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- [00:04]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
Abe Greenwald
Some preach and pain Some die of thirst the way of knowing which way it's going.
- [00:19]
John Podhoretz
Hope for the best, Expect the worst, hope for the best. This is an Emergency Commentary magazine podcast. We are recording this podcast on Sunday morning, June 22nd at 7:30am Eastern Time to discuss last night's American raid on Iran's nuclear sites. I guess we call it a raid. We could call it a single day action. We'll discuss how we should characterize it. And by we, I mean executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:02]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:03]
John Podhoretz
Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [01:06]
Matthew Continetti
Hi, John.
- [01:07]
John Podhoretz
Washington Commentary columnist Matthew Catnutti. Hi, Matt.
- [01:10]
Matt Catonetti
Hi, John.
- [01:11]
John Podhoretz
And joining us this morning, Commentary contributing editor Pooh Bah at the foundation for Defense of Democracies. And wonder of the leading voices on the Iranian threat to Israel and to the world over the past 20 years, Jonathan Schanzer. Hi, John.
- [01:29]
Jonathan Schanzer
Hi, John.
- [01:31]
John Podhoretz
So Shanzer has not slept. I haven't slept much. Maybe you guys have also not slept much. Jonathan, let me turn to you because you have, as we say, at least as we're speaking, new information. God knows when people will be listening to this. So by the time they listen to this, they may know some of your new information following last night's strikes on Natanz, Fordow and Ifsaan, but please take the floor.
- [02:03]
Jonathan Schanzer
Sure. All right. So we'll go technical and then we'll go strategic. And these are conversations that I've been having this morning with friends in Israel, the technicals. And I am not a technical guy, so pardon my ignorance as I try to dumb this down to at least something that I can understand and others. But what we, what we understand right now is that Fordo has been hit with multiple mops, right? I mean, massive ordnance penetrators that have destroyed very likely the entire facility. There is still what we call a bda, the battle damage assessment that needs to be released. And there may be several of these over the course of today as they pull together whatever intelligence they can to try to figure out exactly what was destroyed. Did they get to the, you know, to the bottom and implode the entire facility that was underground with all of those centrifuges that were spinning? So that I think is sort of question one, and we should get answers soon. Then you have Natanz. And that's interesting because there is this it's called Salahin. This is a secret facility that was being built. It was also like 100 meters below ground. There's a question of whether the Israelis, you know, can assess or whether the United States can assess what happened there. And then there is Isfahan. And Isfahan people are asking about, because that's where the roughly 400 kilos of enriched uranium has been stored. Is it entombed? Is it just now impossible to get at? And that's another question, right? But these are all the things that folks are grappling with now. From there, there are questions about what the Iranian response will be and of course we're watching bluster from the regime because, well, it's the regime and bluster is what they do. But they have effectively three choices in front of them. And I think they're worth briefly unpacking. One, which I think is highly unlikely is full surrender capitulation. And I think it would be the healthiest for this regime to do that. I don't see it happening because I'm not sure that you can be the Islamic Republic of Iran and be calling for death to America and death to Israel as key pillars of your regime, and then capitulate to America and Israel after getting shellacked for nine days straight, capped off with these attacks last night by the United States that really were a crippling blow to the nuclear program no matter what has survived from it. And don't forget the Israelis still have total complete air superiority. And after they started attacking Israel last night, Israel is attacking back and the Iranians have nothing to say about it. They cannot respond in any real way. So the Israelis aren't even looking to pick apart nuclear targets anymore. This is just full on hunting and destroying rockets launchers and other military capabilities that the regime had had. So that's one then. The other is, so let's call that scenario one. Scenario three. I'll jump to that. One is the Iranians decide that they're going to respond. There's multiple ways they can do it. I mean, we've already seen that they fired off a significant salvo of ballistic missiles last night and they may try to do that more, right, to draw Israel into something like, you know, we would call the war of attrition of sorts. But really it's two timelines. The Israelis hunting for those ballistic missiles and launchers and the Iranians trying to impose as much pain on Israel as possible. They could try to, you know, sort of launch dozens or even hundreds of missiles at Ben Gurion Airport at Tel Aviv, you know, at Dimona, for example, and they could try to do one, you know, sort of one last stand, or they could try to attack American bases or they could try to launch terror attacks, asymmetric sleeper cell type things here in the United States or abroad. I don't think any of that is going to work out well for them. But this is a suicidal, apocalyptic regime and they may think that this is what their job is right now. And we need to watch for that and hope that the US Is ready, the Israelis are ready, Western intelligence services are ready to do whatever is necessary to counter that. But then there's this last scenario, which I was hearing from a friend in Israel this morning, that fascinates me, which is that Iran simply stops firing for a time and that they do essentially what Hezbollah has been doing, which is nothing. They're defeated. They know they're defeating, they're defeated. They're not surrendering per se, but they're also not fighting. And there is a possibility that that happens, that they, we just sort of reach a plateau in this war and the Israelis attack occasionally when they see threats and that eventually we arrive at some kind of new understanding in the Middle East. But let me just cap this off by saying an unbelievable historic night. When you heard that the president's speech, it was short, it was to the point, it was emphatic. The man essentially offered up the fact that he was working closely with Benjamin Netanyahu from the get go. And I think we could all see that that's what was going on here. Complete and full coordination between the United States and Israel to neutralize the Iranian threat, the nuclear threat in particular. We still have a little bit of work to do here right now, maybe a lot as it relates to those conventional threats that Iran poses. But I think so much of this right now hinges on how suicidal the Islamic Republic wants to be.
- [07:59]
John Podhoretz
That's an amazing summary and I want to. Abe, go ahead. Sorry.
- [08:02]
Christine Rosen
Well, it's a fantastic summary. My question relates to sort of your last point here. A lot of us who have been watching since the beginning of Israel's air assault on Iran, there's a, this question is like how much, how many missiles does the regime have left to respond? I mean, I got number, but I.
- [08:34]
Jonathan Schanzer
Mean there's, I got back of the envelope, back of a napkin numbers for you. They started with about 2,000 missiles, as we understand it. They fired about 600 of them. Maybe some other ones have been destroyed, you know, various means that the Israelis have technical military to destroy them before they, you know, left the launcher. There's probably 1000 to, I don't know, 1400 left, you know, seven large salvos or, you know, 15 significant salvos left. And you got to understand that this is, you know, we're watching more of them get through because the Israeli interceptors are dwindling. I mean, it doesn't mean that they're running on empty here, but it just means they have to be judicious about what they use and what they're going to defend. And I do think that we could be watching this sort of endgame play out. And it is. We are looking at the potential of a war of attrition for a time. I don't think that the regime can survive this. Now, the other, the, the other part of this is the number of launchers that they have. And that's crucial, right, because missiles cannot reach Israel unless they're on a launcher first and then sent into space. If the Israelis continue to knock those down, right now they're saying a few hundred launchers, which is up from, let's say it was six or seven or 800 launchers or whatever it was, those numbers are dropping. And so if the Israelis can continue to hunt down the launchers, the holes in the ground that are on the right angle for these things to be launched, the missiles themselves, that's what's going to speed this up for Israel. But we are looking sort of, you know, from, from Israel's perspective that, you know, these salvos that are coming in and doing grave damage to Israeli infrastructure, this is the game here. They need to destroy all of this from the air with those F35s that are continually in the air right now over in the skies over Iran, you know, versus what the Iranians are able to pop off. And they're not going to do a lot of this during the day. So what they have is the Israelis have 15 hours of daylight to go hunting for these, for these missiles and for the launchers and for the officials that are, you know, issuing the directives. They're doing all that. And then what you have is, you know, something like eight or ten hours at night where it's dark and the Iranians are able to pull out their missiles and launch them. There have been some volleys during the day, but there are not many of them right now because the Israelis have a much better visual and they're able to respond quickly when they see these missiles potentially about to be launched.
