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A
Welcome to an emergency edition of the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. This is a Saturday, and we're in the middle of the afternoon.
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B
It's Shabbat.
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Ordinarily, we wouldn't do a podcast on a Saturday. We wouldn't do a podcast on a Shabbat. But, of course, the United States is at war, has struck Iran together with Israel, and we are here to try to bring some illumination to that. And by we, I mean Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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C
Hi, John.
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A
And joining us is contributing editor and big poobah at the foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer. Hi, Jonathan.
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D
Hi, Jon.
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And in Israel, the columnist for the Jewish News Syndicate, co host of the Israel Undiplomatic Podcast, and my sister, Ruthie Bloom. Hi, Ruthie.
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E
Hi, John.
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A
So, Ruthie, you are in Tel Aviv, and we have been in communication since the middle of the night here in the United States. Just give us a sense you. The indication is the war started and you hear the siren, that very familiar siren that says, get thee to the bomb shelter. So where's your bomb shelter? And what's the scene like in your bomb shelter?
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E
Okay, so first of all, my bomb shelter is sort of next door in the building next door in the basement. It's filthy, and it's like falling apart. But it's a bomb shelter, and so all the neighbors in that building and my building can go in there. And I'll tell you, the interesting thing about today's first siren is that it wasn't an air raid siren about a missile attack. It was a siren waking everybody up. And keep in mind, because as you pointed out, it was Shabbat. And many people in Israel keep Shabbat. They observe Shabbat, and they keep their radios and televisions on a silent channel that only makes noise when there's an air raid siren. But this was a special siren. It sounded just like an air raid siren. And my phone went off like crazy with all these noises. And what it said was, this is the warning. Everybody stay near bomb shelters. It wasn't an actual missile barrage. It was there to tell everybody, okay, it's starting. And now everybody make sure that you don't go anywhere. Just stay near where your nearest bomb shelter is, and then you'll be able to get there in the amount of time you need. And everybody needs a different amount. Like I have in Tel Aviv, you have a minute and a half. There are places where they have less time. For example, during the Gaza war, people in the south in southern Israel had sometimes 30 seconds or 20 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. Anyway, so this siren went on.
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A
It was 8:30 in the morning, Israel time.
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E
So I was asleep. I had been up really late at night. I was asleep. And then I heard the siren and the noise and everything. I didn't have my glasses on and I thought there was an air raid. So I grabbed my. Looked for my shoes and grabbed a coat because I wasn't really dressed properly to go in public and ran downstairs to go to the bomb shelter. And then I realized nobody was running, nobody was there. And then I read on my phone that it said, this is not that this is just a preparation siren. And so. But about half an hour later, there was an actual air raid siren. So I did have a chance to quickly get dressed and all that. But since then, for 12 hours, I would say there wasn't a half an hour straight when I didn't have to keep going back to that comm shelter. So you heard the shelter until it says the coast is clear and you can leave and then go back home. And then you say, okay, I'll take a breather. And then before you know it, another one. All day long right now.
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B
Right.
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A
So you said, you kept texting and saying, big barrage, huge boom, really big boom. Looks like they're really firing stuff. Now, the boom, which we talked about during the Gaza war, the boom is a success, not a failure. The boom is the interception. So even though the boom is a scary noise, it's actually an indication that a mission has been accomplished and an incoming projectile has been taken out. So it's a kind of weird thing that the thing that sounds like a bomb going off is actually a sign bomb has been prevented.
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E
Correct. But I have to, with One caveat. On October 7th, when the war, when Hamas, when Hamas committed the massacre, and then there were missiles all over and rockets. Actually, one did hit, hit right next to my building, and all my windows exploded and everything. So that was an actual hit. It wasn't intercepted. We have had
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A
but the huge light.
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E
And also with drones. We also had a drone hit a building a couple of blocks away from my building. You know, there are cases where there are hits, but mostly the booms are interceptions. And by the way, they tell us, don't go out for several minutes after you hear, after the sirens. And they. They say, stay in until we tell you the coast is clear because the interceptions are very dangerous. If you've ever seen a piece of shrapnel, it's not some teeny little thing. Some of those look like missiles themselves.
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A
Indeed. It appears from what we hear, that a lot of the damage outside of Israel and outside of Iran in Dubai in particular, against a couple of these hotels may have been the result of shrapnel falling as the result of a successful interception. Particularly this, I think the Fairmont Hotel appears to have been hit by the after effect. So. So we do have literal evidence of that today. Now, speaking of that, Jonathan Schanzer, we somehow seem to take it as a given, though. I think it is a fascinating given. Okay, so Iran and is engaged by the United States and Israel in a war. And Iran says, as is understandable, if this is the case, then there are no red lines. There are legitimate targets against our. The people who have come to attack us. But as seems to be typical of this kind of irredentist regime that observes no rules of human conduct of any sort, they go into this war by firing at Bahrain, Dubai, Oman, maybe, maybe not Oman. I mean, so there are like five, aside from American, specific American base targets. They're just spraying fire across the Gulf and in the Middle east, including hitting countries that are not involved, which should give us a sense of now. So no one's really making a big point about this, but to me, it's like, yeah, okay, this regime really has got to be destroyed. Like, they'll do anything. They'll shoot at anybody, including people who are just standing there, not really involved.
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D
Yes, that's what's happening. And I mean, look, the list is Bahrain, including residential towers, but also the 5th Fleet base did take some incoming early on in the first hours of the war. Kuwait has been hit. Their airport was hit in Kuwait. And then on top of that, you know, I've actually seen a video of a missile falling in Qatar, which is really interesting. A huge explosion resulting from it. There was an attack reportedly in Iraq on a US or possibly US And Israeli base in Erbil in Kurdistan. But, yeah, you can see. And the. The Jordanians have shot down more than 50 projectiles that have gone through their airspace. So there's a lot of activity going on right now. And the Arabs actually seem to be coalescing around this.
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F
You know, you had.
