that much like Trump, Netanyahu is also ideologically quite flexible. So when Americans elected Obama that made the peace kind of trying to revive the peace negotiations or two state solution a priority. You got pretty much a compliant. Are you kidding me? I'm not kidding you. I'm 100% serious.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I've even gone to Iran before Obama takes office. In that interregnum, Netanyahu takes the opportunity to bomb the crap out of Gaza just to make sure that the atmosphere is poisonous as possible. Then they spend the next. I sat there, Eli. They did all they could to in

[Eli Lake]

the middle of a War prevent any. Do you think he did it because Obama was elected or you think he did it because there was yet another rocket war that was launched by Hamas? Come on. It was in the middle of the war.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Because the commitment to settling the west bank, to occupying it, annexing it and making it part of Israel is fundamental to Benjamin Netanyahu. And any two state solution would prevent that. He has been dedicated to, he said so himself, to killing the two state solution his entire political career.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, so when, so let's not talk

[Andrew Sullivan]

about him when Obama is elected.

[Eli Lake]

First of all, let me just, let

[Andrew Sullivan]

me just say this, but because this is where my impatience began to really run dry with the Israelis. Obama comes in after this catastrophe of an Iraq war and wants to, with great public support, reorient us to get us slightly more balanced in the Middle East. And the Israelis do everything they can to destroy that president and that president.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, come on.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They absolutely did.

[Eli Lake]

No, they did not.

[Andrew Sullivan]

With my own eyes.

[Eli Lake]

Absolutely not. I 100% disagree. The first term of Obama, you have Netanyahu.

[Andrew Sullivan]

When does a foreign. I know this country's president, Prime Minister come to the US Congress to rally the Congress against the sitting President of the United States?

[Eli Lake]

Okay, you're now in the second. Okay, you're mixing apples and oranges, Andrew. So let's just talk about two different things. We started talking about Oslo and we started talking about a two state solution. And the historical record supports this. You could look up his Bar Ilan University speech, which was given under the pressure of the Obama administration, and you can also see that he agreed to a settlement freeze in order to get Mahmoud Abbas to come to the table. All of that is true. Mahmoud Abbas, by the way, never really came to the table. But let's leave him aside. Now then you're talking about the second term and you're talking about an Iran deal which he absolutely was trying to sabotage because he saw it as a disaster for Israeli security. And those are, I think, two very different things. I do not think it was a matter of Israel trying to destroy Obama's presidency. I think it was Israel saying that or Netanyahu. And I think it was Netanyahu clearly looking at what was being negotiated without Israel at the table and saying that this is a death warrant for us.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Use the term sabotage. When does an ally sabotage another ally?

[Eli Lake]

I didn't sabotage. You did, I think. But didn't you first use it?

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, I.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, maybe check the tape. Okay. I would say you said it because

[Andrew Sullivan]

in fact, in fact, we all assume that Happened.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

He did try and sabotage it. And I'm just asking.

[Eli Lake]

So we're talking about the Iran deal now?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, we're talking about jcpoa. We're talking about the successful achievement of Iran agreeing not to be in danger to us with respect to nuclear weapons. Now clearly Netanyahu was terrified that there might be a more balanced American approach to the Middle east in which we might actually be able to balance the Sunnis and the Shiites and we wouldn't. Our entire Middle Eastern policy wouldn't be entirely premised on ending the two state solution.

[Eli Lake]

No. No. What Israel, and not just Israel, but many good faith patriotic American critics of this particular deal argued was that you went into these negotiations trying to neutralize an ill begotten and illegal nuclear program, an industrial sized nuclear program. And you ended up with a deal where Iran was able to keep its ill begotten nuclear program in exchange for a promise not to build weapons. And that itself was hardly a guarantee that they wouldn't. You're trusting the word. All sorts of mechanisms of a revolutionary regime.

[Andrew Sullivan]

There were all sorts of again, that

[Eli Lake]

lies constantly and violates all kinds of other diplomatic agreements. And so the idea that you would allow them to keep their mass banks of centrifuges, you have provisions in them from when they can upgrade their centrifuges. And not only that, you lift the limits after 15 years or 10 years in some cases to the amount of law enriched uranium they can have, which gives them.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I know it wasn't good enough for Israel, but certainly it was good enough for America.

[Eli Lake]

I don't think it was good enough for anybody. Well, I think it was, I'm saying. And also by the way, in the process that deal throws out the understanding that other American allies who wanted nuclear energy, like the United Arab Emirates. The old deal was that you can have nuclear energy but you cannot enrich your own uranium. And here we are making a special exemption for the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. That by the way, right after I want to just make.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We would never make an exemption for the NPT for anybody, would we?

[Eli Lake]

Well, Israel hasn't isn't signed in the npt. Oh, that's, that's the, that's why they haven't signed.

[Andrew Sullivan]

That's your rhetorical sleight of hand.

[Eli Lake]

What A rhetorical sleight of hand.

[Andrew Sullivan]

These people are have an illicit nuclear bomb. Yes.

[Eli Lake]

They didn't sign the nuclear nonprofit.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Our point of view, the belief. I mean you wrote your bar mits for essay on the non proliferation here is one of the biggest violators of the non proliferation. And you can say they're not a violator because they didn't sign it. But that's a completely similar.

[Eli Lake]

Well, there's another important.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They are nuclear. They developed a nuclear bomb.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Against American desires and will.

[Eli Lake]

Well, and debatable.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And. And also. Let me just do it. Under the law, the United States is not allowed to sell arms to people who have illicit nuclear weapons.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

That was then we had another law passed to make that an exemption. Now I just.

[Eli Lake]

His. For the record, there is an understanding.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Have we had any. This brilliant achievement that nuclear illicitly nuclear armed. Israel never gets called on it in this country ever.

[Eli Lake]

Yes, there's a reason for that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

What's the reason for that?

[Eli Lake]

Well, it goes back to the Nixon administration and the aftermath of the Six Day War, which is when Israel, most people believe mastered. It's. I, I always like to say Israel went nuclear somewhere between sergeant Pepper and the White Album. But there was an agreement.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Those are dates that Eli knows very well.

[Eli Lake]

Anyway. No, I'm wearing.

[Andrew Sullivan]

He is wearing a T shirt of John and Yoko, for God's sake.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

In their, in their. In bed in Paris.

[Eli Lake]

Yes. Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I am wearing a T shirt that says Grumpy Daddy.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, we're now both grumpy daddies.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, I'm getting grumpy.

[Eli Lake]

But under, under, under Richard Nixon there was an agreement with. With a secret agreement between Nixon and Golda Meyer, who was the prime Minister, that Israel would never announce publicly that it had a nuclear program. But of course, everybody, I mean the Americans knew. There's a series of how the world came to know. But like, you know, probably Israel's Arab neighbors understood by the 73 war and the world knew because of Mordechai Vanenu, who was the defector who talked I think to the Times of London and gave an interview saying he worked on the nuclear weapons program. My point here is that it was in America's interest at that point, once Israel had the nuke that Israel would not be. Was it declared nuclear power at that point. Why? Because then you avoid the potential for an, for an open arms race in the Middle East.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Oh, surprise, surprise, yes. You mean if someone in a region acquires a nuclear weapon, the people.

[Eli Lake]

Israel has a long standing point, okay?

[Andrew Sullivan]

In the regional, like Jesus Christ, only one country has a nuclear weapon. They can do what the fuck they want because they have a veto. What we need to do. Obviously someone has to get a balance to this.

[Eli Lake]

Okay?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Isn't that the entire argument of non Proliferation?

[Eli Lake]

No.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So Israel went ahead unilaterally.

[Eli Lake]

Correct.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Unilaterally. Altered tremendously the balance of power in the Middle East.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

By getting a nuclear weapon and then asked the United States to make sure no one else ever in the region ever gets one to balance them.

[Eli Lake]

Well, no. Why the fuck would we do that? The United States? No. Israel acquired a nuclear weapon because all of its neighbors since its inception have tried to destroy it and said so openly. And so when it's developing a nuclear weapon, literally all of its neighbors, ironically, not Iran, because it has good relationships with Shah Mohammed Shah, the father of Reza Pahlavi. But the point is that, of course, they developed a nuclear weapon because they needed to have the ultimate kind of deterrent. But instead of having a situation where Israel was an open and declared nuclear power, what you had is the sort of understanding that it would not acknowledge that it had nuclear weapons because then that was sort of the best it can do. And that, by the way, helped.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Again, you haven't given an answer to this.

[Eli Lake]

No, I am giving you an answer.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Absolutely no reason.

[Eli Lake]

Hold on, go back to the first thing I said. The reason Israel developed is because from its inception, the state of Israel was the. All of its neighbors have pledged to try to destroy it.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Sure, sure.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, okay. So that's why.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes. So why. But by the same argument, why can't Iran have a nuclear weapon?

[Eli Lake]

Because no one's pledging to try to destroy Iran, including Israel.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We don't know what anybody will do. The whole point, the whole point.

[Eli Lake]

Come on.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The whole point.

[Eli Lake]

This is a. This is your split. You, you, this is you. You can't possibly.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The whole point of having a nuclear weapon is mutually assured destruction. We tolerate the Chinese Communists having a weapon. We had 20, Stalin having a nuclear weapon. Because we understood.

[Eli Lake]

We would rather they didn't.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, of course. But actually, I'm not sure it would have been a great thing if only one country in the world had nuclear weapons forever. I think it would be a very destabilizing thing.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I wouldn't be great, but, but,

[Andrew Sullivan]

but, but I think if you have only one country in a volatile region like the Middle east, that is Nuclear arms, all the other countries are going to feel extremely vulnerable and it is entirely reasonable for them to take extra measures to make sure they aren't. The only way to be protected when you have a threatening nuclear power. That is talking about, by the way, the way that Israelis talk about what they're going to do to the regime is to get your own nuclear weapon and It's a perfectly. And for the United States, Israel has, from the United States point of view, there are two possible options for stability in that region. One is to allow someone else to get a nuke to balance it out. Or the other is to do the unthinkable, which is tell Israel if you don't get rid of this nuclear weapon, we're withdrawing our support for you.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. Except, no, except, first of all, it doesn't work that way. We don't.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But why doesn't it work that way?

