← The David Frum Show
The David Frum Show
Trump’s War With Iran and a New Danger at Home
00:52:44
Tom Nichols on Donald Trump’s war with Iran, forgotten lessons from the Iraq War, and fears about the intentions of America’s leaders. Plus: Why Trump’s wartime powers could be extremely dangerous for American freedoms.
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic. I'm recording the show at a grave moment in American history. My guest this week will be Tom Nichols, my colleague at the Atlantic, former professor at the Naval War College. And we'll be discussing our anxieties about the way the war with Iran has been managed, our fears about the uses to which the war will be put by the Trump administration, and our hopes for a better future for the people of Iran, but a future that cannot be separated from the dangers this war poses to the people of the United States. There will be no book talk this week. Our conversation will be too substantial for that. So I will just preface now with some thoughts before the dialogue about what is at hand. I should stress I record this program midday, Monday, March 2. It will not be released on audio for a day and a half. It will not be released on video for two days. So there may be intervals, there may be gaps in the things you know about the situation at home and abroad and what I know as I speak to you. But I want to speak about something that just happened a very few minutes ago that is a real indicator, a real warning of the dangers that the United States faces in this war with Iran. Shortly before I began the recording, CBS News obtained and published images or purported images of the alleged shooter in the Austin, Texas, mass shooting. The alleged shooter was wearing a T shirt, which apparently, according to the images that have been released, reveals an image of the Iranian flag. Now, I personally very much doubt that the shooter was in any way an agent or operative of the Iranian state and was anyway operating on behalf of the Iranian state. Might be wrong, but I doubt it. But there's no question that Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and that it has, over many decades, not only built networks all over the world, but activated triggered networks that have committed acts of terrorism all over the planet. Buenos aires, Berlin, Washington, D.C. any prudent administration in a war with such a power would have to anticipate that one resource available to that world's leading state sponsor of terrorism would be to activate terrorist networks in the United States. You simply have to plan for that. Even the best administration, with the greatest respect for American liberties. What if you have an administration that does not respect those liberties? What if you have an administration with a proven record of falsely accusing Americans of terrorism for acts like legally recording the operations of immigration authorities that has repeatedly lied about what the Department of Homeland Security is doing and why it's doing it that has covered up casualties of American citizens at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. What if you have that kind of government? Well, that possibility of Iranian sleeper cells inside the United States, that's not just a resource for the Iranian regime to use against the United States. That's a resource that the Trump administration can use against the liberties of American people. After all, if it's really possible that there are about to be acts of terrorism by Iran inside the United States, how can Congress continue to blockade funds for the Department of Homeland Security until it gets reforms in the way that the Department of Homeland Security operates, including an end to the lying that has been such a disgrace of the Department of Homeland Security? You're going to see a real press by the Trump administration to say release the funds and let the Department of Homeland Security resume its operations exactly the way it wants to, including falsely calling people terrorists if they operate a camera near an immigration agent. You're going to see attacks on the freedom of the press. This administration has already made it clear that it regards it as illegal, criminal for reporters simply to ask questions of Pentagon employees about what they're doing with the American people's money, about what they're doing with the American people's security, but what they're doing with the lives of soldiers entrusted to their care. That has been the view of this administration. No, you are not allowed to ask any of these questions. We're going to yank your press credentials. If you have any unauthorized conversations with anybody in the building, you're not allowed to do that. Only the designated leaders of the building get to speak at all. And if they're not speaking, and if they're saying things that are that look like they might not be true, you can't second guess or question them. We have had many instances over the first year of the Trump administration of false invocations of emergency powers. The whole tariff nonsense, the tariffs that were struck down by the Supreme Court, those tariffs rested on false claims by the President of the United States. But economic emergency, well, now there's a real war and there's a real risk of terrorist activity inside the United States. That's a much more plausible emergency than anything Trump invoked about tariffs. And what court will say, you know what? We don't think you're telling the truth about this either. Courts will be very reluctant to do that. So there'll be new assertions of emergency power in all kinds of contexts. We know that people around the president, people who have the president's ear, have been urging him to use emergency powers against the elections of 2026. The possibility of that temptation being accepted are much higher today than they were 10 days ago or a week ago. And there may be more legal predicates to allow him to do it in every way we can imagine and in many ways we cannot. We're moving into a terrain of extraordinary danger to democratic institutions. The war in Iran is not just a foreign policy question. It is an urgent domestic policy question. It is a massive grant of power to a president and administration that have proven again and again that they will abuse any powers that they are entrusted with. You know, we all wish, of course, a safe and swift return to American personnel in danger. We wish a safe and swift return home to all the allied personnel in danger. And we wish