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D
Everybody's been talking about how the Saudis and the Emiratis have been at loggerheads over the last several weeks. They're issuing statements right now where, like, they're talking about their coordination and how they have solidarity between the two countries, the Qataris and the Jordanians. The Jordanians are not big fans of the Qataris. They're issuing statements Right now. So what we're watching, you know, and I think maybe this might be sometimes hard to get our heads wrapped around, but the Iranians are I think in some ways unifying the Arab world and maybe even unifying this idea that the U. S Led alliance which includes Israel, also includes the Arab world. So guys hang together or hang separately I think is kind of the message that's coming through right now. And the Arabs appear to be buying into this. So I think there's some positive stuff happening in addition to the strikes that we're watching on the regime in Iran.
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C
Okay, follow up question. Just quickly, Jonathan. Is Iran hitting all these other targets because they believe that there is some tactical value to doing so, or is it that, that their capacity for precision and is just gone or failing?
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D
Yeah, and I think it's an interesting question, you know, when you look at what has been on fire in Dubai, for example, dangerously close to Burj Al Khalifa, the largest, the tallest tower in the world. Right. So it, from, from my vantage point it looks like they're, I mean they have a fair amount of precision here and they're trying to topple the largest tower in the world. This is like the Iranians trying to replicate 9, 11 here in New York and to have some kind of a shocking display of Iranian strength. I think in other places you see them wildly missing the mark. But I think what needs to be understood here and I think, Let me, let me bring this back to Israel for a minute. There have only been 180 missiles fired at Israel as of 2 o' clock on Saturday afternoon Eastern Time. 180 is far fewer than anybody thought. As I understand it right now. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the Israelis have been able to target a lot of the more dangerous missiles, specifically the solid fuel missiles where they can pull them out of the, the, the underground bunkers and then just simply light a fuse and let it launch as opposed to what now they're firing, which is the liquid fuel, which are, they're less stable, a little bit harder to steer in the right direction, in other words the aiming capabilities. But by the way, it also is taking them two to three hours to fuel these missiles before they can be launched. So what we're watching is a little bit, there's a, there's always a technical component to this, but it really does look like the regime is losing capabilities the longer this thing goes on. So as we're recording this, it's, you know, it's about 12 hours into the operation, and it certainly does. I mean, there have been a few direct hits in Israel. There have been a few direct hits in the Arab world, but one does not get the sense here that the regime is able to do as much as it did in June of last year. Now, there is one open question, and a friend of mine in Israel, we were talking about this just a little while ago. Are they saving up certain capabilities for when their backs are truly up against the wall? Nobody knows. But this is what the Israelis are seeing right now. They're seeing a regime that doesn't have the same kind of capabilities that they did a year ago.
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E
Also, by the way, I just like to add something to that, Jonathan, and that is that so far, neither the Houthis in Yemen nor Hezbollah in Lebanon have joined in this attack. And in the days leading up and in the month and a half since President Trump said help is on the way, Israel has been saying that it is prepared for the Houthis and Hezbollah to join in when an if Iran attacks.
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A
Two things. One I just want to explain to people. If you're hearing a weird tone during the course of this podcast, that is Ruthie's phone. She has to keep it on because that is how she gets alerts in case she has to go to a shelter. So she's getting messages. She can't turn it entirely off. And so if you hear that noise, that's why it's there. It's her early warning system. Not that those tones mean that the bomb alert has come along. Second, during the week last week, there were massive bombardment strikes in Lebanon on Hezbollah positions. Was one of the signs that maybe something was really imminent, that they had, that Israel had taken, made those moves. And of course, the mission appears to have begun with Israeli action and that the targeting of the Khamenei family and the Khamenei compound was Israeli and not American. This is very, very important because it
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indicates,
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it suggests a level of sophistication, moral, strategic, and tactical. This plan that people, I assume they'll give them credit for it later. But Donald Trump and the Americans have been insisting that our purpose in the United States, our purpose is not regime change. We want there to be regime change. Trump said in his speech overnight that when we're done, the Israelians should take back their country from the regime. But regime change would be, we're on the ground, we're gonna go in, take out people, establish a regency, set things up for elections. He's like, we're doing this, and when we're done, Things are gonna be sufficiently ruined for the, for the Islamic Republic that you can go in and sweep it up and take charge of your own destiny. But we're there to get the ballistic missiles, the intercontinental missiles and the nuclear program and take them out. Israel is doing the regime change.
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F
Yes.
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That these missions have been divided. So it's.
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D
Yeah. So the division of labor. And it's really interesting, actually, again, speaking to an Israeli contact just really minutes before we, we started recording, what I heard was the US Military is targeting the nuclear sites, whatever is left, whatever they think may be used in future endeavors for, for the nuclear program and other military infrastructure that could threaten the United States or threaten our allies around the region. And then the Israelis are targeting the top leadership of the regime. And by the way, as we speak, I'm watching on Channel 11, Israel, that there are celebrations in Iran after the belief that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was killed. The channel 11 says they have some video evidence of this. I have not seen it yet because it just popped up on my screen. But anyway, this is part of what Israel's doing. And there's. There are other top military figures and IRGC figures that have apparently been killed by the Israelis in the first 12 hours of this war. But the other thing that they're doing is they are hunting the missiles, because it's the missiles that can do damage, strategic damage to the state of Israel and, of course, to the other Arab states in the region. And so this is the division of labor for day one.
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F
Now, what to me is going to
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be interesting is if, and I don't think it's going to take days and days for, for the United States to go hunting the, the.
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F
The nuclear sites. So the question is, as we head into day two, what is the United States going to do next? What are we looking for while the Israelis continue to go hunt for those missiles or for those top figures? That's going to be, I think, an interesting question, because Trump kind of made it like, hey, we're just going to do this for right now. And there's a very specific kind of MAGA reason for this. There's only the American interest. This is what we're doing. But I got to say, in for a penny, in for a pound. By tomorrow, there will be new targets for, for the United States to consider.
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C
Can I just ask a question on that? Just before I got on here, I was watching. There's some reports that Trump was talking about a conversation that he's had with regional leaders about possible off ramps. So I'm guessing what you just said, we shouldn't make too much of that, other than Donald Trump will talk about whatever has just happened or come up.