[Eli Lake]

Israel's not a satrapy of America. I mean, that's the first thing. It has its own.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, if it isn't, then why are we giving it, why do we.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I'm glad you brought that up and we can talk about this in another segment. But when we actually get to the Iran war. So maybe, you know, you can, you can, you can pause it here for the non paying listeners, I guess. But, but the, the, the point is, I mean, I would agree at this point that I would end the subsidy. I would, I would completely change the dynamics of the relationship.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I would like Israel is back.

[Eli Lake]

What?

[Andrew Sullivan]

I like it all paid back.

[Eli Lake]

I think Israel is paying it back, Andrew, with interest. I mean, I think Israel absolutely is paying it back. This is like an insane.

[Andrew Sullivan]

When you think of Trump saying to me, let me just, you think of

[Eli Lake]

Israel as a boat anchor. Israel is, is the best ally militarily that America has right now.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It's Trump for a second.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Trump is basically breaking up NATO because they're not doing their fair share, right? He's, and he's demanding payback of all of it with Israel. It's like, how much more money can I give you? What is, why, why is there such a difference between his relationship to a NATO ally like Germany, say, or Poland, who, who have to cough up their own money to do all this. And, and he actually almost breaks up NATO for that principle. But when it comes to Israel, it's like, how much money do you need?

[Eli Lake]

All right, well, so first of all, where do you, I'm not entirely sure that I would say I agreed with you that his reckless and insane brief and hopefully, hopefully brief and no more fixation with Greenland was, you know, an embarrassment as an American. So, I mean, I remember you wrote very passionately about that. But I would just say that the, and you're putting me in a weird position because I don't think that Trump is necessarily trying to destroy NATO. I think what Trump is trying to say is you are counting on America to defend Ukraine from Russia. When you, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a direct security challenge to you and you're not footing the bill. And there are deeper questions here, Andrew, about the readiness of European militaries even, and the ability for Europe to project power in a situation like even on its own continent that from a hard power analysis is a problem, then I'm saying now let's compare to Israel. First of all, you have to look at the fact that Israel in the last 20 or so years has become a leader in just because it encompasses so many things, what's called defense tech innovation. So in that respect, I'll just give you one example, as I'm sure you've followed in the Iran war. Right now we are facing a kind of terrible math problem. It's cheaper to make ballistic missiles than it is to produce interceptors for our missile defense systems. And we, and the cupboard is bare and we cannot help defend Ukraine and Israel and Saudi now and Qatar and the Gulf states and also have enough interceptors for any eventual problem we might have in the Pacific with China. All of that is a problem that, you know, defense nerds have been writing about now for the last few years. But everybody should know it's a serious issue. Well, Israel has developed a technology known as the Iron Beam, which shoots out missiles with a laser which is far more cost efficient. That is an Israeli technology that will the first person in line is America to use. For now, Trump has a lot of bad ideas. I think one of his good ideas is something he calls Golden Dome, which is this missile defense for America. If you could have missile defense for America that used Israeli laser technology like Iron Beam, then that's an example of how Israel is paying back with its enormous innovation and the alliance between Israel and the United States. And that's just one of several kinds of innovations that Israel has done that will keep America's military at the leading edge and with the qualitative and quantitative advantage over its rival.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So you're saying they're more important than NATO allies, the NATO allies?

[Eli Lake]

Well, I wouldn't have said that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I would not have sent their own troops to die for.

[Eli Lake]

First of all, I'm sure Israel would have sent its troops to die if they were asked. But of course, for reasons that we both understand, they were not sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. But the point is, is that, but

[Andrew Sullivan]

my point, I'm not anti NATO, that Trump is prepared for the countries that have sent their own sons and daughters to die in coalition forces, countries that have been in allied wars with the United States. He's still prepared to say, you're still not paying enough, you're still not doing your fair share. And it is not even at any point imaginable that he could ever say such a thing to the Israelis. And never has.

[Eli Lake]

Well, actually, never. We have an example of that because Netanyahu publicly said he'd like to phase out the military aid and Trump objected to it. Now let's get to why.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why does this country, why every rule break for this one place?

[Eli Lake]

Why would Trump object to it now without getting into kind of conspiratorial reasons for that? I think there is one reason for it, which I don't think, by the way, is a good one, because we are fundamentally in agreement that Israel should give up the subsidy. That is my position.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I'm not talking about that substantive question. I'm talking about double standards.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. I'm giving you, which I'm telling you,

[Andrew Sullivan]

unless you're making some bizarre exception for this country.

[Eli Lake]

I'm not making a bizarre exception. The vast majority of money that Israel spends through that subsidy is spent on American armaments also.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So what?

[Eli Lake]

Well, so what?

[Andrew Sullivan]

They can pay for it themselves.

[Eli Lake]

Sure.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why have we been paying it for them for so long? We don't do that for anybody else.

[Eli Lake]

I think that we pay for it.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why did Chuck Schumer say, I am the. My job is Senate Majority Leader of the United States and my job is to get aid to Israel. He just outright. That's his number one. One of his number one jobs.

[Eli Lake]

And you know, it is okay, until very recently, Israel was in a very precarious position where it was again before the Abraham Accords, you could argue, I mean, the subsidy really starts in earnest as part of the Camp David Accords from at the end of the 1970s.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I don't want to get any of the subsidy.

[Eli Lake]

Wait a second.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We both agree on the substance.

[Eli Lake]

No, no, no, no, no. You're asking why There is. Because there is by. Because the United States has treaty level agreements with Israel and Egypt. Egypt gets originally 1 billion, Israel got 2 billion. It's all gone up in recent years. But I'm saying that that was originally baked into the pretty remarkable peace agreement that was negotiated, the one great accomplishment of the Carter administration only six years after the 1973 war. So that was part of, as you know, being a former citizen of the United Kingdom, that often subject of the United Kingdom, that oftentimes one of the tools of diplomacy, especially for getting peace agreements, is a bit of a bribe I believe. What is it called? King George's Calvary is the name of it. Like you just.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yeah, because we do nothing else for Israel. We don't really. And we have to bribe them.

[Eli Lake]

I understand.

[Andrew Sullivan]

To go to peace again.

[Eli Lake]

Come on. Not bribe them. It was part of the agreement.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Called it a brain bribe.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I'm saying it's part of the terms of the peace agreement.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Again.

[Eli Lake]

It's, It's. Look, Israel, I'm trying to.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Israel knows how to get a good deal, let's put it that way. They weaken. Not only do they do. Do they. Do they have.

[Eli Lake]

I feel like I'm not really throwing my back in because I don't support the subsidy. So it's like, in a way, I agree with you. I agree with you that that should. I'm happy to move on, but I also think that, like, there's. And then again, the investment, if you will, pays off and that we have this remarkable ally that has developed all these technologies that are incredibly valuable against our rivals.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You've heard that sales pitch many, many times.

[Eli Lake]

But we've heard that sales pitch. That's a serious argument. I just gave you a very specific.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And I think it's a completely legitimate argument. All right, I agree. And you say that they're doing more better work in advancing military technology than, say, Germany or Britain.

[Eli Lake]

I would say they are at this point.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I don't, frankly, I don't specifically know the answer to that. But anyway, we're not that far apart. I just think that most Americans looking at all this, and this is what's been happening the last few years, have just begun to say, wait a minute. So many of these things are sort of an exception in this case. And you and I are. Eustace, they're not. They're beginning to figure this out. They're like, well, why are we paying for their defense when we're not paying for NATO? We don't pay them. In fact, we're asking more from them anyway. I'm just saying that that's part of what's going on. The other thing, that's.

[Eli Lake]

Two more points. Two more points. The cost of deploying US forces in countries like Korea, Japan, Germany, et cetera, is a kind of a subsidy, and that is in. Contributes to the defense of those countries and yet is never spoken about in those terms. So this, I also would say, is

[Andrew Sullivan]

part of America occupying them. Are we not occupying a superpower?

[Eli Lake]

Don't you think? Okay, it's part of being a superpower. Okay. It's a different arrangement to have, you know, our forces garrisoned in Germany than it is to simply pay for part of the Israeli defense budget. But I'm just saying this is what, you know, to quote James Brown, the cost to be the boss, that this is part of being a global power. And again, a lot of it, almost all of it is spent on American stuff. So that affects our economy. It's good for our. To have. If you're building, they can pay for it. Yeah, well, we are in agreement in the end that they can pay for it. Okay. But it's kind of like, so what

[Andrew Sullivan]

are the odds of them paying for it in the next 10 years?

[Eli Lake]

I hope that it, as I would say the demonstration of the two air forces working kind of as co. Equal allies in the war at least is an example of why it should end as soon as humanly possible. I would like to have it end as soon as possible because Israel has, is at this point a full ally and then the other side of it. But one, one more thing that I think.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Eli, this is my podcast, not yours.

[Eli Lake]

Fair enough, but can I just. Just one more thing to think about and then I'll move on very quickly. For those who do not like Israel's policy, when you eliminate a subsidy like that and Israel is no longer dependent on, I think a quarter or more of its defense budget being part of an American subsidy that also provides less visibility and less influence into Israel as a matter of course. So there is a double edged sword there that you also purchase a degree of influence and also visibility into Israeli military planning.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It's a, it's a. You bring up the next topic. Okay, so the benefit is we have all this influence in Israel, Correct?

[Eli Lake]

Well, so yes,

[Andrew Sullivan]

this superpower that is primarily responsible for the country's survival. Existence in many ways. I mean, not entirely, but it's an underwriter.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I think we can say that. And over the years, it's asked some things of the state of Israel that give. Right. Yeah. So obviously the nuclear stuff was not something the United States wanted.

