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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Bull Work podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Happy Memorial Day. We've got an abbreviated edition of our usual Monday podcast for, you know, those of you on long road trips with your family and you want to disassociate and just hang out with us instead, or people that just want to celebrate the holiday by paying attention to our insane news cycle. And since it's Monday, I'm here with Bill Kristol. How you doing, Bill?
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Fine. How are you, Tim?
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I'm doing well. I'm doing well, all things considered. Why don't we just get to it here? A lot of updates on the state of play with regards to Iran since we were last together on Friday. On Saturday, Trump announced that we're basically on the cusp of a deal. A deal is essentially done 95% there. A lot of ballyhoo, a lot of back patting among Trump himself. But his allies, the pro war allies, were pretty horrified by the rumors coming out about the deal. And so since then, things have started to unwind a little bit. On Sunday, there was a massive spin effort to push that there would be no, that there would be dust for dollars. There'd be no dollars without nuclear dust. They were calling all their allies, making sure they knew that and that there'd be no to on the strait. And this morning, Monday, Iran is saying that they aren't charging a toll on the strait, but they are charging an environmental protection fee, which shows that the Iranians have learned a lot from the liberal bureaucratic nomenclature of the West. So anyway, that's the state of play we're at now. Bill, what's your sense of things?
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Trump desperately wants a deal. The Iranians know that and are twisting the knife a little. But also, I think, as you can see, with the environmental thing giving him enough cover so that Trump will end up with a deal that'll be murky, more even than these deals often are. And we'll see what really happens in terms of the nuclear material, in terms of opening the strait. But it seems, I think we're heading towards, I mean, we've been heading towards the deal for a while. I think some of us have thought it was going to happen for a long, long time. Trump has basically announced he wants a deal. I mean, the degree to which he can bluster a little bit and put up bizarre photo, you know, memes of, I don't know, US bombing Iran or decimating places or Iran with an American flag. But at the end of the day, he wants out. And I guess he'll get out. I think he will get out.
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It's interesting, I noticed you were posting about this over the weekend. We had a initial quite angry reaction from the Mark Levins of the world, Lindsey Graham, fdd, you know, the major backers of the Trump war effort, who felt like this was basically a disaster and a betrayal. As the, as the hours go on, we're going through the same thing that happened after every Trump disaster, January 6th, et cetera, where they all start to look at the bright side, spin things for Trump. What's your sense of that development? Is he gonna be able to get people to circle the wagons like usual? Or is there something different about the Iran situation?
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I mean, if you were a serious Iran hawk, let's say, who was going along with this, not because you were loyal to Trump, but because you believed in certain things and certain outcomes were important. You're not getting any of those outcomes, really. You're not getting regime change in Iran or liberation for the Iranian people. Obviously, Trump gave up on that very early. You're not getting a clear and unambiguous resolution of the nuclear issue, which Trump sort of defaulted to as his rationale for the war. And if you're more of a traditional international order type of internationalist, you're not getting, I don't think, clarity on passage through the strait. You're not getting any kind of emphatic reiteration of a right that these are international waters, so forth. You're getting Iran probably sort of, as you just said, no, no toll, but maybe some environmental fees and plus reminding everyone, at least sotto voce, that they do have the ability to close the thing if they want to, and it might be a good idea for some governments to negotiate with them to make sure their ships get through. So you're not getting any of the really care about the nuclear issue, the strait, or the fate of the Iranian regime. So if you're an honest hawk, you need to say this deal is a defeat for the U.S. now, you might still say, as we've said, I think that better a defeat that doesn't risk more than an escalation that risks US Lives and the destruction of the energy infrastructure in the Gulf and a million other things. But you've got to say the whole thing's been a defeat. And what strikes me is that, as you say on what would it have been maybe Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning, there were enough, some of the Trump supporting hawks were being honest hawks. And I predicted that. And I think I still predict that by tomorrow The Trump supporting hawks will 80% be Trump supporters and they'll abandon their actual principled objections to not abandon, but will certainly mute their objections to this deal. And also we'll put a happy face on it, don't you think?