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D
Well, so let me just say there is fear among some in Israel that this is the limited strike that Donald Trump talked about last week, the week before. He repeatedly said, hey, we might just do a limited strike. Limited strike doesn't mean just one strike. It could be one. One day of strikes, three days of strikes. And then he calls the remaining leaders of Iran back to the negotiating table to find out whether they're more flexible, to find out whether they're more pragmatic. The Israelis are very nervous about the prospect of this, I think, for obvious reasons, because every time the regime has come to the table, they have fleeced the United States. We walk out without our pants on, and the regime walks away, pocketing concessions. And now I will say we've never done this before where, you know, we have, like, taken out top leaders and taken out key assets of the regime and then said, okay, guys, your back's up against the wall. We've got a gun to your head, and now negotiate. And so that's interesting. But I will say the Israelis don't like it at all. They are very nervous about it.
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B
Let's talk about Aura Frame. So I have an aura frame in the middle of my living room. And last night I glanced up, up at it, and there I saw a photograph. Actually, two photographs split in half, because aura does that for you. It sort of seems to understand what photos are related to each other and will kind of edit them for you to put them together in the frame.
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A
And there was a picture of my
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late mother and my late sister Rachel, side by side. And I was, of course, very moved and pleased and touched to have this memory placed right in front of me in my living room for me to experience almost unexpectedly. And that is one of the great gifts that Aura Frames can offer. This is a wonderful, beautiful piece of
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A
living room, bedroom, whatever.
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B
I wouldn't call it furniture, but it's literally a photo frame.
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A
And you download your photos through an app, as many as you want, in whatever order you want, in whatever way you want. And they can provide you with all
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B
kinds of unexpected joys and pleasures. There is free, unlimited storage, so you
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A
can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can add them from anywhere, anytime using the app. If you want to give it as
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B
a gift, it comes in a gift box included. You can personalize the gift with a message before it arrives.
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A
And if you download the app yourself,
- [20:47]
B
you can text photos straight to the frame or to your the person whose frame whom you're giving it to as a, as a, as a present. So that's Aura Frames the perfect gift anytime. Name number one by Wirecutter. You can save on this perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $35 off their best selling Carver mat frame with Code Commentary. That's a U R A frames.com promo code commentary. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
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A
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B
because I am almost 65 years old,
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A
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B
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A
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B
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A
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B
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B
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A
That's Quincom Slash commentary, free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/ Commentary okay, so it is apparently, it is apparently in an interview that Trump did with Barack Ravid of Axios in which he talked about off ramps, but in classic Trump fashion, he said I could go all out for a couple of days and then pull back or we could just go until we're done or something like that. So I don't think any of this means anything in that sense. And of course, success breeds success. So there are two ways of looking at success, one of which is Trump goes, I did it. We did it. Like we've, wow, we really slaughtered them. And did you know, we've, we've, we've. He said in the speech, like there's blood and guts all over the floor or something like that. Literally, he used the phrase blood and guts so I don't have to do anymore. Or it could be like, it's like shooting fish In a barrel. Let's keep going. We have no resistance, and there's no resistance like there may be.
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D
Here's the middle ground, and this is what I'm watching. Okay? There's the we're going to stop because we can. There's the we're going to keep going because we can. The middle ground is the Maduro option.
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B
Right.
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D
And I got to say, let's not take our eye off of this ball because Trump loved what happened in Venezuela, right? You took out top leader of Venezuela
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F
and then you had to deal with the people who were incredibly fearful afterwards that they could be next. And then they start working with the United States in a more pragmatic fashion. This is, I think, what Trump would love to see. Now, let me just say I don't believe that the regime in Iran is at all like Venezuela. Venezuela was, is a kleptocracy. It is filled with criminals and opportunists, and the regime in Iran is filled with true believers who've been brought up on this idea of a revolution from the moment they were born. But there is still a chance that Trump can pull this off because nobody wants to watch their country get destroyed. And there will be people who are pragmatic lower down in the IRGC that
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D
might be tempted by this.
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F
So that's what I'm watching. As a third option.
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E
I need to make a point here because we have to say. You say that the Israelis are nervous that Trump is that this may happen and he may be doing this to go back to the negotiation table. But that is not how Netanyahu sounded when he gave an address this evening. He addressed the nation and address the Iranian people. And what he said was very important because what he said was, you know, we are giving an off ramp not to the Revolutionary Guards and not to the regime, but anybody in the Iranian military who is said, we are not against the military and we're not against the people and you should rise up. And what was significant about it is that this indicates that one of the things that he and Trump spoke about was this business of the day after. You know, Israelis, like everybody, are obsessed with what about the day after. And it seems that what they are planning or hoping for is that members of the military will defect, not the ircg, that the military will defect and that there will be some kind of military rule when the regime.
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D
False.
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A
Right. So now the. The thing about the Maduro option, we still don't know if this is the case, but whether it was pre planned that we were Going to extract Maduro and then hand the country over to the vice president as we did, or whether that was happen stance, whether this was, you know, something that had been quietly negotiated with her, you know, and Rubio, I, I suspect that that's the case. The transition was way too seamless and way too confidently executed for it not for there not to have been pre planning. Similarly, it seems to me that there has been two months, really almost literally two months since December 28th when the, when the riots started in Iran that have led to this day where the rial collapsed and the people started rising up in places no one had ever risen up in Iran before. And then everyone's out in the streets and Trump says, take back your country, help is on the way. And then came the massacre and all this two months and one, one of the things we know is that Israel's intelligence capabilities in Iran are nearly supernatural at this point. So assuming that this wasn't just like Trump going on Thursday. All right, let's go. The hell with it, they stink. I don't like these negotiations. I don't like the way they're behaving. We're just going to go that this has been a much more painstaking period of time in which not only have the Israelis been set at figuring out where and when they can strike in order to get Ahmed to get Khamenei immediately at the beginning of the war. And so they say to Trump, we know where he is now, everything's ready, let's go right on Friday afternoon or something like that. But it's not just that like everyone's obsessed with the day after. I'm guessing there's a plan for the day after, by which I mean Israel's ability to know what's going on in Iran means that Israel has assets in Iran at very high levels, at very, very, very high levels. They have agents of influence. They have people they bought off. They have people who have been working with them against the regime. Not mid low. Even though, as Jonathan, you say this is an ideologically driven regime with people who are religiously committed to its existence. But it only takes two or three or four people to provide Israel with the intelligence it needs to know where the apartment is that they can hit and what to do then what. And therefore I suspect that there is more foreknowledge of where this could go with regime collapse and regime change and that that's been part of the two month planning process.
