Tommy Vietor (3:03)

Welcome back to POD Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Ben Rhodes (3:06)

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Tommy Vietor (3:07)

Ben, you've been enjoying the World Baseball Classic. You look like a WBC guy.

Ben Rhodes (3:11)

I am a WBC guy and I've enjoyed it too because I'm a Mets fan. And Juan Soto was playing for the Dominican Republic and he was. I was struck that some of these guys seem like they're playing a little harder in the WBC than they do during the. Which I appreciate. I mean, you're playing for your country.

Tommy Vietor (3:28)

I love all the random American players who are playing for like team Italy or whatever and they're just like, look, they're just happy to be there.

Ben Rhodes (3:34)

They just grab some guy with an Italian name and put him on the Italian.

Tommy Vietor (3:36)

As long as you, your name ends with a vowel, you're on the squad. I was at a sushi place, Japanese place on like Saturday night. And everyone working there was Japanese. Everyone. Every customer except for Hannah and I were Japanese. And the Japan game was on and people were riveted. And it was really awesome because I think Shohei went yard in like the first inning and was just like playing his balls off. And I don't know, it was just very fun. It got me excited for baseball season and for the Dodgers in particular.

Ben Rhodes (4:03)

Well, it's kind of cool to see baseball which has always had an international dimension, but kind of like basketball, it's become this global sport that we used to think of as a very American sport. But if you look at the rosters, it's most of the guys tend to be from somewhere else.

Tommy Vietor (4:18)

Yeah, it's very cool.

Ben Rhodes (4:19)

I like that.

Tommy Vietor (4:19)

It is cool. Especially like the growth of these Japanese players. I mean, Shohei Ohtani's like maybe the best player ever in history.

Ben Rhodes (4:26)

When you go to a Dodgers game. I don't know if you go, but I mean, a chunk of the fans at Dodger Stadium are Japanese and some of them are Japanese Americans. But you get a sense that they're literally people that travel from Japan to come see Shohei at Dodger Stadium.

Tommy Vietor (4:40)

And like, rightly so. It's like a once in a generation opportunity to watch this guy play baseball. Baseball. Very fun. Less fun topics. Today we're going to cover a lot of stuff from Iran. Actually. We're going to do our best to have fun with it because there's some kind of MAGA media crack up things that are very interesting and entertaining. So the gist is the Strait of Hormuz is closed. The price of gas is up. No US Allies will help Donald Trump solve the problems he's created. And despite ongoing bombing and further assassinations of top Iranian political leaders, it seems like we are now further away from this conflict ending than we were last week. So that's the broader context. We'll update you on all of that. We're also going about the resignation of a top Trump national security official named Joe Kent. And while he is a deeply flawed kind of individual and messenger, which will explain his comments are very stark and could be a sign of a broader kind of intra MAGA crack up that we should watch. Then I'm going to get Ben's reaction to this viral op ed that's making the case that the Iran war is actually going well. This thing has gone super viral in D.C. we're going to cover these reports that the supreme leader of Iran is gay, some, like I said, massive infighting in the media world. And then the latest from Trump's slow motion regime change attempt in Cuba. And then we'll offer our own Kennedy center honors to honor its former leader, Mr. Rick Cornell. So happy trails to Rick.

Ben Rhodes (6:04)

Feel bad for that guy. And then. Yeah, Tommy, I did not do with. Yeah, that's true. I did the interview with Kim Gaddis who's been on before. She's great journalist and writer and analyst who's based in Beirut. She'd actually just left Beirut, but yeah.

Tommy Vietor (6:18)

Did she have to evacuate?

Ben Rhodes (6:20)

No, she had some preplanned travel because she's coming to teach a class in the United States. But she updated us on the situation in Lebanon, what it's like to be there, the scale of the displacement, the scale of the bombing, the regional dynamics, what Israel's intentions may be, how much of southern Lebanon they might try to kind of hold or create as a buffer zone, what, what the Lebanese political dynamic is a combination of frustration with both Hezbollah and Israel and kind of the sense of being caught in the middle of things. So good to Lebanon's been overlooked in this war, but it's a huge, I mean a million people are displaced. It's a fifth of the population. So good time to spend some extra space with Kim on that.

Tommy Vietor (7:05)

Yeah, we decided to put that conversation in the interview because Kim is a genuine expert and just left Beirut, as you said. But in like, you know, on Earth 2 where there' only the war in Lebanon and not a war in Iran, like that's the entire show today, the scale of what's happening there is stunning.

Ben Rhodes (7:23)

Her point, which I think is sobering, is that you have to almost go all the way back to early 1980s when Israel occupied southern Lebanon to get at this scale of war. And there have been a lot of wars since then. So this is not a small, a military operation.

Tommy Vietor (7:41)

800,000 people have been displaced. I mean, it's just unimaginable. So Ben, as we've discussed, you know, there's been some really great coverage of the war. There's also been a lot of like terrible credulous regurgitation of lies from the Trump White House and then this kind of like endless post 911 framing where we are told that the way to support our troops is to constantly send them to war for as long as possible and not question why. So we here at Crooked Media, we promise to be the opposite of that. We're going to do tough substantive coverage of the war in Iran and all the other many places Trump is bombing. So there's two ways that you can support that work as a listener. The first is free. Just subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe rate, maybe review. Leave us a little five stars. It really does help us grow the show and reach more people and hopefully displace the right wing garbage and propaganda from Fox News and Ben shapiro that dominates YouTube. And then if you want to go even further and take that next step, consider supporting Crooked Media's broader mission becoming as a progressive independent media company by becoming a friend of the pod. So you go to crooked.com friends there you can sign up, you'll get ad free episodes. You get bonus content that is just for paid subscribers like Pod Save America, only Friends, which is basically an extra Pod Save America every week. There's Polar Coaster from Dan Pfeiffer, kind of walks you through the latest polling news much more. That's crooked.com friends to learn more and listen to. Thank you guys for watching, especially all the bonus episodes we've been doing on Pod Save the World. We really love doing it and the fact that you watch means a lot to us.

Ben Rhodes (9:09)

Appreciate it. Yeah, there's a lot to. We could do one every day, unfortunately.

Tommy Vietor (9:14)

Yeah, a lot of stuff to cover. All right, Ben. So a lot has happened since we talked last week just to tick through some of the major updates and then we'll hear from our president. So the casualty count unfortunately keeps going up. Thirteen U.S. service members are dead since the war started. Two hundred have been hurt or wounded. So six of the 13 died last week. There was some sort of midair collision between two KC135 refueling planes over western Iraq. I feel like we don't really know the full story there. I feel like we may never because the Pentagon is just hiding the ball on a lot of this stuff. But really awful. In Iran, nearly 1500 Iranians have been reported dead. About 18,500 have been injured, according to Al Jazeera. On Tuesday morning, we learned that Ali Larjani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and the effective leader of the regime, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The head of the Basij militia is also dead. There was also some big news on Tuesday when a top Trump aide named Joe Kent resigned, saying, quote, I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby, end quote. So again, we'll talk more later in the show. We'll go deep on who Kent is, why he's a flawed messenger here, and some of the really weird shit in this letter, especially about Israel. But it is does seem like a sign that the cracks in the MAGA world are widening fast over this war. But more importantly, most importantly for Iran, Ben, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. NATO countries and nearly every other country, they refuse to. They've rebuffed Trump's request to join this like ad hoc, kind of like naval coalition to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump is not at all mad about it. Here's a super cut of what Trump and his team have had to say about Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, NATO and a lot more over the last couple days.

Donald Trump (11:01)

Let's watch the Strait Hormuz, a famous, wonderful, beautiful place. I knew about the Strait, that it would be a weapon, which I predicted a Long time ago, predicted all of this stuff.

Tommy Vietor (11:16)

Why can't the US Just immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz?

Donald Trump (11:21)

Well, we could, but it takes two to tango. We have to get people to take their billion dollar ship and, and, you know, drive it up.

Ben Rhodes (11:30)

The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit. Should Iran not do that?

Donald Trump (11:38)

We have 45,000 troops in Japan. We have 45,000 troops in South Korea. We have 45,000, 50,000 troops in Germany. We defend all these countries. And then, do you have any minesweepers? And they say, well, would it be possible for us not to get involved? I've long said that. You know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this is a, this was a great test because we don't need them, but they should have been there. We didn't have to be there for Ukraine. You know, it's interesting. I'm almost doing it in some cases, not because we need them, but because I want to find out how they react. You could make the case that maybe we shouldn't even be there at all because we don't need it. We have a lot of oil.

Tommy Vietor (12:22)

The Iranian regime is called Sky News. If you put boots on the ground in Iraq, it will be another Vietnam. Are you afraid of that?

Donald Trump (12:29)

No, I'm not afraid of. I'm really not afraid of anything.

Tommy Vietor (12:33)

I love that Pete Hexeth quote so much. The only thing blocking the Strait of Hormuz is Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Like, thank you, Pete. Yes, you have identified the problem. Ben, what do you make of Trump? I mean, I'm curious what you think about any of that, but what do you make of him folding all of this into this old fight with NATO? Like, why ask for help from NATO countries if you don't need it? Why go public with the ask before getting a private yes when you know it'll just kind of like, make you look isolated and stupid? Maybe we're thinking about it more than he ever did. But what's your take?

Ben Rhodes (13:01)

I don't feel reassured by that supercut, and I don't think there's any supercut that could have been put together that reassured you because you get no sense of the political objectives of the war. From that. The Strait of Hormuz is closed because Donald Trump launched the war. And, and for him to turn on allies like this this quickly is, is. Is both completely insane, but also very much a situation where the chickens are coming home to Roost. So, first of all, the idea that these countries should get involved and literally get in harm's way to support a war of choice, an illegal war of choice that Donald Trump launched without even consulting any of them, is absolute madness. I mean, it reminded me a little bit, Tommy, to play back one of the hits of how out of sorts the Bush administration got when France and Germany refused to join the war in Iraq. But at least that was like they went over there, they made the case, they said, you know, you should join us for these reasons. And then they were told, no, this is, we are going to surprise you by launching a massive war in the Middle east that is going to compromise all of your energy supplies.

Tommy Vietor (14:16)

Right.