urgently a better future for the oppressed people of Iran who've been so maltreated and murdered by the most aggressive and most repressive regime maybe on the entire planet. But Americans also are entitled to think about their safety, their security and their freedom. And that is suddenly called into question in a way that has been quite theoretical until the Trump administration came along. And even in the early days of the Trump administration, the second Trump administration has, while it has been less theoretical and more actual, has not been as imminent and ominous as it is today. But the threat now is as imminent and ominous as possibly could be. Or as it yet has been, perhaps it can get even worse. And as an American, it's your job now not to lose either your ideals or your confidence. The courts still work. The liberties of the Constitution are still on paper. And it's going to be up to all of us to make sure that those courts continue to operate and that those liberties remain real. Against an administration that will use any excuse to try to cramp, to avoid the courts, neuter Congress and negate those liberties. Any excuse. And now they've got a better excuse than they've ever had before. So as I said, a grave moment in American history. A dangerous moment in American history. Not blind to the opportunities for a better Middle east, but don't be blind either to the risks of a much worse future for Americans here at home. And now my dialogue with Ton Nichols. But first, a quick break. Tom Nichols is an ex professor at the Naval War College, an expert in nuclear weapons, and of course a colleague at the Atlantic who filed early in the morning of the first hours of this war in a act of amazing summary of knowledge and and expertise. Tom is a five time Jeopardy. Champion and now a returning two time guest on the David Farm Show. I'm very grateful to him for making the time on this busy day. I'm going to, just for the information of listeners and viewers, point out we're recording midday Monday. The audio will post early morning Wednesday video midday Wednesday. So there's a, a gap for a lot of events to happen in the United States and around the world, but we're going to do the best we can to focus on some domestic issues raised by President Trump's action in Iran. Tom, let me just start with this. I think you and I belong to that tiny little Venn diagram section of the Venn diagram that is broadly sympathetic to action against the Iranian regime and deeply worried about action by the Trump administration.
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B
Absolutely no one should be shedding any tears for the mullahs. And, you know, we should all be hoping that now that we're committed to this, whatever this is. I suppose one of the things we should talk about, but if it's regime change, that this goes well. But not only am I worried about the history of regime change, I mean, I supported, as you did, the Iraq war and as we saw that regime change becomes a very dicey business. But I'm also concerned about the competence of this administration to pull off something of this size. And I think because of the people who are in it, the president is the president, but I wish he had a better team around him. So, yeah, I'm concerned. I hope the, I hope the Iranian regime transforms into something else. But I'm very concerned about this team trying to do it.
- [09:23]
A
Okay, let's break this into pieces. I'm just here are the pieces that I think we should address. The first is your question, what is this? The second is competence of the team, and the third is intentions of the team, both for the region and here at home. So let's, I'm going to try to get to all of those points. Let's talk about what this is. I listened to the recent press conference by Pete Hegseth, who denounced other wars, very personal terms waged by Presidents Obama and Biden and President W. Bush, I presume. And he said, this is not going to be a war of regime change. There's no nation building. There's no democracy building. I thought, what kind of guy looks at the Iraq war, says, you know what we did wrong in Iraq? We spent too much time planning for the end state. Everyone thought the problem was we did too little planning for the end state. But the Hegseth and company say no too much. The answer is launch a war, then see what happens with no particular idea about what's to come next.
- [10:15]
B
You know, you and I were alive during that war and paying attention. And one of the things that I heard constantly, especially from the officers who were coming back to us, you know, from their assignments and coming back through the Naval War College, is that it was completely the other way around. Donald Rumsfeld would pretty much throw. The Secretary of defense at the time would throw you out of his office if you started talking about phase four and what comes after and nation building and all that stuff. He don't want to hear any of that stuff. He was more like Hegseth maybe, than Hegseth wants to admit. He wanted to prove that a transformed small force could knock over the. What was at the time the fourth largest army in the world. Right. That, you know, that we could go in and we did that in 91, and then we knocked over that army, and then we came back in and that we could do it again with this kind of Jedi force. That's all Rumsfeld was interested in. So the idea that somehow these previous wars, we spent all this time, you know, chin pulling about what comes next and how the mistakes that happened were. Because we didn't do that.
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A
Right. And now we're not. Now we're not doing it. The Trump people think they're doing the opposite, but they're doing, as you say, Rumsfeld on steroids. Rumsfeld without the good manners. Not Rumsfeld's manners were so good. All right, let's. Let's talk here about the team at home. I think you and I are worried about slightly different things. You're worried about the competence of the team. I'm worried that war empowers presidents inevitably. And President Trump and his team have proven his domestic team have proven they can't be trusted with those powers, and now they're going to have greater powers to, for example, crack down on media reporting. I mean, it's a war. You can't put troops at risk, obviously. So if Pete Hegseth texts you the war plans by mistake, as he did to our colleague Jeff Goldberg, now there's a real case for punishing the people received B says mistaken texts.