- [11:15]
John Podhoretz
So as we move forward, I'm sorry, as we move forward over the next two weeks, the threat to Israel's civilian population kind of grows a bit in the sense that they, as you say, their interceptor numbers are dwindling and when you say judicious. So just to be like plain spoken about this, they have to husband their resources and they're going to have to make very painful decisions like okay, this missile looks like it's headed toward an air force base. We cannot allow that missile to hit the air force base. But then there's missile number two and it's headed for Haifa. And we may have to let that missile hit Haifa, which is not a military target, and do what damage it's going to do because we need to maintain full operational capability. So there are these Hodson's choices that is really going to have to make. And the Israeli population is basically going to be living in and around those shelters for being. Unless the two, unless the two more pacific scenarios you lay out, which are either that Iran just simply stops firing or Iran surrenders. If one of those two happens, then Israeli life can return to normal. But until we move off this moment or Israel so degrades Iran's response capacity that it will be able to use the interceptors. It has to deal with the missiles that are fired. If they can nail launchers at nail sites. Correct. By the way, it's not just that they have this operational strength in the air and have total air superiority. We had these reports that there were Israelis on the ground at Fordow, right. In the last three or four days. We don't know what they were doing. But when we say they're going to do, when you say they're going to do a damage assessment, Israelis are going to be on the ground or on the site doing the damage assessment. They're not just. We're not going to have boots on the ground.
- [13:25]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know how they plan on doing these assessments. But one thing I do want to note is it's not just the Arrow interceptors that are protecting the skies over Israel right now. There are Thaad interceptors and there may other, there may be other assets that have been deployed to the region. As I understand it, there's some Western countries that have also sent, you know, vessels to the region and they may be able to help defend the skies over Israel. Although I have to say the Arrow system that the Israelis have been using, the anti ballistic missile system, I got to tell you, every, every western country is going to want a piece of this by the time this war ends because they're, they're, their rate of interception has been superior by far. And that as I understand it, has been like 60, 70%. And the Israelis are at like 90 plus percent. And that is remarkable. And this is something that we didn't even see until this war began. After October 7, their first intercept was. I mean, they were supposed to be in Alaska testing a couple of months after October 7th, and they had to just use it in real time. And it has just been defying all expectations. But they have. You know, right now, I think you're going to start to see the Israelis rely more on the west for those intercepts. And it's a lot of money. But I got to tell you, the. That's not. I mean, for me right now, I mean, I think the Israelis are going to be able to endure this. You know, I was telling you guys before we went on, you know, I just spent the last week in Israel in shelters.
- [14:52]
John Podhoretz
It's brutal.
- [14:53]
Jonathan Schanzer
But the defiance that I've seen from the Israeli people, it is. I mean, it's mind blowing. I mean, they're just like, come at me, bro, like, we're ready. Go ahead, Keep going. Keep firing. Because we have air superiority and we're going to win, and we know we're going to win, so we're willing to take the damage. And this is.
- [15:11]
John Podhoretz
You've gone somewhere that we. I want to go. Let's broaden this conversation out. You just said Israel. The Israelis believe we are going to win. The United States came into this war last night, and the tone of Trump's speech was, as you said, to me, it was a victory speech. He didn't declare victory. He said, come at us again and we're going to go at you Iranians harder than we did. This was the hardest mission for us, technically, said Trump here on in, it's all gravy. Come at us and we'll just pick you off with our, you know. And you mentioned the arrow being used this way. Remember these bombs that we used, there were six or there were 12. No one knows exactly the precise number, have never been used before. And the B2 bomber may be the most controversial piece of military equipment the United States has ever built at a cost, an ungodly cost per craft because we ended up making far fewer of them than we were going to. We'd made as many as we were going to make. The per unit costs would have been way lower. Some estimates are that each of These planes cost $2 billion from development to deployment. Haven't been used before, never been used in battle before. We just use them. They flew 37 hours in the air from Whitman Air Force Base. They took out these sites and they flew home in Time for breakfast. Again, a complete vindication of an American strategic vision of what you could do. If you made these bunker buster bombs and you put them on B2s and you had to use them, what would you use them for? This is what you would use them for. To take out a nuclear threat before it. Before it manifests.
- [17:11]
Matthew Continetti
We got to call it Whiteman. I think it's Whiteman.
- [17:13]
John Podhoretz
Is it Whiteman?
- [17:14]
Jonathan Schanzer
It's Whiteman.
- [17:16]
John Podhoretz
Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought it was like Walt Whitman. Now you're saying it's like Paul Whiteman, the jazz musician. Okay, I got my.
- [17:22]
Matthew Continetti
Can I just ask? Because having watched the President's short remarks last night, it was. I mean, obviously, given my political leanings, I was thrilled to hear him say two things. One, just to be decisive, emphatic and powerful sounding about a foreign policy intervention with no caveats, with no excuse making, with no attempts to kind of, you know, coddle any coalition on one side or the other. Just, this is what we did. This is why we did it. I said I was going to do it, and now I've done it. And don't test us again. That was hugely refreshing. In this era, it's been decades since we've heard a president speak that way. Secondarily, that he ended the talk by saying, God bless Israel and God bless America, that really matters. That is a signal, I think, that the we're not necessarily just one and done with this strike. It does solidify the fact that Israel is our ally. But I'm curious, Jonathan, is that where is that relationship right now? Because obviously Trump has a whole faction of MAGA that would like to see this as strategic. We're done and now we're out of it. No.
- [18:22]
John Podhoretz
No war, Matt. Let's go to Matt here on this question of Matt, our historian, author of the definitive history of the conservative movement. Over the last hundred years, MAGA has spent two. Some elements of. MAGA spent two weeks saying, don't go in, don't go in, don't go in, don't go in. I noticed Charlie Kirk, who is like the king of MAGA in the sense that he's the richest. He's the guy who has profited probably personally and professionally the most from MAGA over the last decade as head of Turning Point and all that. So he was anti war until the missiles flew. And then he said, we stand with Trump. And then he said on Twitter last night, Trump had no choice. He gave Iran every opportunity to come to the table. He didn't come to the table. That's it? This is so Charlie Kirk is like, okay, maga's. MAGA has now moved. We are now patriotic supporters of this incredibly wonderful raid on Iran. Is that where do you think in the next 96 hours this goes with the American right?
- [19:22]
Matt Catonetti
Well, so much depends on where the war goes. And I don't think this is over. So I really don't know how people will respond to whatever happens next. But I can say this. I think we have to separate the isolationists who were non interventionist restrainers prior to Trump from the coalition that came into being because of Trump. And so the Rand Pauls and the Thomas Massie's of the world, they're going to be against this intervention. They're going to be arguing for a congressional authorization of military force. They're going to highlight any downside that follows from the strike and they'll do that long after Trump leaves the stage. And then there's the Charlie Kirk types who is, you know, he's a creature of maga. Charlie Kirk's extremely influential and I say that not to, you know, insult him or anything, but he, his rise coincided with the rise of Trump and he I think actually speaks for many more members of the coalition when he says, look, we don't want to get involved overseas. That's a general feeling in America first. But we also trust Trump. More importantly, we know that Trump has always wanted, has always said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And here he's done it. He's ensured that that path is closed for a long time. And so they'll tend to back him. And so we'll see that in the Congress as well. Mike Johnson, John Thune, Dave McCormick, Tom Cotton from the Senate side, you know, others in the House represent supporting Donald Trump, supporting Israel. But then you have some dissenting voices like Massie, but really you can count them on a single hand. And even Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was I think the most vocal member of Congress, who wasn't, who wasn't a kind of pre Trump isolationist against intervention. She said, well, now is the time for peace. I hope Iran makes the right decision. And so on and so forth.