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F
It has.
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D
But let me, let me, let me tell you a little bit of what I've heard. And again, I always deal in scraps of information. I always try to reinforce this because I only see what I can see. I can only hear what I can hear. What I understand is that on Thursday they did not have a plan. Somewhere between Thursday and Friday they began to understand that there was going to be a meeting of the top leaders of Iran based on the intelligence network that you just described, John. And once they figured that out, they figured out that overnight on Friday night into Saturday, that that was going to be the moment that they struck because they would be able to take out as many of those top leaders as, as they could all at once. And just don't forget that the Israelis have done this with the Houthis, they've done it with Hezbollah. They did it during the June war, but they did it in different ways. This was a one off, one strike, one opportunity and they apparently did some pretty good work.
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F
Now, as for what happens next, that
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D
I think it, it's muddier. Okay? But I mean, I do think the Israelis have their list, right? It's their deck of cards, if you will, right? Where they're going to go after the 20, the 50, however many leaders they're going to go after with the idea that everything below that they're just going to be dealing with incompetence or fear or pragmatism or some combination thereof. But I do think that there is still concern, and I hear this, you know, all the time from the kind
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F
of, from the, let's just say the isolationist wing of the MAGA movement. We don't know who's coming next. We don't know who's going to step up. Let me just say, nobody in their right mind in Iran is going to stick their neck out and proclaim themselves to be the leader of the opposition while the regime is still slaughtering 30,000, 40,000 people on the streets. So there's a little bit of a black box here about what comes next. And you have to understand why there's a black box. Okay, so we have Mossad networks that I think they can mobilize. There are CIA networks that can be mobilized. There's networks associated with the Crown prince, right, in exile is here in the United States that also can be mobilized. But who emerges as a viable leader? No clue. And anybody who says that they know, I got to say I'm going to, I'm going to have to question because of that. Again, that same thing. Nobody wants to stick their necks out. Not yet. But I do think that Right now, as the reports are circulating that Khamenei is dead and people are getting a sense that maybe this thing, this regime is going to be relegated to the ash heap of history. This might be the moment where you start to see the leaders come out and declare themselves.
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E
And by the way, especially since it wasn't only Khamenei pronounced dead. I mean, we hope that that's definitely the case. But there were other leaders, I believe the chief of staff of the army of the Revolutionary Guards and a few other people, the Defense minister or whatever their titles are. There were quite a few killed.
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D
There were. And actually, yeah. And as we speak right now, I'm watching, Effie Defran, the spokesperson for the idf, is talking about exactly this, that there were multiple people killed in the initial strikes. And yes. So you're watching the erosion of the regime in real time, and that's.
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E
Iranians are dancing in the streets. They're cheering and they're cheering for Israel. And it's like, amazing, right?
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A
But again, if this is day one, their regime assets all over the place, and if Israel, as I believe we know, their special forces are on the ground and they do have a network and all of that, what I guess will be interesting from the larger perspective of history once, you know, we're five years out and this, if this works well, is who wasn't killed, whom they didn't target.
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B
Right.
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A
So if they, if they are going after the defense minister, but not the deputy defense minister, they're going after the head of the ijrc, but they're not going after the head of the Basij, or they're going after this one, but they're not going after that one. In that way, you can start picking out whom, who was playing footsie with Israel and the United States and who wasn't, who was. Who was hedging their bets or sick of the regime or whatever. And that, of course, will not emerge until the regime appears to be in ruins and rubble.
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F
Yeah.
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A
And I just don't. I just can't imagine that there isn't an idea in the heads of the people who conducted this, chose to go ahead that they. They don't have a day after. Now, the day after plan may be ridiculous. It might be. It might be Pahlavi, and maybe that's ridiculous. Just like the day after plan in Iraq in 2003 ended up being kind of ridiculous. But here you would at least have Israel's input on who it is that they have been dealing with. That can be somebody you can deal
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E
with, yeah, okay, now you have to excuse me, I have to go to the bomb shelter.
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A
So I'm just, just. Okay, so there we go. So Tel Aviv is under. Tel Aviv is, is about to, there's hopefully will be an interception. We're going to leave, we're going to leave Ruthie's. If you're watching on YouTube, we're leaving Ruthie's spot open here. So you understand that there is a war going on and that every civilian in Israel is a combatant in the war. And as has been true of the, of the, of this seven front Iranian war that began on October 7th. And so here we have visual evidence of that. If you are, if you are watching.
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D
So let me, let me respond, John, to something that you said as we wait for, hopefully the all clear from Tel Aviv and Ruthie can come back. There's only been one time in history, in modern history where the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic has died. It was 1989, and it was at that moment that the Islamic Republic stood at a crossroads. And we didn't know what would come next.
- [35:48]
F
Would the Iranian people rise up and demand something different? Of course, Khamenei died, or Khomeini, rather, died by natural circumstances. Khamenei has now been, according to all reports, now liquidated by the Israelis. And it's happening amidst this massive uprising. And so this is, you know, I think this is the moment where the United States, the Israelis and maybe some others, I'm guessing the Saudis, Azerbaijan, who knows, right? But there's any number of actors that probably have, you know, an idea of what they want next. The question is how coordinated are they? How well have they planned this out? And to that, I've just got to say, you know, there are a lot of people out there who were, you know, obviously taking shots at Donald Trump, you know, saying that this is seat of the pants. Let me just say this guy's been, this guy's left our forces in the Persian Gulf for five weeks waiting for the plan, waiting for a better plan than what he had for when he first sent aircraft into the region. They were 17 minutes away from bombing Iranian targets five weeks ago. And he pulled them back and has been working with the regional players, not just the Israelis, but the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Bahrainis and the Qataris and everybody else to work through this. So, look, I can't tell you that we have a great plan. What I can tell you is it should be a damn site better than what we had five weeks ago. And I hope that that's what we're going to see in the next couple of days.
