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- [00:01]
A
Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing at the Bulwark. We're here live following Donald Trump's press conference at the G7. A meandering affair, a bit wild even by his standards. Joined by Journal, Mark Hertling and Andrew Egger to break it all down. Guys, I, I honestly, I'm kind of like, we're speed speechless about this because it was a weave, it was meandering, it didn't make sense at some points. At others, it seemed oddly defensive, low energy. But then there was also some real substantive stuff, Mark, about what we should, how we should perceive this mou, this Memorandum of Understanding that we have struck with Iran. And that doesn't seem to be actually much in the way of enforcement of the mou.
- [00:50]
B
Well, there's not much in the way of an mou from I can tell. One of the things we've been talking about for the last several weeks as they first announced they were going to do an MOU is an MOU is not a diplomatic tool. It's sort of an agenda that you use to do further diplomacy, do further negotiations, do further talks, parse out what both sides want, and then come to a determination of exactly what you're going to negotiate. He even admitted that earlier today that it's not a deal, it's an mou. And, you know, there was just a rambling for the first time by the President of what an MOU is all about, which all of us have been talking about over the last couple of weeks. Now, during this press conference, there seemed to be a desire to state that, that everything we're going to ask for is going to be accomplished if, if Iran doesn't do it. The repeating theme was we're going to bomb the hell out of them or start shooting again or start the action all over again. And I, for one thing, part of getting this MOU on the table and getting people to negotiate was to him, for him to have an off ramp for what he realized was a disaster. And, and yet now on the verge of doing an MOU and beginning the negotiations, the off ramp has been pulled away and we're back on the potential for another on ramp for military action.
- [02:27]
A
Let's play the clip that really personified this where essentially it's like, and I'm trying to be, I'm trying to be objective about it, but essentially it boils down to, they will do what we want here, they will fulfill these kind of amorphous obligations of the MoU, or else we will bomb them again. Let's Play the clip.
- [02:52]
C
So you're threatening to bomb Iran if
- [02:54]
B
they don't comply, but there's nothing enforceable in the deal itself, is that correct?
- [02:58]
D
Doesn't have to be. I let him know, I said, look, if you don't adhere to the agreement, I don't want to do that, but we're going to bomb the hell out of you. And I don't think that they're going to veer from the agreement. What else am I going to do? Am I going to say I'm going to take you to court? Let me take you to court. Let me, let me sue you? No, we're going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement. I don't want them to. I want them to honor the agreement.
- [03:25]
A
All right, Andrew, that seems a little bit sort of reductive, but maybe you have a different view of it.
- [03:31]
C
Well, the catch 22 there, I mean, the substance of the question is, which we've all seen these draft versions of this MoU floating around and the whole, the whole predicate of the question is there isn't that much that's enforceable that Iran is actually committing itself to other than, you know, pinky promise not to go after a nuclear weapon, which we also had in the jcpoa and beyond that, you know, all of the sorts of, you know, actual checks and actual, you know, accountability mechanisms and things like this that Republicans have wanted since the days of the jcpoa. Didn't think the JCPOA got us enough. None of that is in it. So that's why she's asking the question. She's asking, how can we count on Iran to stick to this? So it's this weird back and forth situation here with the President where on the one hand, there's no reason to believe that Iran is, is, has committed itself to anything like what Iran hawks want to see in terms of actual, like concrete. We are not going to take this and that and the other step toward enrichment and things like this. But then on the other hand, Trump is saying we're going to bomb them if we think they're moving toward that. So it almost seems like he is saying that we are going to be looking for different measures that are not part of this agreement at all. And if Iran takes steps that we don't like that aren't part of this agreement, then we ourselves are going to violate this agreement and start bombing again. But at the same time, if I can just add one other thing, like, sure, Trump very plainly does see the need to sign something right now. And that, that, that is another thing that he spent a ton talking about this.
