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3: Who Really Signed Off On The Iran Strike? (w/ Eric Edelman) | Bulwark on Sunday
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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
What is daddication?
- [00:01]
Eric Edelman
The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariona. We call him Dae Date for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job.
- [00:22]
Bill Kristol
That's dadication. Find out more@fatherhood.gov brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human.
- [00:27]
Charlie Sykes
Services and the Ad Council just in time for the live Bulwark Sunday. We had a couple of technical problems and I was about ready to summarize everything Eric has to say, but instead he can say it in his own words. Eric, thank you for surviving the technical problems and for joining me today on this eventful day. Eric, of course, you all know former undersecretary of defense, a distinguished foreign service career ambassador to two nations, served in the White House and has written many times for the Bulwark. And he and our friend Elliot Cohen, co host, Shields of the Republic. Excellent show. Which hopefully you did an excellent one late last week before the U.S. strike. And you hopefully will do another one early this week to give us a longer and more scholarly version of what we're going to talk about today. But I thought today would really be helpful. I mean, you and I have talked on the phone many times in the last 36, 48 hours, but really give people just a sense of what to look for, what's most striking. So all the headlines, people have to, obviously all these things will have to be developed so much more in the weeks and months to come. But anyway, Eric, thanks for joining me today.
- [01:34]
Bill Kristol
Always good to be with you, Bill. So look, this is a. Yeah.
- [01:38]
Charlie Sykes
What happened? Let's do this. Is it a big deal? You were in government 40 years. You saw a lot of big events and momentous ones. This is pretty big.
- [01:48]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. As former President Biden might have said, it's a big effing deal. Look, this was an amazing demonstration of the American military's global reach and its ability to synchronize military activities across a variety of domains. You know, air, sea, space, cyber, electronic warfare. I mean, it was really a pretty impressive display. It was the first operational use of the GBU 57, a 15,000 pound bomb known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator that we actually began developing late in the Bush 43 administration for precisely this purpose, to go after deep and buried targets that were difficult to get to from other conventional munitions. And obviously, if you don't want to use a nuclear weapon, which is, I don't think, ever advisable if you can avoid it. You know, it was exactly created for this purpose. I think there's some ancillary benefits here to this one, is that I think it shows that President's willing to use military power to defend American interests. That's got to be something that President Putin, President Xi take into account. Kim Jong Un, as said, it shows the reach of our military and the effectiveness of our military tools. But by the way, we shouldn't be resting on our laurels. We got plenty to do in terms of funding the military. And I would add that I think the current big beautiful bill, which adds 150 billion plus up for the military, totally unsatisfactory in terms of how it funds the military. But, you know, this clearly did some damage to the Iranian nuclear facilities. How much we still don't know. We'll have to wait for the bomb damage assessment to, to come. But first blush, looks like it certainly did, did some, some pretty significant damage. Whether it obliterated them, as the president said in his speech last night, I think that's a different story. We'll have to, you know, know, wait on.
- [04:10]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, with all the obvious caveats, this is, we're one day in and it's one event and things could reverse wildly and go in unanticipated directions. And, you know, I was in government with you in 1991 at the beginning of the first Gulf War, which, which actually went very well, but at the end of the day, you know, left Saddam in power and maybe laid the foundation for future troubles in the Middle east, unfortunately. And anyway, it didn't help President Bush politically. I'm thinking about how many of these things bounce and so people say, oh, Trump's, you know, going to be reelected. Oh, Trump, this, this majority, there was majority opposition to attacking Iran. People need to understand, need to understand that people might wish to understand how dynamic situation war situations are. And both in the war itself, I think, but also in the politics of it at home and internationally. I mean, you've already mentioned Xi and Putin. Most of the analysis is pretending they don't exist. But I mean, Iran was a pretty good body of both, is a pretty good body of both of them. Iran, we know the Iranian drones being used by Russia. And somehow so far, so far, with all those caveats, so far, that doesn't seem to be the axis of evil. What are we calling it? These days, the axis of, axis of upheaval. The axis of the bad axis. The bad axis. Axis of a bad day for the bad axis. Right. I think in that respect and for the US Military. World War you serve in the Defense Department. Some of us have been so worried, and I remain very worried about Pete's at the Secretary of Defense, about the politicization of the military, about a lot of things that happened. You were a very critic of the firing of the former chairman of Detroit Chiefs who you knew and know and who was very well regarded. Political firing is not a good idea. Having said that, it seems to me as a layman that, I don't know, US Military did a pretty good job here and the Defense Department did a pretty good job of at least keeping things quiet and so forth. Right.