[Eli Lake]

Well, that was before there was any subsidy whatsoever.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I know, I know. I'm just about. Now the relationship here, okay. I'm talking about, I'm talking about the. Whether we have any influence there.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So we obviously were a key underwriter of their existence when they just told us to go fuck ourselves and got themselves a nuclear bomb and certainly were not willing to give it up afterwards. The other question that we had was, we understand you defended yourselves in 67 and 73 and in many ways, many of us admired that defense. But what's happened is that you now occupy a bunch of territory that if you stay there means there will never be a two state solution and therefore do not, do not change the demographics of it to make it so that there are more Jews and so that eventually you'll claim it as your own. Because that is only going to fuel desperation on the part of the Palestinians. It's going to give the sense they have no chance whatsoever. It's going to make them more violent, terroristic, and it's also against the Geneva Conventions as we understand that we do not seize land and then populate it with your people so that you will get a majority so you'll be able to control the area. Now we've asked, we've asked that again and again and again and again and again. And every single time they have told us, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself.

[Eli Lake]

No, they haven't.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, they have.

[Eli Lake]

How? First of all,

[Andrew Sullivan]

how many settlers are there now on the West Bank?

[Eli Lake]

I don't know. You tell me. Was it 500,000?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why would you care?

[Eli Lake]

I don't know everything about Israel. I know a lot about.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But you don't know anything about the west bank because no one ever talks about the West Bank.

[Eli Lake]

People talk about it all the time.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They do not.

[Eli Lake]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Sullivan]

How much have we talked about it since this war with Iran started? Not at all. But in fact it's a grand opportunity.

[Eli Lake]

We're talking about it. Okay. It's a war with Iran.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I want to take. My point is this. We have no influence.

[Eli Lake]

That's not true.

[Andrew Sullivan]

If only influence we have is so pathetic that on none of the major issues in which we have disagreements have

[Eli Lake]

we know a settlement freeze at Obama's request in his first term, he imposed a settlement freeze at Obama's request just to restart the negotiations.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Settlement freeze?

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why are there any settlements there at all?

[Eli Lake]

Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that. Because they removed all the settlements from Gaza and then Hamas takes over. I mean, you have to look at this from the perspective.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I was talking about west bank. Who just changed the subject.

[Eli Lake]

Well, and they also dismantled five settlements in that process known as disengagement under Sharon, after him, Ehud Olmert gets to the point where he can offer at the end of the Bush administration another offer of a kind of final two state solution and Abbas is either too weak or too ornery and that is rejected. Then there is this experience in the Israeli polity which I think you have to account for, which is that Every time they've withdrawn from territory like Gaza, or for that matter, southern Lebanon, which happened. Southern Lebanon, of course, happens at the end of the 1990s, in 2000, and then Gaza happens in 2005, 2006. And when that happens, or 2005, rather, what replaces it? Fanatics.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Armed fanatics, as those who told people

[Eli Lake]

on behalf of Iran occupy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You're going to radicalize them even further when.

[Eli Lake]

No, no, these. No, no, this is when they leave. This is when they leave. So they get out of Gaza, it's briefly under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority loses a legislative election to Hamas. Hamas then says that they're going to take over Gaza. They do, and they turn it into a military staging ground, taking the entire population of Gaza hostage and launch a series of wars with Israel. Ditto for southern Lebanon with Hezbollah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

That is an argument, say this on the west bank to, to, to keep it under. It's not an argument to actually add population to it.

[Eli Lake]

Well, when you say adding population to

[Andrew Sullivan]

it, I mean deliberately. I mean, I'm just listening to the people in the actual cabinet of the current prime Minister who. And again, no, you're not going to. You're not going to say that they don't. I don't agree with them. No. They are the government of Israel, and they are speaking for the government of Israel, and they say our goal is greater Israel. Get rid of these Palestinians, get rid of these Arabs entirely. And they are engaging in a policy of unbelievable harassment, violence, intimidation against people from their own lands in the West Bank. And of course, it's something that any person in the world would say, stop doing this. My point is, if we have all this influence, we've asked them to stop, how is it there are now four times as many people there as there were when this whole process started and is now completely unstoppable? And the government itself says it's deliberate, it will never stop. We will continue until we have a majority, and then these other people can just go somewhere else.

[Eli Lake]

Well, there is a formula that is originally under Oslo, and conceivably, if you had a Palestinian leadership that was interested in actually ending the conflict, that there would be the equivalent of land swaps, because you would have areas that were majority Jewish, and then you would have other parts of pre 67 Israel, and it could be negotiated.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Specifically in the second point, which are. Not that.

[Eli Lake]

The second point I would make is that what Sharon proved in the mid-2000s was that Israel was capable of completely withdrawing, again, five settlements in the west bank. And every settlement in Gaza. And so that if there was a peace offer, I think it would be very painful. It certainly couldn't happen under this current political arrangement. But the good news about Israel is that they have lots of elections and things can turn. Now, my view is. Let me say something. I want to level set here. I think that Smotrick and Ben GVIR are Judeo fascists. And that frightens me. And I want to be totally open with you because we're not just having a kind of formal debate where I'm supposed to be taking this side and you're taking another side. So I want to concede that when Netanyahu initially decided that he would allow himself to run with political parties inspired by the late Mayor Kahane, I was completely against it. And I also thought it was a violation of the principles of the Likud Party and. Or the Likud coalition, I should say, that was founded by Menachem Begin. Menachem Begin would leave the Knesset when Kahana, for his two years as member of Knesset, spoke as a kind of protest because he did not believe in that kind of thing. Now, I would like for. At a certain point, and I think it's quite possible that you could see any number of scenarios. In fact, we saw it in 2021, I think, is the year when we saw the first kind of unity government that included the first Arab party, Mansar Abbas, that actually was part of the ruling coalition. So it's quite possible that you could see another majority in its Facaqta electoral system, and you would see, you know, GVIR and Smotrick and that crowd out on their ass. Which would be great. That would be great.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Let me, in the spirit of that, to do things, I need to say that I. That I'm with you.

[Eli Lake]

All right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

There is no question to my mind that Israel is the most functioning good place in the Middle east to be and to live. And I. And there is no question in my mind that it is an astonishing, staggering achievement. And nor any question my mind that they technologically help us in terms of the military good.

[Eli Lake]

Or that, for the most part, intelligence too.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Oh, that's where I'm gonna. That's okay. I don't trust these people any further than I can throw them. So, yes, insofar as they tell us the intelligence they have and probably withhold other intelligence they have, sure. But they're not going to ever act in our interests and never have. And I despise Hamas. I do think the Palestinian leadership has been remarkably stupid and Counterproductive.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, great.

[Andrew Sullivan]

All those things. And I also believe, as you know,

[Eli Lake]

it's our own Oslo process right here,

[Andrew Sullivan]

that what happened on October 7th was an absolutely horrifying thing. I said so at the time. I was genuinely personally horrified by it. And I've never, I've always grew up, brought to be a believer and a friend and supporter of Israel. It is the last 20 years that I've just had enough.

[Eli Lake]

Right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So I'm in this relationship. I'm done. Right. And I think a lot of us here are done. The polling will tell you I'm not the only one who's sick to death of this stuff. The way they're treating us and the, the, the settlement stuff really is to me by far the most important because it is not much to ask. Just don't add to them and they just refuse. And yes, when in addition to that, we've seen them publicly define the purpose of this in terms of what GVIR and Smotresh have been saying. It is truly disgusting. And it becomes very difficult for us to support another country and call them Western when they are engaged in that kind of rhetoric and that kind of ethnic cleansing campaign. It's just. And when I see that there's nothing we've been able to do to get that, to stop that, that's when I'm like, okay, so I mean, let's not rehash Gaza for sake.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, we did that. We've done that before. Two years ago we had that conversation. Let's get to where we're.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Let's say that nonetheless, I do think that Israel owes us one for that to a great extent. Without the United States arms, the bombs that we gave them, fair or diplomatic cover, all the other shit.

[Eli Lake]

I would just, I chafe a little bit here, which is to say, and then you're not doing this. Okay? But one of the lazy memes that has come out, I'm not gonna die in another war for Israel, which I have a lot of problems with, because what the Israelis, certainly we gave them the arms that they needed and gave

[Andrew Sullivan]

them more than they needed.

[Eli Lake]

Well, and under Biden, we withheld some arms in order to try to get them to do certain things.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Failed. But the Israelis, how much of a Israelis? Zero.

[Eli Lake]

But the Israelis fought a war and the Israelis are flying with American Air force side by side. It's not a matter of, oh, go attack this country. For us, it is very much of, I think, a joint project.

[Andrew Sullivan]

That's why when we saw what was happening in Gaza, many of us felt personally and Americans complicit because the enmeshment was such that even though we were not at war, we were funding and the war and giving the weapons and we had no say over it. And for many of us, I know we disagree about this, but for many of us, it was absolutely unconscionable in its impact upon civilians. And I'm not going to have that argument again, but I'm just trying to tell you that's how we see it.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, but you would also argue that. But so that the war was started by Hamas, of course, and waged in such a way where I would almost say that these civilian casualties were inevitable. Nothing is inevitable. But if you.

[Andrew Sullivan]

That would. I'm not. We're not going to. We discussed this a million times. We're not going to there. But I don't agree the way. Would you agree the way of the world agrees. Eli, just for a minute, just ask yourself why no one agrees with you anywhere. And the only reason you can say

[Eli Lake]

that Indian prime minister just came to Israel in a very, very. I mean, I could go through the list.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I'm not saying they don't.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Cooperate with or say nice things about Israel. I just did. Other people can. But owning what they did there is, is, is, it's, it's a, it's a horrible break. And the end of our relationship with Israel. It will. I think we'll see.

