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- [00:00]
Scott R. Anderson
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?
- [00:07]
Tyler McBrien
Progressive makes it easy to see if
- [00:09]
Scott R. Anderson
you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [00:23]
Dan Byman
Scott, I want to tell you something, and I hope this doesn't disturb you. You were in my dreams last night.
- [00:29]
Scott R. Anderson
I mean, that depends on the nature of the dream, man. I don't know.
- [00:33]
Dan Byman
So I'm not gonna describe what you were wearing, but I was on my bike.
- [00:37]
Scott R. Anderson
Inevitably, I had a pocket square. I can only assume, but that's it. There you go. Maybe that's it. I don't know how it stays up at that point, but.
- [00:47]
Dan Byman
So I'm mainly a bike commuter. So I'm on my bike commuting to work with Lauren Groff, the wonderful author whose book Brawler. I just finished a collection of short stories, but nevertheless, she is biking with me, which was pleas on my way to my office. There was a stretch that was a little rough, so I decided to get off my bike and check it out on foot. When I came back, my bike was gone and I'm freaking out. I'm very attached to my bike. And then you show up and you point out that I am now late for this podcast because I take my deadlines very seriously. But fortunately, you have brought recording equipment with you. I have to say, I don't know what happens after that. I don't know what incredible insights I had to share on Iran on the bike path. But we were going to do the podcast from the bike path, and then I woke up, honestly.
- [01:41]
Scott R. Anderson
Wouldn't be the weirdest place we've done a podcast from before. Wouldn't even be in the Cop five. Yeah, Ben's done it for moving trains with a questionable choice in hindsight, we realize now, so, you know, it wouldn't be that bad. Well, that's good. That's refreshingly normal. I feel like most time I show up in people's dreams, it probably gets a lot weirder than that. So I appreciate it.
- [02:00]
Tyler McBrien
Scott, you're the podcast host of Dan's Dreams.
- [02:03]
Scott R. Anderson
Literally. There you go. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories, whether they're in our lane or not. I am, you know, screaming kalu kalei from all the hilltops around me because we are not in the middle of a massively escalating, potentially genocidal war in the Middle east today. Instead, we saw a breakthrough of sorts, although we will talk about how much a breakthrough it actually is in the Iran conflict last night right before President Trump's 8pm Eastern Time deadline, at the conclusion of which he was promising a world historical elimination of a civilization from the face of the planet or something along those lines, at least that potentiality. We thought this was a big enough development with enough angles and issues attached to it that we wanted to spend the whole time talking about it today. I'm thrilled to have a phenomenal cross section of my colleagues to hash it over with. Joining us first off is one of Lawfare's foreign policy editors, Csis Maven, Georgetown maven Dan Biman. Dan, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
- [03:15]
Dan Byman
Always happy to be here, Scott.
- [03:17]
Scott R. Anderson
Wonderful. Also joining us is Lawford's executive editor Natalie Orpet, back on the cast. Natalie, thank you for joining us as well. From five feet directly behind me, but we don't have a good setup for doing this in person. So glad to have you from your own office joining us here.
- [03:31]
Natalie Orpett
It's very dreamlike for me as well. I have your voice echoing from all around.
- [03:35]
Scott R. Anderson
You can just hear each other a little bit in the background. It is slightly distracting, but I don't think, I don't think, I don't think people listening can pick it up, but we definitely hear it. But that's good to know. It gives me just little previews if you see me react or Natalie, more likely react just a little too soon to something I say. That's why in the visual version. And join us as well. As law firm's managing editor, I'm taking out the whole editorial leadership structure today, Tyler McBrien. Tyler, thank you for joining us today.
- [04:01]
Tyler McBrien
Good to be here. Don't worry. It's been a slow news month, so nothing happening. The editorial team's here.
- [04:08]
Scott R. Anderson
Absolutely right. Well, let us get into our three topics. They're all facets of the same topic today, but we thought it was appropriate to view what we're talking about and frame it through the perspective of the three types of irony in this case, Iran. Y first is, of course, situational irony. The world came into Tuesday evening fearing a major escalation in the ongoing US And Israeli conflict with Iran. But instead, President Trump made a last minute choice to accept a two ceasefire condition on the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, condition that Iran indicated it was prepared to meet. Kind of so long as open means coordinating with its military forces and paying for safe transit. Is this the beginning of the end of the Iran conflict? And what does the shape of the ceasefire and the dynamics around it tell us about the conflict's likely regional implications? Moving forward? Topic 2 Verbal irony Irony Irani Tuesday's breakthrough ceasefire agreement came after days of increasingly outlandish rhetoric by President Trump, including a threat earlier that day that a quote, unquote, a whole civilization will die tonight if his conditions were not met. What role did Trump's threats play in the outcome? And what might the broader ramifications be of a US President issuing threats that would amount to war crimes, if not genocide, if actually followed up? On topic three Dramatic irony. While Trump's rhetoric was undoubtedly intended to communicate strength, it came from a place of increasing weakness. US Military operations in Iran were weeks away from a major statutory barrier, and efforts to secure needed supplemental funding are facing headwinds in Congress. Perhaps more importantly, the conflict has proven widely unpopular in the United States and devastating for the US and broader global economies, two factors that weigh heavily on Trump and his congressional allies in an election year. What will this shift in the Iran conflict mean for Trump's political future and the future of his policy agenda, not to mention the legal and institutional arrangement that have allowed him to pursue so unorthodox a foreign policy in recent months? So let's start with the big development that came last night around 7:30 or so. It was a little earlier than that even. I know. I was sitting at the dinner table verbally expressing to my wife how stressed I was about the 8pm deadline when I got the alert come across that in fact a ceasefire had just been announced on Truth Social, which I do not have alerts set up for. Dan, let me turn to you first. I gave the broad contours of the ceasefire agreement as I understand it. Let me try and rehash it, although I invite you to supplement it for me and then give me your reactions to start us off in this. As far as I can tell, this is a deal that was facilitated by a kind of tripartite force primarily. Pakistan got most of the credit in this case. We know the Egyptians and Turks were involved to some extent through at least earlier parts of the negotiations, kind of serving as a shuttle a little bit between Iran and the United States. Oman has been involved at various stages too, particularly earlier, prior to the conflict, may have been involved to some extent as well. We had seen an earlier peace agreement get put on the table that Iran had rejected the United States and said, maybe it's something we can work with. Iran had come forward with a counter proposal that had been rejected previously by the United States. But then around 7pm President Trump said, okay, I see the Iranian 10 point plan as something we can begin negotiations from. I'm going to accept a two week ceasefire, which I think is what had previously been put on the table by the Pakistanis, and accept this on the condition that the Strait of Hormuz be opened up. And he used his typical all caps bluster, open, I think unconditional sort of other things. Iran then followed up by saying, okay, we accept the two week ceasefire, we appreciate the help of the Pakistanis and anybody is free to coordinate transiting the strait by coordinating with our military forces. So query whether that means open or not. But so far that appeared to check the box and the ceasefire is in place. And notably through clarification, the suggestion has been that the cease fire extends both to Israel and Israeli operations in Iran. And there has been some suggestion by some of the parties, particularly in Iran. I believe I saw Pakistani officials suggested much that's supposed to extend to Lebanon as well, although I'm not sure I've seen that confirmed on the Israeli side up to this point.
- [08:03]
Natalie Orpett
I think Israel has actually said specifically that it does not apply in.
- [08:07]
Scott R. Anderson
I suspected that was coming because I was surprised see that Lebanon got rolled into it, particularly from the Israeli perspective. So there's at least a little bit of disagreement on the scope of this. Dan, first, correct me on any detail of this I've gotten wrong or anything I may have omitted that you think is material and talk to us about where you see this fitting in. What's the process that led to this? How notable is this? What open questions does it leave? I mean, how close is this to a roadmap towards a potential conclusion to this conflict?