- [05:57]
Bill Kristol
Well, two things. One, to the prior point about the know, whatever axis you want to call it, you know, this is a demonstration that President Putin, you know, is not all that anxious to, you know, come to the defense of some of his putative allies. And when Putin was asked about all this, it was before the US strike, of course, but he said, well, you know, Israel is, you know, practically a Russian country. There are 2 million, you know, Russian citizens living in Israel. So, I mean, I can't, you know, join in and fight against them. So, you know, that's, you know, one, one thing on the Pentagon. Look, I think all the concerns about Secretary Hegseth remain. I mean, I, you know, that nothing changed, nothing that's happened here has changed my view of any of that. I would say, however, that, you know, this was a demonstration of the professionalism of the US Military and their enormous skill. Skill. And I would say in the press conference this morning that General Kane, the new chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, acquitted himself extremely well. He did a extraordinary job. I thought of walking through, you know, all the details of the operation, the timeline, the number of aircraft, some of the, the deception that was involved in order to maintain tactical surprise. And it, you know, did a, I thought a very commendable and open job. And, and oh, by the way, said what you. And I said just a few minutes ago, which is we think we did some damage, but until we really get the bomb damage assessment over the next several days, we're going to have to wait and see. And now what's going to happen is I will say one thing about bomb damage assessment. And I'm, I'm only sorry that our colleague Adam Kinzinger couldn't join us today because he might have a different view. But my view is that, you know, from being inside government pilots, you know, almost always believe after a bombing mission that they have hit the target and destroyed it. It's just, it, it, you know, it's just natural that, you know, they react that way. But you really do need to take a look, you know, in the aftermath and see exactly what has been accomplish. You know, you can see from some of the overhead satellite photography that's already available that the GBU 57s made some very pinpoint entry points into the facility at Fordow, which is the major issue that was, you know, before us. But you still don't know exactly how much damage was done down below. I suspect considerable, but we don't know. And so now the effort will be to collect all sorts of different kinds of intelligence, you know, Mazant measurement and signature intelligence, communications intelligence, signals intelligence, perhaps some human intelligence that the Israelis have that will be shared with us as a partner. And all of that has to be put together to get, you know, a real sense of how, how much damage was done. I would add that the work that was done on the Isfahan plant is also very important. It's not only a plant where the yellow cake is turned into UF6 gas for injection into the centrifuges to enrich uranium. It's also the place where uranium metal was recovered by the Iranians, which would have to be used in, in fashioning an actual warhead. And so, you know, essentially, I think some good work was done yesterday. And now we'll have to see, as you said, how will the Iranians react, You know, what are their options and, you know, when what comes next and whenever you undertake military action, you know, there are all sorts of unforeseen potential consequences. There are all sorts of dangers. But there are also, of course, dangers of inaction. And I think a lot of times we tend to. To only focus on what are the dangers of action and not on the dangers of inaction. And that's a problem, for instance, that our former colleague in government, Dennis Ross, describes in his new book on statecraft in a very interesting chapter on the Obama administration in which he served, that the Obama administration, over learning some of the lessons of the Iraq war, perhaps, you know, failed to understand the significant consequences of inaction in Syria, which turned out to be very serious. I mean, not just because, you know, unleashed a horrible civil war which allowed the Russians and Iranians to intervene, but also because it set off a wage wave of refugees throughout the region that, you know, destabilized European politics helped give rise to populist nationalist movements all around Europe.
- [11:10]
Charlie Sykes
So, yeah, now it's. Yeah, the inaction is a choice, too, once you're a global superpower, obviously other countries don't have to make these choices in a way. But I think for me, I wanted to ask you about the last nine days and Israel's action. There's so many things to talk about, but for me, one thing that's striking is the degree to which Trump wanted to avoid foreign wars. He sort of wanted to avoid foreign entanglements. At least some of his supporters did. That was kind of the theory of America first for me. This, and I wrote this, I think, on Thursday or Friday. Not very, very short waves. I'm slow under the weather in morning shots. But I think America first is kind of finished in the sense that maybe overstating it, but the notion that we just stay out of things seems a little hard to sustain now. People can like or dislike this military strike. They can say, you should have had more policy, more of a chance. Very few people are saying Trump should have just, like, ignored what was happening between Israel and Iran. And so when you think about it, that is the theory of America First. Theory of America first is two countries fighting 10,000 miles or 100 miles away, neither in a way that doesn't directly threaten our homeland. It doesn't threaten even that much, honestly. We could deter them probably from threatening our interests too much, right? From America first point of view, why do we have those interests all over the Middle east anyway? So I feel like it opens the door to a more serious debate, maybe about what America's role in the world should be, as opposed to sort of whether we need to have a role in the world. Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see where the debate goes. We'll see what all of Trump's supporters do. But for now, Trump is the guy who. Here's what I want to ask you also, who, following on Israeli action, which he may not have entirely wanted, he was seen two weeks ago. I think we might have bet that he was going to go with that Witkoff peace plan and give Iran sort of away, you know, a path that I think we would have thought was not a good one in terms of not really curbing their nuclear program enough. Sort of an updated Obama jcpoa. We all talked about that, right? It's funny, you know, this is how events, right? One event, this in Yahoo's action, with or without Trump's collusion or green light or yellow light, then the way the war went with Israel's amazing success, then for now, becoming this kind of big thing, question would we see finish the job as much as one can with one wave of strikes and then Trump pulling the trigger on that really does it just two weeks. You know, the world can change in two weeks due to not, no, not no one person exactly planning to change it, you know, but a series of events. But, but again, the US Being so hard for us to get out of our system, for better or worse, I would say for better, the notion that if there's a big conflict in the world, we sort of need to be thinking about what we should do. We might decide on inaction, as you said. But yeah, we are.