- [37:24]
C
I just want to add to that or augment that by saying however coordinated or uncoordinated the parties are who are looking to fill the hole of what takes of what comes next, or even outside parties outside of the country or whatever, just how coordinated are the remnants of the regime going to be after this incredible immediate decapitation strike?
- [38:00]
A
Look, you know, you carry a lot
- [38:01]
B
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- [39:19]
A
That's part of the degradation of the capabilities issue that happens as a result, you know, war. It's like the not only does observing something change things, but when you change things, things change down the road. So if you are taking out leaders of, you know, who can actually like, who have line authority to make decisions about where to file, fire the ballistic missiles or what to do with this or what to do with that, you take them out, you degrade the capability in that way. And then as things go on and you find the physical sites and you bomb them, and then maybe you are starting to go down in the deck of cards to the second level and all of that. That and you've taken out the Internet and you've taken out the command, control and communications capabilities of the regime, which I, which I read we've done. But I mean, that would make perfect sense that that's the first Thing that we would target with our, you know, discombobulation devices and other things that they, they literally aren't in touch. They don't, they, they can't pick up the phone and call the secret location where the, where the, you know, where some secret battery of ballistic missiles is and says, okay, you know, put in the telemetry and fire them because they can't get in touch. And so make that decision.
- [40:45]
C
And you have to figure that at some point they say, do I dare even try to get in touch? I mean, you know, right on the radar.
- [40:54]
A
Yeah, yeah. I say something, I get, I get geolocated, and then boom, someone drops a bomb on my head.
- [41:01]
D
So, but now, now here's, here's the other thing. And I've been thinking a lot about this just over the last couple of hours because, you know, look, from all indication, it looks like the regime's getting shellacked and with the United States and Israel involved, you know, from the outset, this isn't like Israel doing it and then the United States coming in with the punctuation point at the end, like we saw in June. This is the U.S. you know, I mean, they're doing as many sorties as the Israelis are. And the Israelis have had 200 aircraft dropping like 600 bombs or something, you know, just in the first 10, 12 hours. And the United States is doing the same with bigger bombs and, you know, and aircraft that can deliver more powerful, you know, ordinance. This is a serious thing, right? You don't expect these guys to hang on for long. What I am worried about right now are two things related to kind of the underground operations of the regime. One is what do they have here in the United States? You want to think about like the seat, like the, you know, the sleeper cells, the assassins for hire. We've seen it before, right? They've targeted the Israeli ambassador, the Saudi ambassador. They've gone after Masia Line, the famous Iranian activist against the regime, not to mention Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, and a handful of others. I'm worried about that as an asymmetric response that I think can be ordered by somebody lower down in that, you know, within the echelons of the irgc. And so I would keep an eye on that. And by the way, that's exactly the kind of stuff that would erode the confidence of the neo isolationist right. Within the MAGA movement. That's exactly the kind of thing where they would say, trump, I told you so. This is not in the American interest. We told you not to do It. Right. So there's that. The other thing that I think about right now, when I think about where do things go wrong? Well, just so you know. Right. We always talk about me as the morose guy on this program. When you bring me on, I'm worried also about what happens if the IRGC guys melt away while this thing is going on.
- [43:12]
A
And then like a rock, like Iraq in 2003, like the Iraqi army in
- [43:16]
D
the north and they come back knowing
- [43:18]
F
where the remnants of the military equipment, where they are, where some of these missiles and rockets are, or some of the other things that might be useful for attacks against American forces in the region or attacks against a regime that we're trying to put together. And you gotta remember the Iranians, you know, we talk a lot about regime change and how it's a dirty term in the United States and we don't like to talk about regime change anymore. There's a reason why we failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it all tracks back to the Islamic Republic. They ensured our failure and they could do it again on their own home turf. I'm assuming they could do it easier that way. So, I mean, I think that on the one hand, I think we've got a lot to be optimistic about. As we've talked about. You get a sense of how their ranks are thinning out and who knows what's left. And maybe there's a Maduro option.
- [44:09]
A
But.
- [44:10]
F
But don't forget that there are these sort of black swan things that we've not yet tested that I am still, I think there's plenty of reason to be concerned about them.
- [44:19]
C
I just say, as a political matter, and this isn't particularly heartening because of the way Trump has framed this as we are not doing the regime change. That's on you.
- [44:32]
A
You.
- [44:33]
C
You've asked the United States for something for decades. We're finally giving it to you. I mean, this is almost exactly what he said. Let's see what you do with it. Should there be a failure to replace the regime with something, anything, more friendly and amenable to our interests and to and to those of our allies, it's not exactly our failure this time. Hope there's no failure. Obviously.
- [45:04]
D
What I would just say here is that this is not an American led effort at regime change. I think the administration has made that clear. However, if you see, for example, attacks against the homeland, attacks against American bases that are successful, attacks against oil installations that are successful that send the price of oil sky high. Right. Attacks at home here by Iranian sleeper cells or agents of the regime, that will not help Donald Trump. Right. As a man who says we are winning, right. Or we have won, this will go against, this will be a counter narrative to what he has put out there. And that's what I think I'm concerned about. I think the Iranians understand this. It's easy to spoil things for an American politician. Right. And so even if you've lost, you can still score some victories. And that's what I'm concerned that the regime may try to do. But look, I would also argue that if the people come out and, you
- [46:11]
F
know, take charge of the streets and more importantly, that we see elements of
- [46:16]
D
the besiege or the security services, the
- [46:20]
F
police, the, the army, the irgc, if
- [46:23]
D
they, if anybody switches sides, right?
