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- [00:00]
Ryan Seacrest
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Ben Parker
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Ryan Seacrest
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- [00:28]
Will Saletan
CTS&C is 21 sponsored by Chumba Casino. Hey, everybody, it's Will Saletan from the Bulwark. I'm here with my colleague Ben Parker. Ben is our deputy managing editor. He's also the person that I go to whenever I have a question about the Middle east or foreign policy or military policy. He's probably the person that Donald Trump should have gone to but didn't. So Donald Trump, as you know, was just sort of making this up as he goes along. And every week on the Sunday shows, Trump sends out some poor flunky who has to defend whatever insanity Trump has just done. And in the Iran war, and this week it was Mike Waltz, the UN Ambassador. So Waltz got sent out on several Sunday shows. We're going to go through them and Ben and I are just going to try to make sense of Waltz trying to make sense of Donald Trump not making sense. So the first one we'll talk about is Waltz on Meet the Press. And Waltz decides that because the situation is so bad, he's going to quote, step back, a phrase that he used repeatedly today, step back and get a larger perspective on the war. So this is one of Waltz's step back quotes.
- [01:32]
Mike Waltz
I mean, look, we have to take a step back here. This is like the Somali pirates with cruise missiles. I mean, they are desperate in the sense that now we're attacking ships from Panama, from Cyprus, from Singapore. A number of civilian mariners have been killed. And at the end of the day, the president has decided, and he is going to see this through, that the Iranian regime cannot and will not have a nuclear weapon, but also they cannot illegally, in this kind of terrorist fashion, hold the rest of the world economies hostage.
- [02:05]
Will Saletan
So, Ben, taking a step back, remind me, before Trump started this war, were we dealing with Somali pirates who had cruise missiles? And specifically in the Strait of Hormuz, was Iran holding the world's economies hostage? Or is this all something that happened after or as a result of Trump starting the war?
- [02:27]
Ben Parker
The correct answer, Will, is B. This is something that has only been the Case since about March after Donald Trump decided to that full blown, at least aerial war with Iran was a good idea with no clear goal in mind. And I want to keep that in mind because Walt says something here for the first time that we're going to come back to because he does it a lot, which is say the goal is very clear and then not say a very clear goal. If the goal is very clear, it shouldn't be hard to say it because the goal is very clear. The goal, one singular, is that Iran won't have a nuclear weapon and a second thing won't be international terrorists. So keep your eye out for that, because I have a feeling we're going to be talking about it again in just a couple minutes here.
- [03:06]
Will Saletan
And so, Ben, he also doesn't seem to be terribly clear about the timeline of the war. Now, originally this was going to be, what, four, six weeks? Then it was every two weeks, it was going to be another week. I forget how many months we are. And at this point, end of February, somebody can do the math for me, but it's going on. And at this point. So here we are in July, and he still doesn't seem to have a clear answer. This is a question that Welker asked him about the timeline.
- [03:31]
Margaret Brennan
Very quickly, do you anticipate this conflict will be concluded by the new year?
- [03:36]
Mike Waltz
Oh, I'm not going to put some kind of timeline on it. The president has all options on the table, and he is exercising both diplomatic, economic and military to achieve a very clear strategic aim. And that's what's different. The wars of my generation, we had policy drift. Here the president is very focused.
- [03:54]
Will Saletan
So, Ben, I'm a little unclear here. He says the wars of the past, we had policy drift. And in this war, the president is very focused. It seems like to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that we have had policy drift, if you can call it that, throughout this war.
- [04:12]
Ben Parker
No, I don't wouldn't call it policy drift. I would call it policy careening wildly, like a pinball in a machine. We had we're going to replace the government and we have regime change, and we're going to help the protesters overthrow the regime. Actually, we're not going to overthrow the regime. We're just going to choose the next supreme leader. Iran can have a nuclear weapon. Iran can't have an navy. Iran can't have an air force. Uh, Iran can't threaten international shipping. Iran can't support terrorists. Actually, if you look at the memorandum of understanding that Trump signed because apparently he's committed, even though he already tried to end the war at least once. Iran can do a lot of those things. We just have to pretend like we won, and they're not willing to let us pretend like we won. So. Yeah, no, I think drift is actually, would be better. Drift, at least is slow and you have time to catch up to it. This is, like, wild.