- [08:34]
Dan Byman
Wow. There's a lot to say. And I should begin by saying most of what I have to say begins with well, I don't really know. And this is part of the problem is there's a lot of vagueness here and there's a lot of statements on both sides that seem more about domestic political consumption than about actual negotiating points. So according to the Iranians, what they put forward is that the United States will accept Iran's nuclear enrichment, that the United States will be lifting sanctions. And there is a kind of very long list that's long been a wish list from Tehran's point of view that they're claiming really this is the basis of negotiations. The US has been, I will say, certainly not confirming any of these. And probably, I think most of this is just Iran trying to justify things to its own people. But Secretary Hegseth has said if Iran doesn't hand over its enriched uranium, the United States will take it out. So there's the kind of threat of further war already, even as the ceasefire is just beginning. If you look at this conflict, what makes it hard to analyze in some ways is there were two different wars going on. So the United States and Israel were killing huge numbers of Iranian leaders. The Post had a piece, I want to say, about 10 days ago, saying over 250 in total. And again, that was 10 days ago. So, Jack, that number up, of course, strikes on missile programs, strikes on military infrastructure, some strikes on steel and other parts of Iran's economy. And so a pretty massive but relatively typical bombing campaign. While Iran's war was really trying to put pressure on the United states by hitting U.S. allies and through the global economy, in a way, they were both winning in that Iran was suffering tremendously from the damage of the US And Israeli campaign. And despite claims that Iran can take it and they're enduring, losing that many people, much destruction has certainly got to weigh heavily on the surviving Iranian leaders. But of course, the economic pain was tremendous, especially on US Allies, but also on the United States. And this was an increasingly unpopular war in the United States. It was a war that was not only unpopular among Democrats, but also increasingly among Republicans, including parts of President Trump's base. So I think there was a strong desire on both sides to end this thing. And the problem in some ways is we don't have a clear agreement on what exactly is going to come out of this conflict, where the sides are still relatively far apart, just as they were before all this began. And if you look at the demands that the Trump administration has put out over the last month and a half, and includes regime change, it includes Iran's nuclear program, its missile program, its support for proxies, kind of a very long wish list. And if you look at the wish list Iran has put out, there's unlikely to be agreement. The bit of good news in all this, though, is I don't think either side has an interest or desire to go back to war. And so I can imagine after two weeks, they say, okay, we still disagree. We're going to extend the ceasefire two more weeks or two more months or whatever it is. And at some point, they're in a not peace, but not war sort of state. The important caveat to all this I think, is Israel. Israel and the United States have overlapping interests, but not identical interests here. And Israel is certainly willing to use force against Iran. And now that Iran basically has no air defense, it's not particularly hard for Israel to do isolated raids. And as we were discussing in the introductory remarks, there's also the Lebanon question, which to me is a related but in some ways very separate war. So there's a lot of uncertainty, and my guess is there is uncertainty internally on both sides. The Trump administration seems to have abandoned any normal policy planning process in deciding to go to war and in waging this war. So it would be a surprise to me if they had a very careful deliberate process for trying to figure out negotiations. So my guess is it depends on a few individuals and President Trump's mood at any given moment, what the US Position is. And so I think we could see relatively rapid changes, perhaps positively, but it's not going to be something that is easy to predict in advance.
- [13:09]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it's a kind of extraordinary outcome in putting a pause on what was going to be a potentially hugely consequential action by the Trump administration. We don't know exactly what that looked like. For the record, President Trump threatens lots of things. What does it mean to kill a civilization, wipe it off the face of the planet? Are you talking about nuclear weapons, as some people inferred? Although the administration expressly said no, we were not talking about nuclear weapons. He talked about targeting bridges and power plants, which would be very bad for Iran, would be a little bit of a different order. We don't know what it was, but obviously this kind of curtailed that. Other than that, it just kind of seemed to kick a lot of the questions down the road. I would say that doesn't mean it's not a diplomatic victory. Like 95% of diplomacy is just kicking things down the road and getting people to maintain a status quo that involves less killing people until you can go through the hard process of reaching some sort of more stable conclusion. And so I think the Pakistani and Turkish and Egyptian diplomats who were kind of pushing this effort deserve a lot of credit for having gotten here. But it's not clear how sustainable all this is. The one thing I think it does really demonstrate, though, is, frankly, I think the Iranians have a degree of leverage over the administration. Maybe not leverage, but I think the administration is looking for an exit ramp. I was on NPR talking about this on Monday, and this is kind of. They asked one of our closing questions. What are you going to be looking for this Tuesday and what I said is an exit ramp, because I think President Trump doesn't want to have to follow through on these threats. And we're seeing that. But here's my question, and I'll come to you on this, Natalie, because I'm curious if either you agree with me on this or not, if you were to take this as the new status quo for the time being, or at least a starting point for it. On the one hand, certain things are better from the perspective of particularly Israeli security. Iran has had its conventional military capability massively decimated, even more so than it had already and was already frankly, pretty substantially on decline over the last of 2021, 2025, particularly if you take into account proxies in Syria and Lebanon who have been kind of on their heels. There also seems to have been some sort of disruption with the relationship with the Houthis and the Iranians because the Houthis didn't come full in in this conflict as one might have expected in other contexts, although they did get involved in the last week or two a little more than they had been earlier. But on the flip side of that, but the nuclear program we still don't have a sure sense of it, was set back according to this administration during the last strikes in the middle of 2025. Presumably they've hit it more that's more further setback this time, but they haven't recovered this material there. And the incentive for the remaining of the Iranian regime now, if anything, seems to be much higher to pursue a nuclear weapon, because it's not clear to me that they have a clear sense they have other vehicles towards another bombardment defending themselves, another bombardment like this, especially if they can never redevelop a conventional defense capability. And then, perhaps most importantly, before this conflict, the Strait of Hormuz was understood to be an international waterway that ships could transit freely. And now in this new status quo, ships have to coordinate with and pay the Iranians to transit it. I don't think that's going to be acceptable in the long run, either to the international community or to the Americans. But for the time being, that's actually a pretty big decline. It's better than nobody getting through. And it'll impact global oil prices accordingly, which will help the United States even if US Vessels aren't allowed through. Really, it's the oil prices are a bigger concern, less any direct shipping, but it's still a big step in the opposite direction of what's traditionally been the US International community's goal, which is to preserve the Strait of Hormuz as an international strait, as an international waterway. Am I right about that? Natalie, what is your sense about where the wins and the losses are coming out of this sort of agreement for the different parties? And what does that tell us about how much in a good position they are in terms of negotiating a more final outcome?
- [16:59]
Natalie Orpett
Yeah, I mean, I'll caveat the same way that Dan did, which is that I think that there is so much confusion right now, and it's imagined impossible to predict anything, including whether any of this status quo looks like how we think it does. Because even where we are now is that the way that the Iranians and the Americans are describing what it is that they're agreeing to looks really different. And then there's commentary from others, too. Pakistan is trying to explain what the deal is that it helped broker, and it's sort of all over the map right now. But to take the points that you mentioned, it is likely true that the diminished capacity militarily of the Iranians is good for security in the short term. I don't know enough about the specifics of where the weapons program would have gone in the future anyway, and that matters for understanding how damaging the losses have been and whether Iran. Iran would be in a position to pivot and develop other types of military capacity. We already know, for example, that it's been able to produce drones that have been used both in Iran and in Ukraine by the Russians, not the Ukrainians. They've been able to produce those really quickly. And we're seeing from various conflicts right now, in particular in Ukraine, that drones really seem to be the future of warfare. So how much. I mean, there's no question that a lot of the military capacity of Iran has been compromised, but how quickly that can be recovered from, even if it's not in the same model, I think, is to be determined. The Strait of Hormuz issue that you mentioned is. I mean, I think you're right that the solution, as it seems to be right now, which is that there would be basically a toll to pay to Iran for transit through the strait, would be a negative from where things started. You know, right now, it's being portrayed by Trump as a victory because we have convinced the Iranians to reopen the strait, though that conveniently omits the fact that the only reason that they closed the strait was because of the conflict. And as you said before, it was really considered to be an international waterway. And I think I agree with you that for legal purposes under international law, it's pretty clear that it is an international strait not subject to Iranian toll impositions. There was also some very weird tweet earlier today by Trump or maybe a response to a reporter, I don't remember in what form it took, suggesting that maybe Iran and the United States would split the toll fees of ships going through the strain of Hormuz.
