B (5:33)

Good to be here, Dan.

A (5:34)

So I want to think about what's going on right now with regard to the US War against Iran, not just from a strategic perspective, but also in the context of this. We're in an even year, which means we're heading into midterm elections in 2020, 2026, in November. So there's also a political calendar. It remains to be seen whether or not this is a popular war. It's hard to measure that right now, but Trump is clearly, I think, seeing something that many Americans don't and certainly many of his critics Don't. So in that sense, he's making a bet. How would you define the bet that he's making?

B (6:10)

Well, it's a huge bet. Half the people who voted for him perhaps voted for him because they thought a vote for Donald Trump is a vote against endless wars, against US Interventions all over the world. And so here he is offering up a war in Iran, in the Middle east, one that so far, who knows how long it's going to last. So if this thing goes well, and it turns out that American public opinion and Trump's supporters think he did a smart thing in the right way, then I think it solidifies his authority as almost nothing else could. But on the other hand, if it turns into a quagmire, a long war, no obvious exit strategy, or in some other way, some kind of unspinnable setback, then Trump is going to enter the midterm elections wounded, then moves into his lame duck period wounded. It could really be a decisive moment in his presidency.

A (7:06)

So you really think it's that binary, like the scenarios that you can envision could really go wildly in either direction, and it's very hard at this point to predict which direction it goes?

B (7:17)

Well, certainly, you know, maybe if you're sitting in a skiff somewhere in Langley or the Pentagon and you're looking at a lot of information, Dan, that you and I don't see, maybe it's predictable. But I have to say, from where I sit, I can see a lot of different directions this thing could go in.

A (7:33)

And a point you've made is that no matter how good and promising a war looks, there's always surprises. They may not all be bad surprises, but there are always surprises. There are very often setbacks. Those setbacks are not always determinative of the war's final outcome, but there's just a lot of twists and turns in every war.

B (7:49)

We're already seen several in this war. We've seen the decapitation strategy. You know, it was very effective at knocking out, knocking off leaders of Iran, but it doesn't seem to have stopped Iran's ability to continue to counterattack. So the decapitation strategy didn't fully decapitate their ability to fight. At the same time, the Iranians thought that their missile attacks in the region would be so disruptive and cause so much of an economic crisis globally that it would split the American coalition and maybe force Trump to step back. That hadn't happened either. So both sides have already seen at least one kind of big surprise.

A (8:32)

Okay, so one of the most common criticisms out there, and I've been getting this question a lot, as I'm sure you have, is that there's no clear, straightforward answer as to why the US Is at war with Iran, a hot war right now, in the way that it is. So, Walter, I put the question to you. Why are we at war with Iran right now?

B (8:54)

Well, two parts. One, of course. Dan, you know as well as I do we're not at war. We are in the middle of a combat engagement with Iran because the president has just done this. Congress hasn't declared war. Congress has taken no votes on this. So we are in this situation of hostilities because Donald Trump decided it was the right thing to do. So then if we want to get to, why did he think that? We're in the zone of speculation here, because President Trump is not the kind of person who thinks that the way to communicate is to just put all your cards down on the table so everybody can see exactly what you're thinking. President Trump actually comes out of a sort of school of business negotiations where you really don't want the other side to know what you're thinking. That diminishes your leverage. And you give them information, you give them power. So when Trump is speaking, we should always remember, yes, he's speaking to domestic audiences, but he's also speaking to the Iranians. And he is trying to create impressions, ideas in their minds that will lead them to behave in the way he hopes they will. So that makes it really hard, actually. And people who say, well, I'm not quite sure why we're at war with Iran right now. In this sense, the combination of Trump's inexact relationship to the world of facts throughout his career, plus his strategic approach to information, all mean that we're speculating. And there's sort of two different questions. One is, why is he doing it at all? And the other is, why would you do it now rather than a month ago or three months from now or whatever, those are actually quite different questions.

A (10:39)

So let's hit both of them. So first of all, why? And then we'll get to the why now.