- [12:07]
B
Well, hold on. Let me just check signal, see if anything's coming in today. You know, I share both of those concerns. One of them is more proximate here in the first few days of the war. What I'm really concerned about, our military is operationally the most capable in the world. I mean, they're just the best. But you Know they can only do the missions that they're assigned to do. They can't run the war that has to come from the White House and the Pentagon. And, you know, the fact that, I mean, I suppose I take some comfort in the fact that Pete Hegseth has been relegated to giving cheerleader speeches at 8 o' clock in the morning when he knows nobody's listening to a Pentagon briefing room that's full of allied political allies like you. The first thing I thought, I mean, look, why are we going into a run? I think it is the President's vain glory. He thinks he's on a roll, that this is easy to do, that you can knock off dictatorships like Venezuela and then have a parade, that this solves a lot of his problems. It gets people not talking about the Epstein files. I really believe that a huge chunk of Donald Trump's foreign policy is rooted in trying to get people to stop talking about the Epstein files. I think he is that narrow and crass. I think that he will. I had exactly the same thought you did, David, which is great. Now he's going to say, I'm a war president. That means you can't criticize me, means I can stomp on the press, means that, you know, I can declare a national emergency. You know, maybe, as the British Parliament said in 1919 44, I think it was, this is not a propitious time for an election. You know, he I, there's all kinds of mischief that comes with a war because, as you say, presidential war powers, especially once a conflict is underway, become almost unchallengeable.
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A
Right. President Trump has invoked war powers to justify his stupid tariffs. And the Supreme Court said, that's emergency powers, I should say. And the Supreme Court correctly, in my opinion, said, there's no emergency. You don't have these powers. You can't oppose the tariffs. But this is a real shooting war. There's no question this is a war. Powers come with that. If anybody else were president right now, I think you and I would agree the President needs a broader range of powers to bring the war to a successful conclusion, achieve American aims, protect American lives, protect allied lives. But you know he's going to make, you know, you fear he will make wicked use of those powers there.
- [14:39]
B
What presidential powers does he not make wicked use of is really the way to put it. Why would anyone assume that this is the set of powers that he will use with prudence and responsibility, especially when you cannot trust the rationale behind this war? There was no gathering of allies. I mean, you know, Bush 43 took a lot of static for the way he went into Iraq compared to this, that was lawyered up like a corporate merger compared to what Donald Trump has done, going to the UN Going to Congress, getting all those ducks in the row, going back to the UN a second time, even though, as you know, President Bush didn't want to do that that second time around. There's none of that here. And so I don't trust why this war was launched in the first place. I, right now, all I can say is our men and women are in action and I wish them every success and to come home safely. But that doesn't mean that we should stop asking questions about things like curtailing the president's war powers because he will abuse them, because I can say with confidence, he will abuse them because he has abused all the other powers of his office. And these are the most tempting powers there are.
- [15:55]
A
Now, let me steel man this for a minute. Let me invoke people I know, and I think you know who I, I, who I know what they're saying and thinking. And I, I don't know how many people in the listenership or viewership will agree with this point of view, but it's point of view that is important in my social and personal circle and maybe Tom and yours. So here's, here's, let's, here's the steel man. David, everything you say about Trump. True, got it. Don't disagree with you, but Iran has been a lethal danger to Americans since 1979. One atrocity after another, unceasing aggression, unceasing repression at home. Past presidents have all agreed something needed to be done, but nobody knew what to do. The Obama people sent them money. The Biden people allowed them to seize a warship and paid them more money to get the warship back. They've committed assassinations, acts of terrorism, and now we know they're massively rejected by their own people who have sacrificed their lives by the thousands in a bid for freedom. This is the moment. This is the president who happens to be in charge at the moment. How can you say no to the Iran, Iranian people? And how can you forget all the crimes that Iran has inflicted against the United States and America's friends all around the world?
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B
Going to answer with something Ken Edelman said after Iraq? He said, because there was a, you may have remembered, David, some years ago, there was a piece in Vanity Fair called Neo Culpa. And it was a group of conservatives who had pushed for the second Gulf War who were now asked their Second thoughts. And it was people like Pearl and Edelman and Wolfowitz and others. And Adelman said, look, your cause can be absolutely right, but that you have to put it in the drawer that says can't do for now. If we really decided that this was the moment because of the regime's weakness to say, this is the time that we excise this malignancy from the planetary body, politicians, then do it by assembling your allies, by explaining your cause to the American people, by getting authorization of some kind from Congress. And by the way, as a side note here, I was one of the people who. My boss in 1991, Senator John Heinz, he wanted to invoke the War Powers Act. And I felt so strongly about presidential prerogative here that I actually kind of strong armed my boss about why that's a bad idea. He and a group of Republicans were going to enact it. And I said, don't do this. This is the. Against Gulf War One, Bush 41. This was Gulf One in 19. Yeah, this was in the winter of 1990. And I said, don't, don't do it, because I think it would be dangerous. So, you know, if you're going to do it, I would say I still would be worried about this team and their motives doing it. But if somehow we have reached a national consensus, which we have not, and perhaps even something like an international consensus, maybe just our top five or six allies, as we did in 2003, to say, this is the time, then fine, do it. This is not the way. Just showing up and dropping a lot of steel on a lot of Iranian targets and then saying, well, we'll see what happens. My biggest fear is that the steel man case about how can you abandon the Iranian people. Sorry, I have two old wars on my mind. How can you abandon the Iranian people at a time like this? My answer is the way Trump does things and the way it's looking right now, this is going to be, as you and others have pointed out, this is a moral peril not seen since the Hungarian revolution. We're telling people to go out there and oppose their government and risk getting killed. If we're going to do that, we'd better be there.
