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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, March 20, 2026. I am Jon Bud Horiz, the editor of Commentary. With me, as always, Senior Editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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B
Hi, Jon.
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A
Joining us today, Commentary contributing editor, host of the Breaking History podcast, author of one of the lead articles in the April issue of Commentary, called One American Israeli Battle After Another. Our friend Eli Lake. Hi, Eli.
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C
Hi, John.
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A
Very well done, Eli. Nice, crisp.
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D
Okay.
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A
And Abe Greenwald, I assume, will be joining us in due course, but we gotta get going because this is very urgent, people. This is really. I have very urgent news for you. This quagmire of a war, this endless quagmire of a war is now in its 20th day. How have we sunk into another Vietnam, into another Afghanistan, into, as Seth dug up today, into a war that resembles nothing so much as the British Boer War in South Africa in the first decade of the 20th century? How can this be that we are here this morning? I happened to be on.
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C
The Greeks had a word for this. The Greeks had a word for this. Hubris.
- [01:57]
A
It's hubris. We are once again guilty of hubris. I was watching the Today show this morning for my sins. First hour of the Today show, three stories on the war. One had to do with oil, one had to do with missile strikes. Overnight, one had to do with something else. Three times in four minutes, either the host read or the correspondent read featured these words. Increasing activity stoked fears of a wider conflict. Rising oil prices stoked fear of a worldwide economic crisis. Stoked fears, increased fears or provoked fears. Mentioned 1, 2, 3. Lot of fears. Not a lot of, you know, Iranians running out of options. No follow up on stories yesterday. Again, unconfirmed stories that it's possible that Ayatollah junior Died in the hospital in Tehran. Not a lot of stories about how we're running out of some targets. And not a lot of stories about how, though there was a story about how Marines are being deployed into the Gulf or sailed out of, I think, San Diego harbor to get to the Gulf, which will take, I don't know, four or five days. Okay, here is Abe Greenwald joining us. Hi, Abe.
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D
Hi, John.
- [03:31]
A
Okay, so, Eli, lot of fears, lot of quagmires, lot of crises. And I'm going to make one final point. Oil prices. Oh, my God. Oil prices are really high. I'm not saying they're not high. I'm not saying they haven't gone up 90 cents at the pump over the last three weeks. However, in 2022, a month after The United States. Not the United States, excuse me. A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Butler crude was at $128 a barrel. Today it is $119 a barrel. So we haven't even reached the summit of the oil price caused by a war shock in this decade, in the course of this quagmire, Boer War, Vietnam, Afghanistan that we have somehow gotten ourselves into. I don't want to be ameliorist, little merry sunshine type about how everything is wonderful and the war is going great, but since nobody is saying that this is anything but a calamity, I feel like this is our role in part here is to be some kind of corrective to this swamp of gloom and doom and depression and negativity.
- [04:52]
C
Okay, so I generally agree, but this is just a messaging issue because I think the war is going very well. But when Trump talks, when he, when Trump posted two days ago that if the Iranians continue to attack oil infrastructure, he won't be so nice and he'll start going after the facilities on South Pars. And that's a classic move. You, you threaten something in order to get your enemy to de escalate. The problem is that Israel has already killed, you know, a couple layers of their leadership. That's as escalatory as you kind of can get. And I just think that there has to be some understanding that we're going for broke and the Iranians are going to try to take down the region. And I don't know that there is any scenario under which you're going to persuade them not to shoot all the rounds that they have got left. And that's kind of scary. But on the other hand, the side of this that I think should be covered more in the mainstream is that the Israelis have started to show what I think is a plausible scenario under which you could get the best possible outcome, which would be finally like a color revolution, a counter revolution to finally end the horrible experience of the Islamic Republic for 47 years. So nothing ventured, nothing gained. This is a bold war and we should expect the Iranians will do whatever they can to take everyone down with them. So they've alienated all their neighbors. They don't care at this point. I think they just, they want to take as many people to paradise with them as they can. Abe
- [06:56]
A
David Ignatius today in the Washington Post proposes an end to the war in which the regime survives but is crippled. They agree not to fire in the Strait of Hormuz and they agree to degrade their uranium to non weapons levels which you can do with uranium. It's funny, you could sort of turn it on and turn it off. You can enrich it and then you can de Enrich it. And our friend Mark Halperin says, see, David Ignatius figured out that this is the end of the war. That can't be the end of the war. Right. The regime promises it won't hit Hormuz. The regime promises it will. It will actually degrade the. This is why I keep thinking that even though we keep saying this is not a war, not keep saying, but whatever the idea is, this is not a war for regime change, that given where we are and what they're doing with the Strait of Hormuz and how they're still now just simply openly firing on civilian targets just to make as much trouble as possible, that there's no outcome of this war that can't end in regime change that would look like a success for the United States.