- [05:03]
A
We're going to get to that in a second. But I want to just talk about this idea of sort of a snapback enforcement mechanism with Mark for, for a minute. And I might be viewing this the wrong way, but I am admittedly going off of very limited information that we have. But it strikes me that the problem here is that we have a 60 day window at which point benefits will accrue. Right. So all Iran has to do is be on good behavior for 60 days. They'll get their sanctions relief, they'll get the $300 million billion dollars. I should say they may even be able to start charging fees on these straight informatives. Let's put up this Associated Press news break that just happened right before we went on air. I don't know if we're able to do it, probably not because it's a tweet. But under the news break it did say that they. Oh, there it is. So reporters were being read actual language from the MoU and among them was the AP and they said US draft of Iran agreement only secures toll free passage of the straight of Hormuz for 60 days. It doesn't preclude future fees. So this is what I'm going to ask you, Mark. Strikes me the problem here is that after 60 days Iran just needs to play nice for that. They get a bunch of benefits and then they could start kind of inching back in towards malignant behavior. They could put on a couple fees on the straight of Hormuz. They could be a bad regional actor in sort of minor ways, but not overt ways. They can do all the stuff that Donald Trump will say, well, I don't want to start bombing them again and get back into this situation and they'll just kind of be in that bad status quo. Is that a fair read?
- [06:29]
B
It's an extremely fair read. And I'll go one step further and say 60 days puts us in the middle of August and that's a whole lot closer to election. President Trump is doing what he's doing right now because I think his team is telling him we're tanking in a big way. And he even addressed that toward the end with polls. But if Iran decides after 60 days playing for time that they want to go longer, what you just said is exactly right, Sam. They're just going to kind of diddle away with it and no one's are the ships all going to stay there during this period of time. Are all of the ammunition that's been fired at Iran going to be rebuilt over the next 60 days? Are we going to use that time frame to get another military force just sitting around in the Gulf to attack on a whim, or are we going to start drawing that down? It's a ludicrous combination of diplomacy and fallacy. You know, the president really believes that people will take his orders in other countries. And we're still just talking about Iran. Let's start talking about Israel. Let's start talking about the Gulf states. Let's start talking about Turkey and. And Europe and all the others that have a stake in this thing. Yeah, it's just. It's bizarre.
- [07:56]
A
Now, Andrew, to your point, he did at some. At various junctures throughout this kind of hint that he felt really pinched. Right. There was one moment where he was talking about how our munitions, our stockpile munitions was getting dangerously low, or no, sorry, our oil stockpiles, global oil stockpiles are getting dangerously low. Said, like, four weeks, we would have been a real energy crisis. So that was a real hint. But he kept. He kept bringing up Herbert Hoover, like, over and over again. As the president, he was desperately trying to avoid just letting the pretext kind of come out there. Let's play the clip of him referencing Hoover.
- [08:28]
D
The only difference is that a player that's very volatile, very tough, very smart, frankly. You know, they have in one way a primitive culture, but it's also a genius primitive culture. They're very smart people, very good negotiators, but so are we. So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover, I was always the one I didn't want to be. I wouldn't have preferred Nixon. I wouldn't have preferred. Plenty I wouldn't prefer. But the one I always thought of, Herbert Hoover. And he caused it. He raised taxes too fast and he raised interest rates too fast all at the same time. And it caused the Great Depression. So I don't think I'll make mistakes like that. I lowered.
- [09:24]
A
Oh, my God. Well, that was a weave very much. There was one weave where he went from, like, Lebanon to Africa to Ebola to AI to electrical grids and so on and so forth. That was a better weave than that one. But, Andrew, if you're. If you're free to talk, I'm free to talk. Small child. This was what you're talking about. He's. There was something about this whole presentation where it's like, if I had kept going, folks, we would have been in real trouble.
- [09:52]
C
Yeah. The thing to understand about Trump, whenever he's talking, he can be just, you know, sitting in bed, tweeting or posting on True Social, or he can be on the international stage at the G7. The first and foremost audience he is always talking to is some critic that he's imagining in his mind who he is mad at. And right now, these critics are Iran hawks in his party. It's guys like Mark Levin and. And it's also Israel. It's people who want him to keep prosecuting the war who think he's getting cucked by Iran right now. And he is making repeated arguments throughout this speech that he was sort of forced to do this in a bunch of different ways. And this was one of them. He was saying, look, like you thought we were suffering economic pain now, you should have just seen what we were about to be suffering. You don't know how good we have it getting out of this conflict right now. Which is a hilarious thing to say because it completely justifies he put us in the conflict. Exactly, exactly. And I mean, it is true. Iran had us over a barrel. Really expect the President to say that, but he was saying it. The other thing he kept saying, which was. Which was so funny through all of this, is like, him obviously being mad at all of these people who are. Who are saying he's not tough enough on Iran. He's like, you know, you've never seen tough on Iran. None of you guys wanted me to go get Kassem Solemani in my first term, and Israel didn't want me to do that. And, and, you know, none of these, none of these commentators wanted me to do that. But, like, you know, so I went and got him and I bombed Iran now. And I've done great, and I've been amazing, so just shut up already and let me get us away from this depression that I was about to put us into if I didn't sign this deal. I mean, he really, he explicitly makes this argument throughout the course of this thing. And I don't know, he's. I made this point in Slack. He looked so grumpy and so. Oh, yeah, he looked diminished and old. He's having negative fun at this moment that they are trying to sell as this big triumph for the United States. And it is just so clear that even he is not really buying what they're selling on this.