[Eli Lake]

End of our relationship with Israel, the American relationship. I'm a patriotic American. I hope that that doesn't happen, but you can look as a patriotic American. So anyway, as someone who loves our country, I hope that we continue to have this fruitful partnership with this we.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I mean, I supported Israel's war against Gaza until it became quite obviously just complete saturation massacre. And, and we couldn't stop it then. But nonetheless, I felt Amar United States did its part. So then we get to the point where there's some remaining issues about the possibility of Iran's nukes. Okay. That's another legitimate question. Israel has that we as their partners. So we then go the extra mile, join with them in strikes upon these nuclear facilities to remove that threat, which we are told by the president himself has been removed, that it's been obliterated. So at that point I'm like, well, there we go, we're done. Thanks. What else do they want? We've got the west bank, we got destruction of Gaza, we've got embassy moved to Jerusalem. We've got structural control of the Golan

[Eli Lake]

Heights like the embassy moved to Jerusalem in that bucket. I don't understand that as things that

[Andrew Sullivan]

Israel has gotten from us, but I don't understand why. Okay, I'm just saying this is this what so, so like you, we care

[Eli Lake]

a lot about craftsmanship at breaking history, how things used to be made and whether that still matters today. Which raises a fair question. Can you still build something well, on purpose in America? Today's sponsor is doing exactly that. Vare, that's V A E R was founded in Los Angeles with a mission to revive American watchmaking. And they've actually pulled it off. VAIR is now the largest independent watch assembler in the usa, building watches across California, Arizona, Rhode island and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. Now, I have to tell you something. I happen to have a beautiful DS2 Meridian Black Vare. It's quartz, 39 millimeter, and I get compliments on it all the time. I love this watch. And the great thing about it is I know that when I have this watch, I did not pay a premium for a brand name that simply just connotes that I have a lot of money or I am in style or something like that. No, people admire my watch because it looks wonderful, it looks great and it tells time. Great. And one of the things I really like about the watch is that it also is quite durable. It's waterproof, it uses some of the top grade luxury materials that you would expect in your Rolexes or your other more expensive brands. And I can tell you that the public agrees. They've already gotten 10,000 five star reviews. So if you're tired of disposable products and want something that's rugged, timeless and thoughtfully made, check them out, go to Vare Watches, that's V A E R watches.com and support American craftsmanship.

[Andrew Sullivan]

When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide.

[Eli Lake]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel. I would don't see how anyone can

[Eli Lake]

look at this story and think they were happy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Follow and listen to Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. So what did we get back?

[Eli Lake]

What do we get back?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay, here's what I'm saying. Okay. The fundamental what I mean say can you see that after Iran, can you just see that? Here's the point. I was trying to. After all those things that we've given them, including support in Gaza.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Including all this aid, including getting rid of the nuclear sites, that even that was not enough.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, please.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Even then.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, please. Okay, so I think what more had done. Okay, so let's take a step back. I fundamentally disagree with you that disarming and defanging Iran and hopefully resulting in a regime change in Iran is exclusively an Israeli interest. It is an American interest, 100%. And when you listed your. When you're explaining that this is Israel's war, I found myself thinking to myself that you are leaving out lots of other people, including the American interests, as to why that it is totally unacceptable to have an Iran and this particular regime with nuclear weapons.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But they don't have nuclear weapons. They were just told they were obliterated.

[Eli Lake]

Let's slow down. That's my point. Let's slow down.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Can we just. No, they're just slow down.

[Eli Lake]

But this is such a crucial. I'm perfectly willing to address that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The American people want to know how this happened.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, so let's separate a couple things. I agree with your critique of the lack of any kind of process domestically, including going to Congress. And it's a little bit more complicated because I'm going to say that that is a norm that has eroded before Trump under Obama, I might add, as well as others. So. But I think it was a mistake that you had 16 different reasons as to why we're doing the war and that different. Trump would say something different every day. I mean, this starts with, why do

[Andrew Sullivan]

you think he says something different every day? That's my question.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, well, this is a deeper question, and I want to get back to. I want to get back to our debate, but I'm happy to give you my explanation.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You must have some idea why he's doing this.

[Eli Lake]

I think it goes back to the fact that as a young man, Donald Trump was personal friends with and taken in with the flim flam of Norman Vincent Peale. You know, who he is. The power of positive thinking. This is something that Trump before. He's a politician and he's just a developer. Is this idea that if you believe it, if you wish hard enough, it is a reality. And I get into this in a podcast I did. Okay, where he is. This is because the man is a bullshitter.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Tell me why you think he went to war.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, okay. So let's get to the war part. But I'm saying if you want to know why his explanation keeps changing, it's because he is a classic kind of bullshitter. He presents a panorama of a reality. He wants you to believe, okay, that is partly true and partly false and serves whatever he wants it to the moment.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Which of course is that incredibly good in wartime.

[Eli Lake]

Well, it's bad in wartime. I'm agreeing with you. It's bad in wartime. But my point is that, that, my point is personality.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Sure, but what's the real reason he went to war after we've gotten rid of the nukes? What was the point?

[Eli Lake]

Okay, because first of all, the Iranians,

[Andrew Sullivan]

let's say you are giving the speech, you're the president right now, you're doing this the right way. You're actually telling the American people before the fact afterwards with the bullcap.

[Eli Lake]

Fair enough.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Before the fact. We obliterated the nuke. You can't retract that. You've said that very much on the record. We've obliterated the nuclear arms. This is why we have to go into an open ended regime change war with Iran. This is what's happened since we got rid of those nukes that has made me believe we need to do it.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, well, I think the person who came closest to this was Marco Rubio. And what Marco Rubio said, which was not quoted when he was talking to the reporters and so forth, was that I think there was a belief during the 12 Day War and Operation Midnight Hammer, which I might add, the reason there was no risk to those B2 bombers is because the Israelis had taken out all of the air defense systems. Let's just be straight with that. But that there was a belief that this was. The regime would be demoralized. They could never get back to where they were before we'd taken out enough of the program. They wouldn't try to restart. And instead what they were doing is rapidly building up their missile capabilities and stockpiles so that they would have what the phrase from Rubio was a conventional weapons shield in order to protect their nuke to eventually make the race for a nuclear weapon. So that was the. So there was a gamble, I guess in June that such a demonstration of force would demoralize them. And that's why he was, I think, trying to get a sort of agreement with them. No nuclear deal, no nuclear ever. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And the Iranians themselves miscalculated and they said, no, we have an inherent right to enrichment. We can do all this. And it didn't work out. And that is why we went to war.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Because he believed that war, because of their conventional, their conventional arms, they could rebuild sufficiently at some point to protect a potential future nuclear program that would

[Eli Lake]

make Them invulnerable because of the math problem we discussed earlier about interceptors and so forth.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, they didn't make that argument obviously in advance.

[Eli Lake]

In fact, no, they made a bunch

[Andrew Sullivan]

of different arguments and they, it's only been one of many arguments they've made subsequently. So I, I just, I mean, I

[Eli Lake]

mean, I'm agreeing with you that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, I know, but then, then we have to ask ourselves, so how did it happen? Especially when we're talking about a middle, A Middle east regime change, war, which is not nothing in American political history. No, it has an actual lineage. It has probably one of the most decisive moments in American history in the 21st century when we went to war with Iraq, which has probably been written about, thought about more.

[Eli Lake]

Sure.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I mean, it, it forced me to rethink my whole worldview. It really did allow me to be more humble in the face of what I thought I knew, more cautious in the way that one throws one's weight around in the world. Since then, we also had the experience of Libya, which was another catastrophe. And this is bipartisan. Obama. I, I did not give Obama an inch on this stuff either. Eli. I'm not, I'm an equal opportunity basher on this stuff. It's a big deal. It's a big deal.

[Eli Lake]

I agree.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Now, someone in that administration didn't think it was a big deal.

[Eli Lake]

I want to stress with you that I agree with you that this is a big deal.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So then we have.

[Eli Lake]

It is a violation of the War Powers act that we developed after Vietnam. And it is. Or, though I should say violation of the spirit of the war powers. I don't want to say that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You could, I mean.

[Eli Lake]

Yes, okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And I want to. Speaking the idea this is a strike as opposed to a war. I mean.

[Eli Lake]

Agreed. Agreed.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Is ludicrous. Okay.

[Eli Lake]

So I'm in agreement.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You can understand why some of us are mad that this is sprung on us in a way that.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, what I, what I, what I vigorously.

[Andrew Sullivan]

What I am saying is this is not about an imminent nuclear threat. There is no imminent nuclear threat. And here's my other point, that without that imminent nuclear threat, you would never have persuaded the American people, you would never have persuaded the American Congress. You would have never have gotten support for this, or you don't have it anymore.

[Eli Lake]

I'm not entirely sure. But let's.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So here's my suspicion. These people know they can't win, that they also look and they see where the polling is going. They know this is their last chance. Well, okay, so they then go into a serious attempt to persuade the President, United States that this is.

[Eli Lake]

You're talking about.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hasn't done enough. Yes. Okay. Hasn't done enough. All this stuff.

[Eli Lake]

This is where I, I'm gonna part with.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And we know, first of all, we know that Netanyahu visited him again and again and again. We know that, that from every report, this was a key objective of the Israeli government to get us into this second war after the 12 day war, to, to obliterate their conventional threat. So.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, so I, I just fundamentally have

[Andrew Sullivan]

a point in which we were told

[Eli Lake]

that the implication here is that Trump was not strong enough or didn't have his own reasons to resist the misled. What are you talking about?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Do you really think misled Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are ever going to be honest brokers with Iran?

[Eli Lake]

I don't think Iran was willing to negotiate or there was ever a chance

[Andrew Sullivan]

they would not recommend going to war.

[Eli Lake]

What does that have to do with anything? I would say that your argument that it was Israel discounts the following. One, Iran is an enemy of the United States. It has killed Americans. It has killed Americans and has been a belligerent against the United States since its founding as the Islamic Republic in the 79 Islamic Revolution. That's.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Number one, we haven't gone to war every year with.

[Eli Lake]

Correct. Number two, in the sense that there was an opportunity now that Iran's proxy network that it had established in the Middle east, which also not in America's interest. And I'll get to this. Also not in our other Gulf allies interests, was wrecked by Israel. In the sense that it still hadn't rebuilt its air defenses. In the sense that it's still. It was in the process of rapidly acquiring lots of conventional missiles to be as conventional shield, but had not yet finished that this was an opportunity to knock out an adversary when it was going to be far less costly than if we had waited.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, okay, let's just take that point for a minute. That's. That's still against international law under any circumstances.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. What? Huh?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Thank you. Thank you for that. Just the acknowledgement that you don't give a fuck about it. International law is meaningless in these contexts. And that also goes.