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D
Well, I don't know that there's no outcome to this war that can end in regime change that won't look like a success for the US Because I do think, as Eli was alluding to, the regime change part is going to have more to do with what Israel does going forward. But I agree with you. The Ignatius scenario, there cannot be a circumstance in which we end the war based on any promises from the regime. The US can leave. The US can say we've done all we're going to do. The Israelis have their own goals that they're continuing to pursue. And I think one of the goals that one of the circumstances that would signal a possible end for us would be to clear the Strait of Hormuz so that shipping can come back. But none of that should rely on regime promises, regime guarantees, because they are always, always, always fake and meaningless.
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A
Well, I mean, we can end major combat operations without saying the war is over. We can pull, but we can say we've hit the targets that we have to hit. We're going to continue to patrol the skies and make sure that Iran doesn't poke its head out or it doesn't have a capability that we aren't able to respond to that we haven't yet been able to wipe out. But it doesn't have to be these nightly sorties and all this. And then we can do that without saying the war is over. And then the Eli your scenario comes into play, which is we've hit the targets, we've hit the decapitations of various agencies and the mullahs and all of that have taken place. The Israelis are hitting the Basij and the IRGC targets to make it clear to the Iranian people that they can rise up in some level of safety. And then when the regime falls under the Israeli formula, then, then the war is over. Like we don't say the war is over, we just aren't fighting it at the same intensity level. We're basically just, you know, I mean, you don't have to keep bombing a battlefield once the enemy has run away. You just have control of the battlefield or the battlefield is, you know, ordinary battlefield. You would probably occupy the battlefield and move forward. And we're not going to.
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C
There's a precedent here. There's a precedent which is Gaza and Lebanon, those wars ended, I guess maybe you could call them ceasefires. And Israel goes in and takes out terrorists. And they've been doing that since the so called end of the hostilities. Israel now has demonstrated not only that it can dominate the Israeli skies, but it can fly and refuel from Israel. All of Israel, all of the neighbors of Iran have seemed to be fine with giving Israel access to their airspace, despite some statements before the war. And everybody's all in now. You see these joint statements. Iran is entirely isolated. So maybe the US packs up, but Israel stays. Israel certainly has Mossad operatives and its networks on the ground which are clearly impressive. I mean, I still am blown away by the fact that they have armed drones that are going under bridges and getting fleeing baseiji officers. That's still gonna happen. So yeah, war is over if you want it. Except the efforts to destroy your regime are not gonna be over. It's just gonna be, you know, this one phase of it is over. And you can call it whatever you want. David Ignatius. This doesn't end until the Islamic Republic ends. And that's just, I think, how it's going to be.
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B
But also the other problem with the Ignatius position is who's the regime we don't need to identify. You know, it's like, who do I call when I want to call Europe. The old Kissinger thing. We don't need to identify who's sitting in the big chair to continue this war to win the war or to know that the regime has fallen. Like if the regime really falls to pieces, we'll know. But you do have to know who's sitting in the big chair if you're going to let a piece of paper decide that the war is over. If you come to an agreement that says Iran promises this. When he says that, who does he mean by Iran? Who does he mean by the regime. You know, Bibi gave a pretty incredible press conference yesterday in which he said, I don't know who's running the regime right now. I don't know who's running the country. Yeah, and maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. Who knows? But the point is, like, we don't know when they say, when they name, you know, when Trump says, I want to get Russia and Ukraine together and let's end this war, we know who he's talking to. You know, we don't know what that means in Iran in a very real way. Not just because there's no one person at the top, but because, as Bibi described it yesterday, it's like a hollow. It's like a rotted out log of wood where on the outside the surface feels like wood, but on the inside it's rotted and falling away. I don't even think we're in a position where we could accept a deal. Who would we talk to? All that seems fantasy to me. I think the way we're in it now is the way it has to go. And until that changes, I don't even know who you would talk to.