- [19:38]
A
So 1956, American radio, voice of America and stations like that were saying throughout the month of October, 56 to the Hungarians, at a time when Soviet power looked a little wobbly, rise up, rise up. This is the moment you will be helped. And they did rise up. And the United States did nothing to help them. And the Suez Crisis erupted in the Middle east at the same time and that had something to do with it, but basically President Eisenhower was not going to touch it. And as you say, thousands, I think hundreds were killed, thousands were made prisoner. A quarter of a million, I believe, were driven into exile. But that let me continue with the Steel man now remembering that, which is say, okay, it's not the time, not the team, these guys can't do it. That said, the President of the United States a month ago promised the Iranian people that help was on the way. You know he's a bozo who speaks without meaning it. I know he's a bozo, speaks without meaning it. But the Iranian people didn't know that he's. They thought he was a normal president, more or less, and they didn't know that his word was worthless. And he said, I'm hell, I promise the United States of America, for whom I speak promises to help you rise up. They did. They got killed in the thousands. They're being tortured, they're in prisons. And that promissory note has been issued. And yes, it's by President Bozo, but he's authorized to speak on behalf of a great and good nation to answer
- [20:53]
B
that Steel man argument. So the argument is because we screwed up and baited the Iranian people into thinking we were going to do this, we have now maneuvered ourselves into a corner where on the fly, pretty much by the seat of our pants. We're going to do this because, because of a situation of our own creation. You know, it's kind of like the argument that the administration was making that we had to go because the Iranians were kind of forward leaning and were about to hit us. Turns out that wasn't true. But the reason we were worried that they were going to hit us is because we had amassed a giant armada packed into a, you know, pretty convenient set of target packages around Iran. You know, this is the kind of killing your parents and then claiming you're an orphan problem. If we want to do this, state it clearly go to the American people. We had a State of the Union just before this. And it was a carnival, it was a variety show, it was embarrassing. No explanation to the American people that their sons or daughters may be killed. No discussion with Congress, not even bullying of Congress to say, look, I'm going to have to do things and you're going to have to get on board, which is what previous presidents did. No after explanation. The other day I put up on social media a screenshot of Ronald Reagan who went on television in prime time from the Oval Office to address the American people in 1986 about a one night strike on Gaddafi on a seven, on a nation of seven and a half million people. We have gone to war against 92 million people without some, with you know, an eight minute video of grandpa and his silly hat. So you know, again, my answer to the Steelman case is I grant you everything that we, that this is a terrible regime, it should be gone. But you cannot defend the way this is being done. And in the end, if the Iranian people are again destroyed by their own government, that blood is going to be on our hands because we, we baited them into it. You know one. And then I'll get off this soapbox, David. But one thing that really bothered me is CENTCOM and the White House both saying, lay down your saying to the Iraqi, the Iranian government and the Iranian security and military forces, lay down your arms. Surrender. Surrender to home. There's nobody there. They're not to ask Iranian cops, forget about the, the IRGC or you know, the real heavies asking any local security forces to lay down their weapons. You might as well ask them to blow their own brains out. You know, it's ironic, right, that he, Seth says we're not like these previous ones, but as you say, run Rumsfeld on steroids. Trump loathes Barack Obama and yet his strategy here seems to be exactly what Obama did, minus a few more allies in Libya.
- [23:40]
A
Well, the State of the Union point that you make is very powerful because there was Trump, I think just hours before, days before the beginning of the strike. And he went to Congress. He didn't just not make the case for a war, he went out and humiliated members of Congress. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Why won't you stand up when I tell you to stand up? I'm the king, you know, everyone rises when the king speaks. He insulted them, he berated them. He had previously called the Supreme Court or six of nine judges in the sway of a foreign power. They said, oh by the way, I'm going to be back in a few days for a multi billion dollar supplemental appropriation to pay for this war. I never asked you to authorize. So that's bad. But what's also bad, and here's again to continue with what this imagined or not so imagined circle of my friends would say is, look, Trump does actually have a plan. He's a little shy about admitting it because it doesn't sound very nice. But his plan is the same plan as in Venezuela on A bigger scale, which is with the Israelis, to kill everybody in the top 40 positions in the government and then to keep killing people until you find someone who says, okay, I'll do what you want. And then when you find the guy who says, I'll do what you want, you say, okay, good, you're now in charge. And that plan, although unlovely. Anne Applebaum, our colleague, has written very powerfully about the abandonment of Iranian democracy. If the goal is we have to get from here to there while keeping the electricity going, the water projects working, there are hospitals in Iran that have to keep functioning. Children do need to go to school. I presume there's some kind of pension system. The pensions need to get to be paid and on your way to whatever the a better future is in the six months after the collapse of the old regime, someone needs to run the place. And maybe a former insider is the best way to get you from point here to point there. And that seems to be Trump's plan. To the extent he's got a plan is what, is what would be said.