- [21:33]
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- [22:42]
Abe Greenwald
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- [23:34]
Jonathan Schanzer
Can I just say, I mean, I, I really have been struck by, well, a few things, but, but this has really jumped out at me as I've watched the kind of MAGA types respond in real time to these attacks. It's just so, like, unbelievably obvious. Now. We don't have a doctrine, we don't have a foreign policy. We have Donald Trump's whims, which in this case I'm great with. Right? I mean, I think that he's done exactly the right thing, but I mean, Trump is sort of a Rorschach test for all of these influencers and these pundits, right? They see in him what they believe this movement is supposed to be and he's, he continues to make it what he wants it to be as we go on. Now, I think that they're, the test right now, at least in my view, is what kind of damage does the US Sustain and how do we handle that? If we are hit, right, there will be those who scream about how this is, you know, exactly what they knew that was going to happen. If we're hit with some kind of asymmetric attack here in the United States or our bases or our allies get hit and we get drawn in a little bit more. But I want to just stress here that even if the United States is hit with a terrorist attack in the continental United States in conus, or if our allies are hit abroad, or if oil installations are hit, it doesn't mean that we're going down the path of the war on terror after 9, 11, and we don't have to overreact. I mean, I think that what we need to understand here is that people are already warning that we shouldn't overreact and that we shouldn't go all in just because they respond or do something that we're not happy with. Right. We can still be judicious with American power even if Iran decides to escalate. And we can do this in a way that feels consistent with wherever the center of MAGA is. And I'm okay with that. I think that this is not sort of all or nothing. It's not binary. Right. There are degrees in which we can respond if things escalate in a certain direction. And I think that maybe, just maybe that MAGA world is coming to grips with that. A couple of hours after Trump's unbelievable announcement.
- [25:59]
Matt Catonetti
Well, I don't think Tucker Carlson will ever come to grips with that. And I think there are other influencers who won't come to grips with that. And that's because, you know what?
- [26:07]
Jonathan Schanzer
They're influencers at the end of the day.
- [26:09]
Matt Catonetti
I think that's the main point here, is that the influencers are not that influential and certainly not that influential over Trump, who knows his own mind.
- [26:20]
Jonathan Schanzer
But I don't.
- [26:20]
Matt Catonetti
I would also want to call it a whim. I think what we've seen from Trump has been pretty consistent. I talked about the opposition to an Iranian nuke. But also think about how he uses force. I mean, this was the same case in his first term. He got very angry when Assad used chemical weapons. And so he bombed the air bases there in Syria. He didn't do anything more. Assad didn't use chemical weapons another time. Then Trump bombed them again. Then of course, he was very restrained, I think too restrained in responding to Iran in his first term. When Iran downed our drone, when Iran attacked the Saudi oil field. But when Iran backed militias killed our contractors in Iraq, he took out Soleimani. And Iran kind of went into, you know, it launched a volley, it injured some troops, but then it kind of went quiet for the rest of Trump's term. So I think he uses the Very, a decisive, overwhelming force to escalate, to de. Escalate. That's consistent. And so what he's looking here is, okay, I gave you 60 days, then I told you, okay, you can have a few more days with that so called two week extension, which may have been just cover for us getting everything in position. But look, the Iranians met with the Europeans and apparently Witkoff had been communicating with Iraq, she the foreign minister of Iran. So they had a moment where they could have said, you know what, we're scared of Trump, we're going to give it up. And they didn't. So what does he do? He takes out these three sites and now they have another opportunity. And if they do respond, then I think we go to either the Kharg facility, we take out the energy sector in Iran. Trump probably will be reluctant to do that because he is worried about the economic consequences for us.
- [28:09]
John Podhoretz
Meaning higher.
- [28:10]
Matt Catonetti
Meaning, meaning higher oil price prices over globally. Right?
- [28:14]
John Podhoretz
Yeah.
- [28:14]
Matt Catonetti
And then, then there's the other target, which I also think he's seriously considering, and that is decapitating the regime. And just, you know, we know those neighborhoods in Tehran. I don't think they would exist if he, if Iran kills Americans in the next few days.
- [28:28]
Jonathan Schanzer
But Matthew, Matt, I mean, I got to say, and I absolutely agree with everything you said right up until that last point, I think the Israelis are probably more inclined to, to consider regime change. Decapitation. It is just such a, it's on a word, obviously it's a dirty phrase in American political circles now that we don't do regime change. Right. Because I mean, in everybody's mind, it means, it means democracy building and all of that.
- [28:58]
Matt Catonetti
I don't think that's what it means for Trump when I say decapitation. I think he kills the President of Iran or he kills the latest head of the irgc. I don't know if he'll kill the Ayatollah. But it's not necessarily regime change. It's just like, who's the top guy? Okay, he's not here anymore.
- [29:15]
John Podhoretz
No, no. I mean, I think this is an important. In the escalate to deescalate model, Trump says, you harm one hair on an American head, we're going at the highest value target that we can hit as response. I think that was the clear tone of Trump's remark, which is you so much as blink in our direction. I have my finger on a trigger and it's so much easier now than it was. It was so much easier doing that to you than what we just did. Again, remember, using weaponry that has never been used before in war is a risky thing to do. Bombs could not go off. Something could happen with the planes. Everything that's ever been done has been modeled in computer time. You know, it's not like this has ever been executed before. It is a high risk, just like using a defense system against missiles that's never really tried is a huge risk. If it had failed, Israel would have been naked before the world in this idea that it was vulnerable to ballistic missile attack, and who knows what could have happened then? So I don't think of this as regime change. What Trump said, Bibi is toying with regime change. He keeps talking to the Iranian people and saying, you can rise up and you have a brighter future and all of that. It's a different thing if Israel does it than if we do it. And I think it's pretty fair to say that if, while Trump established that he would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, this was his policy, as we've been saying now for two weeks, from the speech coming down the escalator till now, it's also pretty clear he's not a regime change person. Like, that's not. He doesn't care who runs Iran. He only cares whether they do things that he likes or doesn't like or whether they bow to his will or not.
- [31:24]
Jonathan Schanzer
So this is exactly. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what I'm sort of trying to get at here.
- [31:29]
Matthew Continetti
I'm sorry, that's the one point. Because there's a different strategy. Russia and Ukraine. I mean, there actually is. I mean, and Russia has now come out, you know, criticizing this attack, saying that. I just feel like the win point I took is. I agree with that point because that's, in fact, why MAGA is constantly in disarray. It's all selective. It's. Well, in this case with Iran, I'm consistent. I'm doing this. I'm saying this. That's all great. With Russia in Ukraine, totally different set of circumstances. He's going to go a different direction. He's going to. He's going to have this relationship with Putin. So I think that's where the confusion. There's no doctrine, and that can be its own pursuit of foreign policy. And I think it has been for Trump, but it's confusing and inconsistent.
- [32:08]
Matt Catonetti
I think it proves the point. If the Ayatollah said, hey, I want to work with you, I'm going to be nice, then Trump's going to say, fine, I don't care. I'll be nice to you, Putin. The problem is that Putin knows how to get Trump to like him because he says all the right words. And so Trump is like, oh, maybe I'll give you another two weeks. There's also a huge difference strategically in the setting here. Trump likes strength. We know that. Right. We can agree on that. And what I was struck by when he was talking earlier this week, I think it was on his way to Bedminster, just, I guess just at the end of the week. And someone asked, well, you know, do you think diplomacy can end this fight here between Israel and Iran? And he said, well, you know, I don't know about diplomacy because Iran's in a really weak position. And I listened to that. I said, well, that's exactly how he thinks about Ukraine. He thinks Ukraine is in the weaker position vis a vis Russia. Therefore, you know what? Why are we helping Ukraine? I'm not saying I agree with this analysis, but I'm just saying in his mind, it's all about who is dominant. And at this point in time, Israel is clearly the dominant force in the Middle East. And so it only reinforces his earlier support for Israel as well.
- [33:25]
John Podhoretz
Okay, but the whim thing. So let, let, let me, let me try to chart a middle course between Christine saying he acts on whim and there's no doctrine, and Matt, you essentially finding a doctrine in the. He goes hard. He makes it clear that he'll go hard. If you don't believe him when he says he's going to go hard, you're, you're, you're making a mistake not to listen to him, that he's not Taco Trump, that, that's a, that's a misapprehension. Middle ground here is that he has articulated this idea about the Iranian nuclear weapon for 10 years. He knows he's said it for 10 years. MAGA misunderstood him. This is, this is where I go Maga, or whatever you want to call it, from the influencers to the politicians, they thought that his actions toward Ukraine or his behavior in the Russia Ukraine war was the most suggestive aspect of how you could determine a doctrine from Trump and spell it out in future. He doesn't want to intervene. He could solve this war in 24 hours. But in fact, they misunderstood that. Ukraine is its own special circumstance. And he doesn't look at these things, as we would say, synthetic, like he is not looking to synthesize American foreign policy. He goes case by case. It's like the trade deals. He'll make any trade deal. With anybody that's different from the trade deal that he made with somebody else. That's not how international trade is supposed to work. And, you know, it's supposed to, like, you're supposed to set rules of the road that everybody can follow here.