- [14:05]
A
Well, look, to use some historical analogies of wars that are much larger and much more, in some ways, way more consequential than this, when we have had these surrenders, unconditional surrenders, Lee at Appomattox, the Japanese on the battleship, the. The Germans didn't even like formally surrender, but basically were obliterated and the Nazi high command committed suicide in the bunker. Those regimes didn't exist anymore. The Confederacy ceased existing. The Empire of Japan, though the emperor nominally survived to be the person who was the head of state, no longer existed. They were crushed. Like the Ignatius strategy is the strategy of how we sort of dealt with Saddam Hussein in 1991. And how did that work out for us? Like, okay, you can stay in power. You agree, we're going to keep you in your box and we're going to take away. You're going to say that you're going to take away your nuclear capacity and you're going to be nice to Hormuz. You know, we're not spending this or. There was a. We did succeed in achieving a war aim in the 1991 Gulf War, which was for Saddam to be removed from Kuwait. And therefore we won the war on its most basic purpose. But there is no purpose to this war other than we can't have them decommission their nuclear material. It has to be decommissioned by somebody else. I mean, they cannot be considered in possession of it, then we really have fought a war for nothing. If that material does in fact exist, if it is in the rubble in ifshahar and ifshahan, and it needs to be brought out and it's very difficult to bring it out securely and all of that, that's a whole other process. How it, how it is removed, how who takes it, who d, you know, who, who de explosives it so that it doesn't blow up while you're bringing it out.
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B
I think we should say impoverish it. Because if enrich uranium is going in one direction and we, how do we impoverish the degraded?
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A
I mean, you literally degrade it into nothing. Or you, you know, you have to. So they can't do that. If they could do that, we wouldn't have had to go to war. And if they still exist in a place where they are in a position to agree not to screw around with Hormuz, then sure, they're weaker and they've been blown up and lots of places are in rubble, but they're still like some kind of player on the world stage with nuclear material and the ability to close the Straits of Hormuz, sort of.
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C
And also, here's the other tell if there was a concern that the regime ultimately would survive, then you would not see open statements and actions from Iran's neighbors that before the war tried to sort of appear neutral and privately encouraged Trump to go for it. But what you're seeing instead is Qatar. Qatar, the most Janus faced ally. We have just told Iran's entire military attache, you have 24 hours to leave, not just the individual, but the entire office. So that tells me that the neighbors understand it's a regime change war, because they're all in. They're all. I can't believe I've never seen anything like it. From Azerbaijan, I think even to Turkey at this point, maybe Turkey is still talking about everybody else, the Qataris, the Saudis. And they have skin in the game. Unlike Valai Nasser and the Council on Foreign Relations, they have real skin in the game. And their assessment is this is it, when this ends at some point, no more Islamic Republic, full stop. So I just look at it as. It's fascinating because it gets to another point too, which is that we've spent in the commentary community a lot of time dealing with the source of Israel's image in America and the west. And we've talked about the idea that the college protest and the network of people who, you know, libel Israel is committing a genocide and that this is going to have long term implications. And we've seen it in the polling recently. The Democratic Party is totally against Israel and increasingly younger Republicans are against Israel. So that's this thing that we've been spending a lot of time thinking about. Meanwhile, in the real world of diplomacy, Israel now has full relationship with Somaliland. Israel has demonstrated that it's a regional power capable of lethal and precise military action a thousand miles away from which is an extraordinary kind of military statement. European states have accepted that there will be no more UNWRA in Gaza. That's enormous. All these tangible accomplishments for Israel in terms of actual statecraft come at a time when public opinion of Israel has plummeted among its allies. And that itself is kind of telling. It's like it used to be that Israel kind of needed to have that support in America because all of its neighbors wanted to destroy it. And all of its neighbors, you know, were supporting the terrorist groups that Palestinian terror groups that, you know, meant that Israel has kind of been in a constant war since its founding. Now we have a scenario where Israel really will be at peace with its region. And it's the European and American, like intellectuals and students and so forth that are the last ones that want to continue this struggle to destroy Israel. It's an amazing moment in that way.