[Eli Lake]

If you want to get into international law. I am happy to get into international law, but I want to go to the entire absolute. I want to look at the entire board. Okay. Iran as a regime has lived entirely outside of and in contravention of international law by every measure of how it uses to fight. So I have A problem right now with international law as we understand it, because it is requiring in many ways for kind of, let's just call them good guy citizen countries, to play by rules where its adversaries are clearly violating them. And this is a constant problem. It's a constant problem that we can see it with. You know, it's not as high stakes, but you look at China's behavior with its manipulation of its currency and its manipulation of its exports and so forth, and what it means for them to be in the World Trade Organization. That is an example of how we are asking everybody else to play by a set of rules. But this other country, which doesn't exactly play by those rules, you know, gets away with it. Or look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine

[Andrew Sullivan]

and so forth, because we, we also understand the broader benefits of some structure of international order and international order that we have some respect for boundaries for nation states, or we will be in complete chaos. In other words, you might have a short term interest in violating them, but we know that the long term consequences of those violations is the collapse of all order. And therefore you do so with great, great reluctance.

[Eli Lake]

I would argue that we're in a League of nations moment right now where you have effectively the end of, of, of international law in a meaningful sense. Listen, when you already agreed, we've already

[Andrew Sullivan]

agreed that Iran, Iran's nuclear capacity had been pretty much wasted. Certainly would take a long time to reconstitute that the only thing they're doing, how dare they, as a sovereign country, arm themselves conventionally to protect themselves from these, these countries that are invading and bombing them.

[Eli Lake]

Secondly, we're not talking about just, I

[Andrew Sullivan]

don't like, out of the blue, preemptive wars of aggression, brutal aggression, which have no immediate threat, no justification on international law not having been thought through with any understanding of whether it will do more good than harm.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, but what do you do when you have an adversary like Iran that painstakingly, over two generations, built up effectively an alternative state inside of Lebanon, it deprived, it destroyed Lebanese sovereignty with Hezbollah and the same organization then was used.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Our interest in the United States. There's plenty of things Iran does horribly in the recent. Right. Our interest in that compared to our interest, say in what's happening in Eurasia or what's happening in the Pacific is minimal. And yet we are, look where we are.

[Eli Lake]

Minimal. It's a lot less, I would argue. I think you've got it all wrong because it's taken care of. I think you've got it all wrong,

[Andrew Sullivan]

taken Care of once. Israel basically has complete military hegemony over the Middle east at this point. It has regional supremacy. Its major rival doesn't have any nukes anymore. It is. It is. It is. It's reeling. That's the moment you say, you said, it's precisely because of that weakness that we chose to strike. And striking again, illegal, against national law. We also did something we. We didn't. The Israelis did that violates our law, violates all international law, which is to assassinate the entire leadership of another country.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

When has anybody else done that?

[Eli Lake]

Well, not quite like that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

In the last. In the last 50 years, the Soviet

[Eli Lake]

Union sent Spetsnaz and killed or kidnapped the leader of Afghanistan before they invaded.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay. But that's nothing like this. This is one of the greatest war crimes.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, please. In terms of international law, it's a geopolitical mitzvah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I know you. That's what you would think.

[Eli Lake]

Of course, I don't understand how you know, it is. Sit here and say, are you really. If you notice war crime that they killed.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, I think.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, come on.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, yes. Ok. Because if the principle now is we cannot object and will not object to any power going into any other country and assassinating their entire leadership, we have no standing now to say we're against that under international law. I feel like Thomas Morin, you break down all these laws, we wait till it comes back at you.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. And I would count another country came

[Andrew Sullivan]

in, assassinated our top leadership.

[Eli Lake]

Yes.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You think we. Again. It's such a thing.

[Eli Lake]

I think you are. You are making a category. You're making a category error. You're making a category error because you are pretending that the leadership of the Islamic Republic is somehow like any other nation state. It isn't. We have court documents that they had attempted to not only assassinate President Trump, they attempted to assassinate Masia Lineshad. And they have, by the way, done it in Europe and America. They have sent their agents. This is a revolution pretending to be a country. So in my view, ideally there would be some sort of international body in which. I don't know. I mean, I'm just spitballing here where, you know, you could say for the following reasons, this regime has relinquished the benefits of the sovereignty that we would afford to other nation states because of its actual behavior, whether it is hollowing out the sovereignty of Lebanon, whether it is aiding and assisting the survival of Bashar Assad when he is in the middle of using chemical weapons against his own civilians, whether it is, frankly, the great threat to the Republic of letters by issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Everything this regime does to me says that they have relinquished any of those benefits of sovereignty. It would have been nice if there was some way that we could have made that case before the United nations or something like that and explained that this is a special kind of operation or special example, a special case or something along those lines. But it is not the same as simply going and taking out the top leadership of Belgium. And you know it. Iran is a revolutionary. It's not a status quo power.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Sorry. International law does not make those distinctions.

[Eli Lake]

Well, then that is a weakness right now of international law. And I would go back to Immanuel

[Andrew Sullivan]

Kant probably, if we hadn't, if we hadn't gotten involved in Iran in the 50s, in the first.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, well, I'm glad you brought that up. I would like to counter that as well. I would like.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I'm not going to go out. I'm just going to say the amount of damage this country has done to the country of Iran is really incalculable over the years.

[Eli Lake]

The damage has been done by. No, no, I'm sor. The damage was done by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when he stole a popular revolution and turned his country into a medieval theocratic police state. And in so doing, the first victims, of course, were the Iranians themselves and the rest of the region and frankly the rest of the world, if you count their forays into assassination of internal, of domestic opposite opponents, whether they were Kurdish leaders in Austria or Germany or the former prime minister in Paris. You can go through the list from its very beginning. They have.

[Andrew Sullivan]

You're not going to get me to defend the activities or nations.

[Eli Lake]

But I'm saying you care about international law. What do you do about a state that is committed to, it's violating and undermining it? What you make sure is spreading an Islamic revolution.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Sure that you are defended well against it. That so far as it does have a risk of a nuclear thing of getting or ICBMs that could reach us. It can't. And you contain it. That's what we did with the Soviet Union. That's what we've done with a million other disgusting regimes. And one of the things we found out in Iraq is that sometimes containing a regime may be preferable to unboxing it and blowing it up and seeing what happens next. So those are the concerns I have. The other concern I have is that, is that obviously once the nuclear capacity had been removed and the ICBMs are way off. The threat to America is over. The threat to Israel is not, in many ways, for the conventional reasons. So Netanyahu then makes an extra effort to ask for more after the 2025 bombings. And they're lobbying very hard for this. Lindsey Graham is shuttling back and forth from his home base in Israel, occasionally visiting South Carolina.

[Eli Lake]

Right. Well, come on.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It's weird. The dude is popping up there like,

[Eli Lake]

I don't want to.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Having a heart attack.

[Eli Lake]

I don't understand. You and I. You and I have a very. You and I have a disagreement, I think, about America's national interest, which is to be expected in a vibrant democracy. People can have disagreements about what they. What the interest is.

[Andrew Sullivan]

This is the sound of me lighting my second joint here.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. You and I have a dishonor. You and I have a disagreement. What I resent, and I caught a little bit of it there from you, but you hear it all the time from everybody from John Mearsheimer to Tucker Carlson, is that somehow only one side of that debate is really interested in American interest, and the other side has placed a country ahead of the national interest. Whereas my argument has always been that a. The U.S. israel alliance is very much in America's national interest and that Iran and getting rid of the Iranian regime when there is a golden opportunity to do so is also in the American natural interest. I accept, by the way, that people disagree with me, but I don't accuse you of somehow being disloyal as an American in some way. I did not forget disloyalty because you specifically in your piece Others.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I completely understand that you think that this is the interest of the United States as much as Israel.

[Eli Lake]

And why can't Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham also thinks that. Why can't it. Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I can also objectively say simply as a matter of geography, that it is much. That Israel has a much greater interest in what happens in Iran than the United States. As I would say the same thing about Germany and Ukraine, for example.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, we are a long, long, long way away. And we spend an awful amount of money and $3 billion a day, it seems like, at this point.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, so we're having an argument then. Not. Not so much about, okay, I wanna just get to something that didn't come. I wanna make a point. It's a joint point.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It's complicated.

[Eli Lake]

It's not just Israel that has an interest in ending the Islamic Republic.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, of course not.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. It's millions.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The world does.

[Eli Lake]

Millions of Iranian. Okay, thank you. But in terms of Domestic politics and international politics. I don't wanna let the Saudis off the hook because they were neutral publicly. But then we found out that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, had been pushing Trump as well. Okay, so. And if you look at. Let's put it all on the table here, you look at the interests of the Trump family as well as the Witkoff family and others, the opinions of Gulf nation shakes and so forth, would. Would, I think, be quite influential. And they're all privately saying, go ahead and do it. So it's not just Israel that's saying it, that's internationally. And then domestically, I just think that you're looking at. I think a lot of Americans would just simply say, yeah, I remember the hostage crisis, I remember Khobar Towers, I remember the Marine barracks, I remember the IEDs. I mean, there are so many things that the Iranians have done over the years that I think they would say, yeah, of course, it's in our interest. And then, you know, all of your fancy notions and so forth. So I just want to push back on this idea that it was just Israel.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, it wasn't just Israel.

[Eli Lake]

But as I. But then I wasn't just Israel. I will grant a kernel of truth,

[Andrew Sullivan]

but it was Israel.

[Eli Lake]

It was Israel in the front leading

[Andrew Sullivan]

the charge to accomplish something that Netanyahu said he's been trying to accomplish for 40 years. You can't. They wanted this. They lobbied for it. They have every right to lobby for it. You know, this is nothing illegitimate here. My worry is that you could lobby for it. But then it just happened. And we don't disagree about this, the fact that it was just now. But here's the thing. It's because of this very close alliance that at some point, this is what they have told us, this is true, that the Israelis said, we got this phenomenal intelligence about the leadership. We're going to go for it. And what Rubio and Trump both said just independently said and what.

[Eli Lake]

No, you're basing this on what Tucker says Trump said to him and then Trump himself publicly said later?

[Andrew Sullivan]

No. No. Yes.

[Eli Lake]

All right, all right, let's just.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, I'm. I'm basing this also on the New York Times and the Washington Post.