Ben Rhodes (14:17)

Europe is already paying more than America. Americans are for higher fuel prices. And then say, oh, and you better send down some troops to support me. Of course they're not going to do that, nor should they. I wouldn't do that if I were them. And for him to then kind of go back and play the hits of, well, we defend you and you don't defend us. First of all, the chickens are coming up to roost in the sense that if you treat your allies like shit for the first year plus of your administration, if you threaten to invade European territory in Greenland, if you put tariffs on people, if you consistently insult them, if you back far right parties in their countries and say, you're going to, quote, cultivate resistance in Europe, which is what they said in the national security strategy, you should not be surprised that there's not exactly a deep reservoir of goodwill to draw upon. And those of us who've been saying that you need allies and if you treat them like garbage, you're gonna ultimately harm American interests. Well, this is part of what we're talking about. Of course they're not gonna bail Trump out on this one. Nor is there a minesweeper. I mean, this is the other thing is this fundamental misunderstanding of the war. What's needed in the Strait of Hormuz is not like a few extra German minesweepers. It's for there to not be a war. And so it doesn't even really matter if they kick in some ships. You're not going to restart commerce as long as Iran is disrupting that commerce, unless you kill every last single Iranian, which is a horrible thing to think about. And so I just think he's flailing. He's going day to day and he's refusing to see the consequences of the very war that he started.

Tommy Vietor (15:56)

Yeah, I mean, your point about pissing off all Your allies. This is the predictable outcome and predicted outcome. He keeps saying there that no one predicted all these bad things that are going wrong now in Iran. But everyone predicted these things. It was the most obvious things. And I think your point about just, we need a couple minesweepers. It's not that simple. That's a very important one, just for context for folks. So the Strait of Hormuz, it's the only way in and out of the Persian Gulf. It's only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and you got Iran on one side and Oman on the other. And as we're learning, this choke point gives Iran a tremendous amount of leverage because they can cut off the flow of oil and gas on ships as well as many other commodities. One third of the world's fertilizer goes through the strait. One third of the world's helium supply goes through the straits. Sulfur, like the list, goes on and on. And so Iran can block the flow of those ships in a bunch of ways. They can place naval mines and shipping channels, which they've reportedly done, although Trump keeps denying that they've done it. They can attack ships with missiles and drones. As of this recording, 16 ships have been attacked. They can also just threaten to attack ships, and that creates understandable fear from shipping companies. And the price of insurance goes up, and it's like a de facto blockade. So that has all created what the International Energy Agency is calling, quote, the largest supply disruption in history. And at the moment, it's not a total stoppage of oil and gas out of the Middle East. Like, Iran is letting some ships through, they're letting their own ships out. There's some, like, ships connected to China that have gotten out. And then both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have pipelines they can use to move oil and gas. But Iran is also now targeting those pipelines with drones and missile attacks. So the status quo is the prices have gone way up. And if this goes on much longer, it could permanently impact the oil production from wells in the region. Which leads you to this idea of this naval escort for these ships. And the shipping news publication Lloyd's List ran the numbers on the feasibility of naval escorts. They said that escorts would only get 10% of normal traffic through and that a basic naval escort operation would need between eight to 10 destroyers to protect convoys, between five to 10 commercial vessels in each transit. And then, Ben, I saw there was a retired Air Force general who had specifically been asked to study how to defend the straight of Hormuz back in the day. And he told the New York Times that the only way to truly control the straight would be to take and hold the Iranian territory border.

Ben Rhodes (18:21)

Exactly.

Tommy Vietor (18:22)

So that's a ground invasion. And I haven't seen the Trump administration float that as an option. But, man, was this a failure of planning if they didn't realize that. That that's kind of like the escalation ladder here.

Ben Rhodes (18:32)

No. And in any Iran war game, one of the first things Iranians do is close the Strait of Hormuz. Like, this is no mystery to anybody. And what Trump keeps trying to do. And I think things have finally caught up to him. You know, we've talked in the past about how he'd do these things like Venezuela or the 12 Day War, and he'd kind of get out before the consequences could really sink in. And this is the one that caught up to him because this is of a much larger scale because it existentially threatened the Iranian regime. And if they feel existentially threatened, they are going to bear a lot of costs to wreak havoc on everybody else and to make the price of this war so high that they won't be attacked again. That's clearly what they're doing. And whatever you think of the Iranian regime and we. There's plenty of bad things to say about that. If you look at Iran, General. Well, first of all, the regime, they went through the Iran Iraq war for nearly a decade, where they lost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. Like they have. Never mind the fact that Iran as a civilization has been there thousands of years. These are not people that are just going to capitulate under a few weeks of bombing. They're going to do this. They're going to continue to threaten the strait, and they're going to try to control that straight. That's the way that they can, in their minds, win the war.

Tommy Vietor (19:55)

Yeah. And they win by not losing.

Ben Rhodes (19:57)

Yeah, they win by not losing. The regime survives. They've demonstrated the leverage they have because of the straight, and that's it. And that's their path to winning by not losing. And Trump, you know, and a lot of these other things is he creates a mess, and then he tries to give himself credit for solving the problem that he created. And this felt like he thought it was going to be that way, like, I've created this mess, but now I'm going to build this great coalition to open the strait. And he's looking over left shoulder and his right shoulder, and nobody's there except Israel. And again, this is what it's like this is what it feels like to be in a world in which you're not only launching a war with no idea of what you're doing, but you also have no friends who are going to bail you out.

Tommy Vietor (20:40)

Yeah. And so a couple quick kind of military and security updates and then a couple sort of diplomatic or Iran based updates to close this section out. So last week the US bombed Kharg island, which is this tiny little island that we've talked about before. It's 15 miles off the coast of Iran. 90% of Iran's oil and gas goes through it for export. Trump, they just had the military bomb military installations on Carg island, not the oil and gas infrastructure, which again is fueled speculation that the US or Israel might try to invade and occupy Car Island. But Trump did tell NBC he might have Carg island bombed again, quote, just for fun. So that's cool. Ben. Also last week there was a fire on the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier that apparently now we learned took 30 hours to put out. Dozens of sailors have smoke inhalation injuries. More than 600 sailors and crew members lost their beds and are now sleeping on like tables and on the floor and in bunks. A lot of them can't do laundry anymore. And this hardship is coming in the 10th month of deployment for this ship. They sound like these guys are going to get extended until May and in April their deployment will be the longest ever for a post Vietnam carrier. So this is just like it's a brutal and under discussed hardship for the individuals, the men and women on this boat. And then finally along those same lines, Ben, I don't know if you saw the, the videos that were coming out last night from Baghdad of all these drone attacks on the U. S Embassy in Baghdad. Now like the cram, the, the missile, the basically it's a machine gun that fires at these drones automatically and defends the, the Baghdad embassy from, you know, drone attacks. But one hit and it looks just absolutely fucking terrifying because these diplomats are getting attacked by Shia backed militias that are supported by Iran. So I mean the security situation is, is getting worse, not better.

Ben Rhodes (22:32)

I think there's something really important that we have to flag for our viewers and listeners which is something you mentioned earlier when you talked about the casualties, which is, I've lived through multiple wars. I was, you know, we were in government for eight years but also just watching, you know, the Bush years and the, the post Obama years, I, I've never felt like I was getting less information from the U.S. government and information that was clearly Incomplete and even, at times, seemingly dishonest. So, first of all, there's been very little transparency about these casualties. The only time we really seem to learn something specific is when somebody dies, because you can't, you know, conceal that. I don't know how those planes crashed. I don't know the state of these wounded troops, like, where they're wounded and how. How severe those wounds are. The damage you talk about. It feels like there's this tide of censorship. So we already know that Israel is trying to suppress video getting out of the attacks that are hitting Israel. We know that the UAE is prosecuting people who post videos online of Dubai being hit. Now, you could see why they want to do that. The idea of Dubai as this place full of influencers and happy tourists, that's part of their economic model. But the reality is, let's just take the US Side of this. Remember the Saudi embassy fire? The US Embassy in Saudi was hit. I don't know how badly it was damaged. I don't know how badly the embassy in Baghdad's been damaged. We've had military installations hit in Bahrain. I don't know how badly they're damaged. It feels like we have no idea what damage is being sustained. Like, so just to take. Is this billions of dollars? Like, are we gonna. When are we going to be able to reopen embassies? How much is going to cost to rebuild things that have been broken? We are not being told by our own government costs that we as taxpayers are going to have to pay. And nor can we evaluate how much Iran is able to hit things because we're not being told what they're hitting. It's crazy. Tommy, you know what this is like, you're piecing together stuff from the Guardian and Al Jazeera, and is this video on social media? There's no damage assessment coming from the United States government, and that's not normal. And the fact that you can't trust anything Pete Hegset says is not normal. I'm disappointed that the military doesn't feel like it's very transparent about all the targets it bombs in Iran. It's not transparent about the damage that we've taken or the casualties that we've taken. And this is a huge deal that hasn't got a lot of attention yet.

Tommy Vietor (25:14)

Yeah, I totally agree with that. It seems like they're really trying to evade any accountability. And also, like Pete Hexath, I mean, the. The press corps has been just gutted. So half the people in the room are, like, from, you know, My pillow tv and then Pete Hexath's kicking off photographers who apparently didn't make him look good in photos. Like it's just a fucking joke. Also, Ben, as I mentioned at the top, so the Israelis announced on Tuesday morning that they killed a top Iranian political leader named Ali Larajani. One Iran expert I was talking to today described Lara Johnny to me as both like kind of hardline, but a pragmatic operator. So like during the Obama years he was speaker of Parliament, he was considered a pragmatist. But he, he to have hardened over time as the entire system and apparatus hardened and built. Kind of like what was described to me as mafia like economic links with the irgc. Now I was talking to another source who was telling me that Lar Johnny is the, was the interlocut, interlocutor for US talks at this moment, right before his death. Someone, this person told me that specifically he was talking with Steve Woff. Now I can't confirm that, but if it's true, it would be the latest instance of Israel killing a possible interlocutor in the Iranian system who could help find an off ramp to end the war. And you know, my guess is the truth is probably less complicated than that. Like, I know that Netanyahu is, you know, you know, full send on regime change and regime decapitation and that, that kind of component of this military campaign. And they're clearly not coordinating with the US as evidenced by Trump saying things to journalists like, well, all the people we thought, you know, could take over for the Supreme Leader are now dead. But I mean, it seems like this guy was, you know, I've seen Israeli military analysts say he was the number one target after Khamenei. And you know, now he's dead.