- [46:27]
F
This is the major victory that the Israelis and the Iranian people have been waiting for. So there's, you know, there's lots of different ways this thing plays out. I think is, is kind of what I'm trying to drive, drive home here.
- [46:40]
A
So I don't want to be Pollyanna Ish. And I do think that, you know, the idea, 12 hours into a, into a massive military operation that, you know, we're already projecting out, you know, the inevitable end of the regime and history shining down, you know, glowingly, you know, history doesn't move in a straight line. Things don't end up the way you want them to end up. But we do have the history of the last of the years since October 7th and October 7th was this, you know, brilliantly staged surprise, monstrous surprise attack that took the nation of Israel by surprise. That was, you know, a traumatizing event that will, you know, resound, resound for decades inside the, you know, Israeli body, body politic and the culture. But what we've seen in the last two years is this, is this Iranian seven front war systematically crushed with very little response. Once the attack of October 7 happened, the Hezbollah beepers and the targeting of the neighborhood in Beirut that took out the Hezbollah leadership operation number one, the fall of the regime in Syria. Number two, the Houthis, not Houthi leaders, taken out and firing relatively ineffectively, firing, you know, drones from 900 miles away. Number three, the, the after efforts to ruin shipping in the Gulf, we got control back of Gulf shipping and Iran's efforts directly to engage with Israel, leading to almost no death in Israel. And then ultimately this crushing humiliation in Operation Midnight Hammer. So that the, I bring this up only to say that there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that the, this seven Front war had a lot of second strike capability. And if we are going at them full bore on two, with two nations, the two. The two best militaries in the world functioning in lockstep. I mean, not lockstep because they're not doing it all together, but you know, but just basically in harmony. How they pop their heads up and start doing things they could have been doing already when they may not even know. We don't know who's going to say, oh, sleeper cell in Kansas City, go do your mission at that mall, you know, in Independence, or, you know, go. Go to somebody's doorstep in, you know, in AU park and, and do an assassination or something like that, it may not even be that the people who are there to make the call can make the call. If those cells exist. Russia does it. Russia does. Rush has projected its terrorist power outside its borders consistently for the last 10 or 15 years, killing people in England and elsewhere and using poison tipped umbrellas and whatever else. And the Iranians have taken shots at,
- [50:04]
B
or seem to have tried to take shots at.
- [50:05]
A
You mentioned Brian Hook, Bolton, Pompeo Trump, all of that with no success. Are they suddenly going to get good at it?
- [50:15]
D
Yeah. And John, I don't know the answer to that question.
- [50:18]
A
No, I'm just. I'm just throwing that out. I don't want to Polly it.
- [50:23]
D
I'm just saying. But I think. Let me just say, I think you're asking the right questions. And I do wonder whether the regime has any of this capability right now. I point out some of the possible negative outcomes here. Just to note that, yes, we are watching the United States and Israel, after years of practicing military maneuvers together, actually doing this thing and doing it well. I'm just looking for, you know, because I never trust any success. This is just sort of. I'm sorry, but it's just, I guess, my nature at this point. I'm wondering where the, you know, the pitfalls might be. But really right now it does look like things are going well. And with Khamenei gone and with other top leaders gone, you can't imagine the regime coming back easily from this.
- [51:18]
C
Can I just add, also, not to be Pollyanna ish, but I think there are other. There are two other fortuitous elements here, hopefully in regard to the possibility of some sort of attack on the homeland here. One is that it's good that this happened after Trump has sealed the leaks in the border. And the second is that it's good that this happened after the Maduro operation because of Venezuela's ties with all the militant groups associated with Iran. So there's a sort of the pipeline of terrorist militants into the US was, we don't know who got in before but was stopped some time ago.
- [52:09]
A
So what we're talking about here really is this question of what to fear. I mean Hampshire we don't know. But what second strike capabilities Iran has and what it has buried or what, as you mentioned, what missiles with liquid fuel or not liquid fuel, where they are, whether they're going to be sort of brought out from their tunnels in a way that means that they're not spotted so that they can, you know, they can be taken out on the ground and all of that and then they can fire them off and see what kind of damage they can do. That's where. But the thing is, if your first strike is really effective, the you that affects the ability of the second strike, it's not like the second strike isn't connected to the first strike. The second strike is the. Okay, you know, it's like in a classic battle you have, you know, the people at the, you know, the phalanx at the front lines moves in and then it engages in fighting and then oh my God, there's a whole other line behind it we didn't see and they're going to come in and mop it up. There's no such, there's no such second line that we, that maybe there is. That's what I'm saying. It would just be, it's a weird thing to like hold it in abeyance or think, okay, now we can use it with our top leaders gone, like who, who's Khamenei now that he's gone? This is a totalitarian top down dictatorship that has had two leaders in 47 years, both of whose names began with the letters K H and the word Ayatollah. And right now I know it's only been a couple of hours since how many but you know, in a, in a functioning regime, in any kind of functioning long term government, the minute the government is, you know, if, if Kennedy is assassinated, there's Johnson to be sworn in. If a queen dies, the king takes over. If the, this ha. We have no idea. And I don't think the Iranians had any idea. And it may have been that his son in law was going to be the guy to take over or his son and they may both have been eliminated in this strike today. And so somebody's gotta take charge of the second strike and say, you know what? Oh my God, we have some information that the basin, Bahrain, there's a route in from the south. If we can just fly, turn around and hit from the south. They have not defended there. Where are they going to have that? Who are their eyes on the ground around the US Bases to kill people on the US bases?
- [55:08]
D
So let me just say as you're speaking, John, I do see a direct strike by the Iranians on a building in Tel Aviv. They were able to score one. I think it's important to understand that even though the US and Israel are getting the best of the Iranians, they still have some capabilities that they're still going to be able to bring to bear on the battlefield. And this I think will give the Iranians some time to try to, let's say, you know, you're not going to see capitulation over several days because they're still able to fight back. That will give them some time to think through what that, you know, what succession looks like, what the chain of command looks like. If there are internal battles that are taking place between the IRGC and the clerics, they're playing out right now. I think we can actually help exacerbate some of those tensions, and I'm sure we're doing that right now through information operations, through cyber means and Lord knows what else. But I think there's still a bunch of this war that needs to be fought. That's why here's my question. Three days to three weeks of fighting.