- [13:57]
Bill Kristol
We are.
- [13:57]
Charlie Sykes
We are not going to walk away.
- [14:00]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I think that's. That's right. I think, you know, the president last week, and I'm losing track of the days because there's just so people, we're.
- [14:07]
Charlie Sykes
Speaking midday on, on Sunday, on Sunday, the 22nd.
- [14:12]
Bill Kristol
But, you know, a couple of days ago, when, when some of the splits inside MAGA started to manifest themselves with Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and others coming out raising questions about whether the president should do this before he actually struck, the president said, you know, I'm the one who invented America First. No one ever used that term before. And, you know, I get to decide what it means. Well, I mean, the reality, of course, is that America first was a very powerful movement in the 1930s against US intervention in the war in Europe. But America first had a sizable contingent of folks who even, you know, in the 30s were not opposed to the war in the Pacific. They were, you know, Asia First. And they, and there's an element of that in, in Trumpism today, you know, as, as well. But as you say, even that, of course implies some US Involvement, you know, in the Indo Pacific. And the reality, inescapable reality, I think, which we pointed to in the National Defense Strategy Commission that I co chaired with former Representative Jane Harmon and which reported out last summer, we made the point that all of these theaters, Europe, the Middle east and the Indo Pacific, are linked to one another because of the intensifying cooperation and relationship among Russia, Iran, the PRC and North Korea. Now, you know, some of that may be fraying a little bit because of these decisions that both Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump have made. And, you know, that might be all to the good, but again, we'll have to see how it all plays out. There have been all sorts of aircraft leaning, landing in Iran from the prc. We don't know what's in those aircraft, whether it's, you know, ballistic missile components or, you know, what, what have you to allow them to reconstitute some of their ballistic missile production. A lot, you know, can happen from here on in, but I think, as you say, it's extremely hard to see how the United States stays out of it. And oh, by the way, you know, we're talking about a regime. A lot of people say, well, this is between Israel and Iran. This is a regime whose founding ethos was death to America and death to Israel. And on its ballistic missiles they have painted a, you know, Iranian revolutionary slogan, which is America can't do a damn thing about this. Well, President Trump yesterday actually proved that that wasn't right.
- [16:53]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Yeah, that's nice. You know, one other thing, as I already talked about the present, really the future for a few minutes, but you're a historian and the reverse. You and I have talked often about the irony of history, the cunning of reason, whatever those phrases of Hegel and so forth are. Things just go in funny directions. And I mean, if you had told us after October 7, 2023, so that's only, that's less than two years ago. You're in a little over a year and a half ago, after the worst defeat, you know, the worst slaughter of Israelis, of Jews actually since half a century, the worst failure of Israeli intelligence and Israeli government that's very it was already unpopular and now had suffered this failure. Then a kind of grueling and pretty brutal war in Gaza that wasn't necessarily going very well. I mean, Israel was doing a lot of damage to Hamas, but from their point of view, not much, you know, a lot of criticism from around the world, including the U.S. and then if you had said, okay, Israel has this Hezbollah plan that they've been working on for years and they're going to be able to execute that pretty amazingly. And suddenly this huge deterrent that Hezbollah is supposed to provide for Iran right there on the border doesn't happen. Then a out of nowhere revolution in Syria in December, I guess it was of last year, and that's another Iranian proxy and safe harbor to some degree goes away. And then Netanyahu decides to he can do what he did over the last eight days. Trump decides to ignore Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and a lot of others and support him. I don't know. It's a real, the degree to which those events were not predictable. I don't think maybe some genius saw that coming. But in October of 2023. It's a good lesson, you know, that these things do not go in one direction. Right. And that individual decisions make a huge difference. And some of them are not even decisions, just events. Maybe slightly flukish events, I don't know. You know, some of the, some of them plant events, the destruction as well is pretty impressive. But some of them may be slightly flukish, like the Syrian civil war, I don't know.