- [04:56]
Will Saletan
Yeah. And I'm. I'm a little baffled that. So we're in July, the seventh month of the year last time I did the math. And he can't even say that by the end of. She's asking him, will we be done by the end of the year. That's two months after the midterms. And I'm not hearing any commitment on that. That seems politically crazy to me.
- [05:15]
Ben Parker
So, I mean, look, you asked us that, you charged us with making sense of Waltz trying to make sense of this war. And I will say it would be irresponsible to try to say, you know, for sure when a war is going to end, because you never do. The enemy gets a vote. That is the perhaps one actually wise thing Waltz does here is not make a promise that he can't keep. But also, yeah, like, you have to give some sort of explanation of are we moving toward accomplishing our goals. Are we are. Is the sacrifices that the country and especially the people in the military, and especially those four people who died in the most recent round of Iranian strikes, whose deaths aren't being properly acknowledged by the Department of Defense. Are we convinced that all that sacrifice is worth it to some objective that we're actually going to obtain? None of that is clear. So actually, what he's saying is, I can't promise anything. I don't know. We'll see what happens. You know what it reminds me of? Remember, don't worry, Covid will disappear by Easter.
- [06:17]
Will Saletan
Right, right, right. It turned out that Covid had a vote, and here Iran gets a vote. So, yeah, that's the way it works. I want to come back to what you said about the goals. So CBS actually did their own polling and on Face that Walsh was also on Face the Nation, and Margaret Brennan asked him about this gap between Americans supporting the goals but lacking confidence in the administration actually getting us there. Here's the question from Margaret Brennan.
- [06:46]
Margaret Brennan
You just heard our polling. The American people support the goals, the stated goals, opening the strait, ending nuclear program, stopping Iran's ability to threaten other countries, but they don't think that the U.S. is achieving those goals. And 67% want to end the conflict. Now, what happens if the US Decides to cut its losses?
- [07:06]
Mike Waltz
Well, I don't think it should surprise anyone that we want the conflict to end. We wanted this conflict to end since 1979. I think that's incredibly. But I can tell you, as a veteran, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, these wars, these endless wars were the policy goals. What were we doing there drifted so badly. The President has been consistently clear on what our goals are. I think your poll showed that the American people support those goals.
- [07:32]
Will Saletan
So I'm confused again. She asked him about the polls that show that Americans support the goals but lack confidence that Trump is getting us there. And it sounds like his answer was Americans support the goals. I don't hear him answering the question about why Americans should have confidence in us getting there.
- [07:53]
Ben Parker
I think part of that is because she stated, and in that poll, they stated the goals of the operation much more clearly than Walt has or will. Like that is the clearest statement of war goals you're going to get here. And he actually is not even capable, apparently, of repeating those back to her. Maybe that's politically risky for him, I don't know. But, you know, I do think, first of all, to say that, like, the President is focused, the President has been very clear. That's just a lie. I mean, that's just a straight up lie. And, you know, the American people support the goals. Great. I'm actually proud of the American people for this one. They don't believe we're accomplishing them. Let me point this out. If the number one goal is that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, then what do we care about the Strait of Hormuz? You can make an argument that if Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, it makes them generally more powerful, more impervious to attack, gives them leverage over people, makes it more likely that they eventually develop a nuclear weapon. I think it's actually a good argument, but he's not making it it. If the whole point is that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, what do we care about their terrorist networks? If the whole point is that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, what do we care about all these other things? I mean, is it one goal or is it many? And if you can't explain how we're moving toward achieving any of our goals, at least you should explain how they're related.
- [09:03]
Will Saletan
Right? I'm kind of baffled here. It sounds like you who know a lot about this stuff, are also kind of baffled. So there's, in addition to this, there is the independent Problem which is now affecting our, our policy, apparently of supposedly munitions running low. And this is something that's been reported in the press. The administration is denying it. So Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation ask Waltz a question about that.
- [09:29]
Margaret Brennan
Well, specifically, CBS has reported we cannot sustain the rate at which the United States has expended precision munitions, as we did early in the campaign with Iran, that there is a shortage of interceptors.
- [09:39]
Mike Waltz
Yeah, I wish they would also talk about the massive degradation of Iranian munitions that has far less, that has far less than what they started with, not only in their industrial base, but what they have on hand.
- [09:53]
Will Saletan
So the question was about our munitions and whether we're running low. And it sounds like his answer is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but never mind, never mind that. Let's pay attention to how much we've degraded them, which it looks to me. So I'm, I don't know much about this except that it's been months that we've been degrading their military capability. And that's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't seem to have advanced any of our objectives. It hasn't gotten us closer to any of the goals that you've enumerated. If I am, unless I'm mistaken, tell me.