Ben Rhodes (26:58)

Look, this is also very important. And look, I was very familiar with Arjani. He was a very familiar figure in the Obama years. He's like Arachi, the foreign minister. He's a very sophisticated person. Doesn't mean, I'm not saying I agree with his politics. Right. But he was an operator and he straddled the two. There are very few figures in Iranian politics who can kind of straddle the IRGC hardline and the kind of more moderate political leadership. People like Arachi, the current foreign minister, Javad Zarif, the past foreign minister. And that's why he was often an interlocutor for kind of back channel discussions. Killing him guarantees that he will be replaced by a more hardline person chosen by the irgc. And this is the Fallacy of the Israeli strategy. Right. If Ali Khamenei had died of natural causes in a year or two, I don't think his son, who's a hardliner, would have been the most likely candidate to become supreme leader. That used to be seen as a less likely outcome that the hardliners wanted because of the natural pressures inside that system to move in a somewhat different direction. By killing Khamenei, they got a harder line, replaced him to Khamenei. Now, by killing Lara Johnny, they're going to get a harder line replacement to Larajani. This is not how you actually get a better future for Iran. It's how you ensure that the hardest line people, and a lot of us have said for a long time, if you decapitate the political leadership of this regime, you're going to be left with the military, the irgc, the most hardline people, as the strongest power, because in a vacuum, the vacuum goes to the people with guns and resources, and that's the irgc. If I was cynical, I would say that maybe that's what Israel wants. Maybe they want to kind of clear out any potential political leadership that could be in any kind of negotiation with the United States or the outside world and that offers anything other than a binary choice, the IRGC or some kind of violent overthrow of the government or just a civil war. And again, it's hard for me to look at this strategy and see any, you know, pathway from, like, assassinating and decapitating the regime to, like, democracy. It feels far more like a strategy of trying to implode Iran and have it be in a state of violent chaos and civil conflict. Israel doesn't come out and say that's their objective. But you have had some Israeli analysts and including some people on background saying that's an objective that they would be happy with or they'd be comfortable with. And so I think here, Tommy, we see what's at odds between the US And Iran. Because if the US Strategy is, as stated now recently, let's degrade all their capabilities and then negotiate by killing Larajani, you're making that far less likely. Definitely. And so this feels like an Israeli strategy at odds with an American strategy.

Tommy Vietor (29:49)

And they also know that Trump could wake up tomorrow and just decide he wants to end the war and he needs a phone number to call. And at some point, he's just gonna run out of numbers to call. One last quick thing, Ben. The Washington Post reported that while we've seen Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu repeatedly tell Protesters to rise up to take their government, you know, almost seem to blame them for not having done it. Yet Israeli officials are privately telling U.S. diplomats that they believe the protesters would get slaughtered. Now, that is obvious, but the fact that they would make those calls and then say that in private to the US Government, I think kind of gets at why Netanyahu is such a terrible person and why he's like the worst possible messenger for these regime change little videos he puts out.

Ben Rhodes (30:31)

It's so cynical because they're using the understandable hatred of the regime to try to appear like they're doing this for some values proposition. And they're not. Like, Bibi Nanya has no interest in democracy in Iran, or he could care. Reza Pahlavi was a useful idiot to him, you know, when they were trying to kind of create this groundswell of support for something that people didn't support. And I think what you're seeing now is that there's been this effort for 25 years in this country to make opposition to the war feel like it's not supportive of the troops and not supportive of the people. We're trying to, quote, unquote, help inside these countries. Right. So if you don't support the war in Iran, you don't support funding it, you don't support the troops, and you somehow are turning your back on the Iranian people. No, we have to take that back. And we've already talked about why we shouldn't fund this war, but we shouldn't give in to the lie that bombing a country is somehow intended to be helping those people. You're setting Iran back a generation with the scale of destruction that we're seeing in Iran. And you're certainly not doing anything that feels designed to lead to some kind of peaceful transition to a different kind of regime.

Tommy Vietor (31:43)

No, it feels like we are. All signs point to escalation. Okay, we are gonna take a quick break, but as you all know, November is gonna decide the control of Congress. And if Trump keeps a Republican trifecta and can evade all accountability, winning back the House is the fastest way to put a real check on Trump's abuses and the Republicans enabling him. It's time to go on offense. So we, the listeners of this show, the listeners to POD Save America, you are some of the most engaged communities of volunteers and donors and candidates. And Vote Save America will give you the best ways to spend your time, your money, and your attention. Vote Save America will provide you tips on how to donate, where to donate, how to make sure your money goes the furthest how to talk to people in your life about the midterms, big issues, opportunities to take action, and much, much more. 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Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and Save more than 50%@SelectQuote.com World Save more than 50% on term life insurance@SelectQuote.com World Go today to get started. SelectQuote.com World. Okay, let's talk about the resignation of this top Trump official named Joe Kennedy Kent. So Kent was the head of the National Counterterrorism center or nctc. That is a very big job. You report to the Director of National Intelligence. So Tulsi Gabbard in this case. But like you have a huge counterterrorism responsibility and you have a seat at the table in like the biggest policy meetings as you often do a lay down of kind of like the threat. So he was a very senior person. In his resignation letter to Trump, Kent says the following things. These are quotes, quote Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. High ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America first platform and sowed pro war sentiment to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and you should strike now. There was a clear path to victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic that Israel used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war. Okay, so that's the end of quoting. Let's unpack those claims a bit bit and then contextualize who Kent is. So the first claim there, to me, Ben, is by far the most important point, which is Kent had access in that role to the crown jewels of American intelligence. And if he says Iran posed no imminent threat, that is very significant, and I think we should believe him. Then we get to the Israel bucket of claims, and I think it gets a lot more complicated. So clearly Netanyahu pushed for war with Iran. It seems unequivocally true that the timing of the war was due to Israel wanting to strike, like Marco Rubio said as much, but also like Israeli officials did do a PR campaign in the US to put political pressure on Trump, as they did to Obama and other presidents before. I think it's bullshit to say Israel deceived Trump. Like, Trump's a big boy. He can make his own decisions. Right? Like, it's also. And then it gets crazier. Like it's crazy to blame Israel for the Iraq war. That was a Bush Cheney joint. Netanyahu lobbied for it. Right. We've all seen the clip of him before US Congress. But absolving the US Government of agency or blame for Iraq is nuts, and no one should believe that. And there's another important biopoint just that's worth mentioning. So Kent served in the US military. He did 11 combat tours, mostly in Iraq. He reportedly also worked as a CIA paramilitary officer, and his late wife was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in January of 2019. He refers to that in the letter by saying he, quote, lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel. Now, I don't know if he's saying Israel manufactured like the General War on Terror or the war in Syria specifically. Either way, it is baseless and wrong to blame Israel. On top of that, Kent has a bunch of relationships with white nationalist writers and media figures like Nick Fuentes. He's parroted Russian talking points about Ukraine. He defended January 6th like I could go on forever. So, long story short, I'm not a fan of this guy, but it's hard for me to get past him completely rebuking the idea that Iran posed an imminent threat because all publicly available information suggests that is the case. And this guy had access to the most sensitive intelligence in the entire US Government, and he believes so too.

Ben Rhodes (39:02)

Yeah, that part is quite obvious. I mean, Iran did not pose an imminent threat. They have not produced any information whatsoever to suggest that they did. Nor can they describe what the imminent threat was. Trump said, we're gonna get a nuclear weapon in two weeks or something. Totally bonkers. I think there are a few pieces of this that you have to take in isolation because like you said, Joe Kent is a complicated character. First, let's just actually talk for a second about homeland defense and counterintelligence. So the National Counterterrorism center was created after 911 to be the place where you connected the dots, where all the different intelligence about terrorism came together in one center. So you didn't miss plots, right? This was how 911 happened, is the CIA knew things and the FBI knew things. And if anybody had put that together, we probably would have foiled that plot. The reason I say that is because, look, we've read and heard about the chaos at the FBI where you've had a purging of officials, including people with counterterrorism experience. Kash Patel is more interested in shotgunning beers in the locker room at a hockey game than protecting America. NCTC now is leaderless.

Tommy Vietor (40:08)

Did you see the photos of Cash Patel with the UFC fighters at the training at Quantico and his tailor made

Ben Rhodes (40:15)

shoes that had the Cash slogan with the, you know, dollar sign on it?

Tommy Vietor (40:19)

And he's wearing these yellow shoes that have his personal logo on it, like this Cash thing, it's the number nine because he's the ninth FBI director. There's a Punisher logo on the back, like he is literally is like a teenage boy designed his own shoes on a Nike website and then wore them to be around the cool fighters. Sorry, that's an aside, but I just could not believe what a fucking loser that guy is.

Ben Rhodes (40:41)

But the reason it's relevant, Tommy, is that we are poised to be in a period where the homeland threat against the United States is going to be incredibly high because Iran may want to carry out attacks on the US homeland. There's probably increased anger at the United States for all manner of things, including the wars we've launched in the Middle East. And at that time, DHS is leaderless and has become an immigration deportation machine. The FBI is led by a fucking moron wearing personally branded shoes and NCTC is leaderless. Like that's a huge problem. And so if there's terrorist attacks at home, don't forget that right now, at a period of heightened threat, we have no permanent leader of dhs, nctc, and we've got a clown running the FBI. So that's just dangerous. Then on. On Kent's kind of claims, I. I do think it's important, as someone who's spent a lot of time in the. The. The MAGA airwaves to just try to understand what's going on there. There is truth and then there's falsehood. Right. It is undeniable that Bibi Netanyahu wanted the United States to do this. I mean, it's absurd to me that this should actually not be controversial. Like, Bibi wanted him to do this, Trump to do this. He wanted past presidents to do this. It is also undeniable that AIPAC has been supportive of whatever Bibi Netanyahu wanted. Look, Tommy, when we were in the Obama administration, one of the things used to drive Obama crazy is the AIPAC people come see him and say that we want to know that you have kishkas. You know, this kind of Yiddish.

Tommy Vietor (42:11)

I was thinking about that today. Rahm used to be like, you have to feel it in your kishkas.

Ben Rhodes (42:14)

Yeah. But the kishkas they were talking about was to bomb Iran.

Tommy Vietor (42:18)

Oh, nice.

Ben Rhodes (42:18)

Like, it wasn't subtle. Like, we don't know that you have it in you to bomb Iran. This is so people do no service by pretending. Like I get. And we'll get to the darker places Joe Kent goes that are deeply anti Semitic. But if you try to pretend like Israel had nothing to do with us going to war or that AIPAC did not support this war.

Tommy Vietor (42:41)

Yeah, you look ridiculous.

Ben Rhodes (42:42)

You would lose your credibility to then say that these other things that Joe Kent said are not true or anti Semitic. Like, we have to be able to accept two things at once. That Israel pushed hard for this. That Bibi Netanyahu pushed hard for this. That I cannot imagine. Put it this way, Tommy. If Bibi wasn't pushing for this, would we have done it?