B (10:42)

Okay, so why is he doing it at all? I think there's several reasons. One, Dan, you may have noticed this, too, but there's a real generational difference in the way that a lot of people, even people on the right, see this war. When I talk to some of my younger friends, conservative, many Trump voting, their instinct tends to be, no, not another war in the Middle east, not another war for regime change. And when you talk to folks my age, there's a kind of a sense of, well, I don't know if it's going to work. And that worries me. But if anybody on planet Earth needs to be whacked, it's Iran, The Iranian leadership. And what makes for those differences? Two things. One, people under, let's say, 40 have never seen an American success involving the use of force. War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, Libyan intervention. Maybe you could argue sending some folks into Syria helps stop ISIS from running wild. You gotta be old to remember a time when America successfully used force. So that is one big generational difference. The other one is about Iran itself. I remember the 1979 revolution. I remember the hostage crisis. I remember a whole long string of murder. Iranian attacks on Americans and on our friends around the world, and not just on Israel. And I've been listening to cries of death to America. And I've seen them patiently assemble instruments of foreign policy aimed at actually making life worse for us and more dangerous for us. And I absolutely agree with Presidents Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump, all of whom said, at least Iran cannot have a bomb, a nuclear bomb. So that's my background. But again, if you are under 40, Iran is just one of a bunch of characters wandering around in the region. Yeah, it help with the IEDs in Iraq, but your basic idea is, well, we shouldn't have been in Iraq in the first place. You don't have this sense of Iran as kind of uniquely dangerous, hostile actor. So if you believe American force usually doesn't work and regime change is just a quick way to failure, and you don't have any reason to hate or fear Iran, the Iranian leadership, you really cannot see the point of this thing. And I think that's gotten a lot of younger people out looking for, okay, well, if there's no obvious explanation for why we're doing this, what are the hidden occult explanations for this? Who paid Trump, or who made Trump do this? And that's one reason some folks get into the whole conspiracy thinking quagmire and sort of start chasing their own tails. And you see a lot of that.

A (13:45)

If you are under 40 and you have all the observations and the history that you just described, do you think your view starts to change based on what President Trump did in Venezuela at the beginning of the year? That's a real case study of an operation that, so far as it seems now, had a beginning and an end. A very surgical operation, very complicated, very impressive, very. But really no casualties for Americans, and I hate to use the word clean with Any military operation, but it was about as clean a military operation as we have seen, certainly at that scale.

B (14:18)

I think what you think there is. Yeah. So why didn't he do that in Iran? What he's doing with Iran is so much more like what Bush did in Iraq than what Trump himself did in Venezuela.

A (14:28)

Minus the quarter of a million troops that we deployed originally, it was a

B (14:31)

shock and awe raid and the ground troops went in later. And Trump is already saying in press conferences, I'm not going to rule out ground troops completely. This is just affecting people based on their life experience. And the Venezuela thing is just not a. It would take a whole series of successes. For example, let's suppose that things in Iran work out and from that point of view, you know, there's a new government, it's at least reasonably pro American or at least not horribly anti American. It didn't cost much. Everything seems to be working better. Well, then you might have a little more confidence in a third incursion. But it happens just by the way as the Gulf War, the success of the Gulf war under George H.W. bush brought a lot of people out of their Vietnam syndrome funk. Intervention never succeeds. Only then to have a lot of those folks like Biden and Hillary Clinton sort of trapped into supporting the Iraq War, which then didn't work. So you've got the kind of Vietnam syndrome old folks and Iraq syndrome young folks, and they're just not happy with this. Then.

A (15:45)

Okay, so you got into the why and then you explained why. The why is not very compelling to people under 40. But I do want you to also address from your perspective the why now. What's the rush? People say, what was the sense of urgency? Even if President Trump decided us living with the Iranian, the threat was unsustainable and it had to be dealt with. Okay, but why now?

B (16:05)

I think the answer is really very simple. I think it's missile production. That's the main thing, that the longer you wait, the more ballistic missiles the Iranians make and the more they accelerate their ability to make missiles. Already everybody is talking about, oh, my goodness, the big question is now, will the Iranians have enough missiles so that we and our allies use all our missile interceptors, and then they've still got missiles and we're out of interceptors, not only in the Middle east, but we've drawn down our stocks in Asia so that they've made us helpless and now they keep firing missiles. All right, that's an unacceptable scenario. I entirely agree with President Trump on that. That is an Unacceptable scenario. And here I think that the American and Israeli positions have come closer that in the past, the Americans really almost only looked at Iran through the nuclear lens and thought, well, you know, if Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, how bad would their ballistic systems be? And they saw, you know, for Obama and Biden, that was the real choke point. But Trump, I think is right that the ballistic missile program in Iran is not just a threat to Israel, it's a threat to the Gulf, it's a threat to the American ability to secure the flow of oil globally. It is a real threat. He saw them working hard on it. He saw them refusing to negotiate. And so he knew that he did not have an infinite time period to just sort of sit and patiently wait and say, ha, we've contained Iran. It's in a box. Why should we worry that the time would come when it would be impossible to strike Iran because of their non nuclear ballistic missile capability? Under that cover, they'd be able to go ahead with the bomb and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it because of the fear of their ballistic missiles. Then if you add on top of that, the sort of cherry on top of the Sunday is obviously the Israelis saying, well, you know, there's this group meeting schedule with the top Iranian leadership, so you have an opportunity here that is unmissable.