- [19:55]
Tyler McBrien
So this was ABC's Jonathan Karl. He said this morning, I asked President Trump if he's okay with the Iranians charging a toll for all ships that go through the strait. He told me there may be a joint US Iran venture to charge tolls. Quote, we're thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It's a way of securing it, also securing it from lots of other people. It's a beautiful thing. End quote.
- [20:16]
Natalie Orpett
So beautiful. I suspect that's aspirational.
- [20:20]
Scott R. Anderson
I have to think so. But you never know.
- [20:22]
Dan Byman
That doesn't sound at all like him, though. Like, that's so out of character.
- [20:25]
Natalie Orpett
11 yeah, 0.11 and it was the goal all along, guys. This whole war was just a business deal. I mean, the one thing I'll say even specifically with respect to should we consider the consequence of this or the new potentially emerging status quo to be a benefit to Israel in particular, which is, I suppose, of derivative benefit to the United States know bracket. Is that even true? But pretend that that's the case or accept that that's the case. For the sake of argument. I think that there was some very interesting reporting in the New York Times yesterday that was a real deep dive into how the United States went into this war, because as we've been talking about for weeks now, it was really unclear, it has been unclear all along exactly what the aims of the war are. They've shifted constantly and they've been, in my view, pretty opportunistic, depending on where things stood at a given moment and varied quite a bit depending on who was talking. And we're always fairly vague as it is. But the way that this reporting explains it, it really centers Israel in the United States decision to go to war. It reports deeply on a meeting that took place on February 11, I believe, where Netanyahu came to the United States, actually had a meeting in the Situation Room that lasted quite some time, gave a presentation setting forth a plan, at the end of which reportedly President Trump said, sounds good to me. Netanyahu and team understood that to be a go ahead. Then overnight, according to this reporting, the US Intelligence community put together an assessment of the likelihood of Netanyahu's plan and sort of promises working out the way that he suggested they would and broke it down into four different aims that the Israelis had articulated for going to war, the first two of which were basically killing the leadership and diminishing the capacity to threaten neighbors. The U.S. intelligence Committee deemed those possible to plausible. And the second two goals were, and this echoes very much some of what Trump was saying, especially early on, a popular uprising and regime change. And the IC's assessment, this is the USIC assessment, was that that was, as the CIA Director Ratcliffe put it, farcical. And apparently Rubio said it was bullshit. The idea that those were goals, to the extent we should believe that just because people were saying that, that they really were, but apparently they were goals of the Israelis. So if they got two for four of their goals, do you even consider that a success in terms of Israel's aims for the conflict that even if you're being generous, the US Embraced as its own?
- [23:34]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, but it is a question here. I think this gets down to the process question that Dan noted, because that account they gave, which is a really riveting. It's actually, I think, adapted from Maggie Hepperman and Jonathan Swan's forthcoming book, Regime Change, which I want to talk about in relation to our third topic, because there's actually a weird angle about some of the media coming out about this decision in the last few weeks. But it's a domestic politics thing. So I want to come back to that. Towards the end, if you take the account at face value, the last two conditions that were treated as farcical by the DNI were essentially promises that everything was going to work out for the region. It was that, oh, we're going to end up with a better Iran. Regimes could be removed, new regime change, more democratic system, much more stable situation. That's always been the anxiety behind the idea of doing anything like this with Iran, particularly targeting leadership, is that you would be destabilizing a country so central to the region with such a direct bearing on maritime trade and a million other considerations in a very volatile region. And those promises were intended to assuage those concerns for President Trump. So they're part of the package. I don't know if those were so much as strategic goals for the Israelis. I don't think the Israelis probably really bought into them themselves. They're a hard sell, I think, is how the people described in that meeting, which is kind of notable. And notably, the only person who seemed to buy into it was Donald Trump. By these accounts, almost all of his advisors were either neutral and said Mr. President, you do what you got to do. Vice President Vance was framed as the one person who expressed opposition to this. Again, I think that might be a little bit strategic by whoever is leaking these stories. But regardless, it is putting on Trump's thing that Trump bought into this story in a way that nobody else did. It really plays it solely at his fear. But I want to push on that idea. And Tyler, I want to come to you on this about what this means for the US Strategic interests, because Israel, I think, is probably. There's a good argument it's more secure, at least in the short to medium term, because the ballistic missiles is primarily worried about, and not to mention the variety of arms that are going to be smuggled to proxies. And Iran's proxy network was already in poor shape before this conflict, probably significantly diminished. But I'm curious about other US Allies in the region, like the Gulf states. Those are states that have become major hubs of foreign investment in luxury living and foreigners moving there. I used to live there myself for a couple of stints at various points in my life, in part because they were seen as really secure and stable despite the neighborhood, despite proximity, because Iran, because Iran was kind of this balancing status quo. Do you think you can ever get that back for those countries in this particular moment? Iran doesn't have ballistic missiles anymore, but those countries are very close to Iran. They're right across from the body of water. They're well within drone range, as we've been seeing, and lots of ease of targets. And now we have a much less stable, potentially more hostile regime in Iran, if nothing else, at least less predictable until we get to know them better. What does that mean for those countries and how does that bear on broader U.S. security?
- [26:24]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I mean, I think Iran had a proof of concept, not of how to win a war against the US And Israel, but how not to lose it. And I think the tactics that it used in this current conflict are they only have incentive to double down on them. So spreading out the geographical scope by attacking US Allies in the region, I mean, holding on to the Strait of Hormuz probably as its key strategic asset, using drones, etc. And I think attacking the allies was a big part of it. It made it very costly for Trump, both economically but also geopolitically. I mean, it was almost captured by these, these videos you'd see of, like, rich influencers in Dubai feeling the war, like touching them or something. It was this. I feel like that was emblematic of the feeling in, like in these Centers that hadn't been touched before. So I think it was a big, like both reputational and just, you know, material hit to a place like Dubai.
- [27:29]
Scott R. Anderson
So Dan, let me come back to you on that question. Where does this leave the region? I know we don't want to prognosticate too much, we don't know this current state, but give us a sense of your perspective about best case and worst case scenarios that seem realistic within a certain band of realism. Right. We have a sense at least. I think this gives us a sense of where the limits of the parties are and their willingness to engage in the sort of. I don't think the United States is going to do a ground campaign in Iran. That would require a risk tolerance at the president. President doesn't clear. This suggests the president doesn't have currently. Iran, meanwhile, doesn't seem on the verge of collapse, although maybe that gets better once you have a functioning economy and there aren't bombs falling and people can go out in the street and protest in a way they can't. What does this mean for not just Iran, not just for Israel, but for broader regional security in this region that has been so central to US national security interests for the last several decades.
