B (3:12)

Hi, John.

A (3:14)

I think we need to do a little nomenclature or vocabulary work here. So this isn't a ceasefire, right? Can we just. Can we dispense with the notion that whatever is happening right Now, Thursday morning, April 9, in the middle east, is not a ceasefire?

B (3:35)

I think we can say that. I think we can say that this is total chaos. I mean, really zero clarity right now as things are just flying around. Reports suggest right now that the Islamic Republic A is expecting the United States to not just stop firing, but to also leave every base in the region, remove all sanctions, and essentially allow the Islamic Republic to enrich uranium. So that's insane. The Islamic Republic is also saying that Israel has to stop its war that it just started, essentially, in Lebanon against Hezbollah. The Israelis are not going to do that. Suggest. The reports also suggest that the Islamic Republic wants to limit the number of tankers that go through the Strait of Hormuz. That was not part of the agreement. They want to charge ships for going through the Strait of Hormuz. And they may also just want to continue to fire at the surrounding Gulf Arab states. So you can just get a sense of what was not achieved in this ceasefire. I think what we can say, maybe if there is a silver lining to what's going on here right now, there will be talks in Islamabad between the United States or not. Or not. But I mean, right now it looks like JD Vance is heading there and he's bringing Witkoff and he's bringing Kushner and that there will be a serious US Delegation. I'm guessing that the Islamic Republic will send their own delegation and that there will be talks. But I think this weekend is going to be hugely consequential. If they cannot arrive on a common narrative, a common understanding of what's coming out of this, then we're back to war. I mean, the only thing that I'll just note here that may be going on is, I mean, look, obviously you've got the regime sort of flexing right now and really putting on a show for everybody. I. At the same time, I believe that they understand that they cannot continue to sustain the kind of beating that they've been taking. But if they agree too quickly to a ceasefire, they are fearful of projecting weakness to their own people who have yet to show themselves during the course of this 50 plus day war. They are deeply afraid of what happens next domestically. And I think they want to project strength going into whatever that phase is. That would be probably the most charitable way of Interpreting the chaos that was just brokered or not brokered over the last couple of days by the United States, Pakistan, Iran and others.

C (6:21)

I have a question. It's a. It's a sort of contextual question here, Jonathan. Do you have any sense of who the regime is now? I mean, who is making these demands and who the Iranian interlocutor is? You know, any clues? Is it an IRGC official? Is it someone else? I mean, a name would obviously be incredible, but we're not going to have that.

B (6:51)

Well, no, actually we do. We have some names. They are. I mean, it's funny, actually, I have two colleagues at FTD who produced a. What we call an insight. So just a short publication that we put on our website and folks can find it. It's called Five Men Now Running Iran, and it came out on April 6th. So we were really trying to anticipate exactly this question. And so I'll give you the list. Five people. It's not long, Right. One is Parliament Speaker Mohammed Golubov. And I think everybody's heard about him. He's the guy that is apparently on the Do Not Kill list for the Trump administration and for the Israelis. They think that he's, I don't know, maybe the Delsey Rodriguez or something. I'm not sure that I buy that description of him, but apparently he's willing to speak.

A (7:39)

Right. And Vance said that Golubov was his interlocutor. Right.

B (7:44)

So that's the guy they're talking to. But that doesn't mean that he's making the decisions. It means that he's kind of the front man, Right, for whatever's going on in the regime. There is this. His name is Mohamed Bagr Zolgador. He is the head of the Supreme National Security Council. This is the body that deals with the military and intelligence and foreign policy. He's an IRGC guy through and through. He's part of the decision making. There is the IRGC commander, a guy by the name of Ahmed Bahidi. That name may be familiar to some. If you remember the 1994Amiyah bombing in Argentina that killed 85 people. He was part of that. He was also part of the Khobar Towers attacks and a number of others. So a true dirtbag that is at the top of the heap here. There is the chief of the judiciary, a guy by the name of Gholam Hussein Mousseini Ejei. And this is the guy that's, like, responsible for hanging all the protesters and the like. And then there is the law enforcement chief, his name is Ahma Reza Radhan. These are the five people that have been identified by our crew as taking the lead. Now, it doesn't mean that they're fully in charge of the country. It means that they're fully in charge of the messaging coming out of the Islamic Republic, and then in whatever areas they still control within the country amidst all the chaos. They're trying to set some standards, but it's pretty slim pickings for the regime. And definitely there are a couple of recognizable names here, but a couple that I had never heard of before this war began.

A (9:20)

Okay, so Bret Stephens makes a very interesting point in his column today, which is that there is an idea that the regime is transitioning theoretically from being a powerful country to being a new force of resistance, from being. To be translating itself into being ISIS or Hezbollah or Hamas or something like that, but that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is. And what the regime is is a structure that sits atop a country of 90 million people. That means that the people who work for the regime go to buildings, they take phone calls, they push buttons to make sure the electrical grid doesn't overheat, they send out Social Security checks or whatever it is that whatever forms of subvention there is, they manage the roads, they send somebody out to fill a pothole, all of that. It's a country. And the regime cannot transition from being a country that runs a country to being a guerrilla force, because guerrilla forces don't have any real material either obligations or they need somebody, the guerrilla forces need somebody to do that work that I'm talking about so that they can parasitically feed on it in order to keep themselves going. And that when the dust clears or is clearing right now from the fact that Iran is now not being hit or hasn't been hit for 36 hours or 48 hours, whatever the timeframe is. By the time you hear me talking, the extent of the damage is going to become clear, even to them with their command and communications broken and twisted and not being able to really get a sense of just what has been destroyed. And they may be running on kind of adrenalized fumes. You know, they are there. They are. You know, either we did not have the experience of bombing them into submission, but when they have to go walk the damage trail, who knows what it's going to feel like? Nobody has been hit like this. I mean, maybe Ukraine has been hit like this, maybe, or parts of Russia during the Ukraine war, but certainly not over the course of six weeks. And I mean, this is a level of imposed warfare of an entirely new order. And they can talk and gab and say, we're going to only 15 ships and this and that and the other thing, but they are going to be having, I think, a very long dark night and day and night of the soul when they try to figure out just what the hell do we do now? I mean, so we stood up to Trump. So we show we didn't bow our heads after six weeks. But what happens when I can't. I'm the Ayatollah, or, yeah, I'm the Ayatollah's lead deputy and I can't reach my mother on the phone because the phone lines have been destroyed. It's just an interesting psychological fact about the Iranians that people seem to be so willing to give them credit for not crumbling in the face of this onslaught. That one doesn't understand that crumbling can take a very long period of time. You know, you can be shot and get adrenalized and, like, charge your attacker, but at some point, the bullet, the damage that the bullet has done in your insides is gonna tell on you. And it's not a missy. It's not, you know, Jack Reacher who can't be killed. You're gonna, like, fall down and get sepsis and need to go to the hospital and get cured or you're gonna be dead. Georgie is my dog. She's four years old. We got her during COVID for the kids. Two of my kids are now off in college, so Georgie is now my dog, my wife's dog. We love the dog. We were never going to get a dog. And now, of course, we can't think about life without her. And we worry about her health, we worry about problems with her. 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D (16:49)