A (18:15)

So from your standpoint, the why now is Trump believed this moment was fleeting and that Iran, at some point the missile math was gonna catch up with the west in a way that would be unsustainable. A, not just with the west, but, but with our allies in the Middle east. And B, then this opportunity is presented to him where we could really get maximum advantage. If we're going to go to war anyways, then let's figure out how to do with maximum advantage. And this scenario last Saturday morning was the ultimate maximum advantage, at least for the start of the war.

B (18:44)

Right. And I think those are probably the two factors that had the most to do structurally with his thinking. Having the chance of winning if he thinks he's really going to win, getting that done before the midterms so that next couple of months you wrap up a big victory in the Middle East. That's not a bad way to start setting the table for the midterms. Price of oil would come down very dramatically. So all of those kinds of things are probably in his thinking too.

A (19:11)

Okay, so how do you assess how clear the President or the administration have made the case to the American people?

B (19:18)

I don't think they've made the case at all. This is not about why you would do it now, but why Iran might matter from the standpoint of American national security. We've noticed when President Trump came into office, you had the sort of axis of revisionist powers. Russia, China, Iran, with Venezuela and North Korea tagging along after and others, like maybe South Africa and some others, thinking about jumping on. What we've seen is that he's gone after the weak sisters, the lamers in the herd. He went for Venezuela. He's putting the squeeze on Cuba. Venezuela is a country that is very far from Russia and China, very close to the United States. Hard for them to do anything, really, about American policy in Venezuela. So he's got that going for him. You win something there and then you move to Iran. I see that some people in Russia are noticing this pattern. He is, I think, tightening the screws on Russia in ways that a lot of the American press doesn't get, because they're sort of emotionally committed to this idea of Putin and Trump are aligned in some way. But we've been cracking down on Russian oil tankers. Sanctions have gotten tighter. We've pushed the Indians to buy less oil from Russia and so on and so forth. So pressure has been mounting against Russia as well. If this gamble gambit, whatever you want to call it in Iran succeeds, there will be the tremendous both the kind of as a psychological weakening of the axis of revisionists and a material weakness. The weakest of the big three, but still one of the big three has been knocked out. And Russia and China just kind of sat there and issued strong statements to the United nations when one of their allies called on them for help. So if Trump can pull this off and pull Iran as he pulled Venezuela into a different alignment, then you've actually sent a message to Russia and you've sent a message to China, and you've sent a message to any country anywhere that thinks that its best interests might be served by aligning with one of those two. So I think Trump sees there's a lot going on there. But I am not sure that Trump wants to broadcast all of these things to the world. He believes that America needs for there to be a strong Russia at the end of the Russia, Ukraine war. Because if Russia were extremely weak or fell apart into a lot of small countries, the only country that really helps is China, which would then have access to all of those minerals and could kick Russia around and not have to worry about its back if it were involved in some kind of confrontation with the US and allies by sea. He had hoped when he came into office that that would be enough to get Putin to make a pretty quick deal with him over Ukraine and then move on. And here's where some of Trump's critics are right and Trump is wrong. And Trump, I think, has come as close as Trump does to admitting that he was wrong. Putin is much more invested in Ukraine than Trump had realized and has been willing to pay a much higher price. But Trump has been pushing the price up on Russia, on Russia's engagement in Ukraine. And the Iran thing is definitely another step in the tightening of the screw there. What we're hearing out of the administration is fundamentally an Iran focused discourse about what's going on and not a kind of, okay, here's America's position in the world, here's what I've been doing, here's what I am doing, and here's what I'm going to do. He just doesn't think you share that kind of information with the enemy.

A (23:11)

Okay, so if you're Trump and you're presented with possible scenarios of, you know, let's call them, quote, unquote, victory scenarios or successful scenarios ranging from A plus to C minus. So somewhere excellent outcome or not excellent, but still pretty good or kind of mediocre, I won't go with, like, disaster. Just generally, what would those scenarios start to look like, from an excellent outcome to something middling?