- [11:43]
B
And, and, and the, and the combination of, I bombed him once, I bombed them twice, and if they pissed me off, I'm gonna bomb them Again, was a skit. I mean, it was incredibly dumb and scary, actually.
- [11:58]
A
Mark, Mark, how from just a, a sort of military standpoint, I mean, obviously we have an incredible amount of resources and personnel and munitions, but I am kind of curious how depleted we got. Obviously, I kind of misinterpreted at one point when he was talking about oil, I thought he was talking about weaponry. But what's your sense of, like, how much we could have gone further on this path?
- [12:20]
B
Yeah, we could have, but it would have put every single contingency plan we have at risk, in my view. And I used to be, a long time ago, when I was a one star, I was the J7 on the joint Staff, which was the guy in charge of watching contingency plants. And how much were we draining from one, Iraq and Afghanistan at the threat of draining others? What he's used is quite a bit of ammunition. Low density, high demand ammunition is what they call it. Ldht. So when you're talking about going another day, another week, starting it all over again, starting campaign, you're really putting other contingencies at risk. And that's not me saying that. That was the commander of Pacific Command saying that a couple of weeks ago when he said he was concerned about his various war plans and being able to have the right amount of ammunition.
- [13:15]
A
There was a couple times during this, well beyond, beyond being sort of like amazed at Trump and his kind of grumpiness, but there were a couple points in this where someone who covered the JCPOA in 2015, I was just like, kind of blown away by how, how similar the structures are here. But obviously Trump will never admit it. So they're talking about, at one juncture, you know, you're not paying Iran, but you are unfreezing their assets. And Donald Trump went into this great soliloquy about, well, it is their money, right? It's their money. Yeah, we, we're just. If, if we were to seize the money, if we were to seize their money, no one would ever invest in, in America again because you would have not, you wouldn't have the confidence they could get your money back. And I just light bulb went off. I was like, well, this is a sort of incredibly unsophisticated talking point, that unsophisticated version of the talking point that the Obama people use when they were unfreezing Iranian assets in 2015. And it just, it just blew me away. But then he went a bit further than even Obama did. He made the case proactively that the Iranians should keep Some of their ballistic missiles, which is not something I ever heard any Obama administration official utter once in 2015. Let's listen to that.
- [14:34]
D
So we'll be working on a parallel effort with the Gulf nations to address non nuclear issues such as the conventional ballistic missiles, which we'll be talking about and support. I mean, they have to have some because other people have some. You got to have some. Somebody said you shouldn't give them one. I mean, I have guys, I like some of these guys, but I don't think this, I don't think they're smart, sir. You shouldn't let them have any missile. I said, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles but they can't have them? Yes, sir. It doesn't work that way. You know, it doesn't work that way. And missiles aren't the problem. Missiles are. They hurt a little location, but they don't blow up the planet. So the Gulf nations will address the non nuclear issues as we'll be talking about the ballistic missiles and we'll talk also about the terrorist proxies that they have that we don't want that to happen.
- [15:35]
A
But oh my God, I don't even know where to begin. It's just shocking to me that it happened. Of course everyone's going to fall in line and be like, oh, he's a genius, of course they need some missiles. But it's just so amazing to me that he uttered it.