Tommy Vietor (43:03)

No. And we know that because he didn't want us to do it a couple months ago because we didn't have enough posture and forces in the region to defend him.

Ben Rhodes (43:10)

Yeah. So now to the problematic part. I hate how these MAGA people, People act like Trump was who they said is a strong man on everything on this one. Where it becomes anti Semitic is. It's like. It's not just that Bibi pushed for this. It's that somehow Trump was, like, lobotomized and became like a maturing candidate, a robot of the Israeli. No, that's where it gets crazy. The idea that they cannot Accept that their guy, Trump. Trump is the one who did this. No one is more responsible for this than Trump, not even Netanyahu, because Trump could have said no to Netanyahu. So that's where they lose me, where it's like, we're going to be intellectually honest up until we have to confront the thing that we're uncomfortable with, which is that Donald Trump did this. And then you get to. Yes. Joe Kent, like, takes this to the far extreme. I think that point about Syria is that every war that's happened in the Middle east is all part of. Of this Israeli design. And there's an Israeli hand behind every one of these wars, which, again, that's where Joe Kent loses his credibility. Right. Because there's not an evidentiary basis for that either. We have to be able to kind of find the truth in this kind of cesspool of people that some people who don't want to acknowledge that BB had anything to do with this, and some people who want to make it about world Jewry. No, there's a truth that is very clear about what happened.

Tommy Vietor (44:35)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (44:36)

Now, to your point, I do think MAGA is about to have a big crack up on this.

Tommy Vietor (44:39)

Yeah. Look, I saw some Democrats saying, don't share Kent's message. He's the wrong messenger. Don't elevate this guy. I'm like, I just. I disagree completely. There's no such thing as a right messenger. This guy will reach people who are part of the MAGA base who will never, ever hear, who will not know that you or I exist, and then wouldn't listen to us if they did because of our backgrounds. And Kent might be.

Ben Rhodes (44:57)

Or they've watched nothing but Fox where they've been told there was an imminent threat.

Tommy Vietor (45:00)

Exactly.

Ben Rhodes (45:00)

Suddenly, Joe Ken says, and they're wasn't.

Tommy Vietor (45:02)

And like, I also noticed, you know, Tulsi Gabbard put out a tweet about Kent where she just was like, basically said that, you know, Trump is the commander in chief. He's responsible for determining what is and what is not an imminent threat. And he acted accordingly, which is neither. It's neither disagreeing with Kent nor affirming the Iran policy, which just makes me wonder if she's living on borrowed time here. And then again, we just want to get back. We're going to get to this MAGA world stuff in a minute, but J.D. vance is trying to do this dance where he distances himself a bit from the Iran policy, but says enough trolly shit to keep Trump happy. And I just, I really don't think it's working, but I wonder what you think, Ben. So we edited together two of his answers about Iran recently. One is from Friday of last week, I believe, and then one I think was from Monday. Let's watch.

Ben Rhodes (45:53)

I'm not going to show up here

Tommy Vietor (45:54)

in front of God and everybody else tell you exactly what I said in that classified room. Partially because I don't want to go to prison and partially because I think it's important for the President of the

Ben Rhodes (46:04)

United States to be able to talk

Tommy Vietor (46:06)

to his advisors without those advisors running

Ben Rhodes (46:08)

their mouth to the American media. You're trying to drive a wedge between members of the administration, between me and the president.

Tommy Vietor (46:15)

What the President said consistently going back to 2015, and I agreed with him, is that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. One big difference, Phil, is that we have a smart president, whereas in the past we've had dumb presidents.

Ben Rhodes (46:26)

And I trust President Trump to get

Tommy Vietor (46:27)

the job done, to do a good job for the American people and to make sure that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated. He's just trying so hard to like, signal that he wasn't all in on this war. But also, as people have briefed that he told Trump to go big and he owns everything they're doing. I just like, it's, it, it's not working, buddy. I don't tell you, J.D.

Ben Rhodes (46:44)

he's full of shit. I mean, that's the main thing you take away from these things. He's clearly trying to have it both ways. Look, he's never had a problem coming out of meetings and telling people what his advice was to the President before. So it's not like he applies that standard across the board that I don't reveal my advice to the President. He does constantly. He doesn't want to do it on this one because either like he went along with the war or he argued against it, but doesn't have the gun guts to tell us that either one is not very flattering for J.D. vance. And the idea that he thinks he can absolve the consequences of this war by like winking at maga, he's not gonna be able to. He owns this and he's never gonna be able to come out and fully throated say it was wrong because he depends on Donald Trump for his political survival. So you're watching J.D. vance's diminution as a political figure in real time because his identity doesn't work without opposition to forever wars. Like, it's central to him in a way. It's not to a Rubio. And so I think, you know, the, the, the air of the J.D. vance balloon is, is rapidly running out.

Tommy Vietor (47:47)

Yeah, I agree. The, the, the error is coming out of JD There a little bit. Okay, so let's talk about the MAGA media. Well, the media generally. So over on the kind of normal media side, we got FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatening networks that cover the war in ways that Trump doesn't like and, you know, threaten to revoke their licenses. So that's great. But the really interesting stuff, Ben, is happening in the MAGA media world. So we've talked previously about how some of the loudest opposition to the war with Iran has come from MAGA media folks. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's obviously a congresswoman, but now is just an outsider doing press. There's also more moderate voices like Joe Rogan who has spoken out. So here's a little taste of what they were saying about their opposition to the war, and then we'll come back and talk about what they've been saying since.

Ben Rhodes (48:30)

I think most people, no matter how

Tommy Vietor (48:32)

they feel about Israel, whether they love

Ben Rhodes (48:34)

it or hate it or it doesn't matter. It's nothing to do with this specific country. It has to do with any country that might be leading us around, particularly to our destruction and putting its interests before ours.

Megyn Kelly (48:44)

If you want to bet on the future of the Republican Party and keeping people in it, you would side with the isolationists, because there is not a person under the age of 40 who's a voting Republican who's in favor of

Tommy Vietor (48:55)

this just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars and these stupid, senseless wars. And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it.

Kim Gaddis (49:11)

Trump has betrayed every last single one of us. Okay? Make no mistake about that. Trump is now a never Trumper. The very people that we had to fight to get Trump into office. He is now partnered with and insulting us, and he thinks that we're too stupid to notice or something.

Tommy Vietor (49:30)

So it's an interesting range of criticism there, right? Like Tucker's talking about Israel. Megyn Kelly's just making a case for isolationism. You got Rogan being like, no one voted for this. And then Candace Owens is like, the Jews and the frankist cults are running American foreign policy. But now is where it gets fun. So the kind of one of the loudest pro Iran war, pro Netanyahu voices has been a guy named Mark Levin. He's on Fox News. And Levin has gone super hard at critics of the war, especially Tucker Carlson. He's also gone hard at Megyn Kelly for questioning the war and the fight between these groups finally erupted. So here's Megyn Kelly talking about her back and forth with Mark Levin and Donald Trump weighing in. Let's watch.

Megyn Kelly (50:15)

Since October of this year, he has been coming for me relentlessly. I mean relentlessly, in the most vile and disgusting personal terms possible. Finally, I had enough. And I tweeted at Mark Levin this weekend, something to the effect of I'm very sorry about his micro penis, which I really enjoyed. I mean, I thankfully have never had to look at it firsthand, but you can just tell. And really, we should be feeling sorry for Mark Levin. We should be comforting him because that's got to be really tough. He actually ran to the President of the United States. He ran to Donald Trump and had Trump send out a nice tweet about him last night overnight. And it was a ridiculous tweet for which now the President is getting blowback because he does not have his finger on the pulse of where his party is right now, which is very unusual for Trump. When they go low, we go micro penis.

Tommy Vietor (51:15)

If only Michelle Obama could have known that her line would be invoked like that. So, Ben, I will be the first to say the Candace. Okay. And is a crazy person and an anti Semite. But I do think it's worth reflecting on the fact that the isolationist side is winning and the side criticizing Israel is winning. There was some polling out earlier this week that shows US views on Israel have changed dramatically since 2023. That includes a nine point decrease in the percentage of Republicans who have a favorable view of Israel. Favorable views of Israel are down 21 points with Democrats and 19 points with independence. So, like, that all just makes this kind of battle for the future of MAGA so interesting. And I think, as you've said previously on this show, like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, they're also looking at audience data, right? Like they know what's resonating and getting clicks and getting downloads. And it might be for bad reasons, but like, they follow that lead.

Ben Rhodes (52:05)

Well, I think that the important point here is that what we're seeing is about the future of maga, not even the present of maga.

Tommy Vietor (52:13)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (52:13)

You know, some people pointed to this fact that, that if you look at the polling around the Iran war, after the war started, some Republicans and MAGA voters kind of came home.

Tommy Vietor (52:24)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (52:25)

That's not surprising.

Tommy Vietor (52:26)

Most people don't talk that deeply about stuff. They're full of whatever.

Ben Rhodes (52:29)

They like Trump, so I'll go along with Trump or they watch Fox. These people, Tucker in particular, are kind of at the vanguard, to use a term, of where MAG is to going. It doesn't matter if it's only a smaller percentage. It's where the energy is flowing. It's certainly where the younger people are going. If you look at the numbers on support for Israel, the only demographic that is staying firm in support for Israel are Republicans over the age of 50. The younger people get in Maga, the more they don't like the war and the more they want to rethink the relationship to Israel. Tucker gets that. Megyn Kelly is following Tucker's lead on that. Candace Owens has built a huge audience on a bunch of things, including this, but also on just conspiracy theory. And I do think that there's a sense that this is a betrayal of something fundamental to maga. This, you know, immigration. No forever wars, and kind of upending the elites. That was the core MAGA project. And so he's betrayed a core promise. And you know, Candace said that never Trump thing, that Trump's become never Trumper, as much as Candace is a lunatic. The point there, that's interesting to me is that this is not a case where some other people in MAGA got Trump to do something that another faction of MAGA didn't want to do. The people that wanted Trump to do this were not maga. And so if you take Lindsey Graham, I think that for a long time MAGA kind of was entertained by the Lindsey Graham Trump friendship, in part because they hated Lindsey Graham. And it was kind of funny to them that Trump seemed to carry Lindsey Graham's balls around in his pocket and Lindsey Graham just kissed his ass. Sorry for that imagery.

Tommy Vietor (54:10)

It works.

Ben Rhodes (54:11)

But now the appearance is that Lindsey Graham just got Donald Trump to do

Tommy Vietor (54:14)

something and brags about it in the Wall Street Journal.