B (23:37)

Well, excellence is Iranian society overthrows the Islamic Republic. Maybe some of the units in the army and so on desert and turn it. But basically there's a contemporary equivalent of a color revolution in Iran and a democratic regime takes over, which doesn't see Israel or the United States as an enemy, wants to pump a lot of oil and gas as fast as possible. They name the main street in Tehran Trump Avenue. It's just a big, big success and everybody's just amazed. That's a plus. And it's not impossible. In my mind, it's not the most likely scenario, but it could happen. And then a kind of a B scenario would be the Venezuela option. I don't want to shock any of our listeners with any kind of cynical realpolitik talk, but it's just possible that not, not all of the people in the IRGC are religious enthusiasts and naive believers. Some of them may have actually decided, kind of in it for power and money. And their calculation might flip to the point of, well, let's see, which is better for me being dead in a bunker or having millions of dollars in Switzerland and the Americans giving me a free Pass for all my past crimes. I, I, you know, and so that critical mass of people in Tehran or in Iran who might be willing to take that option, in that case, the global press would do the usual, like, bitter scolding, why doesn't Trump love democracy enough? And so on and so forth, but that just rolls off his back like water from a duck. He does not care. And all of those people, he's lost forever anyway. But, but then you get the kinds of agreements so that for Trump would be a win, but it wouldn't be a win with angels descending from heaven and trumpets of glory everywhere, but it would be a real win that I think he could present to the average American is like, isn't this better? Especially if the oil starts to flow and the price of oil having spiked goes down well before election day. Nice thing. Probably the lowest level that could still be called or spun as a success would be what you can call the Venezuela minus scenario, where it's kind of clear to everybody who looks hard that they're just pretending to be nice to Trump. You know, oh, yes, we're going to change. Yes, we understand. But in reality, the minute the pressure is off, they're going to go back to their old ways. And then podcasts like this and other people will start saying, well, that's not a real thing. A lot of Israelis will say, wait a minute, we've been sold out. The problem is not solved. But Trump will have the feeling that most people don't read the fine print and so that this would be spinnable as a success. From there, you start getting into degrees of failure.

A (26:45)

What levers do the Iranians or does the regime have to prevent those achievements from being reached by the US And Israel?

B (26:53)

The number one piece of leverage that it has is endurance. It is not easy to force a regime change from the air using air power alone. Iran wants to entangle Trump into a quagmire that he can't win. Basically make it look to everybody, including possibly to Trump himself, that what he's done is blundered into another endless war. And again, all the Iranians, in a sense, have to do is keep fighting to make that a very tough scenario for him to avoid. This is probably the strongest argument against the war, is that air power historically just doesn't have that strong of a record of provoking regime change. A little bit like Saddam Hussein, you take out that top layer and there's nothing left. Iran is not like that. The top layer of the leadership is gone, but it ain't dead. The Regime ain't dead. How many times has Israel killed the head of Hamas or the head of Hezbollah and the organization is still there? I think their strategy is this is kind of their hole card, is to force Trump to the place where he either has to get in and fight a ground war, which will probably kill him at the polls, kill him in the midterms, maybe destroy the Repub Republican Party, but wreck his reputation, split the MAGA movement and ultimately probably not work, just as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't work. That's their thinking of what they think they can try to do. And I don't see at this point any sign that they've given up on that as their strategy. Now that's vulnerable because again, there's a critical mass of people there that might want to take no, I want the money and the deal rather than I want the long, uncertain resistance of guerrilla fighting with no assurance of a good outcome. And you'll notice that Trump in his public statements is really trying to woo those people, the potential America supporters in the room. He's not promoting the Shah's son as a replacement.

A (29:08)

And what do you think that is about? Because he is very tepid in terms of how he talks about the Shah's

B (29:13)

son, because that's to declare war on kind of the regime, you know, everybody in the regime. It's to give up. If you're going to impose somebody from the outside, it means that you're cutting out all the people on the inside. And I think Trump at this point believes that the chances of cutting deals on the inside offers a better path to success than bringing in this outside guy.

A (29:40)

Okay, so if there is success, something that Israel, that the region and the US And Israel would all regard, regard as a US Israel victory, what does that do to the region?

B (29:51)

Paradoxically, I think in a way it underscores what happened after the June war, 12 day war, where a lot of regional countries moved away from Israel and also started moving out, edging out from under the American umbrella because they felt less threatened. The trump card that America always has in the Gulf is we're the people who when the chips are down, or we're the only people who can and will defend you against all comers. Well, if there are no comers, that card loses value. And so I don't think this is a war that will out of which we'll see a kind of stable pro Israel or Israel stably integrated Middle east emerge.