- [20:49]
A
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- [22:16]
D
When Eli talks about the regional powers that want this to go to the end, to regime change, you know, they're the countries that are getting hit. And what's fascinating here is that what I think is in part generating all this talk of failure and panic in the media. I mean, some of it has to do with the simple fact that this is Trump's decision and therefore it's gotta be bad and how's it gonna go wrong and all that. But another is just this,
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B
this sort
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D
of sense of stupefication. People don't understand why if we're doing so well, if we hit so many targets, why Iran is still firing projectiles, period. You know, like, how many more can they fire? How much longer can this go on? Haven't we sort of hit everything yet? And the truth is going to go on until, as Eli said, until they can't, until they run out, or until they don't have the people in the wherewithal to fire missiles and drones and rockets. But again, the people getting hit, they're not the ones panicking about this. They're the ones saying, this has got to be seen through to the end.
- [23:45]
B
Can you imagine, like, what that's going to mean for American credibility if we didn't see it through? We went through this a bit with the Iran deal, which was the Sunni Arab states which make up the lion's share of our Mideast alliance in numbers. The Sunni states were, were, you know, Obama stoked their fear, to use the words that John was quoting from the Today show. At the, at the top of the words, lots of fears were stoked that America was, was peacing out. America was done with the Middle east and so it was just gonna leave Iran in charge. Okay, everybody behave. And that was, that was a real blow to credibility also. But it also brought people to get bait. The Saudis, you know, and the other Sunni states, you know, realized that they had to do, you know, a certain amount of public work with the west and, you know, whatever, declare certain lines. But the whole region scrambled at the thought of America turning its back on the American led world order as it applied to the Middle east. And, and then, you know, sort of nominating the Sunni state's great enemy to take its place. And what would happen here if we did that?
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C
You're making a great point, which is that my theory is that you can thank Barack Obama, Wendy Sherman, Ben Rhodes and that whole crowd and John Kerry for the Abraham Accords, because the prospect that America would accept A paper agreement with Iran so startled the Gulf states that it accelerated a process that was already underway, which was secret cooperation with Israel. And as a result of that, plus the fact that Israel realized that it had to prepare itself to militarily take out. Originally the thought was Iran's nuclear program. And now, since October 7th, I think it's really expanded to the regime. Israel has created the capability to militarily replace America as the guarantor of stability and security in the region. So Obama's big strategic vision, the pivot to Asia. In many ways, it can be a reality because Israel can take over, especially after this war, as it's demonstrating in this war the role that America played in terms of, you know, you have to have a regional power and, you know, to take care of pirates, terrorists, natural disasters, etc. And to make sure that Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal and everything else will stay open to international shipping. Israel has the military capability to do that. And I believe they will have the diplomatic agreements in place to do that. That is extraordinary. That is something that can happen.
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A
It is extraordinary. And world is dynamic, not static. Things change and the world changes along with them. The sclerotic Saudi regime 10, 12 years ago essentially underwent this epochal change because this young hothead came in to basically run the country, as opposed to the seven sons of the 17th wife of Ibn Sev, King Fahd or whatever. And there was this guy who did not seem to have necessarily the same ideological and religious architecture inside his head that didn't say, hey, you know, maybe this isn't working, this static configuration in which, you know, our enemy is Israel and all we care about is Palestine and the Palestinians. I want to do other stuff. I would like to take this off my plate and change the rules because maybe I can get stuff from Israel that will be helpful. That after the Arab Spring, after the Israelis started cooperating with the government that came in, after the Muslim Brotherhood took
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B
over,
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A
after a democratizing movement ended up being trumped by the Muslim Brotherhood, which was then couped out of existence by a new Egyptian government that needed to rely on Israeli intelligence to help them secure and calm the waters and keep themselves in power, suddenly everything starts shifting. All these tectonic plates start moving. And it makes sense that it didn't just start now. It didn't just start in 2015. It really did start, maybe with the Arab Spring or something like that, but 15, 20 years after that, that the balance of forces and the way we view the Middle east and who is a power and who is not a power and all of that undergoes a major shift. We did that as well, though we get no credit for it. Which is to say that Iraq was one of the most destabilizing forces in the world. And due to the war in Iraq, which everybody seems to think was a terrible calamity and the worst thing that ever happened, Iraq is now off the global map as a threat to anybody. If you had said that in 1985, people would have thought you were quite like. Saddam Hussein was a major issue in world politics for 35 years until he was finally arrested and his regime ended. He was arrested and put to death. That was 20 years ago. We banked that. That's in our pocket. Nobody even cares anymore. But once you did that and if you take Iran off the table, then this idea that Israel is the guarantor, as Eli would say, which seems almost science fictional, that Muslim countries would let this little Jewish country be the guarantor of peace and stability. But there isn't going to be necessarily much necessary to guarantee peace and stability in some ways if these two irredentist regimes, one in Iraq and one in Iran are gone and ISIS is now stuff can rise up, they can come back. The terrorist movements don't die and all of that. I'm not, I don't want to be like Pollyanna is here.