well, that actually makes me think of a question I had for Jonathan with this delegation going to Pakistan. First of all, which I hope is not trusting Pakistan at all. These are not our allies. These are people who hid bin Laden and create a lot of mischief in the world. But what do you see in that delegation? Anyone who does understand that complicated domestic Iranian context, the state of Iran before these attacks, where there was a lot of domestic political unrest, the water shortages in Tehran, the economy tanking, there were all of these points of disruption internally. Is there anyone in our delegation going to Pakistan who knows how to exploit that aspect when we Talk about the two things that seem to me most important in these negotiations, the strait and the enriched uranium. What's going to happen with those two things long term, strategically. So beyond the folks who I know Trump trusts to make deals, do we have experts on the ground or in the State Department or in any of these briefing any of these people on those more complicated, entrenched issues? Because it would strike me as being crucial with these negotiations to have those folks on the ground.

B (17:59)

Yeah. I mean, so first, just a word about Pakistan, because I do think it's important just to understand what's happened here. This is one of the more bizarre stories to emerge out of a very bizarre series of headlines that Pakistan has emerged as this key interlocutor, the answer to everybody's prayers to save the world, you know, the world's energy. I mean, this is ridiculous. I mean, the idea that the Pakistanis are intervening right now to try to convince a state sponsor of terror and illicit proliferator when, you know, that they need to stand down, when Pakistan itself is a state sponsor of terrorism and a nuclear proliferator. I mean, what planet are we on right now? It's also important to understand that the Chinese Communist Party owns and controls Pakistan. And so, you know, I mean, like, the, the debt that the Chinese own right now that is packed. It is enormous. And so this is like a wholly owned subsidiary of China that is now brokering this. And I think it's really important that we all understand that there is an element of great power competition that's in here. It's like the Pakistanis are a sock puppet for the Chinese. And I think, let's understand that as kind of the first, kind of the first understanding that we need in order to move forward here. There's a lot of other people at the table without seeing them, by the way. Also, the Pakistanis are very close with the Saudis, and the Saudis have a significant interest here. And so there's a lot happening that we don't fully understand heading into these negotiations. I think that the, those interests, the Chinese interests, the Saudi interests, the US The Pakistani interests, the Iranians, they're all going to collide here. And yes, I think it's going to be really important that the United States have experts that can really use our leverage, and we do have significant leverage. The question is, who do they have as deputies that are coming along with this crew? Because I don't see J.D. vance as being this expert on Iran or, or the Gulf or, you know, the, the, you know, the energy Markets. I mean, I know he has good people, but this is not his. His domain. I'm kind of surprised, actually, on that point, that we don't see Marco Rubio taking part in this. Usually it's the two of them together, and they're the kind of yin and yang representing the two faces of Donald Trump. Let's say that's not what's happening. Instead, it looks like it's Jared Kushner, who I think does some have some pretty good depth on this. But I also don't know exactly what his role is. He's not officially part of the US Government, so I'm not sure exactly what's happening there. And Wyckoff, I continue to hear that he is. I mean, he's essentially doing the errands of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is like, I want this. Bring it back to me. And he's doing that.

A (20:52)

So let's talk about Vance for a second. This is literally the first negotiation that Vance has ever participated in. Excuse me, participated in. In government, as a senator, as a vice president, as anything. I don't know what he did when he was at this hedge fund for, you know, two years or whatever it was he was doing. I don't know what he did when he was a lawyer. I don't know what he did when he was writing his freelance pieces for from Forum. This is like someone has put him at the top of the mountain of a black diamond mountain when he has never skied before and said, get down to the bottom without breaking your leg. And I think maybe he broke his leg. By which I mean he came back on Tuesday and said, I've made a deal. And then we said that the deal is the 15 points. They said the deal was the 10 points. And he was standing at an airport in Budapest yesterday trying to explain that he did not say that Lebanon was, you know, Israel and Lebanon were not part of the deal and that this wasn't there and that wasn't there. And I gotta tell you, to be honest, I don't know what the Iranians or the Pakistanis might have heard in the course of whatever negotiation that he would, because he doesn't know how to do that. There are rules and games and language that are used if you're a real estate negotiator, if you're an international diplomatic negotiator. And he may have said this verb that made them think, to be fair, I'm just saying, like, they made them think Lebanon's in. And he's like, I didn't say that and that's why you don't have somebody. You don't put me on a black diamond slope when I've never skied. I'm very concerned that what happened on Tuesday was that we got de pantsed based on a misunderstanding. Can I say Trump wanted to be. Yeah, go ahead.

C (22:58)

This is especially important in regard to Iran, cuz this is very typical Iranian negotiation scenario. I'm reminded of when Obama and John Kerry were pursuing the jcpoa. They were constantly saying they had a deal and then the Iranians said something else at one point there were two different documents that could not be reconciled, which is exactly what we have now. So even beyond the difficulty and the intricacies of international diplomacy, generally, when you go into it with the Iranians and it's a whole other ball game, they play all sorts of games.