[Eli Lake]

No, the New York Times quoted Tucker as saying after he spoke to him,

[Andrew Sullivan]

he said this Post also had it.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I don't think anybody doubts that Netanyahu tried to get the United States to go to this war. Right. Of course not. Sure, he wasn't the only one, but he was incredibly important.

[Eli Lake]

I Think.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And I was in and out of the White House all the time. The point is this. And this is the critical moment. We're gonna. We're gonna kill these people at that moment. Whether you like it or not, you're in the war.

[Eli Lake]

I don't think, by the way, that that does not. I'm just telling you that this explanation, and I understand Rubio said a version of it and then walked it back and so forth, I just don't think that that's what happened. And I'm saying this is not just an argument, but I'm saying, as a matter of accuracy, this is the same guy that basically did. Did they send an armada to the Persian Gulf?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Did they tell. I'm not talking about the fact. Yes, they've been. They wanted. They were also having these negotiations, whatever. And this was. We were all told this was about, you know, leverage and pressure and blah, blah, blah.

[Eli Lake]

No, we were not talking.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Trump was telling us that.

[Eli Lake]

Trump was telling us. Look, no, this starts. No, no, I'm sorry. Okay, let's. All right, let's go. And then I'll go.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay, but here's the critical thing.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

When they got this intelligence and they were going to do this, could we have said, no, you can't do that because that will bring us into the war and we're not ready for it.

[Eli Lake]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Why did we not.

[Eli Lake]

Because Trump supported it. He thought it was great. Okay, okay, so let me explain what I think happened. Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Do you think the Israelis would ever asked us if that's okay?

[Eli Lake]

Let me, let me. Let me. Let me. First of all, the fact that they said we've got this intelligence. They shared it and they said, we want to go, would tell me that. Yes. They were giving them lots of lead time, given. They found out about it, I guess, like eight days before, and they shared it immediately, and the CIA confirmed it. And so, sure. This is not a. We have a secret.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They've got the intel eight days before the meeting.

[Eli Lake]

Yes. They came upon that there was going to be this meeting on that Saturday, March 1st.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They were trying to prepare us for this.

[Eli Lake]

They did. They absolutely did. They shared it through the Intelligence Channel.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Public. I mean, you know.

[Eli Lake]

Oh. Oh, sure. Oh, okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Schmucks called the American people.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. On the American people side, that is.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Who cares?

[Eli Lake]

I. No, no, it's not who cares. I'm with you. I think they should have prepared us more. But. But I just want to go back a little bit.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I just can't imagine this ever happening. In other scenario, I Just, okay, let me have a very hard time imagining.

[Eli Lake]

Let me.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Let me. That Britain says, we're going to attack so and so. And you say, well, what? And you say, we're going to do it, all right? And we'll be involved. We'll. We'll take your lead. We'll follow you.

[Eli Lake]

That's not what happened. Okay, let me explain. Trump opens the door to military participation at the end of 2025, when the bizarre merchants go out in the streets and we begin to see another uprising throughout the country against the mullahs. Now he does something which I think was a result of him not having a real policymaking process when it comes to national security matters, anything. Okay. Which is to say, I think what he did is he saw the, you know, very compelling scenes from Iran, which we all saw then, and said in a series of messages over the course of, like, one and a half weeks. Help is on the way. Seize your institutions. Now's the time to rise up. If any of them, if you kill anyone, there's gonna be consequences, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He put the American. America's prestige behind the idea of the treatment of the Iranians who were in the streets demonstrating, very unusually for him. Fair enough.

[Andrew Sullivan]

He normally likes the other side in those contexts.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

People forget that in Tiananmen Square, he was on the side of the tank.

[Eli Lake]

This is a matter of history. You're right. I think he was. But the point is that in this particular case.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So I don't believe a word of it myself.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, fine, you don't believe a word of it, but I'm just saying that's what happened. And you would agree with that? Okay, yeah. All right. So what was the response from the regime they slaughtered? Most estimates are 30,000, by the way. Let me just, in the interest of honesty, I don't know what the number is because it's very difficult to get. But we know it was several thousand at the very least, and probably it was a lot in 48 hours.

[Andrew Sullivan]

It was a horrifying toll.

[Eli Lake]

Let's put it this way, it was a horrifying toll. It was kind of unprecedented, even for this brutal regime.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But it also suggests, by the way, that they have total monopoly of force of arms. That kind of level of. Of decimation. Not that word. The killing of so many people.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Andrew Sullivan]

But the slaughter so quickly, it just means. Okay, got. So what I would glean from that, if I had half a brain, is actually. No, this regime is still in charge here, and it's Gonna be very hard to get rid of it.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, I'm not disagreeing with you. That, I think, is a sort of a fair point. But anyway, the point is that you had the president on making a promise repeatedly in this period, no response. He tried to then gloss it over, saying, we stopped the hanging of 800 and some odd people, but he lost face. Now we've covered Trump. Now we were in the Trump era.

[Andrew Sullivan]

He lost face. I don't think anybody. I don't think anybody's winning.

[Eli Lake]

He lost face. They killed a bunch of people. When he told the regime not to,

[Andrew Sullivan]

I. Well, yeah, I don't buy that. I don't think he could care less whether he did or not.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I'm not asking what's in his card. I'm not asking what's in his car. I'm saying he said, don't do it. They did. Okay. Okay. And so then we have these negotiations. Suddenly it's all about, you know, their nuclear weapons. It all looks, you know, who knows what the hell's going on here? But what the reality was is that he made a promise before he could do anything about it. Because, again, we didn't have the assets in place to back up the threat. That is what happened.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So we didn't have the answer.

[Eli Lake]

I'm saying, so Trump, to back up the threat that if you kill the protesters, I'm targeting you. Which is essentially what he said.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay, so his bluff was called is what you're saying.

[Eli Lake]

His bluff was called.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And he did not, for the first time.

[Eli Lake]

He did not have all the time. He didn't have the assets in place. Okay, so he sends the assets there and then starts the negotiations over. I mean, we're told it's over nuclear missiles and support for terrorism. And then it depends on. Every day it's about something else. They're not going very well.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And I. And one issue I'm interested in, because neither of us can know what actually happened to things, but one thing that does concern me is they didn't. Witkoff and Kushner did not seem to have real experts with them. I've read. Read a couple of pieces that said they just genuinely misunderstood a nuclear facility that they. They thought could possibly eventually, at some point, lead to nuclear bombs and could not, and they didn't have the. The expertise with them to be able to do that. And of course. Of course, this is very quick. I mean, I think these issues can get insanely complex. Right? I mean, God knows. But anyway, regardless.

[Eli Lake]

Regardless, there was a.

[Andrew Sullivan]

They're not going that well.

[Eli Lake]

There was a negotiation. Now, a cynical interpretation could mean that the negotiations were ruse and a cover to put the assets in place, which took some time. I think that might be true, I don't know. But then there's this other part of it, which is that what the Israelis showed. And we have to go back to June of 2025. Initially, Trump did give the Israelis a green light, but the first message from the Trump administration was, we're neutral. We're not in this. Do not attack any Americans. That was Rubio's statement. Trump doesn't say anything for 12 hours. Then you get the results of that first red wedding is what the Israelis called it from Game of Thrones, where they took out 40 top generals within the first hours of the strike. And Trump thought that was the coolest thing in the world. And some have described this in my reporting as America's first FOMO war, which is that he wanted the glory of what he saw as a success, successful military operation, which is exactly what he got. So, yes, the Israelis wanted Trump to use the bunker buster technology that only the United States has to get the facilities in Fordo and Isfahan that are deeply buried under the earth. And Trump was happy to do it because he said, wait a second. And the way I describe it in my upcoming piece for commentary, which will be out in a couple days, is that the Israelis were offering him an opportunity to place a large bet on a fixed fight, which is that they had achieved a level of intelligence penetration of Iran, which I think we can say real world events, not just and even before the June 25 war has shown that the Israelis have accomplished something that, I don't know there's any parallel in the history of modern espionage, I suppose, when.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Still doesn't make them safe, does it?

[Eli Lake]

Well, they've been studying Iran.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hamas is decimated. They're destroying half the southern Lebanon. They've decimated the nuclear, but they're still vulnerable to.

[Eli Lake]

Or you could say they're fighting a fanatic revolutionary kind of movement, which is. Which is. Which. Which greets death as a kind of noble end to life. Because if, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of explanations for it, I would say it's somewhat ideological and.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Whereas we're only fighting for death and destruction and because these are weaker than us.

[Eli Lake]

You're quoting exact here, I suppose, right?

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. But let's, let's. Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We are justifying this war on the grounds that we can screw over someone weaker than us, because we can. And that is also. I don't. The damage this is doing to us. I'm just telling you what the Secretary of Defense is saying and how it is being heard across the world.

[Eli Lake]

I believe that the Secretary of Defense is high on his own supply and that it is. He shouldn't. He shouldn't necessarily. He should not be talking about war. Serious business. But let's.

[Andrew Sullivan]

He shouldn't be Defense secretary. I'm not going to call him war secretary. He should not be Defense secretary. It's an absolute farce.

[Eli Lake]

Sure. I want to get back to, though, what I think. I think my understanding of what happened is that after the Israelis demonstrated in the June 25 war, Trump said, oh, my God, that is so cool. We have a chance to take out these enemies of America once and for all. And that it was not this pushing Trump reluctantly to do Israel a favor. It was rather, let's take advantage of this opportunity. You guys know what the hell you're doing.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Neither of us can know for sure. And one day a little bit more. But I don't think we're that far apart.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I'm not.

[Eli Lake]

But do you understand how that would be very different than you've done Israel another favor? Israel's doing America a favor, at least in Trump's eyes. Israel is doing America an enormous favor because it has wired this country for sound in a way that gives a kind of advantage. Because if you would have just said, and I didn't know this, Let me put it like this. If you just said, here's the plan, we wanna knock off the regime, but we're not gonna have any ground troops and we're gonna do it by the air, I would say that's insane. You can't do that. You have to have a ground force to manage the chaos. How do you know what's going on? I think the only way that you could get around to saying is that there's things that you do not understand about the level of penetration that Israel has of the regime and Iranian society, and that will actually make this possible to pull off.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I can absolutely believe. And I'm okay.