Ben Rhodes (54:16)

Brags about it, yeah. So I think this is a big problem. And I would not, if I were Donald Trump, take comfort in the polling that shows that a lot of MAGA people approve of this. Cuz I think Tucker is looking past Trump, who's gonna take the mantle? And you don't see anybody, whether it's J.D. vance, Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, the people that are thinking about, how do I have the audience after Trump, none of them are betting that Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham are where that's gonna go.

Tommy Vietor (54:47)

No, Mark Levin is not the future. It's Candace owens doing a 12 part series that Sarah Netanyahu was born a dude or something like that. That's where we all have to look forward to. Ben, last thing on this. Just the dumbest neocons I've noticed have been coming out of the woodwork to support the war. Bush propagandist turned Saudi employee Ari Fleischer.

Ben Rhodes (55:06)

Oh, this is amazing.

Tommy Vietor (55:08)

So he complained that, quote, today's media cheer against the US Overstate enemy abilities understate ours and paint a picture that the US Is losing while we are winning. And then he posted an article from 2001 from the New York Times where I think it was R.W. apple. The author talked about concern that Afghanistan could turn into a quagmire, like Vietnam. Ben, what happened in Afghanistan after that?

Ben Rhodes (55:31)

It turned into a quagmire that was longer.

Tommy Vietor (55:33)

Much longer. Right? Yeah, we were there for 20 years.

Ben Rhodes (55:36)

It's such an amazing window into the country. Kind of paranoid mindset of these guys because if you want to be generous to him, he's kind of not denying that that happened. He's suggesting that it happened because people in the media said it would happen, that everything would have been fine in Afghanistan if RW Apple didn't write that there would be a quagmire, that, that somehow created the quagmire. And this is kind of a weird part of the kind of right wing authoritarian mindset, which is that if bad things happen because of what we do, who, it's, it's not our fault, it's because of the media. Like, like writing about the bad things that happened. You know, it's. That's what's scary about it to me.

Tommy Vietor (56:14)

It was crazy. I mean, yeah, he like made like three points and none of them made sense. He was like. And then after this article was written, Cobble fell. But it's like, hey, buddy, again, fast forward to Kabul falling again to the Taliban. The other one I just want to quickly flag, Ben, was a post from Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich tweeted an article that said instead of fighting over the Strait of Hormuz, we should cut a new channel to the Persian Gulf. I think kind of through Oman. Here's how he described it. This is from Newt Gingrich. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you've got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks. There was a community note on his tweet that said this proposal originates from a satirical article. Published the same day, presented as a humorous open letter with a disclaimer that its views, quote, do not necessarily represent those of anyone with brain cells. So that was the speaker of the House for a while.

Ben Rhodes (57:05)

Well, not only that, this was a man who was held up as kind of the intellectual. Yeah, big time.

Tommy Vietor (57:10)

Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (57:10)

I mean seriously, like if you know those of you not old enough to remember these days, he was this professor and he was this intellect and he, you know, we were supposed to take him seriously. We are like, I've learned that these are the dumbest fucking people imaginable that have been like driving this country to the far right.

Donald Trump (57:26)

Right.

Ben Rhodes (57:28)

I mean, I don't need to get into why nuclear explosions are not the answer to the Strait of Hormuz, but Newt doesn't seem to get that.

Tommy Vietor (57:35)

Yeah, I think the Omanis might not appreciate a bunch of nuclear detonations. So a couple more things on Iran. So there, there's this op ed in, in Al Jazeera of all places that has been making the rounds in dc. I got it sent to me a bunch of times. I don't know if you did too, Ben.

Ben Rhodes (57:47)

I did too.

Tommy Vietor (57:47)

It makes the case that the war in Iran is going really well and I thought it would be worth trying to like steel man the argument and like take it on seriously. It's by a guy named Muhammad Saloom. I think he seems to have worked in like the intel world now as a, it's a long piece so I can't do it all but I'm trying to summarize it in like a good faith way and get your reaction. So he argues the following. Like when you look at Iran's ballistic missiles, their nuclear infrastructure and their military, it is being systematically degraded and destroyed after decades of the US allowing it to build up. So that's an important correction in his view. He says that phase two of the world will be taken out Iran's industrial base, so the missile production facilities, the nuclear facilities and basically set them back to square one. He argues that that the pre bombing status quo for Iran's nuclear program was unsustainable and that Iran was basically just being allowed to like constantly inch towards getting a nuclear weapon. And that weakness is what led to this moment where we had to deal with it militarily. He concedes that the argument for a nuclear deterrent will be strengthened, not weakened by the military conflict. Like if you're Iran, Iran will probably want to get a bomb, but says that's an argument for a quote, a comprehensive post conflict Diplomatic architecture, not arguments against the military campaign itself. He argues that closing the Strait of Hormuz hurts Iran the most financially and also hurts their relationship with China, while its capacity to close the strait is also being steadily degraded. And he says that this war is going to kill off Iran's ability to have a proxy network. And quote, what the critics described as an expanding regional war is better understood as the death spasm of a proxy architecture. Who's authorizing center has been shattered. He says the disarmament Iran is like, that's happening now is similar to what allies did to Germany in 1944 and 45, which is a prelude to a post conflict framework that does not yet exist in public. A verification regime, a diplomatic settlement, or a sustained enforcement posture. Basically, he's saying like, look, there's no diplomatic framework to end the war that is public yet, but that doesn't mean the military campaign is failing. I'll stop there. What do you make of that claim and why do you think this is gaining so much currency in dc?

Ben Rhodes (59:54)

First of all, it's funny that the very people sharing this are often people who say, don't listen to Al Jazeera.

Tommy Vietor (59:59)

Yeah, I noticed that too.

Ben Rhodes (60:01)

I think the fundamental flaw with this is that he is kind of accepting the premise that you can measure a war based on the amount of things that you're destroying. And so to me, there are two questions related to that. Okay, let's take him at his word that Iran's ballistic missiles will be significantly set back. Their ability to manufacture ballistic missiles will be set back, their nuclear program will be set back significantly. We'll see if there's a ground operation to get nuclear fuel out of Iran. There are two questions, though. One, was it worth all this? So before even what happens after the war, was just setting back their ballistic missile program, nuclear program, worth all this death, all this violence, all this global economic disruption, all this uncertainty, all the geopolitical changes that could come from this that are not good. But second, even more importantly, time doesn't stop. Iran will rebuild its ballistic missile capabilities. Iran will want a nuclear weapon and it might take a little longer. But if this regime survives, you have to think, think that they're going to be more hell bent on some kind of deterrent. And he kind of gives away the game with the Germany reference. We occupied Germany fully and carved it into four zones and ran the place like if we're not, you cannot do that from the air. You cannot engineer a political transition from the air. And so if you get a regime Implosion. I actually think that's worse for the Iranian people in the region because you could get a civil war that draws in the neighbors, you get refugee flows. You could have tens of thousands of people die, like, so. The problem with it is the article only makes sense if you look at Iran as like a spreadsheet of ballistic missiles, ballistic missile launchers, nuclear fuel, and ignore the entire political dynamic around it on the back end of the war, nevermind the cost of doing all this and whether is this how we want to spend tens of billions of dollars and all this time. So it's a good steel man for what's working, but all that's working is destruction. There's no political strategy, there's no geopolitical strategy. And even in the piece, the only nod he can make is to some secret plan that is akin to post war Germany, which again, was a much different scenario.

Tommy Vietor (62:16)

Yeah, he keeps kind of like yada, yada, yada, ing this diplomatic framework that would be needed. But again, like, how are you going to get them to agree to that? Are you going to do a ground evasion? Are you going to fully occupy them?

Ben Rhodes (62:27)

Yeah. Is the IRGC going to agree to that also?

Tommy Vietor (62:29)

I think it kind of, it ignores the, the, the impact now. Like, the biggest winner of this war is, is Russia.

Ben Rhodes (62:35)

Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (62:36)

The price of oil is way up. Russia's making more money. The Financial Times says they're making another $150 million per day because prices are up. Trump temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil, ostensibly to lower prices, but that hasn't even worked. The US And Israel are blowing up so many missile defense, interceptor missiles that there's no chance we'll give Ukraine anymore. And any hope for these peace talks that you might have had. Look, I think Witkoff and Jared Kushner are hapless idiots and they were not going to, you know, get a peace deal. But Putin is completely pulled out of any talks now. Like, there's no chance of anything happening on the diplomatic front. The other place that's benefiting enormously is North Korea. So the, the U.S. is pulling missile defense systems out of South Korea. We're putting them in the Middle East. And then North Korea over the weekend tested rocket launchers that can fire tactical nuclear weapons. So that doesn't feel good for us. And also the Chinese are watching us pull, you know, missile defense assets out of South Korea. That, by the way, when we put them in South Korea, the Chinese flipped their shit and they imposed all these economic consequences on the South Koreans. And now we're just rat South Koreans by pulling these things out again. And they too are watching the US Burn through its stockpile of interceptor missiles and T lambs and things we would use in a conflict, conflict with China, and also eviscerate any moral authority that the US Might have had to rally the world around stopping an invasion of Taiwan. So, like, there's a lot of unintended consequences here.

Ben Rhodes (64:02)

Well, this is the thing. And you asked, why is this getting currency in D.C. it's because people in D.C. love the fallacy that the United States controls events in the world and that we alone are the actor. And so they love the narrative of that. No, no, no. Look, our military is capable of destroying their ballistic missile launchers and their drone capabilities and assassinating their leaders and setting back their nuclear program. And they're looking in a narrow tunnel at these kind of outputs in Iran as proof that the United States is controlling events in the world because we're destroying all these things inside of Iran. If you step back and you say, well, yes, but wait a second. What if Russia is getting enormous benefits from this war, economic and geopolitical? What if the Gulf states are going to turn away from the United States towards China and Russia for their security potentially in the future? What if North Korea acts on a South Korea or China acts on a Taiwan? What about the American people losing even more confidence in their government? What about the tens of billions of dollars that we had to spend on a war that didn't need to be fought? D.C. doesn't like to look at all of that. The Blob doesn't like to look at all that. They love to show up and brag about how many fucking ballistic missiles they destroyed in Iran, never mind that they made everything else in the world worse.