- [10:22]
Ben Parker
No, I think that's exactly right. There are a few points to make here. One is that language about we're degrading Iran's ability to threaten shipping or whatever is language that the, that Central Command is using to describe why we're doing these strikes night after night after night against ir. And you kind of have to wonder if we keep degrading, like eventually it should be degraded. Right. Like how much we, first of all, we did weeks and weeks and weeks of super intense bombing at the beginning of the war. And Trump said they have no navy, they have no air force. We were targeting, we said we were targeting their missile launchers, their drone launchers and their missile and drone storage facilities. But it doesn't seem to have stopped them launching missiles and drones, not at the neighboring countries on American bases in the region and not at shipping. So, like, how degraded is that really? That's the first problem. The second problem is if they're using low cost drones to, for example, overwhelm our air defenses around our bases in the Middle east, and we're using high cost, low quantity munitions, then yeah, they can keep going for a long time. Right. Like we're throwing gold to them and they're throwing potatoes back. You could buy a lot more potatoes.
- [11:31]
Ryan Seacrest
Right.
- [11:32]
Ben Parker
It's Just as simple as that. And here's the last thing which I think is actually maybe the most irresponsible thing Waltz is doing.
- [11:38]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [11:51]
Mike Waltz
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- [11:55]
Ben Parker
we we know from what has been reported about what the American intelligence community has found that Iran isn't doing this alone and that part of the answer to how they are preventing their missile and drone launching capabilities from becoming degraded is that they're getting a lot of help from Russia and China. Part of it in the form of inputs so they can make more drones and missiles, part of it in the form of just whole weapons systems like the missile system that shot down that American jet a few weeks ago. We have seen news reports that seem pretty convincing to me that it was a Chinese supplied anti air missile and partially in the form of intelligence about where they should be shooting and what targets might be vulnerable to what kinds of attacks. So the fact that the whole reason we're worried about munitions is that we might have to use them somewhere else, like in South Korea if the North Koreans attack South Korea, like in Taiwan if the Chinese attack Taiwan, who knows where else there are a million other places. And if for Waltz to say, well, we're not worried and by the way, not to mention that China and Russia are helping Iran trying to weaken us does not give the American people a good idea of whether or not we're accomplishing not just our goals in Iran, which we've been talking about, but our goals broadly for what kind of security environment we want the United States to have in the world, it is not going well. And he's just completely ignoring the reasons why.
- [13:21]
Will Saletan
Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the options we have at this point. We've been hitting all these military targets that doesn't seem to have eliminated for sure the ability of Iran to launch attack drones into the to the straight onto American military bases and so forth. The next question is there are people advocating, well then we need to start hitting more of the civilian infrastructure in Iran, hitting water plants, hitting electrical, hitting highways and bridges and so forth. Here's a question Walt gets on Fox News Sunday. Shannon Bream asks him about one of the folks in one of the American hawks who's advocating stronger attacks.
- [13:58]
Margaret Brennan
Matthew Continetti, writing over at the Wall Street Journal, says if he wants to win this war, Mr. Trump must deliver crippling blows to Iran's government. That means rejecting proportionality. It means expanding, expanding targets to include highways, bridges, factories and other infrastructure that sustains the IRGC war machine. Not one a day, but all at once. Is that coming?
- [14:17]
Mike Waltz
Well, remember, The IRGC controls 40 to 50% of the Iranian economy.
- [14:22]
Will Saletan
So, Ben, if The IRGC controls 40 to 50% of the economy and all of these targets would be related to weakening the IRGC because it is so integrated in the civilian economy, does that raise questions about whether we can legitimately target some of this stuff and whether it is possible to weaken the IRGC in the way that some of these American hawks want to do, and presumably the administration wants to do without committing what some people would say are war crimes because we're attacking water plants and so forth.