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Jonathan Schanzer
He's.
- [35:08]
John Podhoretz
That's not him. And for better or for worse, it's not him. And everybody, including his fans, wants to discern the thing that makes them say, okay, well, if X happens, then I know Trump will say Y. And he resists any effort to spell out how he feels. By which I mean, let's go to Ukraine just for a second here. He doesn't why he thinks Ukraine's weak, and he wants to side with the strong horse or whatever. But let's just say out of Nowhere, Europe raised $5 trillion and gave it to Ukraine to win the war. I don't think he would be opposed to that. I don't think he would try to interpose the United States between Russia and Ukraine. He just doesn't want to do it. He thinks it would be foolish for America to do it. He likes whatever, however he feels, but this goes both ways. He doesn't want to move in. Yeah, but if Germany moved in.
- [36:11]
Matt Catonetti
Right. And here's how to build on that. Because he doesn't see Ukraine as our problem. And MAGA thought he wouldn't see Iran as America's problem, but he's always seen Iran as America's problem. That's because Iran is America's problem. And he laid it out in his speech last night. He talked about how Iran is responsible for the death and the bodily injury to so many of our troops in Iraq during our time there. He talked about the death to America, the hostages coming from the comanist revolution in 1979. And he talked about the potential threat of this fanatical regime obtaining apocalyptic weaponry. And so when you hear Steve Bannon scream and yell at Bibi Netanyahu for dragging us into the war, it's completely wrong. This is our fight. This is our goal of American foreign policy since George W. Bush and the revealing of the Iranian nuclear program, that we would not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. All these other presidents have talked about it. Trump just did it.
- [37:14]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah. And he made history. And by the way, as we're all talking here, I'm watching on my screen, Pete Hegseth has announced that the Iranian nuclear program is destroyed. Exactly what that means. And, you know, is it 100% destroyed or 99% destroyed? I don't know. And we're seeing Donald Trump saying we want Iran on the path to peace. Right. And he's warning don't attack. But he's basically saying, look, we've already done this. The job is finished. Don't push us any further. And I think that's consistent, Matt, with what you're getting at here. But I do think that the confusion, Christine, that you've noted within maga, I think they're going to be working through.
- [37:52]
John Podhoretz
This for a while.
- [37:52]
Jonathan Schanzer
It's going to be a process, not.
- [37:54]
John Podhoretz
An see Bannon yelled at Bibi, right. And said, you're dragging us into war. And then last night said everyone's going to side with Trump now in our movement.
- [38:04]
Matthew Continetti
Well, they have oppositional defiant disorder with regard to their foreign policy and they're really struggling with the parent having, you know, bombed the nuclear facility. So but that's to be I mean, that's actually not an unhealthy thing for your coalition to be arguing amongst itself about what it should stand for for. But these guys are pretty I like the influencer versus influence influential distinction that Matt made earlier. I think that's important.
- [38:32]
John Podhoretz
I love to move on to slightly separate topics because I think someone brought, I can't remember whether it was Matt or John brought up the question of whether or not the big move here in America would be Trump needs to go to Congress to get an authorization for continued action. And that seems to be what Democrats who are not, who don't say, like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Trump must be impeached for doing this. Mikey Sherrill, who is the gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, who is a member of Congress saying he needs to come to us so that we can author, you know, this is very important separation of powers, Congress needs to be consulted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course, there's a whole contingent on the right that has been talking about this honorably. I would say in the case of, let's say, Andy McCarthy, that the, that the authorization for the use of military force that was put in place after 9 11, which has been the legal justification for, for our involvement in various, for the last almost quarter century in the efforts that we make to contest radical regimes and terror and things like that still extant Aume is there, hasn't been superseded, hasn't been voted out, nothing like that. And there are people who, as I say, honorably, Charlie Cook, Andy McCarthy, who say it's not appropriate at this moment, we need to revise it and Congress needs to reassert its role in military action in the United States but for the most part, if Democrats are saying it, their disingenuousness is so spectacular as to be mind blowing. Did we go to Congress when we went into Libya under Obama? Was the drone. Was the drone warfare that Obama launched at individual terrorist targets that took out more than a thousand people and including.
- [40:48]
Jonathan Schanzer
An American citizen on foreign soil, was.
- [40:51]
John Podhoretz
That ever brought to Congress for authorization? Biden did stuff. Nobody ever said boo. When you start mouthing off about this in relation to the person who isn't your guy, you deserve to be treated with contempt and scorn. I think it would be great somehow, if Trump began the process of reporting to Congress in hopes that there would be a vote, something like that. I would be for that. But do not people who are listening to the sound of my voice get tempted by this notion that the United States requires. The Constitution requires that the president go to Congress anytime he uses military action. The first American military involvement abroad in the history of the United States was our war against the Barbary Pirates. From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, that took place between 1801 and 1815. Guess what never happened? Thomas Jefferson and, you know, and James. Nobody went to Congress. Thomas, Madison and Roe, nobody went to Congress to seek authorization for us attacking the Barbary pirates. That's the first American military involvement on the planet. There, I think, have been nine congressional declarations of war. And the AUMA functions as an implicit support of American military action in the 21st century, unless Congress were to act otherwise. So don't fall for this disingenuous nonsense.
- [42:42]
Jonathan Schanzer
I just want to say one thing, and I'm not like a legal scholar, and I'm not going to get into the, you know, kind of the different kind of legalistic ways of attacking this, but I wrote my PhD on the history of America's efforts to combat terrorism in the. In the 20th century. And all of the literature points to one thing, and they all refer to it. It's a culture of deference. The Congress defers to the executive as it relates to. To, you know, military and security matters. They don't tell him what to do or her one day. This is something that is handed down by the executive and it becomes a perfunctory thing. And there's no way around that right now. We've got decades of precedent, and that's where we are now. We want to change that. That's fine. But let's not say that because Donald Trump, we need to change these things. Yeah, that's where we have evolved.
- [43:43]
Matt Catonetti
That's why we have a precedent. The president is the only office that is on the job 24 7, 365 days a year. It's the commander in chief. The reason they wrote the job as they did, the founders of the United States, was to have someone who can act in emergency and ready circumstances and not wait as Congress deliberates. Congress is there to deliberate. And this is why I think it's important to distinguish between declarations of war, war usually, you know, aimed at overturning a government or invading another country with our forces, and the foreign policy of a raid, which is what this is and which much of American foreign policy has been. You have the decisive application of force now in the, since the 20th century, that's been through our incredible air power or our naval power. But sometimes it involves commando raids, like, like the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. There was no, you know, I guess you could say that was covered under the original AUMF for the war on terror. But nonetheless, we violated Pakistan's sovereignty and Obama just did it. Right. Over the objections of Joe Biden, I should point out. So I think this falls into the category. Trump saw that this was an opportunity that had to be seized, and he took it. And so these calls will get for another, you know, authorization or congressional oversight will get a lot of attention, but I don't think they're going to go very far. And, Jonathan, since you wrote your PhD on this subject, I now learn, I mean, Reagan did. Congress didn't authorize Reagan's bombings of Libya or the tanker war against Iran. Right. He just. We just did it.
- [45:21]
Jonathan Schanzer
No, I mean, actually, those were not the sorts of things that I looked at more about, you know, counterterrorism raids and things like this. There is, there's, there is literally nothing. Right. That Congress is going to do. And by the way, way better. I mean. Right. I mean, I've learned this from all the different recommendations that we've provided to Congress over the years in congressional testimony from our organization. You're a weapon of mass discussion. I mean, they all sit around and they talk about these things, but they don't actually do anything because they can't agree on the color of hummus most days. Right. And it's gotten worse over the years. And so the idea that we're going to wait for Congress to figure out whether they're going to approve an American strike on Iran's nuclear program as they're making a dash to a bomb over the last couple of weeks, that's insane. That's truly insane. Hello, this is Dr. Rob Williams, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Survivors of the Holocaust have long been the bravest voices speaking out against anti Semitism and all forms of hate around the world, whether it's European antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s or the anti Semitism we see on our streets and campuses today. We'll explore it on the USC Shoah Foundation's new podcast, Searching for Never Again. We'll hear stories that are heartbreaking and stories that are inspiring every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever fine podcasts can be found.