- [28:23]
Dan Byman
What this does ironically is it highlights the importance and reliance that US Allies in the region have on the United States, but also the dangers of the United States. So this is a war of choice by the United States. It was something that at least a number of Gulf states were not for. Others may have secretly been a bit more for it, but it certainly was not strong regional support for this war. And of course, they were the ones that were bearing the risk and paying a very heavy price. Their economies, their social calm, and in general, a number of these states have said to their own populations, look, we know you don't like the alliance with the United States, but the benefit of this is when things go really bad, the United States will be there to protect us. And the US did try to protect them. It's not as if the United States sat on its hands and did nothing. But there were limits. And some of these were very practical questions about the number of munitions. Some of it was simply that Iran had lots of lots of stuff. And if you throw enough drones or short range missiles, then some will get through and some did. So it kind of highlighted the limits of US Power. But at the same time there's no choice, right? There's no other power willing to step in and play a major role in this. And Iran brought in all the Gulf states Except for Oman, into this conflict. Conflict. And some had been more accommodating to Tehran and some less yet. They were all attacked and Turkey was attacked. And so these countries are going to look to Washington for more support in the future. But at the same time, I think if you go even longer term, their likelihood of hedging increases. There's a sense that the United States, first of all, cannot fully protect you, so you want to have alternatives. And this is something the Gulf states have done historically over many years. And so we've seen them buy European and in the past, Kuwait used to buy Soviet, even just to kind of have a foot in multiple camps. So we could see greater outreach to China. There's also probably a desire to use China's diplomatic influence with Iran as a way to kind of reduce the risk of hostile Iranian behavior. And you also might see a mix of hostility to Iran, but also outreach and attempt to be a bit more like Oman, which, you know, somehow manages to host the US Military, yet have very good relations with Tehran. It's credit to Omani diplomats for being able to kind of walk that line quite successfully. So I would say that, on balance, this war has been destabilizing for the region, but a lot's going to depend on how Iran is handled in the future. Right? It's important to note, as critical as I am of the Trump administration, Iran has been an incredibly destabilizing force, force in the Middle east for decades. And so if this leads to a more chastened Iran with leadership that might be hostile but is at least very pragmatic, with Iranian proxies that are both weaker and more afraid, that could be very positive for regional stability. I could easily spin the opposite scenario, which is you have Iran that is wounded, but not mortally so and quite anxious, angry, and remembers who has helped the United States and who has helped Israel and is out for revenge. So spinning that scenario is plausible as well. I don't think with the chaos in Iran, the incredible leadership disruption, the disruption of communications, I don't think the Iranians have sat down and said, hey, let's plan for the long term. I think at best, they've said, let's plan for the next 12 hours. So I think there's a lot of to be determined as things go forward, forward. And that means there are openings for better U.S. and allied policy to kind of push this in the right direction.
- [32:20]
Natalie Orpett
Your point about hedging, Dan, and the likelihood that just because this really blew up a lot of assumptions about how things would play out and what the dynamics are in the region. I think there's an open question as to how this becomes. Will history show this as a real turning point, as the start of sort of a project politically and then later down the road perhaps militarily or alliance wise into this sort of broader phenomenon that we've been talking about for months now of whether we're sort of entering a post liberal new world order? And I want to channel a point that our colleague Ari Tavatabhai made last night on Slack, which was to say that this was, and to her credit, she was talking about this before the deal actually came out, that she suspected that Pakistan and China would be heavily involved in sort of piecing a solution or a temporary solution together because Iran would want a mediator and look like if they were making concessions, it was to a more friendly party than directly to the United States. But that raises the question then of what is the new place going to be, even if it's for now just on the diplomatic stage. But, but where does that evolve into, of states like Pakistan and China that have been just sort of peeking in here in a way that they hadn't in the past? And to your two scenarios, Dan, of how does this spin out? There's a question of in what way will these other states that have been involved in sort of new ways help shape that future? I don't think there's any way to know right now, but I do think there's a potential for the ripple effects to this being much broader than just what do things look like in the immediate region, that it's much more about who are the players on the international stage as every state is hedging because it's seeing this much disruption of previous assumptions of how things worked. Where are new alliances and opportunities and efforts, even if opportunistic, where will they go? And I think there's a lot of room for just totally unforeseen possibilities there.
- [34:54]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, that does get to one aspect of this I want to touch on before we kind of shift focus and that is China's involvement or potential involvement, I should say. So we have reports from the Iranians that China pressured them to move towards this deal that could be part of an effort to have a bit of a face saving maneuver to domestic, more hardline audiences, to kind of project kind of some degree of foreign commitment to foreign audiences, basically saying, well, we didn't want to do this but China really bullied us into it. Or maybe it's really genuine. I suspect it's somewhere between the Two China meanwhile has not kind of declined to confirm its involvement in these negotiations, at least as of the media reports I was reading this morning, but did say we've always been a urging people towards a ceasefire, towards resolution. They have been while they have very close trading and economic relations with Iran, I think it's Iran's biggest trading partner. They also have been not fully embracing Iran's actions in response to the US attack. They're critical of the US and Israeli attack, but also critical of Iran for its attacks against regional powers and urging a return to a status quo. What does this mean in terms of an entree for China in the region? For the last 10 or 15 years we've really thought about about Russia as the main kind of major power competitor for influence of the Middle east because they had of the intervention in Syria and because they had the Assad regime as a client state that has fallen apart in the last few years. I don't think really in the last two years. I don't think Russia has a major entree. They have some clients that they sell arms to, some economic relationship. Some substantial Russian populations living in the Gulf states, particularly in the uk, UAE are definitely there. Obviously there's a Russian, Israeli kind of cultural and historical connection too, but I don't think they're even quite the player that they were a few years ago. Not least because you also had Iran relationship that's now complicated by the conflict and you have the Ukraine conflict distracting them. China has always been kind of competing for economic influence. We've had economic ties. It's always been kind of the other party from the economic side, less on the security side that that Middle Eastern states have occasionally nodded towards in the last I think 30 years. I wrote a paper on Sino Saudi relations in college, so at least the last 20 years since I was in college. Dan, tell me what your sense of that. How big an opening is this for China on the global scene to gaining influence here and what does it say and communicate to different audiences around the world about the role China may have played in this as a peacemaker? Is that a sign that that it's got a little bit more sway and credibility as a status quo, preserving pro stability government perhaps than at least the Trump administration does given its role in initiating this conflict.
- [37:35]
Dan Byman
So I think this is a political opening for China, but probably less so on the security front. In terms of hard security measures, China is already pitching itself and saying look, we are not a warlike country in contrast to the United States. We are believers in consultation, unlike the United States. And by the way, we're not the one sinking a third of the economies around the world with surging energy prices and skyrocketing fertilizer prices. So it's gaining political influence in part simply in a zero sum way by the damage to US prestige and the US reputation that has come from this war. And as you say, China will certainly play up its role as a peacemaker and will also be doing outreach other states and saying that we're the ones you can depend on. The problem for China is it doesn't have the military presence in the region and doesn't have the power projection capabilities at present. Now if you look at the growth of the Chinese military in kind of five year snapshots, you could see really steady and almost staggering increases in both different air and especially naval platforms that can go outside the region, but also increases in bases around the world, in Djibouti, in Pakistan. And if China starts to have a more global profile, it can get to the point where its aircraft carriers can be present in the Gulf just the way US Aircraft carriers are. So this might be something to be thinking about in a 5 to 10 year time horizon rather than an immediate one. But I certainly think the short term political possibility is there and I think the longer term security possibility is there, but the security role is more of a question mark
- [39:32]
Scott R. Anderson
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- [40:57]
Scott R. Anderson
So let's step away from the regional geopolitical consequences of this and think a little bit more about the consequences that we may have avoided. That are the threats that President Trump has been levying against Iran for the past week or two, and particularly intensely over the past 48 hours. Before the cease fire was reached, we had specifically President Trump planning to specifically target bridges and power plants in Iran. I suspect that is because they are dual use items that one can conceivably develop a case for being a legitimate military target, but that if eliminated en masse, would have massive consequences for the civilian population and for the Iranian economy. And then in the last 24 hours before the deal, we had the quote I mentioned earlier where President Trump said we may be seeing the end of a civilization tonight. At another point, he had another particularly unhinged true social message, essentially saying, you crazy F words. Open the strait. You need to open the strait or else going to turn Iran into a living hell. It's pretty extraordinary rhetoric that I have never heard an American president say before, and I can't think of a historical example of it being used before. It takes the idea of the no quarter comments that have been controversial by Secretary Hegseth that we've read about before, both in the context of Iran, the context of maritime strikes, but it takes it to a whole new order. Natalie, I want to come to you first on this. For listeners who may not be as cued into to kind of the international law and expectations around the proper limits of the use of military force, talk to us about why these sorts of comments have international lawyers so alarmed in regards to what the Trump administration may have planned or intended to do if the ceasefire had not been reached.