Tommy Vietor (65:14)

And by the way, if you look at polling and you want to look at arguments against the war, the that pulls through the roof is the argument that we should not be spending billions of dollars on weapons. We're spending like a billion a day or something like that. We should be spending on literally anything else. Education, jobs, like, whatever it is, voters hate it. But you're right. The DC Blob views it very differently. World is brought to you by Quinn Quince. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last, that's where Quince shines. They get premium fabrics, considered design and everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable even as the seasons change. Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that lasts. Lightweight cashmere sweaters short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos, linen bottoms and shorts. They got tees and 100% Pima cotton and European jersey linen. 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The claim is that Hamine has been in a long term sexual relationship with either his childhood tutor or someone that worked for the family. The, the least believable part of this article is that Hamini made sexual overtures to people caring for him after he was hurt in an airstrike, like because he was drugged up or something. It just doesn't really track to me that you could have your foot blown off in an airstrike. Like Pete Hegseth keeps saying he's like incapacitated, but he's like hitting on his nurse. I'm not sure that that works. The story describes Ham and is the power behind the robes hopefully more powerful than Mark Levin and claims the intel was quote, derived from one of the most protected sources that the government has. There's also like been some traffic in WikiLeaks from 2008 about hominy maybe getting treatment for impotence in the UK and you know, this broader sort of belief that he was not the one and he was not the. His father, Habane's father did not want him to take over for him, but that, you know, for whatever reasons. So Ben, who knows if this is remotely true though. I was reminded last night when I was researching all of this that the CIA constantly floats theories like this that autocrats the US wants to topple or like bad guys we don't like are gay. The Washington Post back in the day reported that the CIA considered releasing a fake video that was supposed to be of Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenage boy. That was. They thought that would work somehow. They apparently did film a fake video of a fake Osama bin Laden bragging about gay conquests and they thought about leaking that one. There was something, you know, in the Advocate about gay porn at Gaddafi's house at one point. Like, none of this is very subtle. I doubt it's particularly effective either. But I'm sure, you know, the Trump White House is quite satisfied with. You saw their, their Stephen Chung, their press guy, like giddily retweeting it.

Ben Rhodes (70:08)

Yeah, but it's, but if you wanted to have an information operation, which again, I don't think we should in this space. I don't know why denigrating people on their sexuality is a space that the United States should be in. But you would do it subtly. Like it would be appear in some regional publication, like going to the New York Post.

Tommy Vietor (70:29)

Yeah, Page Six doesn't do it.

Ben Rhodes (70:30)

So freaking transparent. I mean, you might as well put it in like the Free Beacon or something. I mean, the idea that the New York Post is it the vanguard of coverage of the intelligence community and has gotten this secret through its sources. No. Someone called and was like, hey, we got a fun one for you. Why don't you write this? And we told Trump and he laughed. So it kind of fits with the kind of war porn that they put out in the sense that it's almost like they're entertaining themselves because this is not gonna have an impact inside of Iran. It just feels like, like they, it's a chum in the water for, for them to be entertained, which is kind of part of what's so chilling about this. I, I, I don't know what the fuck Khamenei's sexuality is. I will say this, though, again. I believe that actually he wouldn't have been chosen. And, and, and that shows the failure of the policy because he is a tool of the irgc. That's all he is right now. Like, he, he's, he's the Supreme Leader in name. Doesn't matter how injured he is. The IRGC is running the show down there.

Tommy Vietor (71:32)

Do you think any of the libs are reading this? And they're like, more LGBT theocrats. Remember the famous female.

Ben Rhodes (71:39)

That's the thing. They see their culture wars as global and like, I don't really care to make our culture wars dumb enough at home.

Tommy Vietor (71:45)

Also, Ben, I do want you to know that there was a draft intro to this section written by someone on our team who wanted me to read the following. Well, Ben, as you're so fond of saying, Trump 2.0 has been an absolute banner era for the sinister homosexuals of the world.

Ben Rhodes (72:00)

Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vietor (72:01)

You wanted me to put that quote in your mouth, and I didn't do it.

Ben Rhodes (72:04)

Thank you for that because I love you. Yeah, this is talking about a multiple

Tommy Vietor (72:08)

minefields, but we are raising the pride flag here at Crooked HQ for Mustaba host. Okay, let's turn to Cuba. Well, you'll do one fun thing then. We're out. And we'll get to Ben's interview. So Cuba remains in crisis. There was the total blackout across the island on Monday. The Cuban electrical grid has been shaky and subject to blackouts or brownouts for a while, but, but the full black outcomes of the US has been enforcing an energy embargo on the island since January. That includes cutting off all oil from Venezuela and shipments from Mexico. So it's very dire. Life is intolerable for the average person. No refrigeration, there's no trash collection. It's all in the streets because the garbage trucks don't have gas. There are thousands of surgical procedures have been postponed, and there are growing protest movements. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has been in talks with the Cubans. Mainly it's Marco Rubio talking to Raul Castro's grandson, who was also named Raul and apparently nicknamed the Crab or Ralito. So the New York Times said that the US Wants President Diaz Canal to be ousted as a precondition for resetting relations with the. With the US Trump was asked about all things Cuba Monday. Here's his incredibly weird, ominous reply. Let's watch. When you say Cuba is next. Cuba is Cuba. Whatever you do with the military there, it seems like something. Will that look more like Iran or Venezuela?

Donald Trump (73:25)

Can't tell you that. I can tell you that they're talking to us. It's a failed nation. They have no money, they have no oil, they have no nothing. They have nice land, they have nice landscape. But. But I think Cuba see the end. You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States do it? I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be good. That's a big honor, taking Cuba. Taking Cuba in some form. Yeah.

Tommy Vietor (73:59)

It's like. He sounds like a comic book villain. Like, it's. I mean, do you think that rhetoric will make it even harder to get a deal done? Or is Cuba just so, like, decimated that they're just going to be forced at gunpoint to do something?

Ben Rhodes (74:13)

I mean, first, on his rhetoric, it's outrageous. And we should not be desensitized to the fact that he's talking about pure colonization. Like, I'm gonna take Cuba. Like, this is imperial shit. Right?

Tommy Vietor (74:26)

It's great land.

Ben Rhodes (74:28)

And this is the third country this calendar year, Tommy. It is March 17, and he's talking about the third government he's going to oust. Like, I don't know, like, who needs to wake up to the fact that an authoritarian leader launching war after war and replacing government after government has historical echoes? They're not good echoes because they continue. And never mind that. It's just wrong. We don't colonize countries. We shouldn't. I guess we do now, but we shouldn't. That's no way to kind of enter into a negotiation. Now, on the negotiation itself, Part of what is so interesting to me about this is that Diaz Canal is not a very important figure in Cuba. I know it sounds ridiculous. He's the president of the country, but nobody's ever seen him as the actual leader of the country. Right. When I negotiated, Raul Castro was transitioning to Diaz Canal. And I met Raul Castro, I met his son, I met the foreign minister. I met lots of people. I never met Diaz Canal. And he was often described by Cuban analysts and some Cubans as kind of a frontman, an apparatchik. Right. The guy who got the job because he was not going to challenge anybody else's power. Raul Castro still has some power, even though he's in his 90s. The military has a lot of power. So I don't know. This isn't even like negotiating, getting rid of Maduro and replacing him with Delsey Rodriguez. Maduro was actually the leader of that regime. So I guess the Cubans might. I can see why some of the Cubans might be like, sure, we'll get rid of Diaz Canal, but that's the Cubans wanting to not change the regime. If Trump wants to take Cuba, like, he'll need more. I've seen thus far the Cubans release some political prisoners. Maybe they put Diaz Canal on the table in some fashion, but what they're trying to negotiate is we stay in power and nothing really changes, but we give you some symbolic win, and maybe we let you develop some real estate down here. That's probably what the Cubans are aiming for. Trump seems to be aiming for something more, and I think he needs more pushback. He needs to feel more pushback. It's not okay that we're starving an island. People are dying, dying because of American sanctions. People are dying. If you have blackouts like this and people can't get food and people can't get medical care because the power shut off, that's the scale of what is happening in Cuba right now. It is tantamount to an act of war to kind of completely blockade a place to the point that the power grid goes down.

Tommy Vietor (76:52)

Yeah. They're trying to turn it into Haiti. It is unconscionable, and it just seems to be. I mean, people are so distracted by what's happening in Iran and everywhere else that it just sort of happens, happening. Finally, Ben, it's a bittersweet day here at pod. Save the World, because we are bidding goodbye, at least for now, to a show. Favorite listeners have probably heard us talk about Rick Grinnell, a living, breathing Twitter troll turned diplomat. Rick was kind of a reject toy in the Bush administration. Then he found favor with Trump. He was US Ambassador to Germany, where he managed to make basically every German political party hate him. He served in some weird special envoy role to Serbia and Kosovo for a minute Senate. He was Director of National Intelligence at the end of the first Trump term, which is terrifying. And then for Trump, 2.0. Grinnell made a very hard play to become Secretary of State, and it did not end well. Apparently, Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff, cannot stand Rick Cornell because he's a. And he screamed at her. So Trump made him like a special envoy to Venezuela, but he got crosswise on policy with Rubio and ultimately that job up so badly that we toppled and invaded the government of Venezuela. That's probably more, you know, correlation than causation, but, you know, roll with me here. And then Trump installed him as head of the Kennedy center, but Cornell apparently fucked that up, too, because the place is now closed for two years. No one would play there. And Cornell just got pushed out of that job, too. So we hope this is not goodbye. It's more of a see you later. But any final thoughts on his 10?

Ben Rhodes (78:23)

I just always knew of his long standing and deep passion for the arts, Tommy. And so to see him lose this premier platform to advance his interest in opera and performance arts in this country is just heartbreaking. I will say that the serious lesson to take away is whenever something like this happens, you're reminded that no matter how far you wedge your head up Trump's ass, like the bus is going to roll over you at some point. I hope that's a lesson that people take from this, because this guy was out there doing Stop the steal press conferences with Rudy Giuliani in the final dead enders after January 6th. He was down there kissing the ring at Mar a Lago. He was trolling every Trump adversary. He was trying to do corrupt business deals with Jared Kushner in Serbia. That deal fell apart, by the way. So pour one out for that.

Tommy Vietor (79:13)

Where they were going to do an apology for the NATO mission, which is endlessly funny.

Ben Rhodes (79:18)

And now we can kind of go back to being a lonely Twitter troll. So good luck. Back to who he really is. Maybe back to, you know.

Tommy Vietor (79:26)

Yeah, I was rereading some of the stories about Grinnell. I didn't. I'd forgotten that he floated himself as vice president. There was one of the articles a

Ben Rhodes (79:36)

little too close to the Sun. Did Rick.

Tommy Vietor (79:37)

A little bit. Yeah, it's amazing when someone is just such an asshole that Trump like talks about it very publicly. He's like, I got a lot of little rough, Rick, you're a little rough. There's this. One of the stories, I think it was the Times linked to an Instagram post of these absolutely insane, vicious, over the top emails he sent to a like finger style guitar player who is scheduled just to play at the Kennedy center, who asked some basic questions. Just like this guy was on Tilting Everybody. Yeah.