- [19:02]
Bill Kristol
But you know, it's again, I think a reminder that, you know, so much of this is interconnected, but it's not always easy to see ahead of time how things are connected. So, so yes, I mean, I think, you know, Hamas clearly was a element of Iran's strategy of surrounding Israel with a ring of fire of proxies who could. And their plan was essentially to use those proxies ultimately and then their own forces to destroy Israel. That what's happened. I mean, if you want to talk about Hagel's cunning of reason, you know, what happened is the Israelis, whatever. I mean, there's a lot of criticism, I agree, that one might have about the Gaza campaign, particularly in the more recent weeks and months. But having said that, Hamas has been destroyed as a organized military force, the Israelis then, who always were more concerned, I mean, part of the reason they were surprised on October 7th was, was they were much more focused on the north rather than the south. They mistakenly thought that they had a modus vivendi with Hamas. That turned out to be a serious misjudgment. But they then turned to their long standing plans to deal with Hezbollah and as you say, kind of eviscerated. Hezbollah, they then essentially destroyed in October, after Iran for the second time launched a major ballistic missile and cruise missile and drone attack against Israel, they destroyed Iran's advanced integrated air and missile defense. Not all of the air defense, by the way, but. But Basically the Russian S400 systems that had been provided to Iran because Russia was preoccupied elsewhere in Ukraine, it had already withdrawn a lot of its equipment from Syria. And, and now that the Iranians were also, you know, engaged in essentially a long distance quasi war with Israel, they were not as paying as much attention to Syria either. So in a sense it wasn't complete. I mean, it struck all of us as out of the blue for Assad to fall, but it wasn't really out of the blue. It was connected to.
- [21:36]
Charlie Sykes
Good point, good point.
- [21:38]
Bill Kristol
To all of this. And all of it, in sum, created a moment of opportunity that Bibi Netanyahu decided he couldn't pass up and had to take, combined with the fact that, and I think this is important because there's a lot of discussion about how there is no intelligence, you know, Tucker Carlson said that Iran was planning to make a bomb. In fact, there is. And, you know, I would refer people to the Economist, which had a very good look indirectly at the new intelligence based on briefings the Israelis have provided to allied intelligence services about an effort that clearly appears to have been underway to create a group inside the spnd. The, the nuclear program for Iran to have a capability to race to a bomb, and it included secreting away some of the 60% highly enriched uranium from the IAEA in order to, you know, be the feed stock for that weapon. So there is some intelligence how, you know, how, you know, complete it is, I suspect it's fragmentary and, but it was enough, I think, to convince Netanyahu that there was no point in waiting around for this. And I think that's fair. As the IAEA reported, you know, at the end of last month when it reported to the Board of Governors, Iran had over 4, 400 kilos of highly enriched uranium at 60%, which is essentially a step from bomb grade. And there's no other country in the world that has amassed that much highly enriched. That is not a nuclear weapons power. And when you add that to the fact that Iran had this arsenal of 2,000 ballistic missiles, there's no country in the world with 2,000 ballistic missiles that's not a nuclear power. And so, you know, hard not to feel compelled to connect the dots.
- [23:42]
Charlie Sykes
No, that's very interesting. You know, I was even trying to remember why. I think in retrospect, people will say that there's Iranian barrages against Israel. I guess there were two. Right. That we all focused at the time, or I did, at least at the Biden administration. It helped Israel stop them. And that was good. And not good, depending on your point of view. Good from my point of view. And they didn't succeed much. They didn't do much damage in Israel and so forth. But I suppose the provocation for that was that Israel had attacked Iranian personnel or assets, if I'm not mistaken, in Lebanon. Right. Israel had not attacked Iran first, so to speak, at that point. I think the attack was on Iran, Iranians not on Iran. And Iran took that as inappropriate to blow up his actual call. Some Iranian senior officials who were working with the, with the, with Hezbollah and, and attacked Israel. But I suppose that opened up the, the, the. What they learned from that attack and from stopping that Attack maybe was quite important actually in giving them confidence that they could go ahead and do what they did in this past week, don't you think?
- [24:50]
Bill Kristol
Yes. I mean, so the Israelis had, had attacked IRGC personnel both in Lebanon and in Syria, part of Iran's proxy network. And Iran did use that as the occasion for firing, you know, barrage, the largest ballistic missile attacks on another country in history. We shouldn't, you know, neglect that. I think the Israelis did learn some things from that. They certainly learned some things from their retaliation in October.
- [25:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, I guess that was the key, right? Yeah. But they wouldn't have had opportunity or excuse, if you want to be more, you know, Machiavellian about it, to retaliate without the Iranians deciding they had to show strength and attack Israel. Right.