- [42:52]
Natalie Orpett
Why are international lawyers so upset about this? All right, so targeting power plants and infrastructure, as you say, Scott, is not per se a violation of international law. It is, however, an area of significant disagreement between the United States and the rest of the international community, which put the threshold at very different places with respect to whether or not power plants are a legitimate military target and how you should perform the IHL analysis in terms of proportionality, precaution, humanity and distinction. Distinction being sort of the most important thing, but not the only thing, which is is this a civilian item, a civilian object or a military object? And for dual use, it is both. The United States legal interpretation puts sort of this is an oversimplification, but the sort of like what percentage of this object is civilian purpose and what Percentage is military purpose at a different place than the international community. In this case, I suspect that even under the United States, much more permissive standard for what is an appropriate military target among dual use objects. I mean, certainly the scope of President Trump's comments that talked about destroying all power plants, there's just no way that that's legal even under the most generous of or the United States is already much too permissive in my view analysis of this question. So that would be a violation of international humanitarian law, which is law of war. The comments about destroying the entire civilization would implicate at least two laws, two legal issues. Number one is, as you said earlier, potentially genocide, which has among the groups. So genocide is acts committed with the intent to destroy and whole or part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. So this would be a national group, obviously all of the people of Iran. And so depending on whether in a court you could prove the intent element, which is always the most difficult to prove. This could be genocide. It could be litigated in the International Court of Justice, as with the United States as a state party having the action attributed to it. Obviously, as we know, prosecution of war crimes is much more difficult for US Persons because we are not parties to the Rome Treaty, which is the International Criminal Court, but potentially other sorts of legal consequences for that sort of crime, violation of international law. The other one that that implicates that's gotten a little bit less attention is collective punishment, which is really one of the clearly illegal things in international law. Actually, the prohibition on collective punishment goes back to the Hague Convention in 1907, which even at the time was considered a codification of existing international law. And collective punishment just means that when you are in a conflict, you cannot just wipe out an entire population, including civilians, as a means of punishing the state with which you are in a conflict or the party with which you are in a conflict. There are other issues too, but I think those are the easiest high level to just put a little more meat on the bones of some of the discussions that have been happening in the press.
- [46:38]
Tyler McBrien
I was curious about, and maybe this can go with it, but I was curious to pick up on the intent element, which I know is notoriously tricky anyway to prove, but I don't know if this is a philosophical question, but is it even, even more difficult with a figure like Trump when it's really hard to ascribe his intent to anything because it switches so much? I guess. What is the legal standard for using written or official statements to establish intent? For example, Especially when the politician issuing these statements, it's very difficult to ascertain the seriousness with which he's making them.
- [47:18]
Natalie Orpett
Yeah. So it is in part, it's notoriously difficult to prove and to answer this question, because there have been so few cases that have successfully found that a state has been responsible for genocide. There have been more instances where the International Criminal Court has done some analysis on specifically the intent element. But that has been sometimes what I think could fairly be characterized as persuasive in the International Court of Justice, but is not binding in any way what the ICC has as its analysis for intent. And in the icj, it's more complicated also by the fact of attribution to the state. So state responsibility, the intent element is even trickier because you sort of have to deal with when you're actually litigating these issues. So and so said this, but these other people said this. And what can you infer from this type of action? And. And it would be a factual question, really, and it would be subject to litigation. And frankly, I don't think there have been very many instances, probably, I think we can safely say none, where the head of state has been so mixed in messaging that if you were putting on the defense on behalf of the United States and the ICJ trying to argue why there was no intent, you would bring up the fact of the inconsistency as demonstrating that there wasn't sufficient intent. There would be plenty of counterarguments that the opposing side could bring. But it's a very weird issue to have to litigate.
- [49:00]
Scott R. Anderson
And setting aside the litigation context, I do think the intent question really bears in on the broader context in which a lot of these rules bear on most directly, which is is the perspectives of other states about the legitimacy of U.S. conduct. Setting aside the genocide question, setting aside even the war crimes question, although that kind of gets implicated, the fundamental premise of any legitimate military action under national humanitarian law is that you are pursuing a military necessity objective and you're adequately distinguishing from civilian targets, and that any harm to civilian targets is going to be necessary and proportional to the damage to the military necessity being pursued. The problem with that here, and notably I should say that, is why I think you see Dan Kaine saying, well, we're still only going to hit lawful targets. We're only ever going to hit lawful targets. That's why you hear them focused on, at least in the earlier comments and in the military comments, bridges and power plants, something where you have at least a potential use in battle argument, one that Part of the international community is going to disagree with, a lot of international lawyers are going to disagree with, but at least the United States military, military has bought in on for several decades now to some extent. The problem with that is when the President is saying we are hitting these targets because you won't agree to open the Strait of Hormuz, that's actually not a legitimate basis for the conflict. And Jusan Bello rules, something which are supposed to be, are kind of conceptually kept separate from the US at bellum rules about the legitimacy of a conflict, but they're not actually that easily segregable because your concept of military necessity, what you're weighing against, is inherently tied in with your strategic objectives. So if you have a really legitimate strategic objective, it becomes really kind of a hard case to say all of the things are validly targetable. I think that really is what the damage that President Trump's comments do in this context, and particularly as hard, I think, for US Service members, because service members will say, well, look, we're hitting a target because we, we think the Iranian military uses, they're an enemy force. And in how we think about this, bearing in mind that in the US system, the military is much more authority over looking at jus and Bella questions, but tends to defer the political leadership on jus ad bellum questions. It's a rough divide between the two. It puts them in difficult positions because they're being asked to do something for reasons that inherently aren't clearly lawful. It gets even harder when you have President Trump and senior administration officials saying we've met all our military objectives. I mean, that's what we've heard multiple times, both before and after the ceasefire. Our military objectives have been accomplished. If they have, then what's the basis for continuing the armed conflict in the first place? There isn't one. That's a US ad bellum question fundamentally, but it really begins to draw on the question the military necessity scale you're applying in the Jusunbellum context too, particularly for dual use objects where it's so fundamental to the trade offs that Jusambello is supposed to weigh in, which is civilian harm versus military necessity.
- [52:03]
Tyler McBrien
One more question that because I've been thinking about this connection between us and Bello and you said bellum. I think it also especially is complicated when just months ago, the last round of strikes on Iran, President Trump said that we've completely wiped out, I mean especially their, their nuclear capability, which I feel like undercuts both use at bellum and use in bello arguments that the US has made in terms of, you know, the military in itself, of each strike when he's only just months prior said that they basically have wiped out certain capabilities. Yeah, I'm just wondering how that complicates things as well.