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C
The Turks can be the spoilers, Joe. That's it.
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D
And Syria's unstable, you know.
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C
Yeah.
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A
I'm just saying that the things major state actor in a country that is the size of Alaska with 90 million people and a huge amount of oil revenue, being the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, like wanting to attack its neighbor so it could control or wanting to attack Saudi Arabia so it could get in control of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. All of that stuff. Like if that is no longer. If those ambitions and those geopolitical actors are no longer the focus of attention. Yeah. Then America can turn its attention elsewhere. That's one of the reasons you fight wars. We took Germany and Italy and Japan off the table as our enemies. They're not our enemies. They haven't been our enemies for 80 years. So we then had to turn toward the Soviet Union. Like if we had had to consider all of these things together, we would have been in a world of unbelievable and immense peril. But that's like a peace dividend that the United States gets for winning this war. It can actually turn and focus on the Chinese threat because it's doesn't have a more immediate threat. Sitting in Tehran, assuming that this.
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C
Right. And our ideological rivals in Washington, Bridge, Colby, if you're listening, consider this an olive branch. You're gonna get what you wanted. You're gonna get the pivot to Asia, and you're gonna get the pivot to Asia without. It looks like China making a move on Taiwan, which was. His big fear was that we would devote all these resources to Iran, and then we would keep our eye off the ball in China, and then China would surprise us and swallow Taiwan. That's what he said. Some people have said that Colby just doesn't want us to do anything. He's really an isolationist. I don't necessarily believe that he's written a lot about this, but the point is that the defense intellectuals known as the Restrainers, can get what they want because of this war that they hate. It's kind of an irony. It's just the key thing is that America.
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B
You're welcome, people.
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C
Yeah, you're welcome. Exactly. You're welcome. Thank the neocons for making the Restrainer dream a reality.
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A
Well, since I don't believe that the restraint. Yeah, see, I don't really believe that the Restrainers want us to pivot to Asia and have an aggressive situation.
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C
Some of them don't. I agree with you. Some of them just.
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A
I think that's total disingenuousness, and that's a way station toward their isolationism, that their ideas. No, let's not do everything we're doing now. Let's focus over here. But if you ask and read Bridge, Colby and the Restrainers, and you say to them, okay, what do we do if China invades Taiwan? They say, well, there's nothing you can do. So if that's the case, then basically the whole thing is a form of isolationist defeatism with a gloss of military realism and, you know, not wanting to look like a pacifist. So they are welcome, and I consider this an interesting provocation to them. Right. Because if we are in a position in July or August or whenever it is, when we say, okay, you know, Iran's fallen and all of this, and now we should pivot to Asia, let's see what they say. Yeah, let's see what they say about whether or not we should be deploying enormous naval assets into the South China to sit there the way they've been sitting off the Iranian coast.
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C
My next essay for Commentary, an Empire, not an Islamic Republic. Okay, It's a deep cut, everybody, for the Pat BUCHANAN Book from 25 years ago.
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B
But anyway, can I be the first to. By the way, can I be the first to welcome Qatar to the Abraham Accords? This is a really. I mean, seriously, right now in the Middle east, in the Arab countries, Arab countries are taking hits. They're under threat from Iran. Right. The entity that strikes back and degrades the Iranian ability to hit these Arab states is Israel. And the entity that is helping them more make more permanent their ability to intercept the missiles and drones coming from Iran are the Ukrainians, by the way, whose president is a Jew. Like, I don't think, you know, what was it? What was. It wasn't Jordache. What was the jeans company? The. Starts with a B. The Benetton. Was it Benetton? The colors of Benetton, right?