- [25:30]
Bill Kristol
So yeah, man, the retaliation in April at the instance of the Biden administration was fairly limited and basically just a calling card. Took out a radar around Natanz and basically said, you know, we can hit you, so don't, don't do this again. The second time they went out and they essentially used their F35s to which have a stealth capability to go in and take out all of these high end Russian supplied air and missile defense radars. So they cleared essentially a path for them to be able to do what they did 10 days ago, which was start this campaign to degrade and destroy Iran's capability not just on the nuclear side, but also on the ballistic missile side. And they did it by going after the command and control of the Iranian forces. And they've also, I think this is less, has not been acknowledged enough. You know, you hear people say that you can't destroy the knowledge of nuclear weapons even if you destroy the program. And of course that's true. You know, at some level which is that the physics of this are well known. It's not a secret really how to build a nuclear weapon. That said, you know, it requires some real engineering skill. And Israel has not only, you know, sort of eviscerated the senior leadership of the IRGC and the artes, the, the regular Iranian military, but also the scientific leadership of the nuclear program. You know, they have already been conducting a campaign for years of killing Iranian nuclear scientists. In 2020, it's believed that Mossad was buying the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was sort of the Oppenheimer of the Iranian nuclear program. But they've also, you know, they stole his archive. The Israelis exfiltrated that in 2018 and in one of the strikes, I believe Actually, before this latest round began back in October, they also hit the headquarters and the files that, that had all the backups for the stuff that they had taken. So they've done a lot to set the Iranians back in their ability to reconstitute. Doesn't mean they can't. It just means the timeline for reconstitution is going to be a lot longer.
- [28:12]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, that's so interesting. One of these things leads to another and in ways that people don't see. So maybe they saw, they did see some of the implications of what they were doing, obviously. But did they see that they would have this kind of opportunity? And, and anyway, I was worried. Trump, I mean, this two months ago, right? Three months ago, very cool meeting in the Oval Office. Trump surprises Netanyahu. I mean, the world's full of the Trump people now say this is all a deep Machiavellian plot, which I'm a little dubious about. But in the end of the day, though, he made the decision and I personally congratulate for it. I mean, it wasn't inevitable. I don't think. I thought he would rather. I think I wrote this Wednesday or Thursday, but I don't know. It was 50, 50 in most people's minds whether he would have actually go ahead or just leave things alone. It wasn't just, you know, from his point of view, things were okay if left alone, they hadn't. Israel hadn't been able to get to Fordo, but there was still a lot of damage to the Iranian program. We were out of it. What's not to like from his. In a way. And he could then still be a peacemaker. He seems to really. It's unclear to me why he, why he made this decision, honestly, given what we know about him and his views about things. But he, he did well, I think.
- [29:21]
Bill Kristol
First of all, it's been clear and, and you know, Secretary Hegseth and JD Vance have been accentuating that today. He's always preferred a diplomatic solution to this. I, I think he believed he had a path to that. He, I think he charged Steve Witkoff with, you know, you know, sort of pursuing that. And that was, I think, the background for the meeting with Bibi that, as you pointed out, Bibi only found out about this opening of negotiations shortly before their meeting in the Oval clearly was an uncomfortable meeting. The Israelis, I think, have understandable skepticism about Iranian negotiating on this front because the Iranians have a history of serial prevarication about their nuclear program and undeclared facilities. And then, you know, not coming completely clean. They've never come completely clean about the Ahmad plan, which was this earlier plan for nuclear weapons program that they, you know, suspended or halted, as the national intelligence estimate of 2007 said, in the wake of our invasion of Iraq, by the way, which doesn't get enough credit for that. But I think what he found was, although Steve Witkoff, by all accounts, we haven't seen what he presented to the Iranians, but from the press accounts, he presented what he called an elegant solution which seemed to entail some limited ability for Iran for a brief period to continue enriching, then having to stop enriching and having to get their enriched uranium for a nuclear power from an international consortium that would not be physically located in Iran, which would make it difficult for them, therefore, to, you know, to have all the elements of the fuel cycle on, on site. And the Iranians basically have, you know, never responded to that or been unwilling to respond to that and unwilling to give up, quote, their right to enrich. I think the final straw from what I can gather, is that he had a phone call with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president who's quite anxious to end all this. He finds, I think this very unsettling for a whole host of reasons. You know, demonstration of Israeli military power, which he doesn't care for because he thinks of Turkey as a regional superpower, fear about Iran collapsing and letting loose a whole wave of Iranian refugees in the Turkey or just been dealing, hopefully, you know, now reached the point where we can get the Syrian, 4 million Syrian refugees out of Turkey and back into Syria. He's got a lot of reasons not to, you know, want this to go on very long. He met with Araghi in Istanbul, the Iranian foreign minister, you know, on Thursday. And there was this effort to, you know, get a negotiation. And Trump apparently, according to reporting, was willing to send the vice president willing to go himself to meet with President Pezeshkian. And the Iranians reportedly could not get a sign off from the supreme leader because he was in a bunker, fearful for his life because of Israeli strikes and maybe the president's threats. And as a result, I think the president drew the conclusion, look, they're not serious. They're never going to negotiate. We have a window of opportunity. Let's just deal with this. Now. That's my reading.