A (30:36)

You mentioned Russia and China a few moments ago. I just want to return to Them, they, as you say, have not done much. Putin and Xi, to our knowledge, have not done much in support of Iran. At least that is obvious that we can see. So what's going on there? What do you imagine is going through their calculations?

B (30:54)

Well, I imagine what they're hoping for is for the US to get trapped into a quagmire that will both, like, suck in our munitions and our attention, cost us a bunch of money, and totally divide America and polarize even more than already is American society. So if that's where this thing ends, they've achieved a tremendous victory without lifting a finger. Those are the best kinds of victories when your enemy does all the work. And if they can find little ways of putting their fingers on the scale to make that outcome more probable, I would expect them to look for opportunities to do that. But if, on the other hand, the US Scores a real win and. And Iran moves from the Russia, China column into the America column, then I think their calculations change a bit. It makes the Russians. I think it will probably increase concern in Russia about the cost of the war in Ukraine and the path that they're on. I think it'll cause even the Chinese to rethink some of their assumptions about, ah, America is in inevitable decline and, you know, we are on an inevitable, inevitable rise. I think either way, real defeat or real victory changes the geopolitical situation in pretty significant ways globally.

A (32:17)

Okay, I want to ask you in closing here about India, which you have spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about. India generally as a global power, as a geopolitical power, but also India and Israel in that relationship. It was quite stunning in the last week that you had Modi's historic visit to Israel for two days, and then Modi leaves. And then basically it felt like within hours, Israel and the United States were jointly at war with Iran. It's just a lot going on. What do you think Modi is seeing right now as he watches this war play out? What matters to him?

B (32:52)

Well, I have to say I do wonder what Bibi said to Modi while they were there. Did Bibi say, listen, you know, I know you'd planned a shopping trip for tomorrow afternoon. Right.

A (33:02)

Text me when you're on the ground in Delhi.

B (33:04)

Right? Exactly. I saw Bibi a couple of days before Midnight Hammer, and he said, nothing to me, nothing to me about, make sure you get out of there. I hope Modi got maybe a little bit more of the red carpet treatment than I did. But look, I think for India, this is just a huge Mess, and a very worrying one. First of all, oil. There's no oil coming through the Straits of Hormuz. India is a major importer of oil. They need it. And gas, this is their source. They don't really have a lot of alternative supplies. It's bad. You know, anybody in India is going to be worried, what's this going to do to the currency? What's this going to do to inflation? Am I going to have a crippling energy shortage? How long is this going to go on? That's going to be one consideration. Another is there are almost 10 million Indian citizens living and working in the Gulf. Contract laborers, professionals, a whole range of people. Those people can't get home and they're in a war zone. And if you figure there's 10 million there, that means there's like a hundred million people at home who are relatives or friends of these folks who are calling their MPs and calling the government. What about, you know, how, how am I getting my cousin home home?

A (34:21)

Right.

B (34:21)

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And India's reaction, a lot of it is just going to be focused around the immediate crisis that this is causing for India. Then there are other issues. These days. Pakistan and Afghanistan are basically at war. So the Indians have gone from seeing the Taliban as really bad guys to being, well, not all bad. I mean, they've got some redeeming virtues, but on the whole, all right, stepping away from the short term issues, which are going to be top of mind for Indian policymakers because they're important. If you had an Iranian, Israeli, let's imagine a victory scenario in which Iran actually is grateful to Israel for its help in getting rid of the Islamic Republic. We can't rule that one out. I would see the Emiratis, the Indians, the Israelis, really in a very interesting place. And India right now is, I believe, Israel's biggest foreign customer for arms exports. I would see more of that happening. This war is a tremendous, so far, is a tremendous advertisement for both American and Israeli defense capabilities and technologies. And it is so crystal clear that the side that relies on Russia and China for military help is basically throwing rocks and spears, while the side that is aligned with the United States is just having the best stuff you could have.

A (35:56)

All right, Walter, we will leave it there. Thank you. This is a tour de force of the region and global geopolitics in light of this historic moment. And we will, I'm sure, be coming back to you soon because your sobriety is welcome. It's not all hopeful and optimistic and it's not all dire. Thank you for doing this.

B (36:16)

Well, thank you Dan. Good to see you.

A (36:26)

That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavayal, Amit, Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's ark media.org call me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Ark Media's Executive producer is Adam James Levena Reddy. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Weiner. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.