- [52:38]
Natalie Orpett
Yeah, I mean, I think this is actually pointing to one of the real tensions of where in some international law experts opinion, you really do have to have a firm line between the legal analysis in a jus and Bello versus jus ad bellum framework and the military necessity question of what is the connection to the strategic purpose and does that comply with international law? Whether you have a justification you can raise for going to war in the first place. Those people who really differentiate would say, well, that's actually very different from the IHL analysis, which is what you apply when you use in Bellow when the war has started, where the question is not military necessity, the question is military advantage. And that is a question that isn't as much directly. And this is where there's a big point of contention, even among experts. There is not necessarily a connection to the overall strategic goals of the conflict or how you connect that back to the original legal justification that the state purports to have for entering into the conflict in the first place. But instead, in a jus in bello framework, the military advantage is the question of whether in combination with the other principles of IHL that you have to apply it is advantageous for really much more the military campaign and how that measures up with respect to the other obligations that a state party has to distinguish anguish and exercise precaution measures and humanity measures. It's tricky because I think, Scott, that those sorts of experts or analysts would say, well, actually the Strait of Hormuz focus is legitimate in terms of its military advantage if weighed properly among the other factors that need to be weighed, because it's become a crucial part of the fighting and it's one of the areas of leverage that Iran has. By the way, I am raising this for the benefit of the people who make these arguments that I do not agree with, at least to the strictest sense that they argue. But I think it is worth sort of putting a finer point on that. And it's one of those areas where unfortunately the terminology is really complicated and really there's a philosophical question of whether to, at least for the sake of discussion or analysis, separate Jusan Bello and us ad bellum, because the idea or the premise for those who think that they should be strictly divided is that even if jus ad bellum the entry into the conflict was completely illegal, you still want parties to adhere to the law of war once the conflict has begun. And so you don't just judge whether or not entry into the conflict was legal. That's over and done with. Now that you're in war, you have law of war obligations. That's the thesis there.
- [55:53]
Scott R. Anderson
I understand those arguments and I hear, but I think there's still a fundamental issue here where the concept of military advantage depends on your objectives. Otherwise any sort of military campaign will immediately justify an all out war, which is the direction we've seen both Israel lean in and the United States. You can't target an Iranian naval vessel off of Sri Lanka, not engage in hostility and say it's a legitimate target, which the United States did. Unless you're leading to this vision that anything related to the Iranian military is 100% open target.
- [56:22]
Natalie Orpett
Now, which those people would, they would say if there's a military advantage.
- [56:26]
Scott R. Anderson
But the point is that that legitimacy under Usin Bello does not mean the strike is lawful. It means it's lawful under. But there's a whole other set of legal obligations that that's ignoring if you're describing those and conceiving of those as lawful. And that's what's really getting undermined here by this broader spectrum. Jusum bello isn't the only law that applies in an armed conflict. So let me take this back to the political realm, Dan, because I want to pull you in on this. We've seen this become a point of conflict between the United States and key European allies. And it's a big point of distinction between, for example, the June and July strikes last year and this military campaign. Last year we had the G7 issue fairly strong statement of support with some caveats or some careful language, but nonetheless generally supportive tone. This time we only had Canada and Australia actually step in and voice support for the military operation. And I'm not sure of their logistical involvement. My sense that there hasn't really been many. Last time we did not hear about any reports about Europeans posing major obstacles to the use of air bases or airspace. This time we've seen an actually expanding universe objection where now we have limitations by not just Spain and the UK although the UK has kind of waffled and walked back some of it a little bit. You have Austria shutting down airspace. You have France setting limits. Talk to us about what this sort of rhetoric and the general posture the Trump administration has taken means for those long term relationships to setting aside even the hostility that President Trump has expressed towards those conventional allies. What does this mean about the trajectory of what have traditionally been pretty key defense and international relationships for the United States?
- [58:07]
Dan Byman
So certainly it's going to harm the relationship. The question to me is, how much? And also, are there any kind of perhaps second order effects that might be beneficial? So the United States kind of had the worst of all worlds where it didn't consult allies at all, especially key allies in Europe, and then as soon as things began to go bad in the war, immediately began to berate them for not playing a major role. And this was especially galling to Europeans when the United States is calling on them to open the Strait of Hormuz, which would not have been closed, as Natalie pointed out earlier, if it weren't not for the war, and which the US Navy was reluctant to do because of the incredible difficulty of the operation. So there's a sense of being seen as irrelevant. There's a sense of insult, which is not a great combination. However, it again highlighted the dependence these states have on the United States militarily. And for those who have been kind of following European security, there has been a big shift in Germany to increase the power and budget of its intelligence service. And part of it is because they recognize they're incredibly dependent on the United States for almost everything. And that question they have is a legitimate one, which is, will the United States be there? Should Europe need it? And we have contradictory signals from this administration. But certainly if you focus on actions rather than words, there are genuine question marks to be raised. This has meant that Europe is actually increasing its own defense efforts, which to me is a very good thing. I, as someone who believes in democratic values, want the Europeans to be more involved on the world stage. And I, as an American, want European partners to be playing a role and sacrificing, just as Americans sacrifice for broader security goals. But part of the reason for this otherwise very desirable and is that the European states don't trust the United States. And rather than doing these sorts of buildups in harmony with the United States and trying to complement U.S. forces, it's often done to supplant the U.S. role. So I can see some benefits of this. But it's being done for reasons, to me that are very strongly against long term US Security interests, which to me depend very much on the United States having close alliances with other democracies around the world and Europe being very much at the center of this.
- [60:38]
Scott R. Anderson
So I want to shift our focus and talk a little bit about the domestic front And Tyler, I want to come to you first on this one. This administration is, I think it's fair to say, pretty obsessed with projecting strength. It is in the rhetoric, it's in the framing of everything. The president, Secretary Hickseth, lots of people talk all day, would talk all day about the strength of the United States, its incredible military capability. And we see that on display in the city conflict. From a tactical, from a technical perspective, what the United States and Israel accomplished in the first 48 hours of hostilities is pretty extraordinary. We just saw this really extraordinary rescue operation take place using all these emerging technologies, although the fact that details of them are now coming out in the New York Post, I find maybe slightly dismaying. So that now our adversaries are fully aware of exactly what those constraints and limits of our capability are, including geographic range. But nonetheless, there's pretty exceptional tactical and technical stuff happening throughout this conflict that is pretty extraordinary and I think probably does give adversaries of the United States and Israel some pause to say, wow, this is actually kind of amazing what the United States can accomplish, maybe even more than we fully expected. That said, the United States ability to force its main immediate goal, like the opening of Straight Hormuz, has been pretty limited. And those limitations come from, to some extent, the domestic political sphere and the economic sphere that feeds into that sphere. So talk to us about what you think are the big constraints there that we've seen and how this kind of feeds into it. How much was President Trump and the Trump administration constrained by some of the outer limits of what's happening in this conflict and the kind of second and third order effects from this conflict? Or am I exaggerating and reading too much into this idea that the war is proving unpopular and proving very expensive and damaging the global economy. Maybe that's not enough to happen, actually have swayed them this way. What's your sense of it?
- [62:26]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen the most recent poll figures, but I imagine that the stunning military success in the very strict sense has made the generals look great to Trump's base. But maybe Trump not so much. And I think if you look at all of the many shifting goals that Trump threw out there of opening the strait that never happened, of regime change that didn't happen. In fact, it may be have just replaced it with a more extreme and more revanchist leader, diminishing Iranian military capacity. It did to a great extent. But planes are still being shot down. I mean, their service members have died. It's not like a. I think those will loom large among the base. This is by no means scientific at all, but I opened up Facebook this morning for the first time in, I think a year. And the first post, I grew up in a fairly conservative area of Georgia. The first post was a guy who went to my high school, very, very like, strong MAGA supporter. I've always seen him. This was the first post he's ever made that was like an anti Trump post. He said he highlighted the civilizational line and he said, this is not what I signed up for. This is not America First. This is not no more forever wars. And I was shocked. It sounds like I'm making up a conservative MAGA voter just to like astronomy, but this is a real person and, you know, obviously it's just one person, but the, I think the civilizational line after the one of the biggest single civilian casualty events in recent US Military history happened, it's just really hard to stomach. No matter, I think where you stand on America first, just the combination of those two things I think would give any normal person pause, you know, So I don't know. I think this is a quagmire for Trump for sure. And I know we've been talking about the war in the past tense a bit, but I'm maybe not as hopeful about the prospects of this ceasefire. And so I think I don't want to even discount the idea that it could get even worse for Trump politically, domestically speaking.