- [33:11]
Charlie Sykes
That sounds right. And I mean, it's not the first time that a nation has, well, that they missed a chance perhaps to get a peace deal that would have been to their advantage. And now they may still have another chance, of course, to cut a deal. I mean, Trump says he wants to have a deal, otherwise he's going to attack again or something like that. And maybe Khomeini or his successor would accept stuff they couldn't accept even a week ago, having seen the damage that has been done. Our friend Elliott Abrams has piece that, if you've seen it yet this morning, I think at National Review, where he quotes at great length Khomeini's famous statement from 1988 that you mentioned to me on the phone actually yesterday, the poison chalice, the bitter chalice or poison chalice that he had when he stopped the war with Iraq. And it was, it's interesting, I never read the actual long statement. And it's, I mean, it's perfectly sensible that it was quite the right word because it's ruffle. I don't, you know, messianic rhetoric and so forth, but which is sort of, I didn't want to do this. I wanted to fight as long as we could. It's now become clear that we just can't accomplish anything and we're hurting ourselves so badly by continuing this war. God knows they've been a huge amount of death and destruction over eight years. And so I'm drinking the poison chalice and accepting that the war will end. I don't know. It's not inconceivable that you could, we could be back in a situation in two months with some kind of negotiations if people like us worrying that we're not being stringent enough on our inspection regime and all this. But I suppose the beginning, the main point to say is that the beginning point would be so much with Iran, so much further from, we think would pretty certain, I would think, though, from nuclear weapons capability. And then, then two weeks that if the negotiations that if we got to the negotiating table two or three weeks ago.
- [35:05]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I think that the, you know, the supreme leader has very unpalatable choices right now. He can, he can drink from the poison chalice and hope to just escape and, you know, fight another day. If he there are some people who think that actually if they reached any kind of agreement that would be threatening to the regime, that there could be hardliners in the regime who would not accept that this time around. That's a possibility. I think there are a lot of possibilities that come from that particular branch that the Iranians might take. They might decide because Iran has been, you know, for many years focused on a culture of resistance to American hegemony and to Israel's you know, military power in the region. You can imagine them doing some, you know, trying to take some actions, you know, to strike back. But I'm struck by the fact that, you know, it almost every turn, whether it's hitting, you know, some of the facilities that we have in the region. We have 40,000 troops spread out in a variety of different, you know, bases in Iraq, in Syria, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar and the UAE and Oman, Bahrain. You know, these places right now are locked down and pretty well defended. The Israelis have done a lot to degrade Iran's military ballistic missile capabilities, particularly launch capabilities. They could launch some volleys at these places but not be guaranteed of success. Moreover, you know, Qatar and Oman have been very important, you know, sort of go betweens for the Iranians in the West. I don't think they want to jeopardize those relationships. And they've just invested a lot diplomatically and politically in improving their relationships with the Saudis and the Emiratis, who lobbied the president in favor of diplomacy and against a military strike just, you know, a few weeks ago when he was visiting the region. And I'm not sure they want to jeopardize those relationships either. The, the, you know, other option they have, of course, is the, the proxy network. But that, as we've just discussed, is kind of in. In shreds. I mean, you still have the Houthis, although the Houthis have been kind of quiet since the Israelis launched an attack against the chief of staff, their military chief of staff, who I don't think has been heard from since. It's not clear whether they killed him or whether maybe they just wounded him or whether he's just gone to ground. Any one of those things is possible, I suppose. The popular mobilization forces in Iraq, the Shia militias who have periodically carried out attacks against US Bases, they're having actually, over the last week, launched about six or seven, I think, drones against al Assad, against one of our bases in Syria, against our consulate in Erbil, all of which were intercepted. There's also the energy of the Gulf. Right. They could mine the Gulf and try and close out, you know, the Gulf to shipping. Problem is, then they can't get their own oil out to market, and the Saudis and the build pipelines that they can use as alternatives. So almost anything that they do would be kind of have some very big downside risks for them, and they will have to calculate very carefully. And, oh, by the way, since they're having so much trouble communicating with the Supreme Leader, how rapidly any of this happens is another question. You know, could happen, I suppose, quickly, but maybe not. And then finally, the other thing they have, there's cyber and there's terrorism. And cyber is something that I think we might want to be concerned about, because the Doge cuts to CISA have, and the fact that we have no NSA or Cybercom commander right now because of changes that the administration has made. So we have some vulnerabilities. That's something I think, to worry about. On the other hand, you know, unless they take credit for it, it won't be immediately clear that they did it. And if they do take credit for it, they open themselves up to pretty serious, both cyber and kinetic retaliation by the United States, which they may not want to undergo. And then finally they've got terrorism, which, you know, is already the status quo. I mean, Iran before 911 had killed more Americans through acts of terrorism than any other country in the world, through its proxy Hezbollah in, in Lebanon. And they've been waging a terrorist campaign against us since 1979. So, you know how that would actually differ from the status quo? Not clear to me.