- [14:52]
Ben Parker
It raises really difficult questions. And you know, there are, there are sort of two ways of looking at this. There are three ways of looking at this, really, and I'll run through them. One of them is legal. And if you have what otherwise might look like civilian infrastructure that belongs to what is really a military organization, then I think that means that it's a legitimate target. But also if civilians are using it, it gets into complicated, you know, complicated processes of weighing is it more useful to the civilians than it would be as a military target, that kind of thing. It gets really complicated real fast. Legally speaking, we have seen the United States military already target some water plants and some bridges. And I'm sure they went through that calculus and found a way of saying, yep, that bridge is a military target because the military sometimes uses it, might use it, whatever. I'm glad I'm not the person who is responsible for making that decision. It's very complicated morally. I think it's pretty clear that when you're targeting a water treatment facility, unless it's specifically supplying like a military base with water, if it's supplying civilians with water, that's a much trickier, I mean, even, even, that's even less certain than the legal argument. The legal argument is sort of borderline. And that's because of the third way of looking at it, which is strategically, does it help you? Does it help to make Iranians thirsty? Remember, Iran was suffering a water crisis in the capital of Tehran, where millions of people live before the war started. This is not a regime that values the well being of its people. There have been mass Protests for years because the economy stinks and the people are fed up with it because the, the regime takes huge amounts of money and funnels it into supporting terrorism abroad, the nuclear missile programs at home, and huge amounts of corruption. I mean, you see people, you saw people before the war, you know, chanting things like, you know, help us forget Palestine in the streets of Tehran, right? Like, stop funding Hamas, like build water infrastructure, that kind of thing. So I think the entire argument that, you know, hey, if we just target civilian infrastructure, that'll win the war, that I think, first of all, that totally misunderstands what the Iranian regime values. Also, I'd point out targeting civilians hasn't won the war for Putin. Targeting civilians hasn't really been winning the war for Israel and Gaza. Targeting civilians didn't win the war for Hitler in World War II. Targeting, you know, the history of targeting civilians and thinking you'll just break the population's will and destroy the government that way is a little more complicated than this argument would lead you to believe.
- [17:44]
Will Saletan
Such a good point. Such a good point. Thanks for getting us, taking us through the history on that. Before I let you go, I want to a couple more things. One is I want to talk about what the administration did to get us here in a situation where we're having trouble figuring out who we're negotiating with and who can. Who can actually cut a deal with us. So this will take us back to the Meet the Press interview. Waltz is trying to explain why we're having so much trouble getting a deal with Iran that Iran then complies with by not, you know, attacking the strait or our own facilities. So here's one of his explanations for why we're running into this problem.
- [18:22]
Mike Waltz
Talks are ongoing. They're happening, happening at every level, from the more technical aspect of it all the way to the highest levels, of course, within both the Iranian government and the US Government. What we are constantly seeing, though, is on the Iranian regime side, they are divided. There is internal fighting. Some are seeking the guidance of the Supreme Leader. Others want to move into a different direction. And that makes it hugely challenging. Challenging to. From a diplomatic standpoint, but to get to some reasonable resolution here.
- [18:54]
Will Saletan
Ben, again, this sounds like something where before the war, it was very clear who you were talking to in Iran, and there was a structure where you could count on things being implemented if they were authorized from above. We celebrated. Supposedly this are a couple of strikes that we took at the beginning of the war, wiping out, as Trump says, the first level and the second level of the Iranian government. It seems like this excuse that waltz is offering us, that there's chaos in the government and we. And one doesn't. One side doesn't know what the other is doing is something that we brought on ourselves. Is that correct? And if so, what do we do about it?
- [19:30]
Ben Parker
So I would complicate that just ever so slightly by saying that this appears to be sort of a disconnect from the very beginning of the war between the American war plan and the Israeli war plan. And the Israelis have used this decapitation strategy against all sorts of enemies, mostly terrorist groups, for, like, two generations now. When in doubt, kill the leaders. It makes everything else easier. That's at least the theory. That's what they did in Iran. And it was, I believe it was the Israelis who killed most of the Iranian senior leadership, not the United States. But we also didn't stop them. We could have said, hey, guys, we're totally down for this war plan together, except we'd kind of like to know who we're negotiating with, so maybe don't kill the top guys. You know, we didn't. So that's, you know, that's our bad. We didn't actually drop the bombs, but we could have. We could have prevented them, maybe. It is funny to me. Trump complained a few weeks ago after the Memorandum of Understanding fell apart that, you know, these guys make a deal and then they just don't stick to it. I've never seen anything like it in my life. This is Donald Trump saying this. I mean, it's like the mullah in the mirror, right? It's like the Spider man meme. He's like, what? I can't believe they would. They wouldn't stick to their word. Whoever would have heard of something like that? It's ridiculous. This is the kind of thing that. That any diplomat with any kind of experience would know, which is. Governments are not an it. They are. They. And Iran is the same way. There are always, you know, there's. It's why these negotiators, there's always the people you're talking to and the people they work for, and there's always different factions in a government, especially in Iran, where some of them are zealots and some of them are sort of nationalists, military types, and some of them are just super corrupt. And they've all got different motivations that's only gotten worse because of the chaos at the top of their government. So, like, yeah, duh, there are different people with different agendas. Like, welcome to politics, man. And it makes me wonder this, who are our negotiators? Because we've got a bunch of people in the government who are actually super sophisticated about Iran and like whatever else, know that country really well and speak the language and know who all the different players are. It's like one thing our government is really good at is studying Iran because we've been doing it for, as Walt said in that earlier answer, 47 years, ever since the revolution. But I think instead we've got Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who probably are still figuring out that they're not negotiating with Iraq. So, yeah, no wonder they're overwhelmed by the complexity. Like, we've got idiots working for us. I don't know how else to put it.