- [25:31]
B
I'm having flashbacks now because these were the same arguments that, you know, I had, and I'm sure you had back during the second Gulf War, where I, I did say, I admit it, I said, look, I don't know what comes after Saddam, but it has to be better than Saddam. Chaos would be better than Saddam because of WMD and, you know, terrorism and all the things I said. And I admit it, I said, you know, can't. I couldn't really imagine things getting much worse. And then we made it worse.
- [26:00]
A
Right?
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B
We disbanded the Iraqi army. We did all kinds of stupid things. But to take this and to compare it, say, to Venezuela, we eliminated exactly one level of leadership in one person. And then we said to the vice president, okay, fine, you can run things. That's not going to happen here. This isn't. This is a total.
- [26:21]
A
The 40 top leaders are already dead.
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B
They're already dead. And, and the top, you know, at some point, this is an ideological regime. You know, this is a totalitarian ideological regime. Now there is a huge amount of corruption. You know, the true. I read, I think it was in. Somebody writing in the Atlantic pointed out that it used to be 80% true believers, 20% kind of charlatans and hangers on. Now it's the other way around. It's 80% charlatans and 20% true believers. Great. But in the meantime, you have a gigantic country. This isn't, you know, this isn't even Iraq. I Mean, and Iraq was hard enough. You have this gigantic country of 92 million people that could fracture into some authorities. You'll get a patchwork of authorities across the country, and that leaves open a lot of mischief.
- [27:14]
A
It's only about 60% ethnically Persian, as we're all about to learn.
- [27:19]
B
Yes, we're all about to learn some things. We're all about to go through some things. So I think part of the problem is the steel man case rests on. Yeah, these are all valid objections, but we're in it now. Well, that's a hell of a way to do foreign policy. I mean, the car's off the cliff and turning to the guy in the next seat and saying, we. Fine, you drive.
- [27:38]
A
Okay. Well, we are. Okay, but we are in it.
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B
We are in it. We're in it. So that's.
- [27:42]
A
And, and some tactical military successes have been. That underwrites it. Some very important tactical military successes have been achieved as much by the Israelis as by the United States. And part of the problem, and I say this as a, A great friend of Israel and, you know, on their side, but, but it does seem like they have a clear idea of where they're driving the, the, the car to. And the United States is a little bit along for the ride.
- [28:07]
B
Well, yeah, And I think, I suspect that Netanyahu has learned how, as most world leaders have, they've learned how to manipulate Donald Trump. And I'm sure there's been whispering in Donald Trump's ear about, you're going to be the liberator of Iran. You. There will be songs written to you for centuries. There will be statues in Tehran. You know, look, Bill Clinton's got a statue in, in Bosnia. You know, you need one. And I'm sure he's hearing all that stuff and responding to it the way we know Donald Trump responds to visions of glory and flattery. But here is where I want to be a War College professor for a minute. One of the things we always warn our students is operational successes do not by themselves translate into strategic success. I mean, the first two years, the first year and a half of World War II was nothing but a string of Japanese operational successes. Things don't turn around until Midway. And we, frankly, you know, let's face it, too, at Midway, we caught a huge amount of breaks and some real luck to turn that around. But, you know, the Japanese in 1945, saying, how can this be? We, you know, it was two years of winning, so you really have to be careful with. And I, and I've said this both to the steel man arguers, look, this isn't over hold the USA chance. Just as to the doomers, of whom I am not one, by the way. I mean, I'm, I'm concerned, but I'm not a doomer saying, listen, there are some ways this can go, right? Even under Donald Trump, even with this team in charge, they could in fact find their way to a better outcome. And, you know, we'd all have to be the first one to say, not a fan of Donald Trump, would never vote for him. But if he, if he does manage to liberate Iran, send our congratulations.
- [29:55]
A
I just finished reading a book. It was a book based on the Japanese war archives. And the question is, okay, what did they think they were doing when they struck Pearl Harbor? And the answer is it was exactly headsetism that they didn't know that their plan was that the civilian leadership was intimidated and weak. And they said, well, what we're going to do is we're going to seize Southeast Asia, hit the American fleet and then see, right?
- [30:19]
B
And when some, you know, there were some Japanese, and what then?
- [30:23]
A
Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine,
- [30:26]
B
you know, and there were some. Something good, maybe, you know, fate. Fate is a harsh, harsh mistress, David. You know, there were some guys in the room who went, the Americans are not. That's a big country you're tangling with. And the answer they got was literally there were people in the Japanese high command saying once we destroy their fleet in Pearl harbor, they won't like it, but they'll understand. This is something I worry about, again, sort of basic strategic analysis. Right. That I think. I'm worried that the people in Washington are doing a lot of mirror imaging. They're doing a lot of what we, you know, strategic analysis calls script writing. If we do this, they're going to do that, and then when they do that, that opens it for us to do this. And it's all very convenient and congenial to your own assumptions. And I think that a lot of that is going on. But as you say, have they thought through what happens if the Iranians decide, we don't care, we'll go out in a blaze of glory. We'll, you know, we'll fire everything at everybody. Are we going to put ground troops in?