- [40:32]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. Plus, to get back to your original point, I mean, in a way, this brings us full circle. I, I think it's. It's not like we couldn't. It's not like once we've attacked. I've always been amused by this aspect of these debates. Once we've attacked, it's like their turn to play a card and we don't get to do anything. It's like, of course we continue to have deterrence. And I think, in fact, and this is your point about Putin, but I think it's very, very true about the Iranians themselves. Khamenei can think about doing these things, but what does he think Trump's going to do next if some Americans get killed on a base somewhere by Iranian proxies? I think, and I actually even myself, we're a center. 2019, was it that we sort of criticized Trump for not doing enough when there was Iranians did go after US Forces in the region? Now I kind of think he would, and at least they would have to think he might. So I think the degree to which this showing of strength may changes the dynamics for everyone's thinking that moving forward is really something one has to. One has to ponder. And it doesn't solve all the problems, God knows, but it does something they would have to. They would have to weigh. I do. And look, the other point you make, I'll just close on this maybe and get your reaction is Hamid, he's in a tough position. I mean, on the one hand, the people who were skeptics maybe of the nuclear program, who let's say on the more moderate side of the republic, they are thinking this nuclear program and the public course itself, which has always been not so friendly to the Islamic regime and its nuclear intentions necessarily. So we spent, you know, zillions of dollars and went through international isolation and pretty rough sanctions for decades. For what? For what? I mean, so I think the degree of popular, popular demonstrations obviously as recently as 2022, 2023, pretty serious ones. Could those become again? I think so. So could they find more support among elites from within the regime this time, maybe ironically from those on the, on the right, so to speak, the more the right wing types who would say what are we doing? We need to have, we can't just be accepting this humiliation. So you could get, I mean, the degree to which there won't be support for the status quo, that could lead all kinds of directions. It could lead to a nasty nationalist military hunt. It could lead to a helpful, hopefully friendly kind of. Let's go back to being Pro Western like before 79. I mean, who knows? But I think the degree of the Trump people keep saying they don't want regime change. I wish they would just say, and some of them do say this, the point of this was not regime change. The intention is not necessarily regime change. But you don't have to say you wouldn't prefer it if it were changed for the better, you know, so, but anyway, I do think people are underestimating perhaps a little bit how this level of military discipline defeat. It doesn't necessarily change the regime, it doesn't necessarily change policies of regime. But it's pretty big, it's a pretty big variable to introduce, I guess I.
- [43:21]
Bill Kristol
Would say, yeah, I would say just two things on that. I mean, one is to your point, the estimates I've seen are that the Iranians have spent half a trillion dollars on the nuclear program over 40 years. And given where Iran is economically right now, if you're an average Iranian citizen and you've just seen essentially, you know, half a trillion dollars just go up in smoke and you're wondering about why your own, you know, economic situation is, you know, so crappy. You know, you know, you see this show up in Iranian protests when they've broken out in 2018 and 19 and 2023. You see signs saying why are we spending money on Palestine? Why are we, you know, spending money in Syria. You know, it's, it's basically a nice expression of, you know, iran first. Now some of that Iran first sentiment, I think right now, because the country's under attack is, you know, more focused on, on Israel, understandably. I think once the dust settles, there will be recriminations about this. Not just the ridiculous spending on a nuclear program that they didn't need, but recriminations about the massive counterintelligence problem that's been exposed that they are so penetrated by Israeli intelligence. I think that's going to be an issue, intra elite issue maybe with some public overtones. And the balance between the population and the regime will have shifted somewhat because the instruments of coercive power that the regime has have been weakened. I mean, leadership of the IRGC and the Israelis have now recently hit a few other targets that go more to the internal security side. And the more that that happens until this wraps up, the more that balance shifts and the regime. The facile comparisons to 2003, I think, are not well articulated or placed here. Nobody's talking about, you know, invading Iran and imposing, you know, regime change on Iran with U. S. Boots on the ground. I think the, the only issue is, you know, will Iranians rise up as they have historically in the past? I mean, this happened in Iranian history. This is not like, you know, some, you know, fantasy happened in, in 1906, it happened in 1922, it happened in 1979 more recently. And you've seen these expressions, expressions of popular antipathy to the regime in the late 90s and then again several times in the last five, six years. So, you know, I'm not predicting that that's going to happen, but it, you know, it could well happen as the balance shifts. And whether that's for the good or for ill, it's hard to know because there's so many variables. But it's something that we all should be watching out for to see what happens.