A (23:46)

But I mean, I'm even saying this out of like sheer innocence, which is to say everything was so confused in the 18 hours after the 8pm deadline passed and Trump said we had a deal and this is a glorious day for peace and everything like that. That I'm not saying the Iranians are honest or I think they're honest brokers or anything like that. We just don't know what they heard. We don't know what they heard from us. And Trump was clearly so eager to get himself out of the box that he had built for himself by the I'm destroying civilization tonight at 8pm and also I think a reader, reader, a listener wrote today made a point that we didn't make yesterday, but I think is worth pointing out, which is that Trump may have been very, very rattled by the incident with the two pilots in the sense that he suddenly had this seizure of fear that particularly with ground forces or anything like that, that this is the game that these people play are hostage crises. And obviously Hamas did it, Iran did it. To be 45, 46 years ago, Iran did it with our hostages. And that he saw the way in which we had to get that. What was it called, the backseat guy back from the top of that mountain before the Iranians found them. Because then we would be sunk into a situation that is unbelievably untenable. And that he may, that may together with the I'm gonna blow you up. Oh no, what do I do now that I've said I'm gonna blow you up. May have been like, we just need to take a breath, we gotta figure out where we're going here. Because we're like we were on a glide path to some kind of ground troops. Now I'm like looking at five Americans being taken prisoner and then paraded and then the entire country going absolutely ape, and I don't know how to handle that. And so Vance was the one who brought him the deliverable. Right, which was the word ceasefire. But clearly that's not what happened. There is no.

B (26:10)

Yeah, it's not a ceasefire. Let me, I want to respond to this because I do think that Trump was probably, yes, a little rattled. I think that, I don't think that he expected the regime to respond the way that it did. I think that, you know, he thought winning the conventional war was going to be just a win. And instead what they do is they launch an asymmetric war, an economic war, and it gets him exactly where he doesn't want to be got. Right? I mean, this guy always talks about prosperity first, and all of a sudden you're looking at metrics of prosperity beginning to tank and it doesn't look good for him. And then also he was the guy that promised that he wasn't going to be putting America into positions where we lose wars or that we lose blood and treasure and get involved in stupid conflicts. And all of a sudden it starts to look maybe like it's a stupid conflict and he doesn't like what this means for him as a legacy and all of that. I'm not sure it was about the two pilots per se. I think it's just the deepening crisis. But I think, you know, for me, I'm struck by one particular dynamic here, which is that you have on the one hand the Islamic Republic. And as you, I think, very eloquently put it, they are known to de pants their interlocutors on the regular. This is what they're known for. They have a reputation for fleecing everybody that they negotiate. You have smart people from the United States, seasoned diplomats, and they come out not wearing pants time and again. And so right now, Trump's getting a taste of this. But the Islamic Republic, on the other hand, is getting a taste of Trump, which is, I'm all over the place. I'm not going to tell you what my strategy is. I might double down, I might destroy you, I might negotiate. You figure it out. But I'm keeping all my options open. This is like the clash of the negotiators right now. This is like Donald Trump's ultimate test. The guy, the self styled dealmaker, the guy that can negotiate anything and ultimately get to a success. This is the ultimate test for him. The Islamic Republic is testing his, his skills, his limits. And I think, to your point, John, he put J.D. vance in there as his lead, along with Wyckoff, who is just the guy that is doing Trump's bidding. I'm a little bit unclear about why he put this team in when he's got such high stakes diplomacy right now. And for me, I've been trying to read, they always say personnel as policy. What is he trying to get out of this with this team that he's inserted? Right. Kushner wants a win for, for Israel, and he wants a win for the Saudis and the Emiratis and maybe the Qataris. He wants calm, I think, you know, I think Vance wants out. I think we could probably say that with some certainty. And Witkoff wants to just make sure that the President's getting what he wanted. So I don't like this constellation of people heading into Pakistan. I'm nervous about it. But I will also just say at the same time, Trump doesn't like to lose. So, and this is his ego is going to loom large here, he wants to be able to declare that he won this thing. So a capitulation doesn't work either. So, I mean, I think if you're confused, you're not alone. I'm still trying to figure this out. We're reading the tea leaves. And once again, I will remind listeners that this White House has been incredibly disciplined. They are not leaking stuff that they don't want to get out. And so the media's in this complete frenzy trying to figure out what's happening. They're getting very little to work with. And once again, I'll remind you that the Israelis have better news and intel than almost everybody because they're not subject to the same rules as this White House. So it's been fascinating, but maddening because nobody can actually discern what the hell's going on.

D (30:06)

Well, this is actually, it's interesting because it's also a test of whether Donald Trump's, you know, art of the deal, 80s style negotiating tactics, which he's used in the tariff wars, he's used him used this a lot in his administration, especially the second term, whether that will work in this diplomatic context. And it strikes me that the reset opportunity he has here is also with the American people, because that's a part of the art of the deal he didn't have to deal with as a real estate investor. He didn't have a public voting on him in real time, responding to him in real time to his decision making. He had, you know, I guess, shareholders and investment folks. But in this situation, he's, you know, he's going to go back to Congress and ask for some supplemental spending for the defense budget. He could come again, he could do another brief little talk or somehow to tell the American people what's going on, what the goals are now. Like, we're going to the negotiating table. We want this, this and this, and if we don't get it, we're going to do this. Like, that's just sort of the basic. He has signaled, which I think is reassuring, that we're keeping our military close by so that if things go bad, we might need to go back in. That, I think, was a really important thing. He did not. While also declaring victory was sort of a mixed message. But one thing I would like to see more discipline from in this administration is, you know, people like Carolyn Levitt saying, well, there's a 10 point plan, but it's a different 10 point plan than what you all saw. They sent something different to us. And so we're, we're dealing with that. Okay, well, what is, what is the difference? They don't have to reveal everything. But the confusion right now, I think to John's earlier point is strange because it's not clear who we're talking to, who's in charge over there, what our goals are. And I do feel there's an opportunity for the President to really say, and I mean, again, like I said, for me, that's what's going to happen with the Strait of Hormuz. Because a deal where we get a cut of a toll on the Strait of Hormuz might seem like a tactical victory to Trump, but long term, strategic, massive error. The right of navigation has to be protected because it doesn't just affect Hormuz, it's all around the world. And as you say, China is sort of the shadow in these negotiations. So I think it is an opportunity for him to reset and reconsider and state very clearly now, what are the goals? What is victory in this conflict going to look like?