- [46:47]
Matthew Continetti
And Congress retains the very, very powerful purse so they can fund for, you know, so coming to them for, for budget approval and for, for spending is where, and I think the founders would agree that is where its power largely is. I just want to add thank you for saying him or her, but also thank God that right now this isn't a her, because I was thinking of that in terms of like, hinge moments of history and Matt's comment about what Biden would have has done in the past. We really should be grateful that we have the leader that we do, even as flawed as he is, and all our leaders are flawed. But as flawed, flawed and difficult a creature he is to understand at a moment like this. He proved historically important, by the way.
- [47:29]
John Podhoretz
Again, relating to that question of Kamala Harris and the Biden, whatever they, what do they call the politburo, Biden's brain trust. And the people who were Obama's brain trust, all of whom sound very funereal or were sounding funereal last night on social media about what, what was going on. So where the Democratic Party stands, pull back 30,000ft. Trump announced last night and now Hegseth has announced that the United States went to destroy the nuclear program of a country that has Friday weekly sessions on Friday afternoons where hundreds of thousands of people chant death to America. And it was about to get a nuclear bomb and he took up, took, took planes, American planes with American bombs, and he dropped those bombs on the sites where it was going to have nuclear, where it was going to create and deploy nuclear weapons historically. Do you really be, want to be on the other side of that? Do you want to be a, do you want to be in a party like just a year from now? Do you want to not have thought that this was a good thing? Am I, am I again, am I taking crazy pills? Well, no, go ahead, Abe.
- [49:01]
Christine Rosen
If you are, you know, among those funereal voices, what you're now Waiting for is the bad response. Right. The bad stuff to happen. Almost.
- [49:13]
Jonathan Schanzer
CHEERING Exactly.
- [49:15]
Christine Rosen
So. So you could then say, I knew it. You know, this is the best. And I'm also, in this regard, I'm curious about the region because right up until this happened, we started to read these stories. Israel is intensifying its attack amid growing calls for it to slow down or calls for a ceasefire. I mean, I got to think that every Arab power in the region now is absolutely delighted. Right.
- [49:54]
Jonathan Schanzer
You know, it's funny though, Abe, I was watching the Saudis have issued a condemnation. You know, profiles encourage these country or not. You know, they're fearing right now a possible backlash. And so the lip service continues of, you know, de escalation and, you know, calls for peace. And I think they're going to continue to do that until it's clear that there's no threat, at which point then they come out and high five the Israelis and, you know, and normalize. But you're going to watch this charade go on. By the way, as we've been talking on my screen, I'm seeing that, you know, talking about some of these weapons platforms, John, that have never been used before. The entire operation lasted 25 minutes last.
- [50:38]
John Podhoretz
Night to remark seven hours of flight time. Yeah, 25 minutes of action.
- [50:45]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yep.
- [50:45]
John Podhoretz
And then got a fly back.
- [50:47]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah.
- [50:49]
John Podhoretz
I mean, you know, so getting back.
- [50:54]
Jonathan Schanzer
Driving to Philadelphia for just the cheesesteak and turning around and going home, it's like stripes, right?
- [51:01]
John Podhoretz
We go in, boom, we get them out. It's like going to Wisconsin. As Bill Murray says when he says they have to go, they have to cross into Czechoslovakia to save their friends who have been taken prisoner in a Communist country. They're going to drive in an RV and rescue them, like going to Wisconsin. So I am. I just want to think about this in terms of the American mission. Trump has now taken the anti interventionist, isolationist part of his party implicitly to the woodshed and said, no, I'm not a restrainer. Like, I am something else. I'm not part of this doctrine that you guys are trying to create. I'm something else. Don't try to put me in a box. I'll do what I have to do. This is what I decided to do. Democrat Party is. We're not Trump. Trump does it. Trump says it's day, we say it's night. Trump says he's doing this to, you know, help American security and save Israel. What he's doing is terrible. I do think that that's a expression of a deep Democratic Party worldview. I don't think that it's just they don't like Trump. I think if, obviously, I think if Biden had decided to do this in 2023 or 2024, the Democratic Party would, a lot of it would have lined up and would have aligned with him, but not all. And way more, way, way more people would have been uncomfortable with the projection of American power in the Democratic coalition than will be the case in the Republican coalition. For one thing, Republicans until five minutes ago are, they may not be interventionists, but they believe in the projection of American power. They're supporters of military spending and the idea that we should be the toughest hombres, you know, in the world. And Democrats don't think that they're citizens of the world. They believe in inter, they believe in international organizations superseding American law and sort of and governing how we can I.
- [53:11]
Matt Catonetti
Interject with the point there that I've been wanting to make. So there are two models of non proliferation. There is the diplomatic model and then there is the Israeli model. And the diplomatic model has essentially been the Western model since the North Korean nuclear program was unveiled in the 1990s. And that model is we are going to use diplomacy to prevent the acquisition diplomacy and bribes, diplomacy and money to prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. And it failed. And it's failed in North Korea. It was failing in Iran. There's no, actually, I can't think of a positive example for the Western diplomatic method. Then you have the Israeli method, which is we're not going to allow our adversaries to obtain WMD and we're going to use force. And that was Osarak in Iraq in 81. That was the Syrian plant in 2007. And that was the beginning of Operation Rising lion last week. And the only examples of America going with the Israeli model were the Iraq war in 2003, which no matter what you say about it, Saddam Hussein will never have a nuclear weapon. The Libya example where force was not used. But because of what happened to Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi voluntarily gave up his W and D plans. And now Trump and Fordow and Operation Midnight Hammer. I see that's been called which model is more successful?
- [55:03]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [55:03]
Matt Catonetti
The only model that's successful is the Israeli American model of destroying these programs.
- [55:09]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah. And I think, I think we can all acknowledge that that action like this is going to be far more effective 10 times out of 10.
- [55:16]
Matt Catonetti
Well, Obama folks don't acknowledge it to this day.
- [55:19]
Jonathan Schanzer
I got to tell You, I was watching like Brett McGurk on CNN last night, responding in real time. And it was a full acknowledgement that, that what the Israelis have done and how it set this up for the United States, that this was the way that it should be. And I got to say that was remarkable. And of course, let's admit here that Brett McGurk may not be part and parcel of that whole crew.
- [55:41]
Matt Catonetti
Yeah.
- [55:42]
Jonathan Schanzer
But I also just want to raise one more thing as we talk about non proliferation. That's one part of this, but the other part is this rising axis that we've all been wrestling with right there. You know, the MAGA folks, they've been talking a lot about China and great power competition. What I think is remarkable right now is the silence that I've seen from China, from Russia, right this axis. They're stunned. So it's not just that, that the United States has thwarted the nuclear program. And we are seeing, by the way, Pete Hegseth and JD Vance, they're all saying the same thing, that the nuclear program is gone. But I have to, I have to ask right now, what are the knock on effects, the salubrious effects of this attack? Does it begin to curb the enthusiasm of the revisionists? And that I think is a fascinating thing because it's, if that plays out in a positive way, then I think Israel and the United States will be justified on more than one level. It's not just that they remove that nuclear threat from Iran. Maybe, just maybe, and again, we need to wait and see here, but maybe it begins to roll back this sense of inevitable growth on the part of this axis that we've been trying to contain.
- [57:00]
John Podhoretz
So I'd like to, and maybe you can chime in here, I'd like to sort of separate out these two strands of opposition to American action at the present moment, sort of ideologically. You have the restrainers that we're talking about. The key intellectual figure among the restrainers is Eldridge Colby, who is, I guess, head of Policy Planning now at the Defense Department. Is that right? Do I have his right?
- [57:27]
Matt Catonetti
He's Under Secretary for Policy.