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Yeah, I do. Well, do you? I just don't know that it's going to be quite as vociferous and quite as all in lockstep as it has been in the past for a couple of reasons because you have a, the opposite end of the hawks, the America first crowd that I think will probably want to crow that they were right about all of this. So you'll have some wing within the Trump coalition that will not be trying to spin this shit sandwich into a chocolate cake. I think that they're gonna just say what they have said throughout the whole time and then I think there'll be a little bit of a mix among the hawks. This goes back to kind of the big theme of last week where Trump wins his revenge tour in these primaries with Cassidy, Cornyn and Massie, but maybe loses the broader battle because he angers enough of the old school Republicans that they're not as excited to get in line. And you've seen this with Tillis over the weekend. He was on TV really bashing Trump. So that kind of crowd, McConnell, Tillis, to the extent that I don't know how important they are really, but I do think there'll be some on the hawk wing also that criticizes them. So Lindsey Graham's going to come around and say whatever Trump wants, that he can still get invited into the golf cart. I wrote a book about that. So he'll come around. But I do think that there are some fractures that was caused by this that were significant. And I think part of the continued version of that is the strait. And the cost of gas prices are down today to about 90 bucks a barrel, which is on the high end of acceptable I guess, but it could still go back up again. Who knows how long this goes. This little period of negotiation that we're still in getting that last so called 5%. The New York Times is a big piece this morning. Even if a deal is finalized, the pre war status quo went upward off 130 ships transited the strait each day would be weeks or even months away. Like it just, there's, there's a lot of logistical issues that still need to be ironed out. And you know, the, you know, the gas prices are still really high. I think there's going to be persistent negative impacts from this Second, second order effects that are going to, you know, create problems for a while. And I think that also makes it a little harder for him to just get everybody to get on board after January 6th. Anybody who's living their life in America wasn't really experiencing any negative impacts of January 6th. It was this kind of attack on the democracy, this esoteric. People are still going to be feeling negative impacts here. So I do think that's different.
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No, I think that's an important point. And I also think this is going to be a real deal that's going to finalize things and then we can all go back to normal, maybe with somewhat higher gas prices. Just because they still, that's the after effect, as you say, of the strait haven't been closed all this time. It's going to be murky and they're going to be, the Iranians are going to want to flex their muscles. So six weeks from now, after everything has settled down, the Iranians will deny passage to someone or find an excuse to do something to remind people that they have control. So I agree. It doesn't go back to normal. The prices don't go down to where they were because of the risk factor in the strait. The nuclear negotiations are totally, so far as one could tell, unsettled. So they'll be little. There'll be more, could be hiccups or more than hiccups there. Trump can't credibly, I don't think threaten the use of force much, maybe a bombing or something, but he's not going to move troops back there after this thing gets sort of resolved here in the next few days, I think. So that leverage that he has had goes away. Israel, I guess, retains that leverage. It doesn't go away, but is lessened. Israel retains that leverage. I'm very struck by one thing. Trump's trying to sell the deal or sweeten the deal by invoking out of nowhere honestly the Abraham Accords, which are like entirely different thing, which. And suddenly it's like, you know what this is kind of part of. He knows the Abraham Accords are vaguely popular here to the degree people know what they are and regarded vaguely as successful. Though one could have a separate discussion about have they actually lessened war or tensions or instability in the Middle East. But anyway, they were okay, let's put it, and seemed like a success. So he's desperately trying. I'm going to get those other nations to be part that aren't yet part of the Abraham Accords to part of those accords. We'll see. I mean Saudi Arabia is not going to join the Abraham Accords without a resolution, war resolution of the Palestinian issue. They've been totally clear about that. Egypt has its own peace treaty with Israel. They don't feel like they need to be told to be part of some accord with a bunch of Gulf states. I mean I, I'm pretty dubious that
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Pakistan why is Pakistan, Pakistan which doesn't
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recognize Israel Pakistan as a favor to Trump who's now their buddy and maybe is a favorite of China in turn, which could get favors from Trump, you know, recognize Israel conceivably or sort of join the quote join whatever that means even it's not like the Abraham Accords like data. What are you joining? You know what I mean? They could, they say they're well disposed to them and want to have talks about it. Sure. So there might be a little bit of coddling of Trump here, but it is striking. Is that like someone told him, remember those Abraham Accords? That's kind of one of your achievements. And so suddenly it's and then at the end didn't he one of those truth social posts saying you know what, it would be good if Iran joined Abraham Accords. It's like you could only imagine the faces of the Gulf states in Israel
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at well, I mean on the Israel side of it, it seems like this is attempted a pot sweetener for them for Trump because what didn't mention was over the weekend reports were that Bibi and folks in Israel were unhappy with the contours of the deal. And so I don't know that's like a wild card in the situation. Obviously Israel has more acute security concerns than we do in this situation. And so maybe something might come up that that would make Israel decide that they do want to attack Lebanon again or Iran again for that matter and how that impacts the deal. And that's certainly possible in wild card. But the reporting on the Abrahamic call, I guess Trump was on a call with all of his new friends, Pakistan, Qatar, uae, Saudi and kind of made this pronouncement last night. And one of the reports from an Israeli news source said that the ultimatum was met with literal silence. The Arab leaders were so stunned by the audacity of the request that Trump had to break the silence himself. So, you know, we'll, we'll see what happens with that. Just for kicks on the spin of all this, I saw this video going around this weekend. I want to share it because, you know, people that listen to this show, you know, we, I mean how often do we put on the hair shirt, Bill, and you and I are very, very happy to discuss our mistakes and bad predictions. You know, the policy of radical candor. This gives you a little insight into what is happening inside the MAGA propaganda sphere. This is a guy with a relatively popular podcast named Dave Rubin and someone to put together a highlight reel of his predictions and comments on the war over the course of the last few months. And I think it tells us a little bit about the question of whether Trump will have people still spinning for him after this deal is done. Let's listen to Dave Rubin's take on the war.