B (32:17)

I the opportunity is not one that he's likely to take. Right. The idea that he's going to say, I'm always wishcrafting my fellow Americans, here's what I set out to do, here's what's happened, and here's my plan moving forward, this is exactly what this guy rejects. What he has seen time and again is that when presidents come out and make these declarative statements about their end goal, the end state that they aspire to in conflicts that. That's usually the moment where the opposition domestically will eviscerate you. Right. Because, you know, they disagree with your strategy or they disagree with your rationale. And then it becomes a debate about whether it was wise or not. He is. I think he stayed away from that. He's learned from, you know, from Barack Obama, he's learned from George W. Bush, he's learned from Clinton. Like, just don't engage. Right. And also, there's just this thing where he doesn't want to get like. Like he doesn't want the enemy to know. He doesn't want anybody to know. Maybe he doesn't know. I think that's part of the problem.

A (33:20)

I got to disagree with Christine's framing here because it's too grand. We stopped firing at 8pm Tuesday night. The Iranians are saying that the strait is closed, or some Iranians are saying the strait is closed, or only 15 ships are going to go through. And the Iranians are saying that Israel is not allowed to attack Lebanon and that therefore they'll do whatever it is that they'll do. And the question is how Trump responds now to the response to the ceasefire. And if this goes on, if the Iranians continue to keep the straits closed, he has to go back to war. If he doesn't go back. I'm sorry, I mean, I don't know how else to put this, because it sounds warmongering.

D (34:06)

I don't think we disagree on that. I don't think we disagree.

A (34:09)

I just mean that the larger question of where we're going and what we're doing and what we're. This, the precondition for what happened on Tuesday night was the opening of the strait. The strait has not been opened. He can wait through Saturday's negotiation. But to be fair to him, the precedent from last year was there were negotiations with Hamas, there were negotiations with Iran before the 12 Day War. There were negotiations where he, I don't think, in the end, made a good faith effort in the sense that I don't think he was going to get what he wanted at the negotiating table. But there were negotiations, and Witkoff and Adam Borer and Jared were involved in those negotiations. And they had time. And then when they failed, it was like, okay, green light is real. Go take, you know, go finish this off or let's do Operation Midnight Hammer or whatever. And that's the story here, because he has been. I'm not saying he's been humiliated because everything is too confusing to say he's been humiliated, but they said cease fire, and then they didn't cease fire. You know, that's it. And there's not. And if he. If this goes on another week where he says that there's a ceasefire, where there's no ceasefire, that's when everything that we've been defending him against with the Iranians, if you're. If you're sort of like, in this worldview that we're in, which is they're not winning, they're not winning. That's insane to say they're winning just because they're still standing on one toe and haven't fallen over. But if they manage to get their will in the straight and sort of like, do whatever it is that they're gonna do domestically and all of that, and we don't respond, then that argument starts to get real roots, that they got what they wanted. And we were. We blinked, we panicked, he panicked and wasn't willing to go the final mile. And then they can walk around saying, the Great Satan, you know, turns out to be a little demon named Pazuzu, and that's fine.

C (36:18)

Yeah. John, yesterday you were saying that your concern, one of your main concerns here was that Trump would sort of be precious or fetishize this supposed peace that he claimed to achieve and protect it and sort of make a project out of it that would foreclose the possibility of the war starting again if it had to. And I was concerned about that too. And I think what seems to be happening here is that the Iranians aren't even letting him do that. They're sort of creating conditions such that he can't really do that. And, you know, yesterday, if you were to ask me what I thought, the percentage possibility that we would reengage militarily after this, quote, ceasefire, I'd say it was like, you know, 10, 15%, 24 hours later, I think it's much higher. I don't know how much longer Trump can let these kinds of games go on. With the Straits, with the continued barrages, without jumping back in, I'm gonna tell

A (37:36)

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D (41:48)

Yeah.

B (41:48)

And I think what I'm watching for right now is what is the United States, what is Donald Trump willing to allow? In other words, what the regime is doing right now is it's lit a bunch of little fires all over the region. Right? You got the question of the Strait of Hormuz and the block traffic, you've got the question of the toll booth. You've got the question of enriched uranium, which they're still denying. They're making demands that the United States cannot agree to. You know, they're still attacking the Persian Gulf neighbors, they're still very likely going to attack Israel. They're still going to continue to, you know, deploy their proxies all around the region against Israel or against anybody else. So the question is, you know, at one point, the demands from Donald Trump were like, everything needs to stop. And, but we're not doing regime change. Right. And that was kind of like the big message, like, we're going to make Iran normal again. And. But we're not going to. We're not going to change the regime. We're going to allow them to stay in place, but, you know, but we're going to stop everything else. What the regime is saying is, not only are we still in place, you haven't dislodged us. And of course, Donald Trump's claiming that he's changed the regime, but that doesn't really resonate with anybody. But then on top of that, they are doubling down on every one of the things that we all vowed to stop. And so does Donald trump allow for 1, 2, 3, all of these things and leave? Or does he actually negotiate a narrowing of this, or do we actually get to that maximalist kind of vision for what the regime is able to do? Moving Forward. This is a test of wills. And again, I will just say Donald Trump has not had a negotiation like this. I mean, there is something actually kind of exciting about this, that, you know, the man who wrote the Art of the deal, the guy that is, you know, self styled, best negotiator ever on the. On, you know, on the. On the. On the face of the earth, meet your match, you got the Islamic Republic right now, you know, going toe to toe with you and trying to counter every one of your moves. And, yeah, it's dizzying and it's driving everybody crazy because we can't see half of what's going on, maybe more.