[Eli Lake]

So let me just say that that's where I'm at.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay. I. I think all that is almost certainly part of the truth. Right.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Of course, the Israelis are also really good at working people and know entirely how to appeal to Trump. They've probably done a million studies of this. They're massive. If they can penetrate the entire regime of Iran, they penetrated this administration as well. They know exactly what makes this guy tick. They've almost certainly got a strategy for getting him to do what they want to do. And all I'm saying is that then you also have the sheer serendipity of luck, timing. You know, this happens suddenly, history is like that. You suddenly they're going to meet in eight days time, that changes that, that, that's how history works. So it's a mess. It's a mix of these things. But it is a function partly of, let me put it this way, it's a function of partly Israel's pressure, Saudi pressure, Israel persuasion of Trump. Look how cool we are, Israel. And then, but then here's the thing. It starts with this moment. So I think Rubio, what Rubio said, when he said, no, no, Israel didn't start, didn't determine this war, determine the timing of this war. Yeah, and that's what I was saying, too. Yes. That's what I'm not. That is, but that matters too, that, that, because if the timing means you don't get to explain the rationale, in fact, by virtue of the nature of the initial crime, the initial assassination of the entire leadership, we couldn't sell people that in advance. The whole point was it was surprise. Right. So you could not. So that just simply meant we were in whether we liked it or not. And we couldn't tell anyone. We couldn't tell anyone in advance.

[Eli Lake]

No. The president could have given a speech in January that said, right now we are conducting negotiations that I hope work, but I have my doubts to finally and thoroughly disarm an enemy of the United states for nearly 50 years. And let me explain to you what we are concerned about right now. We have an opportunity. Iran does not have functional proxy networks throughout the Middle east as it did three years ago. It is rebuilding its conventional missiles. But we believe that if it gets past a certain point, it will be too costly to use military force to stop them from acquiring a nuclear weapon. And that is an unacceptable outcome for us. And therefore we are asking Congress to give us the authorization we hope not to use to go to war. He could have said that without getting into any of that special intelligence, and

[Andrew Sullivan]

he wouldn't have gotten the authorization.

[Eli Lake]

And maybe you're right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Maybe he, well, he would look at that and said, what the fuck?

[Eli Lake]

Maybe he wouldn't have.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I don't go to war with Iran or those circles.

[Eli Lake]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, it was only, I think it was 216, 219 in the house anyway, the War Powers Resolution, it was very

[Eli Lake]

close, which they won but.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Okay, I know but I'm just saying it was close in as much as you can imagine. If they'd be given a chance to think about this, they would have said no.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So anyway it is. Let's put it through it whether by luck design.

[Eli Lake]

By the way. By the way a similar thing happened in Libya. There was a vote in Libya and Obama went anyway. In some ways that's even more grievous violation. Okay and let me.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So now that too.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I've got to give me credit after Obama.

[Eli Lake]

So let me very hard on. Let me, let me now and this

[Andrew Sullivan]

now we're in the new. We're in the war now let's. I just want to. Okay I want to because we've been talking remind me.

[Eli Lake]

I want to get back to a note of comedy when we're done this point.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Give me a comedy.

[Eli Lake]

Comedy with a T, not a T. Oh comedy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Oh and then forget that.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So here we he like let me, let me just. Well, let's talk about the war itself. We're in it. Let me tell you how I what the thoughts go through my head.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

One thought is I pray, I pray to God that some good comes of this. It's possible. I don't. I think it's unlikely but I haven't. When my Iranian friend texts me and says I've just lost all hope in everything, everything I've fought for is destroyed. And he's a, you know, green revolution liberal because he fears that this actually has hurt his cause. Now others feel otherwise and my my said to him you never know and things can happen. And I didn't 1989 no one expected but so I feel that I then also feel awful. I see civilian inevitably civilian collateral damage. I don't think we're doing it deliberately but there's. If you're hitting police stations, if you're hitting you're gon hit schools. Schools have been hit. Hospitals didn't hit. That awful first day tragedy in which 150 schoolgirls were killed. It's probably the worst accident in terms of us in, in decades. And, and I feel at the same time that this is going on as people are now experiencing increased prices. This is not good. This is, this feels very destabilizing. It's not yet in any way clarifying. My fear is my hope is that the miraculous happens and it may and I pray for it. My fear is that this entrenches the regime actually delegitimizes us especially in our alliance with Israel, especially in the wake of Gaza, the alliance with Israel has different meaning now that they have the IDF has fresh from this image and, and that it will actually empower the worst elements in Israel that we'll see even more swing to the hard right there and the whole region spiraling. That's how I, where I'm at now the oil price stuff. I mean in some ways American people, I think this is sort of going to be interesting. On the one hand, America's at like Iran, the regime, nor should they. So there's some element of them. Right. At the same time, the Iraq situation is very fresh in people's minds and they're, you know, Joe Rogan is having the kind of response Joe Rogan would have and he's not the only one.

[Eli Lake]

All right, can I address some of those and that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yeah, I'm just one last thing. And then of course the American public, however, if there's one thing they don't really care about the Constitution very much, but they do care about the price of gas.

[Eli Lake]

Sure.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And so that is seems to be, we don't know, we talk from day to day what could be happening when this airs but doesn't look good on any of those fronts.

[Eli Lake]

Okay. I would just say it's far too soon to know. But a couple points I would make. I think when Trump muses about boots on the ground, what he really means is slippers on the ground meaning special operators. I don't think, I think that the reason that the Iraq war became unpopular, I mean there were two things. One is we didn't find the weapons of mass destruction that were promised in this particular case. I don't think there's any doubt that Iran intended to build a weapon of mass destruction, the ultimate one. The second point is that it really more than the pre war intelligence being wrong, it was that American soldiers and were just volunteers were training police officers in Karbala. They were manning checkpoints in Baghdad and Basra. And this is the thing that was so frustrating was that the bulk of the war were Americans who were sitting ducks for a vicious insurgency that combined the poisonous extremism of Al Qaeda and later ISIS with the cruel efficiency and expertise of the remnants of the Ba' Athist state. And that added to that the Iranian backed fanatic insurgency on the Shia side was a nightmare for most Iraqis and a perilous and horrible environment for any soldier. So that was where the war really became a failure. What the hell were we doing? We weren't equipped to do it. It's not what we thought we were gonna do. We thought we're gonna liberate and get out. I think there is zero chance that Donald Trump will in any circumstance commit Americans to nation building or peacekeeping. So that's the first thing. Now that itself opens up a can of possibilities that we just don't know. But yeah, we have to be honest. It could be a Syrian civil war, except in a much larger country. You know, I would imagine that the CIA and the Mossad are competent enough to secure the enriched uranium that is buried underneath Isfahan and Fordo, or I think mainly Isfahan and get rid of it and make sure that they don't have, I think it's 20% enriched uranium that they still have a stockpile. They can have to get through the sort of rubbleized remains or something to get to it. So what about handheld anti aircraft rockets? What about any number of conventional weapons that in the hands of a terrorist group at an airport would be an absolute disaster? So there's a lot of risk here. I go back to the fact that I've heard and I would imagine that again the Mossad has the country under an mri. So if that can be translated into preventing those outcomes, I would hope that it would be. But again, it's an unknown. So I'm just being. I'm saying I see that's a possibility and I cannot say. But as for regional stability, I think I differ with you in an important way. The source of regional instability was a revolutionary regime in Tehran. It was the state policy since its inception to support an Islamic revolution throughout the Middle east. And it was adaptable enough that they could support Sunnis and Shia and that is a source of instability. We have an.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Obviously hypocrisy is the creation of a brand new state in 1948 which completely, completely convulsed the entire region in a way. No, let me finish. That we're still grappling with. It's not like this is the only revolutionary moment. Zionism is a revolutionary moment in 1948.

[Eli Lake]

I'm talking about we're in 2026.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I know.

[Eli Lake]

I'm just saying by 1979, which is the year of the Egypt, Israel peace. Yeah, okay. And it's followed by Jordan, the Abraham Accords, the status quo Sunni powers have made their peace with Israel. It's Iran that is the axis of resistance. Iran is the center of that. If you remove that, that is a golden ticket for America to finally get out of the Middle east and then focus on the Pacific. If you get that Then I also think, and this is one of the reasons to get back to why I'm in favor. And by the way, you can look it up, everybody on Google. I wrote about it, I think, a dozen years ago for the Daily Beast when nobody said it, I wrote a piece of quoting pro Israel defense experts saying it's time to end the subsidy. So I think it was one of the first in the pro Israel Zionism camp to raise this, at least recently.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, you're good on that. We're at one. We're at one with process.

[Eli Lake]

Okay, okay, fine. Okay, we're good. Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Along with the general.

[Eli Lake]

But I think to make the deeper point, Israel, then you're right, becomes the regional hegemon. Okay. Because the balance to it, Iran, the revolutionary regime, is no longer there. I don't think that Israeli hegemony in the Middle east is bad for peace, is bad for any of these things. I think Iranian regional hegemony or competition for regional hegemony is terrible for those things. So if you have a chance to finally knock it out and put in something in place and finally, I just would say I've been covering the Iranian movement as I see it, to get their country back, the democratic opposition for nearly 30 years now. And I've been writing about it for 25 years. And I would just say that there is a long tradition in Iran that goes back to the end of the 19th century of a demand. They still have a constitution, by the way. It's still. The Islamic constitution is still technically the original one. And I think that there is an opportunity. It's not Iraq. Iraq is a fake country that was made after World War I. Iran has been around for, you know, since the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the bad guys of Herodotus. And they have. I think the Iranian people do not want to live under these people. I think they are the first victims of this regime. So I understand that you call it a crime, but that's why I actually think it's an act of liberation if it ends as I hope it does, which is in a color revolution. And I don't think it's out of the question.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, we'll see. My thoughts just about that Iraq war and the Iran war is that, is that the Iraq War was, you know, the process was correct, but it was built upon a false premise.

[Eli Lake]

Absolutely. It was a pro. You could say the process was right and it was strategically a blunder.