- [64:38]
Natalie Orpett
I think that this really reflects an issue we've seen constantly with this administration, which is that it is so juvenile when it comes to the use of the military. And it really feels sometimes, including in the rhetoric that we have a bunch of, sorry, I'm going to try this time to not insult teenage boys as a general matter, but let's say the stereotypical video game playing teenage boy who's just like, these are cool weapons. We have cool capacity. We can do cool things with our fancy technology and our cool weapons. And it has no bearing whatsoever and is completely detached from any sense of strategy. So, yes, it is true that there have been some incredible military successes. They are completely detached. That is completely detached from the question of whether they are of any strategic value. And especially when you take into account the fact that some of these amazing tactical successes have been in response to problems of our own making. The rescue of this colonel, which was genuinely incredible, was because of a mission that I have seen some critics question. The necessity of the need to figure out a means of reopening the Strait of Hormuz is because the United States took all of these actions that were tactical successes. Query. There are some people saying how could they? They must have surely not been realizing that the Iranians would turn to the Strait of Hormuz. Everyone who's been in administration before this has said that's always been when thinking about potential conflict with Iran, the main deterrent is that obviously they would turn toward their ability to. To affect traffic in the state of Hormuz, because that's a huge point of leverage. But tactical successes are impressive, yes, but it really bears thinking about the bigger picture, and that is that the technical and tactical capacity of the military is really secondary to the question question of what are we even doing here in the first place.
- [67:03]
Dan Byman
I just want to kind of foot stomp and then foot stomp again, a point that Natalie made, which is the kind of strategic gap here. I think this is an administration that really almost doesn't have an interest in strategic objectives, where if you look at what the kind of New York Times and others have revealed about decision making, there wasn't any. Here's what we want to accomplish and here's the means for we're going to put forward and here's how we hope to use the peace that results to achieve our interest. All of that is lacking. I think President Trump wanted to look good with his own supporters, which I think is the very strong motivator of most of his actions. Part of the reason he is seeking an off ramp is not just that this war is unpopular with the American people and that this war is going to cause problems for his party over time, but also that key supporters, including I think, most importantly Tyler's friend, are turning against this war. And this is something he does care about tremendously. And so when we think about domestic politics, usually that's a factor that is shaping foreign policy. But with this administration, I would really say that is the factor shaping the Iran war in particular.
- [68:25]
Scott R. Anderson
Dan, let me ask you about another aspect of this, which is the sustainability of the US War effort, particularly at the tempo. It's been pursued for the last four weeks and going five weeks at this point, we've gotten reports about interceptor supplies running low supplies, and particularly the recouped supplies that were originally intended to be given to Ukraine as a security assistant be diverted to support the war effort there. It's a concern not just for the United States, but also for Gulf allies and for Israel, because a lot of these are the same systems that they rely on to shoot down the sorts of threats they're now facing quite regularly in the form of drones and ICBMs and other things from Iran. And then fundamentally, the administration says it needs $200 billion supplemental appropriations to fund this ongoing effort, which it's only going to be able to get through reconciliation. And even then, it's slim margins. It only has slim control of both chambers. And there are Republicans skeptical of that paycheck, if not the military campaign more broadly, and willing to say as much publicly. So how feasible would it have been for the Trump administration to sustain, or will it be, I guess, to sustain, a conflict like we've been seeing for the past several weeks into the near future? And what is the limit on that? We know the War powers resolution says 60 days in certain circumstances. That would be hard to stretch here, but maybe up to 90 days. Then you've got this hard statutory bar. Presidents have kind of disregarded it in the past. Past in certain contexts, but nothing quite this dramatic. And in theory, it does open the door to a potential lawsuit or something, if you wanted to see it. So you've got that deadline, and then you've got the funding and practical deadline as well. Is it true the president could have continued to keep continuing on this campaign, or are there real limits there?
- [70:10]
Dan Byman
I think the limits are actually probably a bad phrasing, but limits are quite limited. I'll defer to others, in fact, everyone else on the session about the War Powers act, other than to say, I think politically he could probably blow it off and Congress would whack a lot of fingers, but not much would actually happen. Right. So there might be kind of some vehement calls that he should be paying attention. But I actually don't think people would vote to cut off funding for the US Military or anything else that would actually matter. So it really depends on really his level of fear towards Congress, which I think is pretty close to his zero. The broader sustainability question. Certainly the munitions were running low, especially kind of certain key systems. Having said that, the number of Iranian attacks was also at a more limited level. The risk was borne by US Allies, especially the Gulf states. And as a result, the United States could keep fighting. Right. It's not the sort of thing where here in Washington, D.C. we are going to shelters all the time because of Iranian attacks. Right. That's something that's happening in other countries rather than here. But of course, there was Gulf State pressure that this is unsustainable, as we discussed earlier. More broadly, the munition shortage is a huge issue for the effort against Russia and contingencies against China and these things. Something like Tomahawk missiles. They take months and months and months to produce relatively small numbers. And we used huge parts of our stock stockpile in this conflict. Now we can increase that, but it's a much more massive effort bureaucratically and politically to increase production numbers. And it's not something we've done. There is, of course, the question of can we replace all this? And the answer in the theoretical sense is yes. But there hasn't been much interest in Congress in kind of a massive, long term sustained increase in military spending. And doing it for a war that is unpopular, I think is relatively unlikely. It's not out of the question. The US Military remains popular. Support for the military remains popular. But the idea of spending hundreds of billions of dollars and decimating some social programs that have already been shredded in the name of an unpopular war is just a bad political optic. And as midterms come up, I don't think many members of Congress want to be seen kind of voting in that area.
- [72:45]
Scott R. Anderson
One more issue, because I flagged it up front before we wrap up our conversation, and that is I want to go back to the Maggie Hack Haberman and Jonathan Swan article, an excerpt from their book you mentioned, Natalie, because it's kind of a broader trend that I've seen in coverage in the last 48 to 72 hours. We've seen a number of exposes on the process leading to the decision to go to war with Iran leading up to the Tuesday deadline. And frankly, particularly that's kind of lined up as Trump's rhetoric has gotten more, by my reading, fairly desperate about it. And they all have kind of a consistent theme, which is that they frame J.D. vance as the person who opposed it. I've seen an article that does this in the Washington Post, in the Politico, I believe, in the Wall Street Journal, although I don't know if I actually got to read that one all the way through. So may have had a different conclusion. Of course, we have this piece in the New York Times coming from this book. It's pretty interesting, possibly that they are all, you know, the fact that you have this book forthcoming is kind of breaking the dam, although I don't think the book's actually scheduled to be released for another couple weeks. Maybe they're all coming up circling back on the same reporting, although I don't believe any of the other pieces I saw attributed directly back to this account. And it's a super detailed account, particularly the Haberman and Swan piece. They go down to these specific places. People are sitting in a meeting to which even the ODNI was not invited, like Tulsi Gabbard. So it's only a group of 12 or 14 people in this meeting. My sense is when you see a wave of stories all doing the same things, that's because somebody is leaking it and putting it out there and trying to shape a narrative in doing so. And that's what I kind of suspect is happening with people, either J.D. vance himself, people around him, or people who are worried about what this war, if it proves to be a disaster, could do for other people in the Republican Party who might be seen as standard bearers. And they don't give Marco Rubio the top prize. They give it to JD Vance as a person who said, no, this is a mistake. First, am I being way too cynical in this kind of framing? I mean, this is what happens when you work with Ben Wittes and journalists for better part of a decade, is that you become highly, highly cynical of the whole enterprise. And that when I see stories, I'm assuming there's always some of classified meanings, there's always some strategic reason between leaking it. But maybe the broader question is, if I am onto something, what does it mean if people are trying to shift blame to Trump and away from J.D. vance and kind of lionize him? And what does that tell us about the role that this set of decisions could play in the future trajectory of the Republican Party and in the future trajectory of American politics? Whether we have our next presidential race, which people are already teeing up for. Does it say something that, at least by my estimation, people close to the president seem to be trying to pass the responsibility off on him in a way, on the next person in line. Does that make any sense to you as a possibility?