Ben Rhodes (80:04)

And it's just a terrible person.

Tommy Vietor (80:05)

It just did not work. But we wish him the best of luck. Maybe you can come on the show if you're in la.

Ben Rhodes (80:10)

No, he'll be back like arguing with you on Twitter.

Tommy Vietor (80:12)

Yeah, he'll be, he'll be back on online. Okay, we're going to take a break, but when we come back, you're going to hear Ben's conversation with Kim Gattis about the massive war and displacement happening in Lebanon. So stick around for that.

Donald Trump (80:29)

Pot.

Tommy Vietor (80:29)

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Ben Rhodes (82:00)

Yeah.

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Ben Rhodes (84:07)

Okay. We're very pleased to welcome back to pod Save the World. Kim Gaddis, who is an analyst, author and longtime journalist based in Beirut. She spent more than two decades covering the Middle East. She is now a contributing writer for the Atlantic, a contributing editor for the Financial Times, and the author of Black Wave, which we definitely recommend to people. Kim, thanks so much for joining us.

Kim Gaddis (84:30)

Thanks for having me, Ben.

Ben Rhodes (84:31)

So I understand that you recently left Beirut and you know, there's a lot to get into in terms of the dynamics inside of Lebanon. But just to begin with, what was it like, you know, recently when you were there and how do you describe kind of what's unfolded in the last several days?

Kim Gaddis (84:53)

So I, I do want to clarify that I left because this is a pre planned trip and I'm always very careful to emphasize that because friends in Lebanon or acquaintances or people who follow my work worry a lot if they see me leaving the country. So I want to emphasize that it's a pre planned trip because I have to go teach at university in the United States and I had to make a detour through Europe to pick up my visa because the US Embassy in Beirut closed already at the end of February. And so we've been living with the tension of the military buildup. And I was fairly convinced that there would be a war, that the negotiations would not go anywhere for Lebanon. There is a real sense of trauma being revived, of layers of ptsd, of exhaustion. Because, Ben, the last time you and I spoke was just before the last war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024. That was a devastating conflict coming a year after a year of war in Gaza after the massacre of October 7th. And Lebanon's just been in this replay mode of war in a country that has seen so much war already, whose economy has barely recovered from the financial crisis of 2019, 2020, we now have almost a million refugees displaced internally. That's a fourth or a fifth of the country's population. And this puts a huge toll on resources, on families, on the government, on NGOs that really cannot cope with this renewed conflict. I also want to just point out one more thing, Ben, is that since the ceasefire in November 2024, up until the conflict resumed, Israel continued to strike Lebanon regularly. There were over 2000 strikes on Lebanon during that time, which don't make headlines. And Hezbollah never responded. And so there is real anger in Lebanon today because as soon as Ali Khamenei was killed, Hezbollah, most likely in coordination with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, launched missiles at Israel to avenge the death of Khamenei. So you have the opponents of Hezbollah who are angry because they say, you know, what do we have to do with this? Why did you drag us into this war? And even amongst the supporter of Hezbollah, there are people who say you let 2000 attacks by Israel go by and you never decided to retaliate for that. But for the leader of Iran, you retaliate and you drag us into a war when we barely had time to recover from the last one.

Ben Rhodes (87:57)

Yeah, no, I think for people to. Who don't, you know, follow this as closely.

Donald Trump (88:00)

Right.

Ben Rhodes (88:00)

This was the separate ceasefire reached with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2024, which has been violated serially, as you describe. I want to get into what Hezbollah and Israel are doing. But. But just before that, I do want to ask you just one more question about the people of Lebanon. You referenced that almost a million people have been displaced. There are evacuation orders for a huge part of. Of southern Lebanon, from Israel, parts of southern Beirut. Where are these people going to go is my question. It's not like, you know, Lebanon's already a small country. It's already had to absorb refugees from Syria over the years and other places. It's not like there are other countries next door where people can. Where. Where are these million people going?

Kim Gaddis (88:52)

So they're going to other areas of. Of Beirut and of Lebanon, into the Shouf, into the Beqa Valley, into the north. The Lebanese government has opened hundreds of refugee centers and public schools, which brings up another problem. You know, kids can't go to public schools. Private schools are open. But as far as I understand, public schools have not been able to reopen. A lot of people are staying with relatives, with friends, with acquaintances. You know, people in Lebanon continue to be incredibly generous, opening their doors in villages. Those who can afford it have rented houses in other parts of Lebanon, have gone into hotels, or unfortunately, are sleeping on the street in the rain. It is pouring with rain in Lebanon. This is bringing up, you know, a lot of tension, also social tension, you know, amidst all this intense, you know, Lebanon is a pressure cooker. So there are, you know, inevitably, you know, local fights erupting. There is some anger in some parts of Lebanon towards those in the milieu of Hezbollah who may have become refugees. And in some places, they're not wanted because the responses. You brought this onto yourself and onto us. There are also, unfortunately, security concerns, because amongst the refugees, there are members of Hezbollah and of the irgc. And we have seen a few instances of targeted Israeli strikes in civilian areas well outside of the southern suburbs or areas where Hezbollah is, is dominant and where it was very clearly targeting IRGC members. For example, in a hotel on the seaside Cornish of Beirut, they had taken a hotel room and they were struck there. So this is a lot for a small country to manage.

Ben Rhodes (90:56)

And in terms of your assessment of what Israel is trying to accomplish, you know, from the Israeli side, what you hear is that they're trying to kind of destroy Hezbollah once and for all. They're issu of these ultimatums to the Lebanese government to kind of break from Hezbollah once and for all. At the same time, you know, I hear from a lot of people in the region who think that what Israel wants is actually to kind of permanently occupy and perhaps inevitably annex southern Lebanon, and that you even have some Israeli politicians, not necessarily Netanyahu, but people further to the right saying that, I mean, you, you can't know for sure which it is, but how do you assess the kind of, of spectrum of what the objectives may be for Israel between wanting to degrade Hezbollah to potentially wanting to hold territory?

Kim Gaddis (91:48)

It could be all of this, Ben, at this point, and I just want to rewind a little bit into history and say that Israel has tried this before. Pushing out the Palestinian Liberation Organization from Lebanon in 1982 with an invasion that went all the way up to Beirut with Ariel Sharon as Minister of Defense. You know, this is going to change the region. This is going to help us get rid of the PLO once and for all. This is going to bring Syria down on its knees and push Lebanon to sign a peace agreement with Israel. The PLO did leave and the Palestinian guerrillas did get on a boat, but instead we got Hezbollah and it went downhill from there. And it was, you know, when America became a target of bombing attacks in the Middle east with the Marine barracks bombing, of course, in 1983, and the US embassy bombing. Right now, I feel like we're just having a replay of this. And Israel has abandoned any pretense of trying for diplomacy or for deterrence. And it's just going for what they call mowing the grass. And they keep doing this again and again. And they may have tactical military victories, but they're not translating any of it over the last two years into diplomatic successes and real diplomatic engagement that can make this long lasting. What are they trying to do in Lebanon today? Mowing the grass again, degrading Hezbollah as much as possible, even though you know, they, they said that by the end of 2024, they had degraded Hezbollah down to, you know, at least 70, you know, up to 70%. And Israel accuses the Lebanese government of not having done enough in the year of the ceasefire to make sure that Hezbollah is fully degraded and disarmed. But of course, there are concerns in Lebanon that taking on Hezbollah, sending the Lebanese army to forcefully disarm Hezbollah, could lead to a civil war. So Israel's argument is, well, you know, the Lebanese government failed to do its job. We're going to do it. I think they also want to take parts of south Lebanon, maybe 5, 10 kilometers into the territory, establish a buffer zone. You know, hello, history. We've been there before with the buffer zone from 1982 to 2000, which, you know, did not protect northern Israel. I don't know if they want to go further into Lebanon, further than they had before. But what I think, and again, you know, who really knows? But from watching some of the military moves and from looking at the map and looking at what they've done already on the Syrian side outside of the Golan, they've expanded the buffer zone. They've taken Mount Hermon and then from there they can connect to the Beqa Valley and then take the rest of that border area along the border with Israel up until the Mediterranean Sea. So you have a neat sort of buffer zone that then connects with the West Bank. So I think that's, that's what I think they're trying to do. It's important to point out that Lebanese government has offered to sit down for direct negotiations with Israel, which is something that has gone a little bit unnoticed, but is really a historic first. It is breaking a big taboo. I'm not saying that negotiations with Israel necessarily lead to positive developments, but it is definitely worth noticing that the Lebanese government has offered these negotiations and has come out very forcefully to say that Hezbollah's military and security actions are outside of the law. And that is a very big step for Lebanon.

Ben Rhodes (95:32)

Well, yeah, I'm going to get to that. But one more question about Israel, which is that there's this question of whether there'll be a large scale ground invasion and perhaps to occupy that buffer zone, however large it ends up being. Is there a sense of inevitability around an Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon? And, and are some of these government diplomatic overtures meant to kind of forestall that kind of ground invasion and deescalate before it gets to that part of

Kim Gaddis (95:57)

it is certainly trying to forestall that ground invasion. But Israel has made very clear that it will not stop whatever its military plans are for the negotiations. They will negotiate. They want the Lebanese to negotiate under fire. I'm not sure where we will end up, but I think this buffer zone, Ben, will most likely be an uninhabited buffer zone. So they don't need to occupy it, they just need to monitor it, you know, with drones, with towers, with, I don't know, walls. But the idea that I've heard also that, you know, maybe settlers will move in there. I don't think so. I think it is the geography of Lebanon does not allow for Israeli settlers to move into this buffer zone inside Lebanon and be safe from, you know, what will be for sure, renewed activity to try to then liberate southern Lebanon. So I suspect it will be a empty, an uninhabited demilitarized zone, and that will then be part of the negotiation as well. If they happen with these, with the Lebanese government.

Ben Rhodes (97:02)

Yeah. So ground invasion is more about, I know, taking out his infrastructure and clearing out an area and then clearing out

Kim Gaddis (97:11)

a large enough area that from Israel's perspective, you guarantee there are no incursions by Hezbollah into Israel and that you push back as much as possible into Lebanon and deny Hezbollah close range attacks against Israel. But, you know, some of these missiles have much longer ranges anyway. The idea is probably also to sort of break up up the popular base that Hezbollah uses or relies on for its support. If you splinter the Shia community, where Hezbollah still finds support, if you push them out of the southern suburbs of Beirut and they're scattered around the country because they are not allowed to go home because Israel is continuing to strike their areas, then potentially Israel is also thinking about making it harder for Hezbollah to operate. And most certainly it is trying to provoke tensions within Lebanon. But we have been through a civil war before, including one which, including an episode which came after Israel, after Lebanon. And Israel did sign a security agreement in 1983, and the uprising against it was very violent and it was led by, at the time, Syria's Hafez al Assad, the president, the sort of nascent Hezbollah and various other factions, and the army split into two. And the Lebanese president, who's the former army chief, is really trying to prevent that.