- [31:23]
A
Well, as we saw in Iraq, I think the military does think a lot about questions like, what if they decide to go in a blaze of glory and fire every missile at once? I'm sure there's a good plan for that. What is never planned for is what if everything collapses? And what if you kill everybody? The IRGC take their money and flee and the electricity stops, the water stops. It's not a very forgiving human environment and there are chronic water problems. What happens if the waterworks stop working? What happens if there isn't a government? And then whatever organized crime networks exist in Tehran, they become the most powerful force. Or the IRGC turns into a mafia.
- [31:58]
B
I was just going to say, I mean, we should learn from other cases of regime collapse. Not just regime change by war, but regime collapse. The former Soviet Union, what happens to the kgb? Well, it turns out they become a powerful mafia and they run the country. You know, what, what if the IRGC says we're the most organized group in this, this shit show here, if I can use one expletive. And you know, we're the, we're the people that can. We'll get the water back on, you know, we'll get the electricity going. But I think the other problem is what if they decide not. You know, who decides when a war is over? The loser. Right. That's an old adage of strategy. The loser decides when the war is over. Unless you literally kill every single person. But, but it's the losers who say when it's done. What if they say, look, we'll drag this on, you know, forever. We'll tear it. We'll. We'll commit terrorist acts. We'll keep stuff in reserve and blow the occasional thing up. Fine. You're going to scuttle. Part of our fleet will make the Straits of Hormuz practically unnavigable for insurance companies. I mean, there's a I in my article, and I know it's a, It's a line, you know, well, from the old days, Barbara Bodine talking about after the war in Iraq. She said, There's 500 ways to do this wrong and only two or three ways to do it right. And what I didn't count on is that we were going to try all 500 ways first.
- [33:23]
A
Yeah, well, on your point about the loser deciding, remember reading a memoir of post war Japan and the memoir writer just marveling that in the spring of 1946, individual American officers, unarmed, could go to the market and shop and buy things and everybody was polite to them. There was no assassination, there was no harassment. They didn't have to put on a sidearm to go buy things in the market. The society collectively decided, we accept you. We accept this outcome, and the United States in turn. By the way, one of the Reasons the Japanese occupation went in the way that it did said to everybody and by the way and every just about everybody here is forgiven. And whoever was the assistant minister of streetcars before is still assistant minister of streetcars today.
- [34:05]
B
A completely different approach to war. This administration. It's almost like the president's speeches are foreign policy mad libs where fire and just like they've never seen and blah and relayed on your weapon. But this is your moment and freedom and we're not who is he talking to? You know, in both Gulf wars we made an effort we the United States made an effort to reach out to some of these guys and say Listen, in Gulf 1, I know particularly if you use chemical weapons, you are not going to be able to try a Nuremberg defense. We contact, we sent word to various generals understand what will happen to you. Instead. Trump says everybody out there, if you resist us, you get certain death blood gore in the streets but lay down your weapons. I feel like was there any preparation for this?
- [35:06]
A
What should the people. What should you and I what should anyone who cares about our voices? What should anyone who is watching or listening, who shares broadly our perspective. What should we do now because American personnel are in harm's way? We want the United States to succeed in its foreign policy objectives. This seems in the abstract a good cause. And yeah, it's run by unworthy. The clowns are the best one. It's run by unworthy people, both morally and intellectually unworthy. But it's done. There's no, there's no undoing this. What does Tom Nichols, what does David from what do people care what we think? What, what should we think and say?
- [35:42]
B
Well, if somehow tomorrow Trump fired everybody and he said, okay, Tom and David, come on in, you've got your shot. You got five minutes for an elevator pitch, I would say this is the time to find somebody that you can talk to. Don't keep doing damage that you don't want to have to fix later. Go to Congress now because even I'm getting to the point where I think Congress should invoke the War Powers act because there's a whole issue of constitutionality here that I think we allighted in previous wars that is now completely thrown out the window. And to say to the Iranians, here's the New Deal. You are going to change your type of government. You are going to stop killing people. Here's the list of demands. Sign here and you may get away with what's left of your regime. Trump's answer seems to be and I would say, if I were standing there, I'd say, Mr. President, you can't kill everybody in Tehran and then say, now form a government. That's just not how it works. So you've killed the worst guys. Now find the less worst guys and basically get them to seal their own doom over time. But the more that it's done at the point of American weapons, the more opening, I mean, the more opening there is for all kinds of chaos that could make even worse people more empowered and lose. This is something very important to point out, and I know this is to. Not to you, David, but I know that, you know, a lot of folks think of Iran as death to America and the whole country hates us. That is not true. The Iranians are an educated, modern people who actually a lot of them have a fair amount of affection for the United States. As, as ironic as that is, after everything we've been involved with going back to 1953. But you don't want to lose that by creating a serious situation where everything gets just pounded into rubble and then people start blaming the nations around the world. Speaking of blame, I will, I will jump on one thing. Yeah. I think we're here and that we in this terrible situation because of people like Obama. I wrote about, I don't take back anything I wrote about Obama's feckless foreign policy in the Middle east. But the answer to it was not to say, to throw. Throw all the cards up in the air and say, screw it. Let's just bomb the crap out of everything and see what happens. I mean, that it. The. That is the pendulum in completely the other direction. And I am still really anxious that this is not going to turn out well.