- [57:29]
John Podhoretz
Under Secretary for policy. Okay. So he wrote a book about this. He said, you know, we, we need to vote. We need to basically pull out of Europe or stop take caring much about Europe, focus on the Chinese threat. Although even there the Chinese threat. If, if China were actually to move on Taiwan, I'm not, he's not sure we could do anything about it. That's one strain. That strain is not the liberal collective activist strain. That strain dates back. If you were to take Bridge Colby, you know, seriously or assume that he was speaking in, in a sort in an American voice that needs to be taken seriously. That strain is, is the farewell address of George Washington. Beware of entangling alliances. We are a purer, better, more nobler, more noble place. We do not want to turn into Europe. So we're, we're better and the world will corrupt us and we need to stay out. Then you have the liberal anti intervention strain, which is, which was spoken last night as follows. You know, if we, we just did this, Iran may pull out of the non Proliferation Treaty and then where will we be? The Non Proliferation Treaty. Iran could be in or not be in the non Proliferation Treaty. If we've destroyed their capacity to ever have uranium or anything, they could be in the non bullshit treaty. The NPT plays no role any longer in the question of Iran's place in the international community or the community.
- [59:18]
Jonathan Schanzer
I will sign the nbt, John, any day.
- [59:20]
Matt Catonetti
Thank you.
- [59:21]
John Podhoretz
I'm just saying that is America needs to be restrained. That is international organizations need to restrain America because we're too adventurous and we do go and do terrible things and it's not helpful. And international organizations are the way to go. And as Matt said, the history of this is that two incredibly dangerous irredentist nations, North Korea and Iran, have been the most determined in the last 30 years to go nuclear. It's not like we're looking around, we say, oh my God, Argentina may go nuclear or you know, I don't know, Rwanda may go nuclear. That's not, that's not what's been in the cards. So in some sense I don't like the restrainers where we're a voice against the restrainers, but they don't hate America. And when I hear what these Democrats and people are saying about last night, I'm seeing this. We're just up to no good once again, when in fact we are up to the best possible good. We're up to the best possible good on earth.
- [60:32]
Christine Rosen
Some of the restrainers hate Israel even though they don't necessarily hate America.
- [60:40]
John Podhoretz
The fair, fair.
- [60:41]
Christine Rosen
What I, what I'm wondering about is the, the left wing version here. Who, the ones who do hate America and say, oh, particularly the activist contingent. Now like, I mean this is a slightly separate question but, but they've been a piece of this ever since October 7th. Like what are they going to do now? Hamas is, you know, like this remnant. Iran's nuclear program is destroyed. Hezbollah cannot do anything. What is left for them. Who are they left standing up for now? And will they continue to. Who's.
- [61:29]
John Podhoretz
I can answer that in one word. And they will invoke Palestine.
- [61:34]
Matt Catonetti
Well, look at AOC greeting Mahmoud Khalil upon his release.
- [61:39]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [61:39]
Matt Catonetti
And escorting him to the press in New York City hours before Trump dropped the bunker busters on the Iranian nuclear program.
- [61:49]
John Podhoretz
Right. By the way, when I say they hate America, I don't think Mikey Sherrill hates America. I don't think Chuck Schumer hates America. I mean, I hate Chuck Schumer, but I don't think he hates America. But I do think that.
- [62:00]
Matt Catonetti
Has he said anything about. About what happened last year?
- [62:03]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, he said they need to come to us for authorization to come to us.
- [62:07]
Matt Catonetti
Yeah.
- [62:08]
John Podhoretz
After he said Trump was Taco Trump and he talks about Schumer. We have a great piece in the current issue by Tal Fort Gang about. About the. This idea that Trump is not a friend to the Jews or Israel. And Schumer being one of the author of the book and, you know, his history of antisemitism, the Protector.
- [62:28]
Matt Catonetti
Shomer, the protector.
- [62:30]
Jonathan Schanzer
Can I just, I want to point out something as we talk about this, and it really, it just, it sort of smacked me in the face just now. Trying to parse through all of this in the idiocracy that we currently live in is. It really is astounding. I mean, the sort of MAGA influencers, the Trump derangement syndrome, the asinine foreign policies of both Democrats and Republicans. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a simple thing. The United States took out a threat. There could be backlash. There could be. But at the end of the day, this was a positive for the world. Right. You don't have the threat of a nuclear Iran, the world's foremost state sponsor of the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism does not have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon any longer. The regime is reeling. Great. We could be hit. The Israelis could be hit. There could be terrorism around the world. But at the end of the day, does anybody doubt that this was a positive and we're trying to get through all this noise?
- [63:34]
John Podhoretz
The answer is yes, there are people who doubt that it's a positive. For one thing, let's take the original restrainer, 45 years restrainer, John Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago, supporter of nuclear proliferation as a form of sort of global deterrence. I published an article about John Mearsheimer, who no one had ever heard of, in a college magazine that I edited at Chicago before he came to Chicago about him wanting to expand the nuclear club. There is a world of people who think that America would be best restrained by Iran having a nuclear bomb, right? Israel has a nuke and maybe then Iran should have a nuke. That would only be fair. There is that there. This is an idea in the head. But to go back to the Obamas, because I think they're they now that the Biden people seem to have evanesced from the world stage, the last successful Democratic presidency, the two term presidency of Barack Obama, the voices that dominated that presidency, or the PR voices, are still very present. Ben Rhodes is on tv. He was the guy who essentially sold the Iranian nuclear deal. His friends at Pod Save America are going around being Pod Save America people, and they are extremely negative about what happened last night. Tommy Viodor, one of the Pod Save America guys, best known for being Obama's limo driver in 2008, is like, there could be an Iranian response, therefore we should have done nothing. That is, I mean, again, is that where you want to be? But this American military, this is to.
- [65:29]
Matthew Continetti
John's point, though, is that we have so long lived in a world, world where the people who are supposed to display strength and leadership are like those parents with unruly toddlers going, one, two, don't maybe get to three, but then they get to three and they're like, four, five. And it is, it is a new world. It is a new way of thinking about what our role in the country should role in the world should be and how our leaders should act. And they will be reeling, I suspect, for a very long time because they do not like living in that world, world of clarity.
- [65:58]
John Podhoretz
Matt, you have to run and we're going to continue talking. So is there anything that you wish to interject that you haven't gotten to say before you?
- [66:09]
Matt Catonetti
Well, I just don't think we've really gotten around the magnitude of the moment, even though we've been talking about it. We also don't know how this is going to unfold. Like I said earlier on, I don't think this is the end of it. But I also think that Trump's speech last night was remarkable, not only for the reasons that we mentioned, but also because of his invocation of the deity at the end of it. And, you know, I just keep returning to that line in his inaugural where he said, God spared my life so I can make America great again. And I really do believe that Trump feels that providence is at work here. And I think that providence led him to make this decision which no other American president has made or would make, in my view. And I think that we have to marinate on that as the, as the facilitators would say.