[Andrew Sullivan]

And. But also the. No, the premise was wrong. The WMD issue was wrong.

[Eli Lake]

Exactly. So.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So this. And so we went to war in a way that wasn't kosher. You know what I mean? This time we went to war without even being asked. Last time, once we broke a country, we felt obliged as a responsible actor on the world stage not to let it just completely collapse and disappear and walk out.

[Eli Lake]

Sure.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Now we're fine with that. Now we've adopted the idea that we can go in and break a country and just let it go.

[Eli Lake]

But see, when you say now we think we can go in and break a country, I would argue that this country is absolutely broken.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, sure, you could have said that about Iraq too.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I'm not as guilty as you are about Iraq.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Saddam was. Was a broken system. But boy, the chaos and disorder and violence and sectarian murders, that can.

[Eli Lake]

Well, one point, by the way, in

[Andrew Sullivan]

my favor, and I'm just saying, how

[Eli Lake]

much of that was Iran?

[Andrew Sullivan]

If 100,000 Iranians die in the next year or so because of this, it

[Eli Lake]

would be a terrible tragedy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, I know. But it's okay for you.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I mean, I think you have to distinguish between IRGC commanders versus Iranian fruit vendors. And we should acknowledge that we now have confirmation that a terrible strike, an accidental strike, something like 132, I mean, I don't know the exact number, but. Of schoolchildren were killed in an inerrant tomahawk strike. It's a terrible tragedy. War is serious. It shouldn't be memed as the White House did recently. I agree with that. And there's something about that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Is there a point at which the character and justifications of the people conducting the war make it illegitimate? Even if you think the court.

[Eli Lake]

I really think that this is. Is such an historic moment, Andrew, that if we can say Islamic Revolution 1979-2026, are rest in pieces, that is such a bigger accomplishment that in some ways it doesn't matter the personality or the process, because that will be part of his legacy, because that's how we judge presidents.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Oh, I could give a shit about his legacy, to be honest with you. I'm just. I am. No, I am desperate not to see another human catastrophe unfold in the Middle east because we intervened militarily without thinking things through, without. Without either the right process and with a president and a defense secretary who are out of their fucking minds as far as I can see. And I do not want to go to war under any circumstances where the commander in chief who literally. And not a single thing he says at any moment can be believed, whose judgment in that war seemed to be affected by the last person he spoke to, who has offered a million different rationales, who is and whose defense secretary is articulating rhetorically an almost barbaric idea of war that. That robs us of the moral authority we might have. What you say, if you're going to war to liberate a people, is that, of course, we're targeting only their leadership. Make that absolutely clean. Of course, up front, we're horrified that civilians will be hurt. We want to let you know there are ways in which you present a war like that. Bush did it. He made it very clear, we're not going to war with you, the Iraqi people. We're not going to war with Islam. Here you have these religious Christian fundamentalists talking about bringing death and destruction. And at some point, you are, as I feel the same way about Israel and Gvir and Smotrich. some point, you are who you are. Who is representing you. And this man Hegstack is representing all of us. And what he's saying is objectively evil, in my view. Even if you believe this is a good war, okay. You do not celebrate violence for its own sake. You do not say it is a great thing when the strong pummel the weak. I mean, that's the other thing. The other.

[Eli Lake]

Well, this is the challenge, I think, of American politics to make sure that the Trump years in this regard, when you're talking about. Because I agree with you that that is a norm that I would like. I would. I do not want that to become repeated over time. I think your point is well taken, that eventually you are who your representatives are in a democracy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes. And I don't.

[Eli Lake]

By the way, doesn't democratic peace theory seem quaint at this point? I'm just saying everything that's happened with all these people with various lives, kind of interesting.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Democratic.

[Eli Lake]

Democratic peace theory that no two democracies will ever get in a war.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Oh, that.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, you know what I mean?

[Andrew Sullivan]

I'm just sort of like tanky shorthand for our. Are normally American listeners.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, no, no, no. I was a was. It was a dated, neoliberal 90s foreign policy.

[Andrew Sullivan]

So inside our. Inside. And the other thing is that, you know, the other thing I try and tell myself is that, look, I was. I was educated by the new republic in America. I mean, look in American politics. And. And I've lived and breathed this topic. I went through the Iraq. I mean, you and I, we're not like most people. Most people have got lives to live. There's a very long way away from where they are.

[Eli Lake]

Right.

[Andrew Sullivan]

The only people that are really interested in cracking crazy evangelicals for all sorts of truly scary reasons.

[Eli Lake]

I'm actually more optimistic on this and this. I think you may disagree. I disagree. When you're saying you've generationally like Israel's lost American, like the American people. And I think that's one of your arguments making that I'm not. I'm not entirely sure I agree. First of all, this is not describing in any way you. And I think that there's. You have to distinguish in any time you're making a distinguish. So there's plenty of very severe critics of Israel who do not necessarily fall into this category. However, there is a political grammar on the left which makes the Israel cause very similar to Black Lives Matter, transgender ideology nonsense. And I think that these tend to burn very brightly and then they somewhat dissipate. Who's talking about abolishing prisons seriously today? I mean, I know the left does, but I'm saying it's not. That's not. People understand. That's a ridiculous kind of thing. And I think the idea of abolishing Israel. And I know you're not saying that. I'm not. I'm just saying. Which has kind of gotten a little bit of a moment on the left and the right. I just think it's going to go. It's going to turn in all that energy is going to go against ICE and for illegal immigration.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We'll see.

[Eli Lake]

I mean, so that's the first thing. But the second thing is this. I actually think that there's a real opportunity to. I think Israel has a great opportunity to kind of demonstrate that it can be, for now at least, the kind of, you know, keep the peace in the region in such a way that everybody can ignore it. I'm just saying.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I don't even know how to respond to that, except I don't believe that.

[Eli Lake]

And with the governments of. I mean, I think the. I think the Gulf monarchies are going to go along with it. That's how it looks.

[Andrew Sullivan]

We'll see. The thing about wars and the chaos that they unleash is that they're very unpredictable. And there is also the danger of this spiraling very badly out of control and throwing the world economy into the crisis.

[Eli Lake]

Do you not think that Iran has been at war with.

[Andrew Sullivan]

No, I don't. I took. No, I don't. I think that's a, That's a rhetorical device. I do think there is such a thing as you could say that Israel's been at war with its neighbors for the last 40 years and it has been in some way. But look, I'm just saying. No, I don't think. And I think now of all times, it is the least threatening. And that's the time by your own confession, you choose to attack. And that is just, Just difficult to solve.

[Eli Lake]

You don't think that's just strategic?

[Andrew Sullivan]

It is, but it's also. It violates a certain sense. Here's what my feeling is that a lot of people who voted for Trump really voted not to have a war like this, and they also voted to lower prices and they voted not have crazy wokeness. That's roughly what they were thinking. And the first two, they've really fucked. And so my silver lining domestically is that we could. That this could lead to a real wave in the elections and we could.

[Eli Lake]

Oh, you mean for the midterms.

[Andrew Sullivan]

For the midterms. And therefore there's some hope in rescuing us from. I think what you and I don't completely disagree about the way that Trump is, is taking the worst developments and tendencies of the modern presidency and making them infinitely more dangerous and more.

[Eli Lake]

I wouldn't say infinitely. He's. By a level of. He's doing more degree.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Yes, sure. Difference of magnitude. Eli, thank you very much. We've had this. It's been fun. We've.

[Eli Lake]

I think it's a fruitful combo.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Who knows? The readers will judge and. And believe. I think every now and again they write in on this topic. You know, not often.

[Eli Lake]

I hope that in my hope. My hope. Do you have any idea, in five years I. I can invite you to like Tehran. Oh, it's amazing.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I'll be. I've been watching Iranian friends. Look, the dish. As you know, we're very. We. During the Green revolution, the dish fused itself with the communications, the Twitter stream of the Green Revolution. We were part of it. We breathed it. We lived it day and night.

[Eli Lake]

You know, there's been at least five or six uprising since the green.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I do know that. And because you make friends in that regime, of course.

[Eli Lake]

And now they have an air force. And now they have an air force. Andrew, is that great?

[Andrew Sullivan]

But when those very people are weeping with me, I have mixed feelings, Eli. And look, I pray that their. Their tears are not.

[Eli Lake]

This is still on the podcast. So this is like super bonus. Okay, so let me. There is at least in place. Trump said it, Bibi is saying it all the time now. You look at the Israelis are hitting all the instruments of local oppression at the provincial level. We've seen. All right, hold on, hold on, wait a second. And we've also been. The message has been stay home, it's far too dangerous. And we'll give you the signal to come out into the streets. Now I'm seeing an air campaign directed at layers of the regime authority of a revolutionary.

[Andrew Sullivan]

I think it's mixed. I think obviously it's mixed. That is gonna.

[Eli Lake]

The refinements in Tehran.

[Andrew Sullivan]

These both things to feel at the same time. First of all, you are feeling you are under by a foreign power. And that is not gonna make you say yay. You're gonna have an instant defensive response to that. You're also gonna have some response as a patriot to a foreign country coming into your country. Then you're also gonna hope that this might get rid of this fucking awful place. But then you're also afraid of what might happen if everything falls apart. That's the other

[Eli Lake]

Iranian leaders. Society in Iran asked for airstrikes. You saw it a lot.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Sure, I'm sure. I'm not saying the Iran some wouldn't like it. I'm just saying it's a whole bunch of emotions that could go a whole lot of different directions.

[Eli Lake]

But which is to say it depends on how it's going to end. And if it ends with something better, I'm not saying it's going to be a green revolution again, a color revolution. I'm saying if it ends with something

[Andrew Sullivan]

better, I will be delighted. As you will not in any way retroactively justify the way it was started. And we must guard against that idea. If the ends always justify the means, we are screwed.

[Eli Lake]

They do not always justify the means, but they have to be factored in when judging the means.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Of course.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Of course, of course. Thank you so much for listening. Jonah Goldberg, Tom Holland, Tiffany Jenkins, Derek Thompson, Jeff Toobin, Adrian Wooldrich. Coming up, I hope you have a great weekend. I'll be snoozing, I hope. And we'll see you all next week. God bless.