- [38:16]
A
Yeah, I have a particular dog in this fight because I'm on record as saying, and people often say this is contradictory, and I keep insisting it's not. I was against the Iran deal while it was being negotiated. I was signing the Iran deal in great part because Iran got its benefits up front. The United States got its benefits on the back end. Once signed. Once you have made the mistake of signing a deal where the other guy gets his benefits signed up front, you don't tear up the deal. He's already got the $90 billion of unfrozen assets the Iranians got. At that point, your next choice is having signed this stupid thing. Enforce it, don't exit it.
- [38:53]
B
For anybody out there who thinks that all of us conservatives from the old days are meeting at the Meadows and coordinating our views, the fact that I was exactly and I was not yet at the Atlantic. You and I were not yet regularly talking. That was exactly my position as well. I was against this thing while it was being negotiated for exact. I said this violates some basic rules of diplomacy, which is that you don't front them the hamburger for the money you're going to get Tuesday. You know, you don't do any of that.
- [39:24]
A
Right.
- [39:24]
B
But once you're in it and the whole rest of the international community, including your closest allies have signed on to it, you're stuck with it. And then you have to make it work, then it's the only game in town. And the Iranians, they were as happy as could be when Trump said, fine, screw it, we're out of this. Makes it great, so are we.
- [39:45]
A
Yeah, well, at that point, the alternative, the alternative was war, the war we've now got.
- [39:50]
B
But, but, but again, let's not fall down that hole either. We're not fighting this war over nuclear weapons.
- [39:55]
A
No. We're fighting over regime, over a regime change that the administration won't acknowledge that it's doing so here. And here's the. This is a problem of going in without allies and having alienated all the allies. Supposing we get real lucky. Supposing we find somebody who's, you know, assistant to the, assistant to the president who's got enough juice to, he survives, he's got enough juice to make his writ run. And he says, right, we're dealing with the Americans and we're undertaking the transition to a better future. We're leaving aside the anti American ideology, we're giving up terrorism and we win, we really win. We win the war we want. At that point, it's still going to be true that Iran doesn't have enough water for its cities. It's still going to be true that this country that was on its way to being had, it not had. And I did this, quoted this chart where from 1960 to 1980, the growth in the Iranian and the Portuguese standard of living is identical. Today in 2020, Iran is really no richer per person than it was in 1980. And Portugal is a fully paid up member of the first world, the oecd. It's a wonderful place. And Rand could have been Iran today, could be Portugal, but they're not, they're poor. So we have to help, we're going to have to help them. We're going to have to make sure they have drinking water and that's going to cost a lot of money, more maybe than the war itself. And Trump has again and again, made it clear to his base, the United States is not putting out that money. Well, who is?
- [41:15]
B
I can think of at least one country that'd be more than happy to do it. China. Or other countries that perhaps do not have America's best interests at heart. I mean, the Chinese have been masters at the game of walking in and saying, listen, the American money always comes with strings, and they're annoying, and democracy, blah, blah, blah. Here, we'll just help you build stuff, and we won't ask any questions.
- [41:39]
A
And you can take 10% off the top. And we bust.
- [41:41]
B
Budgeted. We budgeted for that. Exactly. It's a. It's a lot over. You know, it's a lot overhead. Everybody's got overhead, David. It's. But I. I mean, I think it's a serious problem, right? If not, I mean, Russia. And this does kind of put the screws to Russia a bit. But, you know, again, in that mythical moment where you and I get to walk into the Oval and say, okay, here's things you ought to do and say, oh, and by the way, Mr. President, now is the time to put the screws to Russia and, you know, help the Ukrainians really push this thing, because now the Russians have lost a friend, and that's a good thing. But when Trump talks about this war going on for five weeks, my answer is to. To do what?
- [42:21]
A
To do what? Well, and this is where the refusal to think about reconstruction becomes an impediment to the war aims. Because one of the things that the United States came out of the World War II with a reputation for was if you do fight the Americans and you do lose, they help you.
- [42:36]
B
Isn't that. What's the movie I'm trying to think of?
- [42:39]
A
The Mouse that Roared.
- [42:40]
B
Right. We're a poor country. We need reconstruction. We'll pick a war with the Americans, and they'll come in and they'll think it was a hilarious movie from the 60s, even that people knew that. So, yeah, that was part of the deal.
- [42:54]
A
If President Trump were. I mean, or There used to be a Twitter account called Good President Trump imagining him.
- [43:02]
B
I imagine that person just gave up.