- [67:03]
John Podhoretz
All right, so I wrote a blog post last night that, that, that ends with pretty much that point that Butler assassin. His survival of the assassination attempt at Butler seems to have altered him in some fashion. We don't quite know in what way or how. And that I look at this, I see somebody who says, yeah, God bless American Israel. We love you, God. He said, it's a new formulation. You know, ordinarily we would say, you know, we, you know, God's blessing or, you know, God is love or something like that. We love God was a sort of interesting new wrinkle. But Israel is a world historically unique country in a world historically unique set of circumstances. It has become friendless across the world and over time. And we saw that with this Canada, Britain and France declaring their interest in imposing sanctions or punishments on Israel for it, defending itself against Hamas and trying to, you know, succeed in Gaza and has one friend, and that's the United States. And people are very puzzled by the fact that the American people and the American polity, despite moves and changes and the way the Democratic Party is going, have remained resolutely supportive of Israel conceptually as an ally. The polling last week showed very clearly the idea that Israel was completely justified in its own actions to defend itself against Iran's nuclear threat and increasingly supportive of the idea that the United States should involve itself in ending that threat. Something is going on here that, to my mind, and I can say this, I run a magazine of Jewish affairs and Jewish interests and I am a believing Jew. And I'm a, you know, I'm a, I'm a somewhat observant Jew. And I don't think, I think there's something transcendent going on here. I genuinely do. And I want to read one thing to you guys that I got last night. I had mentioned the other day that we have a reader named Russell Manus who pointed out, as Amit Sehgal had pointed out, that Thursday was the 23rd of Sivan and that in the Book of Esther, notably the only book in the Bible that doesn't mention God, which is the story of the first effort to do a genocide against the Jewish people, that the day that the King of Persia, which is present day Iran, changed his mind and allowed the Jews to defend themselves against his evil vizier was, it says in the Book of Esther, the 23rd of Sivan. The 23rd of Sivan was last Thursday. And so there was this kind of jokey man, maybe we'll strike on Thursday. It's like 25, you know, 3,500 years. I don't even know how many hundred years it is after. Theoretically, the Book of Esther happened, the Megillah happened. But he wrote me last night and he said this. He had written me after, on Thursday, saying, well, I guess it's not going to happen today. Even though that would have been very poetic. He said, I was perhaps hasty in writing off the possibility that the 23rd of Sivan would again be a historic point. The New York Times is reporting that the B2 bombers flew 37 hours straight for Missouri to their mission. As the mission took place approximately 6:00pm Eastern time this evening, they left the Air force base around 5am Friday morning. It seems more than reasonable to infer that the decision was made the day before, on Thursday, the 23rd of Sivan. And as he mentioned last night, which was the end of the Sabbath at the service that concludes the Jewish Sabbath called Havdala, that that is the one time that we say, essentially, a prayer from the Book of Esther which does not mention the name of God or God, which is. And the Jews enjoyed light and gladness in the victory over the Persians. In the victory over the Persians. They are Persians. Ahashveirosh is the king of Persia, secretly married a Jewish woman he did not know was Jewish. Trump invoked God. Short speech. Ordinarily, I don't think you would invoke God. I mean, you would say, we hope God blesses America and God bless America. But that's not what he did. He basically said, gave thanks to God, said, we love you, God, and said, may God bless America and Israel. No American president has said, by the way, also not to keep, like, droning on, but he praised Bibi, Netanyahu and Israel in this speech before he talked about the United States. Yes, the sequence in the speech was, I want to.
- [72:59]
Jonathan Schanzer
I actually want to put my finger on that, because it's absolutely right to point this out. He essentially indicated that the collaboration, the coordination between him and Netanyahu was as deep as it could possibly be. I mean, he acknowledged this in ways that I didn't think that he would. I think we all kind of understood that, you know, he gave Iran 60 days, and on the 61st day, the Israelis started striking and there's been, you know, a massive amount of questions, coordination and that, you know, the two have been on the same side of this from, from the beginning. But it was. It was remarkable to have him say that, to acknowledge the idf, to acknowledge Bibi, to acknowledge that this was a joint operation that went beyond.
- [73:46]
John Podhoretz
I think we have worked closely as no one has ever worked closely before.
- [73:52]
Jonathan Schanzer
Correct.
- [73:53]
John Podhoretz
So he not only said that this was that they were in lockstep. He essentially. Now, you could look at this darkly and say.
- [74:03]
Jonathan Schanzer
He.
- [74:03]
John Podhoretz
If things go really terribly, he can say, you see, I said that night that I did this with the Israelis and I was stupid. Whatever. He never says he was stupid. That's not right. That was, that's, that's, that's unprecedented.
- [74:20]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah.
- [74:21]
John Podhoretz
Like we would say together with our allies, and we're so happy to have worked with our, you know, 53 nations, were involved in the war against Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, and without them, we could never have. That's not what happened here. He said, Israel and the United States working together in lockstep with my good friend Benjamin Netanyahu, the most controversial politician in the world, did this amazing thing.
- [74:52]
Jonathan Schanzer
And now, John, think about what that is going to mean for the Arab states and for the prospect of normalization. And I do need to bring this up here because, look, I don't see them doing this now. We need to get past this sort of danger zone, the question of asymmetric attacks, the question of attacks on bases or oil infrastructure and the like. And these countries are going to stay skittish until they feel safe. But for him to frame it the way that he did, he just showed the Arab world what happens when you go all in on the United States. Right. When you realize that we're your best friend and that we have your interests, we will fight for them. And I'll just say, by the way, I'm sure you guys have probably seen this in some way, but, you know, reading into all of this and the historic nature and the numbers and the dates and everything else, just remember, BB is B2. There's something poetic about that, too.
- [75:54]
John Podhoretz
That is an interesting point. I, by the way, want to make the case. Maybe I'm stupid for making this case and the world shouldn't. You know, it's like, I'm going to be like the one who said that, you know, we were. We would be greeted as liberators and people can make fun of it for 20 years. There is a history of believing that the. That Middle Eastern potentates and their states and their people are going to rise up and punish us or punish Israel for its actions. The Arab street, this, that, the other thing. And it's more way more often than not the dog. The dog that didn't that when action is taken, particularly decisive action, destructive action that shows a high degree of sophistication and superiority over the in relation to the nations that are Israel's or America's enemies, that the response is shock, paralysis, being mute and not exactly suing for peace as as you mentioned, in the scenario where Iran just doesn't do anything, it basically either plays possum or it just goes into a kind of medically induced coma. I think it's possible that Iran doesn't. The response that we saw last night, which was to fire missiles at Israel and one of them hit Haifa and was probably pretty destructive. We haven't heard yet how bad the casualty toll is there. They keep firing them at Israel and that they will leave America the hell alone. Well, can I do you want to. Would you want to go up against Trump after what he did to you last night if you were the mullahs?
- [77:49]
Christine Rosen
I have a related question on the street aspect of it so much and it relates to the Iranian people and where they, where they are right now. There is because of social media, this question has been so distorted. There are. You can, you can stream through a billion clips showing people saying Iranian saying deficiency Khamenei. And then you can stream through pretty much as many of clips that are being used as evidence of this has consolidated Iranians around the mullahs. Jonathan, what is your sense of this?
- [78:40]
Jonathan Schanzer
All right, so look, the first thing that we all have to understand here is that the Iranians have, the Iranian people have been burned so many times by us that even right now, as that nuclear program is destroyed, even as the Israelis have shellacked the regime and even as they dominate the skies over Iran, you have an Iranian people that are still afraid to come out because they don't trust us anymore. And this is, by the way, this is bipartisan. This is not just Democrat or, you know, or Republican. It's both. And I think there's also something else that we need to acknowledge. I still believe that the people can rise up. I still believe that, you know, the people of Iran are inherently good, pro west, pro America, you know, not anti Israel, not, you know, toxic anti Semites. I actually don't think that the majority of the Iranian people qualify in any way those descriptions. But I do think that we need to be really careful here about what we call for because a, we need to be able to put our money where our mouth is. And we've not done that multiple Times. And I don't want to go through that again. This has been a nightmare for these people. But then I think there's the other question, which is what happens as the Iranian people try to sort this out on their own? If the regime falls, you have deep sectarian and ethnic and religious fissures within the regime. Right. You've got the Kurdish question and you've got Azeris, and you've got Baluch, and you've got. I mean, at least as I understand it, more than 50% of the country are minorities. And how you can create a new polity out of this patchwork is, to me, I think it's a fascinating but also frightening question because we know what happens when societies collapse. Even when evil governments fall, you still have the risk, as we saw with Iraq. And look, Iraq is not Iran. Afghanistan is not Iran. There's lots of different permutations of how this thing could go. But I just think that this sort of simplistic, hey, we need to get the Iranian people to rise up and it's all going to be okay. Let's be. Let's take a beat here and understand that we are heading down this same road that we've gone down in the past. It doesn't mean that it's a repeat of what we've done. But each one of these cases, they're sui generis. Right? You're going to have different complications that emerge as we talk about new polities being formed. And I am not sanguine right now that everything's going to be great. Great. I think we can try to help, but I don't want to put boots on the ground. I don't want to spend a huge amount of money. I do think that the unknown is probably better than the devil that we know. I think that's probably the case. But, man, am I not willing to bet on any one horse right now.