A (44:03)

But in terms of the art of the deal he did last year, come to the table with the Iranians and say, stop enriching. Get rid of your enriched uranium. Give it to us. Give it to the IAEA or whatever, or we're gonna hit you. And Iran's like, yeah, yeah, ha, ha ha. You're gonna hit us. Sure. We've been dealing with you Americans for half a century. Your paper tigers go pound sand. And then he was like, fine, all right. And then he authorized the 12 Day War and Operation Midnight Hammer. So he has, in fact, had a negotiation with the Iranians in which the Iranians did what the Iranians do. And instead of being John Kerry and Barack Obama and saying, no, okay, wait, here. Here's a billion half dollars. So here's 150 billion. We're gonna loosen up now. Will you agree to a deal where we're gonna let you have a nuclear weapon in 12 years instead of not agreeing to a deal? And they're like, all right, twist our arm. Okay, we'll take it. Whatever. You know, two and a half years of negotiating, right? That's not him either. He's already shown a willingness to walk away from the table and bomb the crap out of them.

B (45:19)

Yeah.

A (45:20)

The problem now is that the bombing the crap out of them having been done and not having had the result that he, in his most optimistic scenario, saw happening? This is where Christine's point does come into play. Where do we go from here if we restart the war? Do we just do what we were doing before the war, which is, here are 12 targets for today. Let's develop dynamic intelligence and go after 12 targets tomorrow.

B (45:53)

So I have kind of a theory of what he wants and what the Israelis are okay with and sort of like, I don't want to say it's the perfect way forward because I think it leaves a lot to be desired, but the idea that we return back to the multi front war that Israel is fighting essentially on its own with now a weakened Hamas, weakened Hezbollah, you know, a Houthi group that is still not as enthusiastic as it once was about firing missiles. And the regime in Iran has been severely depleted. Right. Pretty beat up, bleeding, bruised, may not survive after all of this, even with everything else. The thing that is like, like sticking like in the crowd of Donald Trump right now, it's, it's just, it's the Hormuz thing and the regime understands this. And so they're still toying with him. I think the regime understands that if they go back to the war that was being fought before this, if we go back to the status quo ante, the Israelis have now increased their advantage on just about every front. They are weaker on just about every front. And so what Trump has just done is he's tipped the scales of back toward Israel and the regime now has to figure out, like, are we going back to what that was? Because we're in bad shape now. And I think that's like, if you're really trying to zoom out and to look at what's going on here, I don't think they're ready to let go. They have a little bit of advantage right now. They've got some leverage with Trump as it relates to energy. Is this sustainable long term? I don't think so.

A (47:39)

I do think you mentioned the Chinese, like you mentioned the Chinese in control of the Pakistanis.

B (47:45)

Yeah.

A (47:46)

Chinese do not want the Strait of Hormuz closed.

B (47:49)

Right.

A (47:50)

And China is one of the two suppliers or resuppliers of Iran. So does China. Trump is yelling and screaming about NATO refusing to come in and help. Right. Which I think is a fair point. But let's face it, like, China could stop this tomorrow. I mean, China could say to Iran, okay, open the Strait of Hormuz or you're not getting a single, you know, part to fix your launcher. We're done, we're done giving you anything. I mean, that's not that hard. Whether they want to do it, I don't know. I'm just saying, like, that's another moving, moving piece. Can we move on to Israel and Lebanon? Because we're, we're so Israel. Major strikes in Lebanon, including in Beirut, and the line that is now being laid out with absolute efficient, clockwork regularity by the forces of people who delegitimize Israel and delegitimize legitimate Israeli military action and all of that are now saying they hit civilian targets in Beirut. It's a war crime. And they're doing this deliberately in order to screw up the ceasefire. And here, let me. I listened to NPR's Up Front this morning. Here's a 19 year old student who went to bed last night thinking she would get to go to class. And then there was an air raids and a bombing and now she can't go to class. And she's really concerned because she's missing class. She's missing class at college. Okay, that's what we get from America's most trusted news source, npr. And it's morning newscast on podcast. So what's happening now is we're laying the table, setting the table for Israel being the reason that this vaunted ceasefire failed because they were supposed to stop firing in Lebanon and they were supposed to give space and they didn't and they went, and now they're committing war crimes and, and Iran is saying it's not gonna abide by the ceasefire. And even though J.D. vance yesterday said we never said Lebanon, Lebanon was not part of the deal, that doesn't matter. Like we are setting the table in this increasingly anti Israel atmosphere, not only in the world, but in the United States, for Israel becoming the villain, when what it is doing is saying, all right, here we are, we have Hezbollah on the ropes. We're moving them north in order to extend the length of time that we can evade their missiles. And this is a point at which we can try to deal a death blow or some can't really deal a death blow, but significantly degrade Hezbollah yet again. And that is being viewed as illegitimate and is going to be treated as illegitimate because it's going to ruin the ceasefire. Okay, is that a fair?

B (50:46)

I think so. But a couple of quick notes because I mean, first of all, I got to say that NPR profile that you just talked about, I mean, I started kind of giggling because right before I got on I was watching Channel 12 in Israel and they had this hilarious video that's starting to go viral over there in Israel. This 7 year old girl was bawling her eyes out because she had to go to school today because the ceasefire has taken effect. It's like the last thing. She was having a blast in the shelters. Like, you know, I mean, it was,

A (51:18)

she was railing, right? Yeah, right.