- [75:37]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I think it definitely. I mean, it speaks to, like, it seems motivated by survival of J.D. vance, the presidential candidate, but also survival of the Republican Party. I mean, if, if you can just offload this unpopular war on like a lame duck president, then you don't have to. Then you don't attach to the party and like, it doesn't poison the entire candidate pool. It's just sort of isolated to Trump. I don't think it's to work, but yeah, I don't know.
- [76:02]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah.
- [76:03]
Natalie Orpett
Can I interrupt with some breaking news? Because as we have said, we don't know what's going to happen here. Our colleague Kate Clonik just dropped in our slack that the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post are both reporting that Iran has shut the Strait of Hormuz again as retaliation for Israeli strikes on Hezbollah. So so we'll see where that reporting goes. I haven't seen. I took a quick look on a couple of US news sites and didn't see that reported, but just in case, dear listeners, the entire conversation we had before this seems irrelevant. Just know that it's because things keep changing, which goes to our point about why it's unpredictable. And this is entirely crazy making when you're trying to analyze yeah, the concept
- [76:53]
Scott R. Anderson
of open is always very relative, and I think that is likely to remain true in the near future. But my suspicion is at least for the next couple of days, as long as there's some colorable argument that's open or on its way to opening, and it kind of already was, even before this deadline with, you know, a couple of ships being able to skirt by Oman and get some shipments in and out of the region, I think it'll be enough to keep the ceasefire in place. If not, it's still a point of contention, but we will have to wait and see. I could be proven wrong very quickly with that, we are officially out of time today, but this would not be rashless. Great if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come until we are back in your podcast. Dan, what do you have for us this week?
- [77:31]
Dan Byman
So, Scott, as you know, I've taken my personal mission to make sure that Rational Security has more references to different games.
- [77:39]
Scott R. Anderson
This is why I have you on, Dan. I rely on these for your regular appearances for my holiday shopping and hobby purchases.
- [77:46]
Dan Byman
Some people can paint, yes, and so a game. And I'd like to shout out my oldest son for this one. I recently played his 1960 the Making of the President, which is a game that simulates the 1960 election campaign. I'd like to boast that thanks to me, Tricky Dick did win the 1960 election, although it was again a very close election election. But it's a very good and relatively simple simulation of a truly fascinating US Election.
- [78:19]
Scott R. Anderson
Wonderful, wonderful. I love these historical simulation games that you've been bringing our way. Natalie, what do you have for us this week?
- [78:26]
Natalie Orpett
I have a book recommendation that I have been reading which has been really enjoyable. I picked it up again recently because I was diverted by life and wars and such. But it is called this Strange Eventful History by Claire Massoud, I believe. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing her last name. It is the story of a family over the course of, I don't know, 70 or so years, written in chapters from different family members perspectives and weaving together their experiences living in all different parts of the world, starting in Algeria, a family that lived in Algeria but considered themselves French. And this was during World War II, and different parts of the family spread out, moved to all different areas of the world. And it's very interesting. It's not super historical fiction in the sense that it's portraying historical events, but it is very much adjacent to it. So it's sort of one of the those books where you feel like you're getting a flavor of what living through those times was like. Not the events themselves, but what it was like to live. And I think the thing I'm actually enjoying about it most is that it is just really, really beautifully written in a very unique way, including in the sense that I think that some of her sentences go on for 10 lines, but they're just beautifully composed and they sort of follow the way that we think. And anyway, I will stop explaining it because it's worth picking up and experiencing on your own. But it is just such a delight to read. Really, really good writing.
- [80:16]
Scott R. Anderson
Wonderful, wonderful suggestion there. I'm going to go a little more low brow with my object lesson this week. I was reminded by another pop culture podcast. I listen to the wonderful blank check of a cultural artifact that I had completely forgotten for the last decade, but went back to and I felt like has a little bit more relevance as we try to understand the psyche of the man making such big decisions that affect all of our lives and the lives of almost everyone around the world. That is of course, our President Donald Trump, and that is in 2002. Errol Morris, the documentarian, did a series of documentary interviews for the Oscars, interviewing various celebrities about their favorite movie. And the clip that aired that Donald Trump recorded with him was about King Kong. But he also did another extended conversation with him specifically about Citizen Kane, a movie about which Donald Trump no doubt has some strong feelings. I think he's actually identified as his favorite movie in kind of prior comments to this. I went back and watched the clip and it's kind it's really extraordinary because actually for a good part of the conversation, this is also done through Errol Morse's signature in Terratron, where you're like looking down the barrel at the person speaking in a way that's a little unusual, I feel like for video documentaries. And Donald Trump actually says some like things about Citizen Kane that are like insightful and introspective and show a little bit of sensitivity to some of the themes that I think the filmmaker certainly meant to communicate around the choices made and then ends it on a note that may have been editing, but I read an interview with Errol Morse and insisted it was not. This is actually how the interview ended. That is so discordant and leads in such a different direction. It really changes the whole interview. It's really extraordinary to watch. I highly recommend recommend it. So I'll throw that out there. Watch the 2002 interview with Donald Trump about Citizen Kane. It is a weird window into an odd man who controls a lot of things about our lives these days. And with that, I will leave it to you, Tyler. Bring us home. What do you have for your object lesson this week?
- [82:11]
Tyler McBrien
For a second, I thought you were going to recommend revisiting the Apprentice.
- [82:16]
Scott R. Anderson
No, I never visited the Apprentice in the first place. Certainly no basis for revisiting. In my mind, I will be.
- [82:22]
Tyler McBrien
But I'm going to. Yeah. I mean, with so much to be cynical about, I'm going to recommend consuming as much Artemis 2 content as humanly possible. I mean, it's just been like, just a hopeful bright spot. I mean, watching the video of the astronaut naming the spot on the moon after his late wife was like, if you don't cry, if your eyes are dry after that, you have no hope, I think, or I have no hope for you. So it's just been, I think, a really delightful and hopeful news story. So I'm recommending something that probably everyone listening to this is already very aware of. But if you haven't seen that video, watch it. If you've seen it, watch it again. There's a lot of humanity happening up there.
- [83:06]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, really extraordinary. It's been something really touching to watch and is something that could have been a really positive, unifying, heartwarming story for the Trump administration, which can legitimately take some credit for the Artemis initiative, but was a little overshadowed by some other statements by the President over the last few days, unfortunately. Well, with that, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is, of course, a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit us@lawfaremedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media, wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening, and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfourmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was Noam Osban of Go Rodeo and her music, as always, was performed by Sofia Yana. We were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guest Dan, Natalie and Tyler, I am Scott R. Andersen and we will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?
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Tyler McBrien
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Scott R. Anderson
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