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A
Yes.
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B
You want a rainbow? Okay. The Middle East. This is your. This is the. Zelensky and Bibi are the guys, you know, standing in front of the UAE and others in saying, not on my watch. It's incredible what's happening. It's incredible what's taking shape. And it's taking shape naturally because this is how alliances are formed naturally. You have the same interests and the same enemies and whatever. And so it really is amazing to see. Anybody want to rush to kind of stop this, you know, well, maybe we'll give Iran, the Iranian regime, some sort of off ramp. No, the off ramp is unconditional surrender. Trump is right. I mean, what you have taking shape is the side that's winning, which is our side getting stronger, adding Ukrainian specialists to going to the UAE and stuff like that. And the Israelis figuring out, by the way, there was a story yesterday, the Israelis are figuring out that if you increase your altitude fast enough and get to peak altitude with the jets, you don't have as much friction with the air, and therefore you have enough fuel to get to Iran without having to refuel midair. Now, everybody knew this, the physics of it as a, you know, theoretically, everybody knew that this would be the case. But no air force has ever tested if you can fly your air force fleet to Iran during a war where there's, you know, where. Where there's no room for mistakes and stuff like that. I mean, what's happening here is like, the west is like, is. Is growing. It's like standing up straighter, it's back, it's straighter, its shoulders are back. It's like got, you know, an edge to it, is figuring out how to work the muscles that may have atrophied over time. I think people need to understand that you're watching something healthy, you Know, I'm not saying war is healthy. This is not, you know, yay, war. But the West's response to the challenge it's currently facing is both militarily and diplomatically. When we talk about including the Ukrainians and the Arab states, healthy, you know,
- [37:46]
A
wars, you know, we often say, or people say, in the course of war, one of the ways that you win is you escalate in order to de escalate you. You hit hard in order to give yourself the space to stop hitting hard and to let the enemy understand the gravity of the situation that the enemy has gotten themselves in. This is world politics as a result of successfully fought wars. Which is to say that this war, if it achieves a successful conclusion, means that there were fewer or no wars in the future. By which I mean Israel and the United States have demonstrated capacities in warfare that the world did not know that we possessed and that other countries that have militaries and military experts and run their own militaries understand. I believe that we are a generation ahead of them and that it is a fool's errand to contest with us. If that were to happen, that is an enormous practical benefit for the United States. Just as the Maduro extraction means that an American president that says, don't f around with us, we have capacities to bring you to grief or to bring you to justice. And Trump has established the precedent, even if Democrats don't want to use it when they get into power, or others don't have the same willingness to do something that kind of like, eccentric almost to fly in, grab them, and take them out. But now that that's on the table, it's on the table. So when an American president says, don't do this, we've indicted you in a courtroom, you're in trouble. They're in trouble. Like there's a real world example of that. Similarly, don't contest with us on some of these matters. If you are going to be provocative, if you're going to invade your neighbor. I mean, in an odd way, think about Russia not going into Ukraine in 2022, but thinking today about going into Ukraine in 2026. Would they go into Ukraine? There is no way they would go into. Even if they think that Trump is their asset, it doesn't matter. Just raise the bar.
- [40:14]
C
How would they think that Trump is their asset at this point?
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A
I know. I'm just saying 2026, I'm even seeding.
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C
Right.
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A
I'm just seeding the lunatic idea that Trump is acting in this way.
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C
No, I know, but I'm just, I just want to take a moment because we've spent so much time on this podcast in the past talking about Russia and everything like that. It's 20, 26 people. I mean, really, you think Trump's a, I mean, Trump's the most anti Rush Putin president we've had in terms of.