B (51:20)

So like she was playing with her friends every day and she was eating whatever she wanted, doing whatever, and now all of a sudden she's really bummed out that she has to go to school. So where's the profile on that? But at any rate what? What, what? I think when we talk about what's going on right now with Lebanon. Yes, the Iranians are trying to make it part. They're trying to save their most powerful proxy because they understand that Israel has just mobilized and they have a plan for the destruction of Hezbollah. Right. The group was weakened by Grim Beeper and by Nasrallah getting killed and all of that back in, in the fall of 24. And right now, what we're watching is a mobilization anew to finish the job. And the regime is nervous about this as they're nervous about their own fate. And they're trying to negotiate all of this at once. I don't fault them for trying, by the way. I understand the logic of this. They're trying to basically make the west buy into this. And we are seeing some Western countries buy in. The French, the Spaniards, the Brits, they're all saying this is really dangerous escalation, and we demand that it stops. And they're nervous about all this. I don't know who's leaning on them, but they've decided that they are against this. The Israelis are saying, too late. It's. We've already mobilized. It cost a huge amount of money to call up everybody. We've got fuel, we've got logistics, we've got weapons. This is happening, and it will happen. And I don't see this stopping. I do see the escalation of this sort of, you know, like the genocide narrative is creeping back in again. It's actually being led right now. I see it more from the Turks than anybody else. They're making a huge stink about this. I'm a little nervous about how much they're reinforcing that narrative right now. And I do think we're going to see more and more international condemnation, isolation of Israel, you know, and who knows what comes after this. In other words, what we saw in Gaza, which finally ended, you know, a few months ago, all these narratives about famine and genocide, they're about to ramp up again, right? This is the Al Jazeera, Muslim Brotherhood, Shiite radical, like the whole all the jackals are going to come together, and they're going to reinforce that narrative again. And the pressure is going to be enormous on Israel. I got to tell you something. I don't think Israel cares. They don't give a damn. Right now. They are looking at the possibility of destroying Hezbollah once and for all. And here's the really interesting thing. The conversations that I've had with folks from the region all suggest to me that most of The Lebanese government is kind of okay with this. Like they're going to, publicly, they're going to belly ache about what's getting destroyed and the, you know, the, the loss of life and all of that. They're going to complain about it and they'll probably lodge official, you know, criticisms at the UN and beyond. But what I'm hearing quietly is that, you know, Sunnis, Maronites and moderate Shia in Lebanon are thinking, here's the opportunity for sovereignty after, you know, I mean, they've been battling Hezbollah since the early 1980s. The Iranians have effectively taken over their country. They've been holding them hostage. I think the question for me is how much devastation do the Israelis impose on Lebanon if it is not complete and total devastation, and that there's actually a country to rebuild at the end of this, and I sincerely hope there is, then I actually see that there is the possibility for normalization between Lebanon and Israel at the end of this if they do the job right. And this would be the ultimate answer to, to all the haters right now who are piling on Israel for defending itself and protecting its own citizens after taking, you know, strike after strike from Hezbollah in Lebanon. I see the logic of everything that's going on here, but this will be a test of wills for a time. The Israelis, I mean, the leadership, the idf, the political echelon, they are going to have to steel themselves because this is going to be as bad as, maybe worse than what we saw in Gaza for those two years.

C (55:37)

And I want to say the narrative that you're talking about that's being constructed, that's being constructed is happening in conjunction with the other narrative that is much of it is happening in the US which is simultaneously heaping more and more blame on Israel for the war in Iran to begin with. Right? So Israel started, Israel pulled us into this war and is trying to sabotage the peace is the story here. And I have a question, Jonathan, regarding Israel and the damage it's taken. There were for a time these stories, semi stories about Israel running low on interceptors. How true is that? How, how, how much time do they need to rebuild if they need, if, if, if there is some vast gap that they need to close.

B (56:41)

So it's one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. How many Arrow 3 interceptors the country has? These are the ballistic missile interceptors that are, you know, they cost three to five million dollars a pop to build and they've been incredibly effective up high in the stratosphere taking out those missiles before they get to Israeli airspace, we won't know what the number is. My guess is they were already running on fumes before the war began and that they're still running on fumes. It's always that way. There's a backlog, they're harder to build. And it's just, it is what it is. We have in theater right now the thaad, the, the U.S. built ballistic missile interceptor. And so the U.S. has been incredibly generous with Israel in terms of providing them with additional defenses. Those, by the way, they, they were not as effective during the 12 day war. They actually underperformed the arrow three. Arrow three was about 80 something percent success rate. The THAAD was like in the mid-60s as I understood it. Which by the way was an interesting moment, I think a humbling moment for the US military as we sort of tried to assess how are we doing compared to some of our allies. I think the Israelis said, okay, well you know, you've got some improvements to make. They've made those improvements this time around. And Thaad is now essentially going toe to toe with Arrow three. And I think obviously that's all good. But what the most fascinating part of this, and this is something that we learned about at fdd, about, I don't know, maybe three weeks ago, my colleague Brad Bowman published a piece about this Iron Dome, which is the short range air defense system. You know, they're hitting like those shorter range rockets coming out of Gaza or southern Lebanon, right? The kind where you have like 30 seconds to 2 minutes to prepare for them. And they don't go up that high. And they, you know, like the, the ARC is not as, as high. The Israelis are using that system as a fail safe when ballistic missiles get through. And so what's amazing here is that, so you know, I mentioned Arrow three is like three to five million bucks a population. The Iron Dome system is about $100,000 per interceptor. And so they're able to destroy the same ballistic missile for the cost of about $300,000. Now you'll see more of the shrapnel explode over Israel and that you've seen that a lot actually, because they're destroying it much closer to the ground. And so there's a bigger mess. But the Israelis are able to prevent direct strikes at the cost of about $300,000, as opposed to 3 to 5 million for Arrow or 13 to 18 for the THAAD. So they brought down the cost enormously. The question is, you know, do they have enough across the three tiered system to continue to do all of this work. And I think that's what we have to start to ask ourselves. After 52 days of war. I, I am sure the Israelis are scrambling. I'm sure of it. How bad it is, I don't know.

A (60:02)

By the way, this raises another interesting question about the ceasefire and Israel and how Israel is going to destroy the ceasefire. Israel has a tactical reason to support the ceasefire right now with Iran, which is that it has mobilized these forces for a major push into and at Hezbollah in Lebanon. And it could use not having to fight on two fronts. I mean, if America is going to go back into the war, Trump will expect Israel to continue to play the role that it has been playing, as he says, our little brother, our junior partner, or whatever it is he says, but in very friendly and favorable terms. As it happens this week and next, Israel could use the brake. I don't think they are in any position where they're not benefiting in some sense from the cessation of offensive action against Iran so they can focus on Lebanon.