- [21:59]
Will Saletan
That's depressing. Okay, so there's one little ray of sunshine that Walt's tried to offer us today. Back to the interview on Fox News Sunday. He says, and we're not going to have to worry very much longer about the Strait of Hormuz because we're not going to be using the Strait of Hormuz anymore to transit the oil out of the Persian Gulf. Here's what he told Shannon Bream.
- [22:23]
Mike Waltz
Taking a step outward, the Iranians leverage. This regime's leverage over the Straits of Hormuz will drastically diminish over time. The Iraqi prime minister just signed a deal with Syria, was just here and signed a deal with a number of our oil and gas companies in Houston. You are going to see pipelines being built all over the Middle east. Some are estimating 14 to 15 million barrels a day will be moving by pipeline and no longer by the Straits of Hormuz just over the next year.
- [22:56]
Will Saletan
Ben, is that realistic, this idea that we won't have to worry about the Strait of Hormuz in a timeline that is relevant to the current war?
- [23:06]
Ben Parker
I don't know which answer is worse, so let me try out both. One is there's no way in the Middle east right now across Syria and Iraq, you're going to build those types of pipelines, you know, maybe across the uae so you can just sort of tranship oil directly from the Persian Gulf out to the Indian Ocean and you avoid the Strait entirely. I don't know. That's a big infrastructure project. I am skeptical they're going to be able to move, build pipelines that can move that much oil. But also, who knows how long this war could go on. So, you know, maybe it's going to go on with this. On again, off again. You hit a ship, we strike a drone factory or whatever for years and years and years. And in that time, they will be able to build pipelines. I don't know, man. Like, I think, you know, it would be great. It would be great if there were a pipeline through Iraq and Syria that could, you know, then just ship oil from the Gulf directly to the Mediterranean. And Europe would be very well off for that. And it would also, you know, make life more difficult for the Russians in some ways, I imagine, which would all be for the good. But also, Iran has shown a really sophisticated ability to hit American military bases all over the Middle East. I don't see why they couldn't just shoot some rockets at the pipeline.
- [24:20]
Will Saletan
Good point, good point. I mean, he's clearly talking about the transit route from through. Through Iraq and Syria.
- [24:26]
Mike Waltz
That's.
- [24:27]
Will Saletan
That does sound like a major. So, Ben, if I'm hearing you correctly, if it is true that there will be this pipeline constructed in the time that we are still fighting this war, that is failure, right? That is the war dragging on and becoming a forever war to such a. Long enough for a major project to get completed. We're talking years, it sounds like.
- [24:47]
Ben Parker
Oh, certainly, yeah. But, you know, that's one of the possible outcomes here, I think, because no one's winning and no one's losing. And when no one's. It's just like we're seeing in Ukraine. When no one wins and no one loses, the war just kind of keeps on going. And right now, I guess we're just content to keep on doing this. They blow up a ship, we blow up part of Iran for the foreseeable future.
- [25:09]
Will Saletan
Great.
- [25:09]
Ryan Seacrest
Great.
- [25:10]
Will Saletan
Well, look, I think it's clear from this conversation that Donald Trump needs to stop listening to himself. First of all, stop listening to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and start listening to you. Thank you for sharing this with our viewers. I learned a lot, and I hope everybody else did, too. Ben, thanks so much for joining us. Everybod hit like subscribe to the channel.
- [25:37]
Ryan Seacrest
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