- [40:44]
A
Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean, he is, but I don't know about that. Like, he is not, you know, this antipathy toward, the antipathy toward Ukraine is still. I agree. The antipathy, it's almost disfiguring. It's almost disfiguring now because Ukraine is clearly part of the, is now almost like informally part of the way in which the Gulf states are going to keep themselves safe from the Iranian drones. So therefore Ukraine is now the third partner in the war against Iran and Trump is still acting like Zelensky is an enemy. So
- [41:27]
C
my point, my point is that taking Venezuela and now looking like Cuba and I think Iran out of the Russian ally column is more significant than every floor speech you could give about the horrors of Vladimir Putin. In terms of real politics, in terms of actually sticking it to the Russian bear. Trump has done more to undermine Putin than Obama, Bush, Biden. I mean, let's credit him.
- [42:01]
A
Abe said this, Abe has said this since 2017. But I do think that while we are speaking in this way, we have to point out that the perversity of his attitude toward, and this administration's attitude toward Ukraine, including at this moment, is extraordinarily perverse.
- [42:23]
D
Yeah.
- [42:23]
A
And it could destructive because we know they're helping. They're helping. They're helping the uae, they're helping. They're there teaching them how to, how to, not only, but, you know, how to, how to do anti drone droning and stuff like that. They could have said, well, they're taking
- [42:38]
B
pressure off Trump personally also because if you keep the Arab states in the game during, you know, the time that their oil fields or gas fields are getting hit, that's, you know, that's what takes the pressure off of Trump. On the energy stuff.
- [42:51]
A
Well, they're going to bring helping out.
- [42:53]
D
They're helping while Russia's hurting. Obviously Russia's providing target information and data and the rest of it. But John, to your point about future wars, I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves on that because I think something that we've learned conclusively is that the rest of the world does not treat the US As a constant because we're not. They make their assessments on what they're going to do based on the administration in power. They act very differently from, you know, other countries, respond very differently depending on who is in the White House. And one thing about this war and war generally these days is that because the US Is so war weary and because Trump is seen by so many opinion makers as a madman, there's almost this sense that I fear when this is over, there'll be this sort of sense of, well, only a madman would take you to war. Like, we're not doing that again, because,
- [44:15]
C
again, based on the reality.
- [44:17]
A
But where I disagree with you here is the question. Here is one of capability, which is to say what we've demonstrated, what Israel has demonstrated is a capacity, an ability, a technical innovation, a war fighting capacity. Whether or not politically America is willing to press the button again or a new president is willing to. You're getting to people outside the United States trying to read American psychology. You would not have thought that Trump would do this based on stuff that he said in 2016. That's where actually the, despite what he said about taking the oil and how since 1980, he said, I want to take out the Iranian regime, you would not have thought that The Trump of 2016 would be the Trump of 2026 based on what he said. Things change. You wouldn't have thought Bill Clinton would go to war in Bosnia. Things change. And if you're a George W. Bush said we should be more modest and not have such an expansionist foreign policy. Things change. If you're somebody outside the United States, you're not digging down and saying, well, you know, these Democrats, they're really, Democrats have this. And in Illinois, they think this. And they're. But you're like, America's got this military behemoth machine and when it decides it wants to use it, we better, you know, we're not even going to make plans that will potentially involve that button being pushed against us. That's the deterrent effect. And that would happen regardless. Like, it's not their reading of our psychology, just like Hamas's reading of Israel's psychology or I would say al Qaeda's reading of American Psychology In 2001, you make a huge mistake, like, you know, thinking that countries are going to say we're never going to do this again. So, you know what? Israel's wimpy. We're Hamas. We're going to go and, you know, go on a killing rampage and then Israel will somehow collapse. And instead the entire Middle east is getting reshaped as a result of this one action on this one day in October. Like, if you come at this, at the end of these processes, you don't say, I don't think you go back and make the same mistake. Like, if you're ISIS after Al Qaeda, you're not gonna try to blow up a giant building. You're gonna go to soft targets in Syria and in Iraq. You're not gonna, you know, we've closed that barn door anyway. That's where I go, so we gotta go. But I did wanna bring up one thing, which is that Matt Mat Nettie, our old friend, our old colleague, has a piece today on the Wall Street Journal's Free Expression Vertical where he has a column on Fridays about how Trump is an able war president, but he has not used the third. He points out that Victor Davis Hanson in 2004 said there are three criteria for success in war. One, you