- [15:47]
C
Andrew, the other good, good moment that was along the same lines as this was he said, well, you know, we got 84, 85% of their missiles. And then his brain like jumped the track into the nuclear material talking point because he said, and by the way, the rest of the missiles, they're totally buried. They can't even get at them. They can't even use them. So, like, what's the problem? Right? And it's like, no, I mean, obviously Iran has not been exhausted in its capacity to deal damage if it wants to do damage. They have continued to show that in recent days when they have continued to launch these strikes on these countries. So, yeah, I mean, I guess if you are Israel, you are happy that the United States has significantly diminished Iran's capacities in these respects. But the idea that they're finished, I mean, Pete Hegseth and these guys have been saying this for months now that they're like, you know, one more good barrage away from having spent their whole role. It's just not the case. And it is funny again to see Trump now Acknowledging from the stage stuff that they have been insisting all along is basically the opposite. You know, where, where, where, where guys like Hegseth have said everything is going to be fine on the missiles department. Guys like Trump and Rubio and, and you know, Scott Besant have said, you know, the economy is going to be fine. Everything is just this little blip. And now we're acknowledging, okay, they're going to keep some missiles. And now we're acknowledging, okay, we were weeks away from a real crisis and we had to do, we had to cut bait basically and cut our losses and get out of here.
- [17:13]
A
Yeah. I guess part of it is he wants to present this deal as some, some sort of re. Entrance of Iran into the global community. Right. And so of course they have to have funds to rebuild and they of course has to have weaponry. And then he wants them to sign the Abram Accords. Like on top of that, it's not, it doesn't strike me as particularly realistic. I'm, we actually have a copy of the MOU and I'm sorting through it as I'm talking to you guys. But Mark, can you, while I sort through that, can you just sort of expand on that? Like what, how, how do you go about getting Iran back into the global community? Is it a realistic objective here?
- [17:46]
B
The, you know, I, if I can just comment on one other thing too, about the jcpoa. You know, that was a year and a half effort.
- [17:55]
D
Yeah.
- [17:56]
B
159 page document. And what we're currently seeing is we're going to go in and wing it. I mean, that's really what is being publicized today. That, okay, we might have a couple of talking points. I'm probably not going to be there to sign it. I'll let JD Sign it. There's nothing there. It is the terms of understanding by both sides of what they want to talk about. And neither side agree. And now that we have the alleged written document from one side, I'm not sure it represents the ideas of again, Iran, the Iranian leadership. Certainly it doesn't represent what Israel wants. Certainly the Gulf states are going to have challenges with it because they're kind of questioning right now who's going to pony up the billions of dollars for the reconstruction. Which Trump also said, well, you know, we're going to only going to give them 300 billion for reconstruction. They actually need a couple of trillion. So he's winging it. Even reconstruction. Yeah, the, the, the MOU is, it's, I would almost say it's a, it's a It's a undergraduate war game of what you might put at a table. For someone who has never done this before.
- [19:18]
A
Well, let's get. Let's get into it. So we're going to start putting up. So we actually have text. This is from the United States side of the full MOU finally released. We do not know if it corresponds with the Iranian version, but let's go. Let's go through it because it's kind of fascinating to dissect. I'm going to start. The first three sections are. Are fairly anodyne. It says the US and Iran commit to negotiating, achieving F in the maximum of 60 days. We knew this. They talk about the situation in Lebanon and territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. In respecting that they are going to respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from interfering in each other's Internal Affairs. That's 1, 2, 3. Then it gets to 4 and then it gets to 5. And let's do 5 here because I found this to be kind of interesting. If we can put it up, I want to read it. Upon signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. So essentially they're going to get rid of the blockade of the straight of Hormuz that Iran had put in place. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and de demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration of and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz. Okay. That's what really stood out to me.
- [20:52]
C
Yeah.
- [20:52]
A
In discussion with other Persian Gulf states in line with the applicable international law and sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz. Mark, that reads to me like we are going to put together a fee service with Oman and that will be implemented at some point after the 60 days of clear passage.
- [21:12]
B
Yes. Well, not. We will institute that They're, I think hedging their bet knowing that Iran and Oman have already signed off on this.
- [21:21]
A
Gotcha.
- [21:22]
B
May not be a toll. It may be a fee service. Hey, you have. If you move through the straits and you're collecting any kind of resources, you may pay a fee at Carg island, which we have the right to instill. You may pay a fee going through a d mined location which is closer to Oman because the Strait is basically separated into three area the area closest to Iran, they control the middle lane, if you will, if you'll call it that, used to be where most of the ships went through. And then there's the Omani coastline, which for the last several weeks, the U.S. navy has helped escort ships or.