Ben Rhodes (98:51)

Well, yeah, I wanted to ask you about this internal dynamic. So you mentioned that it seemed like Hezbollah came into this war after Ali Khamenei was killed, kind of firing rockets into Israel as part of the Iranian bombardment. You then had a situation where the Lebanese prime minister did speak out against Hezbollah. But the question is, where does this Go from there. And what is your sense of if you have Israel trying to kind of manufacture politics in Lebanon with force, kind of compelling the government to fully diminish Hezbollah as a political actor, disarm them. But at the same time, you have a Shia population that's being fractured, you have people that are upset that Israel's, you know, bombarding the country. How does Lebanese politics hold up under this? What is a potential plan for Lebanese political leaders about how to manage being caught between Hezbollah and Israel?

Kim Gaddis (99:55)

Very difficult. Very difficult. I haven't seen many creative ideas right now on the table other than offering to negotiate. The other approach by the Lebanese government is to try to, in a way do what they didn't really do properly over the last year was to which is to make sure that Hezbollah can no longer launch rockets. But nobody really wants to see the Lebanese army intervene in between Hezbollah and Israel. That is not Lebanon's. That is not the Lebanese army's role either. And already we're hearing from members of Hezbollah, its, you know, officials who are still alive calling for an uprising against the Lebanese government, describing the Lebanese government as a co belligerent with Israel, which really stirs the pot in terms of sectarian tensions and political tensions. And I know that this all sounds sort of quite local and specific to Lebanon, but it is really part of the bigger war that we're witnessing unfold in the region because a, it's very clear that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are operating in Lebanon and that the battle that Lebanon is fighting today is not just against Israel, but also against, against other countries yet again fighting their wars on our territory and using Lebanese territory, you know, as, as they please. But second, it also means that these two fronts, Lebanon and the war against Iran, are happening in tandem. And I don't think anybody knows yet how either one really ends, other than my prediction that there will be and a demilitarized uninhabited zone along the border between Lebanon and Israel. This war started without international support, without UN resolution, without congressional approval. And there may be a lot of tactical successes, military successes, but it's also become much bigger than anyone anticipated in the Trump administration. And as much as my good friend and analyst Karim Sajadpour said, it went from being a war of choice to war of necessity to open the Strait of Hormuz. And Hezbollah is watching very carefully how this works out because it is also for their own political survival in Lebanon as a political entity and as a militant entity that they're fighting this war. How it ends will determine both in Iran and in Lebanon what The future of Lebanon and the region will look like.

Ben Rhodes (102:42)

Well, yeah, I wanted one thing. You've written about the Gulf states too. You've written a book about Saudi Arabia and Iran. One of the things I'm struck by is just how weak and compromised the Gulf states position feels right now in the sense that Israel is a hegemon in the region. Whatever you think of its actions, it has freedom of action. The United States is still a hegemon in terms of its ability to project power. The Iranians have a lot of power. They've been able to shut down the economies of parts of the Gulf states, the Strait of Hormuz. And yet you have these big rich Arab countries that just seem caught in the crossfire geopolitically. I think I know what that means, which is they're going to have to find hedges against the United States. They may feel like they need to align more to check Israeli power. But just in terms of public opinion in a place like Lebanon, what is the perception of the, the lack of capacity for the Gulf states, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the gcc, the Arab League? Like the, the idea that there's no capacity for any kind of Arab support for Lebanon in this moment when they're kind of being caught in the crossfire of this regional war.

Kim Gaddis (103:58)

Actually I think there has been support for, for, for Lebanon and I think that, you know, the Saudis, but also the Turks and, and, and the Egyptians have been quite involved to make sure that they tamp down whatever Israel is trying to, to do. We also had French involvement I believe, to try to reduce the intensity of what Israel was trying to achieve in the southern suburbs a couple of weeks ago when they put out a, an evacuation notice for the whole area, which had not happened before. A little bit like they used to do in Gaza, in Lebanon, so far it is quite targeted. It used to be building by building, move out of this building, move out of that building. And crazily enough, Ben, people listen to or read these tweets by the Israeli army spokespeople who say, you know, this building is going to be targeted, move 500 meters back. And they actually do and they film. And it's crazy that people trust the Israeli sort of warnings that you know, 500 meters away and you'll be fine. But suddenly there was a whole area wide evacuation and I think the French intervened to say if, you know, if you're planning to carpet bomb this area, we strongly recommend that you don't. And indeed it wasn't as bad as people thought. Even I I left my apartment because I live very close. I live, you know, not even half a mile away from the southern suburbs. So it gets quite loud. And even I left because we weren't sure anymore what to. What to expect. So we can be very critical of Arab countries for. For many reasons, but I think that they are trying to help.

Ben Rhodes (105:47)

As much as you think it's having,

Kim Gaddis (105:49)

I think, I think it's. It is having a bit of an impact, yes. I think we could be, if possible, even in a worse position. There was this crazy idea, apparently, from the Trump administration to call on Ahmad Al Shara in Syria to get involved in Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, which is really, again, a repeat of all the bad stuff that happened in the late 70s and 80s in Lebanon. And the Saudis and the Turks intervened quite strongly and advised Ahmad Al Shara to stay out of this. I think that Gulf countries are coordinating together quite a bit. I think they're doing as decent a job as possible in intercepting these drones and missiles that Iran is launching. I think they're angry at everyone at the moment, but they're mostly worried at this point they may not have wanted this war, and I strongly believe they did not, despite some reporting that suggested that the Saudis wanted this. I don't think they wanted it. They want to build, they want to have economic prosperity, they have grand plans and ambitions, et cetera. But now that this war has started and that Iran has clearly, as expected, not capitulated, they really don't want to be be left with a wounded Iranian regime that is just going to come back and hit them again in six months or a year. So right now, I think probably in the back channels is the advice to the Trump administration try to finish this job. We're not quite sure what this means, but you need to degrade Iran's capacities enough that we don't feel we have this threat hanging over us for the next, for a repeat of this. I still don't discount the possibility that the regime does somehow collapse in Iran, which could go in two ways, chaos and civil war, or somehow an internal opposition that organizes an, maybe even Pahlavi, Reza Pahlavi, despite all his shortcomings, somehow coalesce to make something of the day after. I think we're looking at another month of war, at least. Ben?

Ben Rhodes (108:14)

Well, the last question I want to ask about Lebanon, which is that we've lived through this kind of quote, unquote, mowing the grass that is bombing Lebanon periodically. And now it's reached another level that Feels like akin to the early 80s. And like you said, the PLO leaves, but then Hezbollah comes in. I mean, it does strike me that the absence of political objectives in this war, there are all these military tactical objectives. One of the problems with that is the other thing that's not being considered is the amount of resentment that is being generated by this constant military action. I mean, what do you see as the recipe for peace in a situation where it's asking a lot of people to just absorb being bombed this regularly without.

Kim Gaddis (109:08)

It doesn't need to be peace. It can be armistice. Let's just agree not to fight anymore and you stay there and I stay here and let's not talk, but let's not fight. I think people in Lebanon specifically, I cannot speak for the wider region. Region. I have some sense of how people feel, which is most likely angry at Iran and pissed off at Israel. They're worried about replacing, you know, one actor that brings chaos, Iran, with another actor that brings chaos, that has a military superiority which allows it to live somewhat safely within its own borders. Whereas, you know, Iran shares borders with so many countries, including Saudi Arabia. And, you know, the proximity is making a difference in the sense that more missiles and drones are now landing on Arab countries than on Israel. So there's this sense in the Arab world and in the Gulf countries that they don't want to be left with this problem because Israel has more capacity to defend itself and America is far away, but no one is getting closer to Iran. Right? They're trying to talk to Iran, but nobody's thinking, you know, what, now is the time to try to find another side, deal with Iran or a detente with Iran. Even though the detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran served Sol quite well over the last few years, since they had it signed in Beijing in March 2023. When it comes to Lebanon, I think the overwhelming sentiment, Ben, is we are fed up of being the battleground for everybody else's wars. We are fed up. Iran, Israel, Israel, Syria, everybody fights their battles on our ground. Are the Lebanese guilty of allowing that to happen as well? To some extent, yes. But we're a small country and some of it is beyond our capacity. I'm very curious to see how the Lebanese government and the president are going to manage this period and whether they can somehow get Lebanon to the other side of this war mostly intact, and then somehow negotiate the return of people to, to southern Lebanon. It's a very, very tall order that would be in a very optimistic scenario, but we have to keep hoping and, and pushing and be proactive. You know, the Lebanese government needs to be proactive in this.

Ben Rhodes (111:38)

Yeah, well, it's a lot to. It's a lot to take on. I mean, with everything in Iran, I think there has not been enough attention on Lebanon, which has absorbed as much of this war as anybody other than the Iranian people. So thank you, Kim, for walking us through so much information, and best of luck getting to the United States.

Kim Gaddis (111:56)

And if I could, I'll just mention one last thing. I've spent the last three years writing my next book, which comes out in October, and it is all about how we got here. And I go back to the 1980s and sort of unpack how the Iranian revolution collided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and created this dynamic of confrontation between the US and Iran, with Israel in the middle of it. And to watch it all unfold and reach this climax today with Benjamin Netanyahu saying, I've dreamt of this war for 40 years. He was deputy ambassador to Washington in 1982. To hear Lindsey Graham say, we, you know, Lebanon, the US should also bomb Hezbollah in Lebanon and avenge, you know, the 1983 bombing of the Marines. We need to get out of this cycle, and I'm not sure that we will, but I can only hope that somehow we come out on the other side with something a little bit more positive for the region.

Ben Rhodes (113:08)

Well, we'll hope so. And we'll definitely look forward to having you back on when your book is out in October. People should watch for that as well. So thanks for that and thanks, as always for your analysis.

Kim Gaddis (113:18)

Thanks for having me.

Tommy Vietor (113:23)

Thanks again to Kip for joining the show and we will talk to you guys next week.

Kim Gaddis (113:28)

Foreign.

Tommy Vietor (113:34)

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