B (61:01)

And that, by the way, John, is exactly what we've been watching, right? The wave yesterday, and I guess this morning, of these, like, really intense strikes by the Israelis. The fact they were running about 400 sorties a day dropping weapons on the Islamic Republic, right? And then when the second front opened up, what happened was the Israelis were running about 200 a day on one side and 200 a day on the other. They were splitting it up. What I think we watched was a rebalancing toward Lebanon as a result of this ceasefire. They are trying to take advantage of this moment because they don't know how long it's going to last, Right? And so what they're doing is like they're doing a huge surge. And this is one of the reasons, I think, why the Europeans are so alarmed. We've never seen a wave of attacks in Lebanon as large as what we've just seen. And I think it's because the muscle memory is already there. The Israelis have been doing this. They know how to do it at the pace that they have been. They have the target bank. I think that target bank would have taken usually three or four days under normal circumstances. Previous wars with Hezbollah or previous wars with Hamas, they wouldn't normally do this kind of fast paced thing, but they know how to do it now. They've been doing it with the Islamic Republic and they're just going at it with Hezbollah, not knowing how long this window is going to remain open.

A (62:22)

Finally, I'm looking. I don't see it. It's too soon. But in terms of Israel's own politics, we're arguing with ourselves. War is not popular here. Right? It's 40% support, 60% of Pope, whatever. The war is not popular. Israel numbers I see rank between the war with Iran rank between 78 and 90%. Most of that 10% that is opposed is Arab. Is Arab citizens of Israel whose opinion matters. But who are, I think 80 to 20% opposed to the war with Iran. I can't find any specific numbers on Lebanon. I think basically Israelis will tend to think that this is the same war, that the war with Lebanon is really qualitatively no different than the war with Iran. So I'm going to assume that 3/4 to 4/5 of the Israeli population supports this new move into Lebanon. And that's where we see a real divergence, weirdly enough, in the sort of stuff that Christine's talking about about America and why America isn't invested in this war. Israel is invested in this war. Ordinary civilian Israelis are invested in this war. If you live north of Tel Aviv or you live north of Jerusalem, the threat from Hezbollah over the last two and a half years while the war was largely raging in the south, I mean, in Gaza was inestimable. Like, you know, 100,000 Israelis had to be relocated to hotels in the south because they couldn't, because it wasn't safe for them to live in their homes in the north. The public wants this. I have not heard a single serious Israeli political voice that isn't on the far, far, far left even utter a word of criticism of the war itself. Maybe they'll say the tactics are wrong or whatever. So not only does Israel have this chance to obliterate Hezbollah or do whatever it can to really obliterate Hezbollah, but there's overwhelming public support. And there is an election coming up. And if you are running against Bibi Netanyahu, your best chance in dealing with this war politically is to say that he's not fighting it aggressively enough or that he's doing it wrong because you have a better way for it to end more decisively in Israel's favor. We are on the hawk side here. There is no dove side. And so when looking at Israel with European public opinion, American public opinion, turning on Israel and all of that, if you're an Israeli politician, that does not play. There's no. That is not a factor here. This is a domestic political issue about national security and existential risk and whether or not your kids can go back to school and whether or not you can go back to work and whether you can sleep in your bed or have to move into your shelter. And that is. Imagine a life that's lived like that. If we were like that here, it would be 100% support. Also, if somebody in Boulder, Colorado, had to be sleeping in, you know, in their basement for six weeks in a hardened silo room, they would also want to. They would want to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.

B (65:56)

Yeah. For all that, let me just say, on Israel, I think there is overwhelming support for the war on all fronts. As tired as everybody's been, and I mean, just, you know, sort of anecdotally hearing from Israelis, you know, on the phone or just watching the coverage as the cease fire begins to take hold and people are, like, bewildered, walking out of their shelters, just wondering whether this is something that they can actually trust. Like, you know, the sun coming into their faces, like, they're just like, oh, my God, like vitamin D. It's been really remarkable for them to just like, wow, is this the new reality? Can I trust this? But I will also just say that. And they all recognize that this is all on Donald Trump. It's actually not even on Bibi. Like, most of the choice of this war, where we go next is really about what Donald Trump negotiates in Pakistan. And that has come through loud and clear. Everybody's just waiting to see what the big fella does. And. And it's, you know, it's out of their hands. What is interesting, though, is I've seen some polls to suggest that Bibi's losing a little bit of support here, that this was not wildly popular, even though the war is. The decision that he made that put everybody into shelter for six weeks is not like. I mean, they're not like, yeah, that was awesome. Let's do it again. They're like, you know, thanks, bud. But, you know, and I'm glad you're doing this because we need to win, but this sucked. And that. That is coming through. What's really interesting, though, to me is, like, Yair Lapid, the head of Yeshatid, the kind of the. The opposition leader in Israel, is slamming the United States and Bibi for stopping the war. Right? Like that. This was. He's calling this, like, this unbelievable caving. And I gotta say, for a guy that is deemed to be kind of left of center and, you know, I don't know, more pragmatic, etcetera, Than Bibi, that he's an enemy of the right, taking on a more right wing, like A right wing position is a little bit bizarre to watch.

A (68:09)

I think it's very Clintonian. It's 92 in 92. What did Clinton say? Clinton said Bush had no vision. Bush was supporting Russia's, was trying to prevent the breakup of the Soviet empire, that he was. That his time had passed and that he wasn't tough enough. Clinton tried to position himself very cannily to Bush's right on foreign policy as a former Vietnam draft dodger. And it was a relatively successful strategy. And I think that Lupid is just like taking a play out of that playbook. Like, this is a weakness of his. He doesn't seem like a strong leader. So he gets to go at Bibi saying, oh, I'm not a strong leader. Look at you chickening out when, you know, instead of dealing death blow.