ensure the military uses the appropriate level of force. Two, you respond to domestic opposition with consistency and determination. And three, you rally the people by embedding realpolitik arguments within a moral framework. In short, appeal to American idealism. And Matt says Trump has done the first two, but he has not done the third. And that's why. And he needs to. And I'm sorry, Christine Rosen is not on. She's been saying this since the war started. I bring this up only to point out, say, ask you guys one question, then we can go. We've had 40 years at least, of horrendous American civics, history, education, and an understanding of where the world is in every state, in every part of the country. This is the dominant educational philosophy from grade one to grade 12 into university, which is that we teach Americans about America's flaws, about America's flawed history, about the social conflicts that have, that have sort of been the key moments of friction in American life, about racism, about the treatment of the Native Americans, about all kinds of troubles. And we do not teach civics in which we say, we invented this idea of free. We didn't invent this idea of freedom. We brought most revolutionary country in history. We brought the idea, we put the individual at the center of our politics. We believe in a self governing citizenry. This is the freest country in the world. It's become, as a result of its freedom, it's become the wealthiest country in the world, blah, blah, blah, blah. American idealism is, we're good, our system is good. When we do things, they will and we follow through. It's good. They haven't been Taught that. People haven't been taught that in 40 years. So Matt says, we need to go appeal to the better angels of America's nature about this war. And I say they don't have it anymore. They don't know it. They don't have it. There's no. When you did this before, when you did this in World War II or Korea or Vietnam or whatever, you did this. You had this background of Americans having been bathed in the story of America from a positive aspect about how America does good in the world and is a good actor in the world. And that is not what anybody is taught now. And so saying, we're good, you're gonna have a lot of people going, we're not so good. How are we good? We're not so good.
- [49:57]
C
Okay, so here's the answer.
- [49:58]
A
So I don't know that Matt's right in the sense that I wish it were true that this appeal would help, but I don't know that it would help.
- [50:04]
C
Steven Cheung and the brilliant Meme team at the White House need to do AI videos where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman and Harvey Milk all look at the camera and say, you know what? I think it's bad to hang gay people from cranes. And I'm glad that we've liberated Iraq. So use the WOKE figures of that new history that's being taught against, you know, to make the case. I mean, because on the terms of the left, this is a just war. It should be considered a just war. And the failure to understand what happened a month ago, I don't have to go back to when they murdered all the opponents in 1988, you know, like, it doesn't matter. Or like how they fought the Iran Iraq war a month ago, two months ago, now two months ago, six weeks. Six weeks ago, they slaughtered tens of thousands in 48 hours. And you think that it's good that they. I mean, I've seen arguments from that wretched, vile woman Anakasparian, saying, I'm on Hezbollah's side in Lebanon. I'm like, if that's where you guys are, then you're not really liberal or progressive anymore. You're just pro. You're anti American and you're pro Islamo fascist.
- [51:31]
A
But you're kind of agreeing with me, Eli, because you're saying you should use the tools of the post American civics, right? I want philosophy as a weapon against them. But that's not what continent say, America's good. And, you know, it does good things in the world. And I think people just aren't taught that, and they don't know that it's true.
- [51:53]
C
Yeah. But. Okay, can I. On a serious note, I was joking, obviously, but on a serious note, John, events like this is a huge thing. I think we're gonna see. I mean, I hope this is my dream, that we're gonna see crazy crowds finally on the streets of Tehran, marching to the Majlis, you know, in a kind of glorious moment, unfurling the flags with the lion and the sword and the rising sun. And that's going to be a very powerful image. A powerful, powerful image. And I wonder if you are just an American that doesn't follow the debates and so forth. At what point are you going to say, oh, no, no, that's bad. It's going to be similar to what we saw, you know, in 88 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, 89 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and, you know, the removal of the Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia.
- [52:44]
A
Talking about what happens after the war, Matt's talking about what should be happening today and what Trump should do. And not only is Trump allergic to that kind of language, I'm just not sure that that kind of language would have the resonance that he thinks it would. Anyway, I would love to have you guys respond, but I've got to run. Okay? So everybody think about this and take it in. And everybody can have their. You can have your own. And our listeners have their own opinion. And maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm right. Eli Lake, thank you for joining us. And for Abe and Seth, I'm John Pod Horowitz. Keep the candle burning. Sam.