- [46:40]
Charlie Sykes
And I think it's something that a, again would then test the proposition if we care about whether it's for good or frail. Again, not that we're going to invade or put boots on the ground, but are we not going to use diplomatic and economic leverage for one side or the other? It's sort of, again, I think the notion, I do think Trump has made it very hard to sort of say, well, okay, we did bomb once, but now we're just going to pretend, you know, we're going back to focusing entirely on rounding up, you know, undocumented immigrants, allegedly undocumented immigrants on the streets of L. A and there's. We have no actual things to do in the world, you know, that's become a little harder to sustain. I think it also raises interesting questions about which we'll not get to now. But you do the, you know, Ukraine and stuff, and it was sort of the kind of, well, this, that's not our fight. Russia's, Ukraine's not our fight. Why is Israel, Iran our fight and Russia, Ukraine is not our fight? You know, is that really. Maybe there, maybe there are reasons. You could say Iran's had more responsibility for the deaths of Americans directly than Putin, I suppose, but they're pretty good allies. So anyway, many, many doors to be opened here for questioning and for decisions over the next days, weeks, months, years. And you and LA CO will be covering all this and shield to the Republic. And we'll keep on discussing it everywhere else on the, on this, on this website and in our, you know, print. I keep saying quick publications in our, in our. What is the alternative to video anyway? It's print, even though it's not printed, if you know what I mean.
- [48:05]
Bill Kristol
Digital. Digital publications.
- [48:07]
Charlie Sykes
Yes. So very important, but a very big moment and a very, and I think somewhat encouraging one, I gotta say, don't you think?
- [48:14]
Bill Kristol
Well, so far, but as we said at the outset, you know, once, once military force starts being used, you know, they're, it's not a direct line, it's not necessarily linear. And so we'll have, well, you know, we'll have to see how the Iranians respond, what the next moves are. But, I mean, a lot has been accomplished in the last 10 days and I don't think people should gainsay that I, I would want to make one maybe closing comment, which is we've heard a lot of discussion coming from both the right and the left about the President's authorities and constitution. And I certainly think the administration erred in not notifying the Gang of Eight, which has been the traditional way that you notify presidential use of force, that is to say, the, you know, leaders of Congress in both parties and the leaders of the community, the committees of jurisdiction over national security affairs. But having said that, the idea that somehow this is some great constitutional breach when, you know, there was no vote to support either Bill Clinton's operations in Bosnia or Kosovo, which went on for way longer than this. We don't know how long this is going to go on. But I mean, it's, it's. Those were quite, I mean, Kosovo was like 90 days that there was no congressional vote to authorize the use of military force in Libya under the Obama administration. And so I mean the idea that this is some unique, you know, violation of constitutional standards and the congressional right to declare war is, you know, honestly given the fact that the uncontested power of the purse that clearly invested in the Congress by the Constitution has been allowed to, to be usurped by the executive branch with hardly a whimper from the Congress. The idea that, that they're going to make a stand on something that is as contested as this is and as you know, easily shown to be consistent with past presidential practice, I think is foolish.
- [50:37]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, no, I very much agree. Just as a practical matter, I think that's going to fade away. Assuming this is a one off or close to a one off. There might be follow up attacks but nothing, you know, that we're talking about pretty precise air campaign. I mean Bill Clinton bombed the Saddam's plants where he in the middle of his impeachment. Republicans to their credit mostly said okay, we support this for now if it sets back Saddam's nuclear ambitions. They want to add in a beach room a week later anyway. I mean, seems like that's a reasonably healthy model of letting the President some discretion but also not letting it change everything you think about his own administration. Right.
- [51:17]
Bill Kristol
So yeah, I mean, you know, there are justifiable concerns. I saw Charlie Sykes this morning in his newsletter was raising concerns about how the President might use this and he might, in which case I think all of us have to be vigilant and call out, you know, any misuse or abuse of presidential power as many of us have been doing for the last five months and variety of other areas. But I, you know, I also think that, you know, when he does something right, we should also say look, this was probably the right, right call and in a sense I think it was the right call.
- [51:54]
Charlie Sykes
Well said. A good note to end on. And Eric, thank you for, for joining me today and this quick analysis. Less than 24 hours, but I think a judicious analysis and not a simply, you know, looking for a headline kind of thing, but judicious analysis of what happened. I guess less than 20 start to believe less than 24 hours ago. So thanks for joining me and look forward to your everything you and Elliot discussed on Shield of the Republic and many further conversations and contributions for you.
- [52:24]
Bill Kristol
Great to be with you Bill, as.
- [52:25]
Charlie Sykes
Always and thank you all for joining us on the Bulwark on Sunday.