B (68:59)

But of course, but this was, but I think important to note, this was not Bibi's decision. This was Trump's decision. So the idea that you've got this relatively far left leader in Israel slamming the president of the United States, that is not a great look for the Israelis, who have been deeply appreciative of. I mean, imagine what kind of position Israel would be in had Trump not just done this for the last five or six weeks. And I do think that amidst all the confusion here and all the chaos that we're trying to analyze and to figure out what the hell's going on, just understand this. And John, you and I have been texting about this over the last couple of days. The region is better off for what has just transpired. The regime is weaker on every major front. We still have the economic and asymmetric stuff that we're dealing with in the Strait. But that overall, when you look at the power dynamic, what the regime has, what its proxies have in the tank for future battles, they are significantly depleted. I think Lapid misses that. I think all of us in the United States miss that, that we are, I think, better off. It doesn't mean that overall the world's better. It's still a mess out there, but I think the power dynamic has absolutely shifted toward the, toward the folks we want to see win.

A (70:22)

Okay, let's step away from Israel and the United States here. How do we know that this is the case? Because the people who have their fingers up in the air with their wet fingers to see where the wind is blowing in this war and in these circumstances, that is the Gulf states, the Saudis, uae, you know, Oman, whatever, what happened yesterday, somebody from the Gulf states flew A mission into Tehran and blew stuff up in Tehran. That wasn't us and it wasn't Israel. It was them. They are not. They have not turned tail. They have not flipped their heels and said, america's no longer to be tried. We better go try to make cut the best bizarre deal that we can. They think that Iran has been degraded. They think that the greatest threat to their prosperity and their safety has been sufficiently degraded and they want us to go the whole way. Now, they're not willing to necessarily go the whole way themselves, but they. So if this really had flipped and if it really were the case that Iran hadn't been materially degraded or that there wasn't a possibility of really dealing a death blow or something like that, they would already be backing the hell off and like looking for an exit and starting to talk out of both sides of their mouth and going to the UN and asking for something or other. And they aren't doing that at all. As far as I can tell. All we're hearing from them is, what do you mean you did a ceasefire? Keep hitting, keep bombing them back to the stone. That's what I like to hear.

B (72:08)

Yeah. And that's what Yusuf Aloh Taiba, the ambassador here at Washington for the uae, said this now somewhat famous piece that he came out basically saying, finish the job. That is what they want here. They want this thing over with. But the other thing is, you know, it's funny, you know, we always talk about how I'm the doctor Doom and Morosity and all of that. We'll just say, not only is it, are we better off? I think right now, with the overall power dynamic and the power structures of the regime are weakened, the proxies are weaker, all of those. And the nukes are, you know, I think set back significantly. The missiles are thinning out. All of those things are, I think, really good. But also the thing that we all need to remember here is that just if the guns do fall silent, and let's just say there is some kind of understanding reached between the United States and Pakistan and Iran and China and everybody that's represented either directly or by proxy at this table with, you know, with J.D. vance and company, there is what comes after, which I think everybody just keeps forgetting, there will be covert stuff that happens inside Iran, that the Mossad is going to run and that the CIA is almost certainly going to run. And if you ask me, the Saudis, the Emiratis and all these other countries that have been taking it on the chin from Iran for the last five or six weeks, they're going to want to fund this. Like, you know, like this was always going to happen and the Mossad was always going to do this. They were going to try to bring down the regime from within. My guess is they're going to have a hell of a lot more money to work with because the Saudis and the Emiratis are pissed. I mean, they are just hopping mad right now that this has happened. And if there's one way to bring down the regime, it's going to be through the Mossad. And we know that they're talking. We know they are. So stay tuned on that. I gotta say, I'm kind of optimistic on that point, even as I still think all of this is too messy for my taste.

A (74:01)

Christine, you have a recommendation?

D (74:04)

I do. If you're my age or older, you likely in elementary school had to take a geography class. I took a whole year in elementary school and another in high school. And I love geography, mainly because it's the stubborn rebuke to all of our claims about how technology will change the world because certain things can, cannot be altered despite China's attempts to build. Well, it can. They can build islands in the ocean. But all of this is a roundabout way of saying I've been fascinated by the Strait of Hormuz, as many of us have been. And a great piece crossed my transom yesterday that I think a lot of our listeners would enjoy reading. It's an essay by a Cambridge historian named Damien Valdez called Choke Points Are the True Crossroads of History. And it gives this wonderful centuries long suffering summary of not just the Strait of Hormuz, but in general how these maritime choke points have altered world history. I mean, the Portuguese controlled the Strait of Hormuz in the 16th century. And you can find this by the way, on a website called Engelsberg Ideas. It's a British website that they have a podcast and various essays, some geopolitical, some not, but I would just recommend it. It's a short read. I have some fiction recommendations coming down the pipeline now, next week. But it really helped me put into context some of why the long term strategic importance of this war. Whoever is controlling the strait controls a great deal. And that the modern principle of the right to navigation is really new and very precious and something worth fighting for. So I think if you want a little history of some of these maritime choke points, it's a great little piece. So it's in Engelsberg Ideas, it's called, called Choke Points are the True Crossroads of History by Damian Valdez. V, A L D E Z. And you can get it online. Their website's online.

A (75:48)

Fantastic. Well, Jonathan Schanzer, as ever, disappointing us with your good cheer and lack of anxiety. So whatever you're taking, I'd like to take, let me know. You'll text me later and I'll go to the pharmacy or to the dispensary or whatever it is. Cause we could all use a little lightening up. And everybody, you know, Jonathan has his own. Is it three times a week?

B (76:21)

Three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three times a week.

A (76:24)

You can actually access it through Twitter. But his FDD Morning brief. Invaluable. It will be invaluable next week. It'll probably be invaluable tomorrow if it's on tomorrow.

B (76:36)

Yeah, we got a sit rep tomorrow with. With some Israeli and American military experts. We're going to be doing it always live. And this will be really trying to break down what's been achieved.

A (76:47)

Right, so it's 8:30, right? 8:30 in the morning. FDD morning brief. You can Google it and. And watch it or listen with profit. And for Christine and Abe, I'm John Podwortz. Keep the candle burning. Sam.