- [56:15]
A
So here's my question to you. You mentioned that when we began the podcast, that as far as you know, about 180 missiles had been fired by Iran. And in the last couple of minutes, as we're talking, there's been a major barrage, not apparently not only at Israel, but at other places around the region. So do we have any sense of how many ballistic missiles they still have
- [56:43]
B
in their arsenal after Operation Midnight Hammer?
- [56:46]
A
I mean, is it thousands? Is it tens of thousands? I mean, in other words, if they've fired off 400 missiles, how, how much of a bite is that on their overall missile capacity?
- [57:00]
D
Yeah, so what they had during Midnight Hammer, Rising lion, they had somewhere around 2500 to 3000. And they were able to pop off 500, 600 of them, maybe even a few more than that. And they got some direct hits. And by the way, they were quite good at the aiming. They got better over time so that they actually hit the kiriat.
- [57:24]
F
The Defense Ministry in Israel, they came unbelievably close, probably 100 yards from hitting
- [57:31]
D
the Head of the Air Force, the headquarters of the Air Force, they got
- [57:35]
F
pretty close to hitting the Mossad during the. One of the previous rounds of fighting in, I think in 2024, they came pretty close to the Mossad, so they were pretty good at aiming some of these. Now, my understanding is that the missiles that they had, they've had to replace with Chinese missiles. Primarily that because the Israelis took out a lot of their own production capabilities, you know, that were domestic, that were indigenous, they have had to do other things. So right now my understanding is they have somewhere between five and 7,000 missiles, or at least they did before the fighting started. So there were more, but as we just discussed, not as many of the solid fuel, which means they're going to take longer to launch, and they can be hit on the ground because they're vulnerable. There's also a question of whether they're still able to manipulate the physics of these things in the, in the way that they did before. In other words, they were getting really good at aiming with the missiles that they had developed. Right now, they may be dealing with missiles that they don't know as well. So it's a big open question as to how many of these things are they going to be able to pop off. The last thing that I'll just note
- [58:58]
D
is the number that they're able to fire directly correlates to the number of missile launchers that they have. Now, these are either the mobile ones where they're on a truck and, you know, everybody's seen it, where, you know, they, they, they raise it to a certain level. There's the angle, and then they maneuver the truck so that it's going in the right direction, and then they fuel it, and then they set it off. So there are those, and then there are the more stationary ones, which the Israelis are also hunting. There's something like 500 of those. So they're like, you know, one tenth of the total amount of the missiles. If you can destroy the missile launchers, then the missiles become obsolete. And so this explains a little bit of the hunting expedition that the Israeli Air Force is on right now, as they're also looking to target the individuals, they're looking to target the missiles and the missile launchers to defang that threat. So then they have total air superiority. And I think, by the way, some people in Israel think they're going to have it by tomorrow, which is fascinating.
- [60:09]
A
So this stands as a remarkable moment. And I want to talk about, just before we go about the larger geopolitical
- [60:17]
B
implications, I Wrote a blog post this
- [60:19]
A
morning which is on our site@complyarma.org and I wrote a sentence that a couple of people wrote to me and said, what do you mean by that? Which I said, this may be the most important day of the 21st century. And I would just briefly explain it and then see what you have to say about that. For 50 years, almost 50 years or more than 50 years really, dating back
- [60:42]
B
to the Arab oil embargo of 1973,
- [60:48]
A
America and the West's relation to the Middle east has been the bedeviling feature of Western civilization. We have been involved in the Middle east in ways that we did not seek, nor do we wish particularly to be involved with. But that, as Michael Corleone says In Godfather Part 3, they keep pulling us back in. We didn't seek the oil embargo. They imposed it on us. We didn't seek. You know, we basically let the Pahlavi regime fall in Iran, not seeking engagement with what was to follow. They took our hostages. We did not seek to have a conflict with Saddam Hussein. He went into Kuwait. We did not seek to engage Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda hits Khobar Towers. Al Qaeda hits us on 9 11. We did not seek to engage with Afghanistan, but Afghanistan harbored Al Qaeda. We had to move on Al Qaeda. We went into Iraq. We stayed in Afghanistan. We are now engaged in this effort with Iran. Should the Iranian threat be eliminated. I even mentioned the eight year war between Iran and Iraq. That really was of no strategic interest to us all that much except that it engaged two bad actors together, but in which millions of people were killed for no result whatsoever, for no good
- [62:29]
B
result, for no purpose whatsoever.
- [62:33]
A
We end a period of time in the world that has been the sort of the anchor on our foreign policy. Shackled in our foreign policy to this question of America, the West, the oil, the Islamic radicalism. Islamic radicalism infiltrating the west and starting to now turn European countries in this way. The result of a successful effort to get this regime out finally, after 47 years that has been at war with us, declaring us the Great Satan and, you know, conducting these measures and works against us. The geopolitical implications of this are so large, it's so freeing, it's so liberating, that. And, and it will allow us to focus, concentrate and develop our capabilities militarily and geopolitically and strategically without reference to the one thing that was always shadowing and on top of our heads. Yeah, that's my, that's.
- [63:51]
D
Yes, it's, it's a great It's a great point to make. It's a, it's a, a great blog post, it's a great thesis. I want to footstep a few things and maybe even take it a step further. Number one, Iran has stood behind all of the non state actors that we have been battling, including those on the Sunni side of the street, so to speak. I mean, we know that Al Qaeda and Iran actually collaborated. And I saw some of the evidence when I worked at the Treasury Department some 20 years ago in the height of the war on terror. You could see it. It wasn't as if the Iranians had clean hands as it related to Al Qaeda and its war against the west
- [64:28]
A
on the grounds that Iran is a Shia regime and Al Qaeda was a Sunni movement.
- [64:33]
D
Correct.