- [43:05]
A
That gave up. Actually, it was interesting. It was illustrated with an image of Donald Trump with a bald head, like he'd accepted it. But Good President Trump would say, and by the way, if you do lay down your arms, that we and our allies are going to be there with the money you need to have proper waterworks, to have the electricity, to improve your roads, to send people back to school, to make universities more broadly accessible. You are going, you know, our goal for you is that those 40 years of development or 45 years of development or 50 years of development you missed since 1979, we're going to put you back on that track. And the vision is 40 years from now, you will look like Portugal and
- [43:44]
B
the United States will now have several friends and allies in that region, including a country of 92 million people who, just as Germany and Japan did, are going to feel pretty warmly about what happened. None of that is on the table. None of it. And in fact, I think that the rhetoric, you know, I couldn't, as you know, I was working through the weekend and working nights, so I purposely slept through Exeth's 8am briefing, which is why I think he has them at 8am, by the way, because he doesn't think anybody's watching. But having watched it, caught up on it later, you know, it's just insane. I mean, it's all chest thumping, Conan the Barbarian stuff. Not the kind of thing that's going to make anybody in Iran say, you know what I ought to do, I ought to trust Pete Hegset that I should lay down my arms and everything, you know, will be okay. I mean, we are to, to some extent, by what we're doing, we're putting some of these guys on death ground. And that's a, that, that's a bad plan.
- [44:46]
A
This is, this is the part that they really seem unconstitutionally capable of dealing with, which is to say to whomever emerges and if you have a plan for a transition to democracy and if you stop repressing, you will live. We won't ask too many questions about your bank accounts. There's a role for you. We are not actually planning on killing you all. We offer amnesty and exit if as part of a plan to make a transition to a better future for Iran, which is going to be defined by the Iranians, but shaped by the values of all the people who are going to, and this is the key point, help you pay for it.
- [45:18]
B
Yes. And the thing I was going to say about a transition to democracy or something less oppressive than the thing we just overthrew, you know, we get it that it's not going to happen tomorrow. You know, we've learned our lessons. We're not going to send you copies of the Federalist Papers and say, here's your homework, but it can't be, you know, just as I think we should have done in Iraq. You know, there was a plan, I guess, from the British to say, look we don't disband the military. We take a bunch of generals and we say we're going to put this country under military rule for now. And we're watching you, and you're going to have to transition to a civilian government. And all the time with Uncle Sam and the allies saying, don't screw this up, because we can come back here anytime. Instead, we're simply saying, hey, people in Iran, kill your government and go take power. And we're not coming, by the way. I mean, everything that Trump is saying, and I really want to emphasize this, so much of what Trump is talking about would be more credible if he were talking about doing it backed by ground troops. And I don't want him to do that. So that, that is where the steel. You know, even though we're off the cliff, there are still dumb things we can do. Even as the car is, you know, plunging, we can unbuckle our seat belts and try and stand on the roof. There are, you know, there are things that we shouldn't do and that I'm worried that because Trump is, is a man who can never admit a mistake, that he will double down. And that's because, you know him, David. That's what he does with everything. I mean, this, that this administration always does that. And it's, sooner or later, something's going to happen where Trump's. I think something could happen where Trump's going to want to double down. This is the time to think about what do we want, what are we satisfied with, who's going to guide what happens next. And I don't think anybody's thinking about that right now, or let me put it a different way. I'm sure there are people thinking about that that no one's listening to right now.
- [47:15]
A
Well, let's finish here. But with this thought, which is, we all wish a safe return home for the Americans in harm's way. We all wish a better future for the people of Iran. We all wish this will be, the situation will be resolved quickly and with minimal harm to innocent people. And as much as our mental skepticism is engaged, our hearts are in sympathy with all of those who face danger in this war that didn't have to happen, but has begun.
- [47:42]
B
And, and I'll add only one other thing, that whatever my thoughts about this particular government, you know that the good Lord guides them and grants them some insight and wisdom in doing this, because they are the civil authorities right now, and they have to do this. And so I think it's important to point out that I hope they do it well, despite my worries.
- [48:02]
A
I mean, look, God's probably doing his part as best he can, but Trump
- [48:06]
B
doesn't listen to him either. All right.
- [48:11]
A
Always a pleasure to talk to you.
- [48:13]
B
It's great to see you, David. Thank you.
- [48:21]
A
Thanks so much to Tom Nichols for joining me today. As I mentioned at the top of the show, there will be no book talk this week. But I do want to thank you for viewing and listening to the show and remind you that if you want to support the work of Tom and me, the best way to do that is by subscribing to the Atlantic. I hope you will like and share this dialogue on whatever platform you use. Thank you so much for watching and listening to the David Frum show, and I look forward to joining you again next week on the David Frum Show. Bye.
- [48:46]
B
Bye.
- [49:10]
A
This episode of the David Frum show was produced by Nathaniel from and edited by Andrea Valdes. It was engineered by Dave Grine. Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards. Claudine Abayad is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm David Frum. Thank you for listening.