- [81:40]
John Podhoretz
Look, I think that's very important. And let's talk about what you mean when you say the devil you know. The unknown is better than the devil we know. The devil we know was two weeks away from. From going nuclear. The devil, the unknown is a future in which Iran needs 20 more years if it wants to get anywhere near back to where it was with making centrifuges and refining uranium after what's happened here. So, of course the unknown is better because we don't really care about regime change in Iran, as you say. If we had. There was a moment in 2009 when Barack Obama, supposedly a, you know, the person who was going to tilt America away from Israel and toward, you know, the Muslim world could have looked at the uprising that did take place in 2009 in the wake of the stolen election, and done something material to help the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are in the streets hoping that that regime would fall. And he didn't do it. And Trump certainly isn't going to do it. And you know what? The Israelis may say, rise up and look for a better future to the Iranian people, but that's in Israel's national interest. If Iran descends into civil war. Let me just be frank and gross about this. That's to our advantage, and that's to Israel's advantage. Let Iran spend the next generation tending to its own garden. That's not our problem. Our problem is Iran's projection of power beyond its borders, controlling Syria, installing Hezbollah and Lebanon with over 40 years, with hundreds of thousands of missiles, activating Hamas, playing the Houthis off against the Saudis. That's our issue with Iran.
- [83:45]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah, but, John, I mean, I do, you know, I absolutely understand where you're coming from. I think we should be trying to shoot for a happy medium here. You know, I don't want to welcome a civil war in Iran. I'd like to see stability. I'd like to see some kind of soft landing here. But I also know that we're not going to engineer that. And I don't know. I don't know who will.
- [84:11]
John Podhoretz
I'm not really calling for a civil war. What I mean is, if Iran's, if the issue going forward in Iran is Iran having to deal with the problems of Iran, that is a net positive for the planet Earth.
- [84:26]
Jonathan Schanzer
Yeah.
- [84:27]
John Podhoretz
And for 45 years since, or 46 years since the Iranian revolution, what have the, what have the Iranians done? They spent eight years in a war with Iraq that cost 2 million lives. They have sponsored terrorism. They have thrown Americans in wheelchairs. Their, their proxies have thrown Americans in wheelchairs off cruise ships, have, you know, done terrible things to America, to the world, to Israel. Again, active the seven front war. This is the end of the October 7th war, in my view.
- [85:05]
Jonathan Schanzer
Well, I will say.
- [85:08]
John Podhoretz
You'Ve been making this point from the get go on this podcast in our pages. This is Iran's war against Israel. It is not Hamas against Israel.
- [85:17]
Jonathan Schanzer
This is, and I think, by the way, Benjamin Netanyahu made that abundantly clear nine days ago when he started this operation, and he brought it all full circle for everybody to understand. But let me just tell you the conversation that I had with one of my best Israeli contacts right before we hopped on, what's amazing is the Gaza war is the one that is unresolved.
- [85:39]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [85:40]
Jonathan Schanzer
And that's actually a remarkable thing. It's the tactical thing, theater that they can't quite finish. But I think now the chances of being able to neutralize all of these seven fronts, I think are far higher because of the damage that Iran just sustained.
- [85:58]
John Podhoretz
And by the way, let's talk about scale, because we're talking about, we just, we just flew these bombers, dropped these bombs, you know, billions of dollars of American, you know, craft and, and money spent to make this possible. Why is the Gaza war unresolved? Because of 20 people.
- [86:20]
Jonathan Schanzer
Correct.
- [86:21]
John Podhoretz
Israel would finish off Hamas.
- [86:24]
Jonathan Schanzer
That and international condemnation of Israel for, you know, purportedly waging war crimes to try to, you know, recoup their people.
- [86:33]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I mean, but I mean, what that shows is Iran deciding to play on the international global scale and finally activating its seven front war against Israel has probably destroyed this regime and laid waste its ambitions for the 21st century. The one thing that worked because of the humanity of the Jewish state and the humanity of the doctrine laid out by the rabbis in the Talmud that it was a duty of Jews to ransom their captives, a 2000 year precedent in Jewish history. That means that this war remains on the, it's the tiniest of, of scales in a country that cares about every single one of its people to the extent that it is willing to endure a war that could have been over in a matter of days, that could not be over in a matter of days, but come at you with the Houthis and with the Hezbollah and all of that large scale Israel will mete out destruction and death to the extent that it has the capability to do so for the purpose of escalating the escalate. This is the final point I wanted to get to. Trump said, I don't start wars, I end them. And everybody misunderstood what that was going to mean in this case. Including me or including us. I thought that was his. You know, every, even getting involved in the world is stupid. I'm not going to get involved in the world. I'm just going to end wars. I would have pulled out of Afghanistan, but we would have done it better than Biden, which I think is probably unambiguously true. But if I'd been reelected, I would have pulled out of whatever. What we did last night was end this war or, you know, basically start the end game of this seven front war of Iran. Against Israel. Trump was right. Trump spoke the truth about himself. He doesn't start wars, he ends them. He came into this war to end it. He tried to do it through negotiation. And, you know, when you think about this, and we looked at, look at the Iranians and we all, I think, were properly skeptical of the idea that there was any purpose in trying to negotiate with the Iranians because they would never agree. And now you look at Iran in tatters and smoldering and you're like, well, why, why, why wouldn't they? Is this what they. Is this. Did they not understand that this could have. Was going to happen? And I think the answer is they probably didn't because they think that we're, we're not a strong horse, that we're a weak horse. The United States, number one and number two, they live in their own theological bubble and they believe that God is on their side. And I don't think God's on their side. God, as Trump said, God blessed America and Israel last night and not Iran.
- [89:51]
Jonathan Schanzer
But, you know, John, I mean, just. And you know, this is, you know, the morosity that we always talk about that I bring to this program, I will say the thing that I worry about right now is that, you know, this is a culture of martyrdom, right? The Islamic Republic. This is what they promote, right? And they've promoted it within Hamas and with Hezbollah and the Houthis that people die for Allah. And what concerns me right now is, no, God is not smiling on the Iranian regime, but they may see that this is their moment for their last stand, for going out in a blaze of glory, that they may try to, you know, saturate Israel's airspace, try to hit Dimona, try to hit, I don't.
- [90:37]
John Podhoretz
Know, Dimona is where the Israeli nuclear program is located, correct? People don't know, right?
- [90:44]
Jonathan Schanzer
Or, I don't know, the chemical plant in Haifa or something to create a mass casualty event to try to destroy Israel as they go down or to try to do the same somewhere else. That I think really is, is that's the concern that I have. I think you're right. That, right that this regime, God is not smiling. If there is a God out there, it is not smiling on Iran right now. But they are certainly weighing their options and they are defiant right now. They continue to signal that they are willing to fight until the bitter end. And this is, I think, what we need to see right now. The United States, Israel, the international community, they need to disabuse the supreme leader of Iran of this Notion. And I think that's why these hours ahead right now are crucial, that the pressure that can be brought to bear on the regime, that all of it comes, whether it's military, it's diplomatic, it's private engagement, it's, you know, trying to offer the ayatollahs an off ramp. Whatever it is, it's important here that we get them to stand down. This is a crucial moment in the Middle East, a crucial moment in this war.
- [91:57]
John Podhoretz
That is why Trump's speech last night was so important in every particular because when he hit Syria for its use of chemical weaponry, he said, that was one shot. One night. One shot. We're done. We did it. Yay. You know, I'm the best. Said last night, stand down. We're not done. You know, we're at the ready to keep going if you don't stand down. That was very important because it's really scary. It's actually really scary. And we just showed that we could scare people again, which is what deterrence is. Yeah, deterrence is don't do it. You're right to be scared of us before you do it. Don't do it.
- [92:53]
Christine Rosen
And Trump, he said it every step of the way up until the very end. I mean, you know.
- [93:01]
John Podhoretz
That'S very important also, because he did. I don't know that anybody can doubt that if the Iranians had come to the table and said, okay, we'll suspend enrichment, that he would have gone to Bibi and said, don't strike them. Don't. They're coming to the table. I'll be very angry at you if you don't let me get this deal. Iran summoned this on itself by pushing the button on October 6, in my view, or, you know, basically said go. And this is the logical end result of, as war often is when, when a nation is, you know, puts of an insane set of miscalculations. And here we are. All right, we've gone an hour and a half. Everybody's got to go get some coffee, take a nap. Chancellor's gotten three hours of sleep in the last three months. Maybe take a. Take a little snooze. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks, John. For Christine, Matt and Abram, John Pothoris Keep the candle bur.