- [64:33]
A
And in theory they should have been at daggers drawn. But in fact they had a common cause in their. In the great state enemy of my
- [64:41]
D
enemy will bring together Sunni and Shiite. The sectarian divide doesn't exist and we've seen it. And Hezbollah, right, that's an Iranian actor, Hamas, an Iranian actor, Shiite militia. But like look at what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, the insurgencies that were launched against us in part, sometimes in whole with Iranian support. So every time we've lost blood treasure limbs in the Middle east, you could track it back to the Islamic Republic. And the idea that, that we would bring down this regime and the proxy network that came with it is an enormous opportunity for the United States to turn a page from a pretty dark chapter in, in American history dealing with all, all manner of just terrible actors, but again, all tracking back to the regime.
- [65:33]
C
Can I.
- [65:35]
D
But I want to, I want to draw this out for just another minute. I think there's an opportunity in bringing this down. It's not just what we're getting rid of. There is the possibility of helping to push the Israelis, the Emiratis, the Bahrainis, the Saudis, if they want to join this idea of the Abrahamic alliance.
- [65:57]
F
That could fill the void in the
- [65:58]
D
Middle east and turn it from something that has been a basket case to something that is far more forward leaning and pro America. But that will require effort on the part of the United States. It will also require us to keep certain jackals at bay. And here I'm talking about Muslim Brotherhood type regimes like the Turks and the Qataris. They would love nothing more than to fill the void. So whatever we do, the hard work doesn't end here. Right? The hard work actually begins after you topple the regime. And what are you going to put in its place. Place. The last thing that I think I just, we need to just acknowledge here and at ftd, we've done a lot of work on this, this idea of
- [66:39]
F
an axis that exists out there in the world.
- [66:43]
D
It's China, Russia and Iran working together. Right There are three legged stool. If we kick out one of those
- [66:53]
F
legs, it does raise some really interesting questions about the great power competition and the challenges that we have in front of us. The supplier of oil and drones to the likes of the Chinese and the Russians, their ability to draw our attention away from them and to the Middle east with Iran creating mayhem all the time. We have interesting opportunities globally, far beyond the Middle east right now. And so when you talk about the moment of opportunity and it is even beyond the enormity that you have described,
- [67:32]
C
I was actually going to make that point about the, about the Russians, the Chinese.
- [67:36]
A
Well, by the way, so in the final, you know, just to get into the like rank, you know, internal conservative, you know, you know, squabbling, the, the isolationists in the United States or the fake people who are isolation but claim
- [67:52]
B
not to be isolationists in the United States,
- [67:57]
A
you know, the Quincy Institute, various others who are obviously will be stalwartly opposed to this effort. Their claim often if they're, if they're saying they're not isolationists and they're not passive, is we need to focus on China. We have to focus on the threat from China.
- [68:14]
B
We have to focus on the threat from China.
- [68:18]
A
You know what? I agree. We have to focus on the threat from China is the great competitor of the 21st century. We have to focus on the threat from China.
- [68:25]
B
We have to make sure that China
- [68:27]
A
stays within its borders and doesn't take Taiwan and doesn't destabilize the South China Sea and doesn't, doesn't start to try to dominate Japan and the, and the Korean peninsula and elsewhere in their, in their region. One of the ways we can do that is by moving past this concentration on the Middle east that has been our enduring. Every single presidency, every single leader has. Either it's about Arab countries in our relation to them, or it was the great distraction of the last 50 years, which is the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And we need to solve that in order to move on to help solve the other problems in order to this and that and the other thing. And here we are in 2026 with a real possibility, not of this going off the board and that it no longer is a problem. That's not what I'm saying. But if what we really need to do is not be distracted from the great power rivalry that is this century's issue, we gotta clear the decks because clearly we have a problem with attention span in the United States and we have a problem with understanding, you know, who our enemies are and who our friends, how to deal with them. And so just there the idea that the people who say that they're America first don't understand that it is America first to get rid of the Iranian threat because it means that we can. The amount of CIA, Treasury Department, State Department, energy, focus, obsession with all of the ancillary things that go on with this throughout my lifetime is incomparable. And so moving it into a subsidiary or tertiary position while we focus on the real problem is deeply in the American interest.
- [70:45]
D
It deeply is. There is no doubt about that in my mind. And being able to put this in the rear view and to create again, something that is, you know, going to be advocating for American values and American interests in its place will be of paramount importance after this. So there will need to be more work. There is an interesting question, and to me, the question is if we do think about rebuilding, and I know Donald
- [71:13]
F
Trump is, I'm chomping at the bit for this, right? It could be $10 billion, or rather
- [71:21]
D
$10 trillion
- [71:24]
F
of reconstruction.
- [71:25]
D
10 trillion with a T. Right.
- [71:27]
F
The energy, the rebuilding of the army, the rebuilding of the civilian air fleet, the bridges and tunnels and hospitals and roads and everything that needs.
- [71:39]
D
Is that in the American interest? Is that America first?
- [71:42]
F
Is that why he did it? These are the questions that I think
- [71:46]
D
we're going to have to start to answer, because what we don't want, and
- [71:49]
F
this gets back to John, to your point, do we want China to take that business? Absolutely, we do not.
- [71:56]
D
Right.
- [71:57]
F
So this will become a business thing soon. And, well, I hope it stays calm as we think about doing this, because then we're back in the business of state building. And it gets right back to that thorny question between the isolationists and the interventionists. And this is where it gets perilous, in my view.
- [72:17]
A
Jonathan Schanzer, thank you. My sister Ruthie, where I assume safely in her shelter is. Thank you also for being on and as ever, and a tribute, by the way, to Ruthie's son, Noam Bloom, who is now the chief technology officer of Commentary magazine, who took off his Saturday afternoon to produce this podcast and is,
- [72:44]
B
of course, monitoring all these developments for us.
- [72:49]
A
So here with Abe, John Pod Horiz. Keep the candle burning.
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G
It's tax season and at LifeLock, we know you're tired of numbers, but here's a big one you need to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it. Guaranteed. One last big number. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for the threats you can't control. Terms apply.