Iran Impasse

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "Iran Impasse" (May 7, 2026)

Hosted by: John Podhoretz, with Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Christine Rosen, and guest Jonathan Schanzer (Foundation for Defense of Democracies)
Main Theme:
The episode delves deeply into the current deadlock of the U.S.-Iran conflict, examining Trump administration strategies, Saudi and Israeli roles, regime resilience, and strategic, economic, and ethical complexities. The discussion covers the limits of military escalation, the effectiveness and ethics of economic warfare, the rules-based international order, and evolving information and political landscapes complicating American objectives.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Stalemate in the U.S.-Iran Conflict

• No Real Progress Toward a Deal
  Jonathan Schanzer sets the tone: “I am not seeing any real progress…things are exactly as they were when the ceasefire began several weeks ago.” (03:32)
• Despite repeated presidential statements of being "close to a deal," both sides are entrenched. The Iranians are portrayed as reluctant to compromise, while the U.S. is unwilling or unable to escalate further without significant costs.

2. Operation Project Freedom and Saudi Complications

• Saudi Reluctance Shuts Down U.S. Military Plans
  • Trump’s aborted Project Freedom—an attempt to escort shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—was abandoned after Saudi Arabia refused to allow offensive action from their territory, fearing they would be left undefended (01:15–03:25).
  • Saudis are hedging, prioritizing regime stability and wealth over regional confrontation, and still keeping diplomatic lines open with Iran and the Houthis (06:34–07:48).
  • Notable Quote:
    “The Saudis are not exactly a profile in courage here.” — Jonathan Schanzer (07:06)
• Failed Military Gimmicks & Resource Constraints
  • Podhoretz critiques the operation as a “gimmick” and exposes U.S. limitations: “There is no cheap way around opening the Strait of Hormuz that does not involve us putting our own shipping at risk…” (07:48–09:15)

3. Munitions Shortage & Reluctance to Escalate

• Resource Depletion and Long-Term Strategy
  • Schanzer points out dwindling U.S. munitions, restricted target lists, and reluctance to destroy Iranian oil infrastructure:
    “We ran out of things that are of value. The only thing that is left…is the oil structures inside Iran. And the President doesn’t want to destroy those for two reasons…” (10:45–12:59)
• U.S. hesitates to risk navy ships or deplete munitions when the returns are diminishing; the goal is to maintain pressure but avoid unacceptable costs.

4. Defining Victory and “Dayenu” Doctrine

• Gratitude vs. Greed: “Dayenu” Perspective
  • Seth Mandel reflects on unexpected U.S. military success:
    “I have both gratitude and greed in my heart…I just can’t lose sight of the gratitude part of it because I never expected to see this…That’s incredible.” (15:57–17:08)
  • The Dayenu (Hebrew for “it would have been enough”) analogy expresses a sense that much has been achieved, and pushing further may not be necessary or wise.

5. Economic Warfare: Blockade and Sanctions

• Choking Iran Economically
  • Schanzer argues for escalating economic pressure—banking restrictions, sanctions, and blockades—believing Iran may soon be forced to cap oil wells (21:44–22:52).
  • Yet, anticipated Iranian retaliation includes striking at Gulf neighbors and seeking to damage global economies.
• Limits of Escalation & International Order
  • The rules-based order limits U.S. options—if Iran won’t surrender, escalation may require actions that could invite war crimes accusations (13:16–13:59; 23:01–24:26).

6. Challenges of Regime Resilience and Information War

• IRGC’s Endurance
  • The IRGC (“a terrorist organization running a country”) remains steadfast despite catastrophic losses (32:57–34:38).
  • The real answer, per Schanzer, lies in internal Iranian opposition—not foreign military action:
    “The answer to the IRGC…is still the people of Iran.” (34:45)
• Messaging and Legitimacy
  • The U.S. has failed to maintain an effective information campaign to delegitimize the Iranian regime.
    • “We need to delegitimize the regime.” (39:10)

7. China, Regional Allies, and Triangulation

• Xi Summit and China’s Role
  • Trump lacks the “fait accompli” he hoped to bring to Xi Jinping; China’s support for Iran has angered Gulf states (26:52–28:32).
  • “The President’s probably entering into these talks not with the advantage he had hoped.” — Jonathan Schanzer (28:32)
• Israel’s Ongoing Operations
  • Israel is juggling northern Hezbollah threats while maintaining readiness for renewed U.S.-Iran escalation (41:12–45:48).

8. The Evolving Nature of Warfare, Ethics, and Victory

• Shifting War Aims
  • Clear war objectives have been difficult to define and maintain, complicated by shifting circumstances (52:31–54:19).
  • Regime change, though fraught, is seen as the only long-term guarantee of security, particularly for the Strait of Hormuz (53:18–55:06).

9. Insider Trading, Geopolitics, and Corruption Concerns

• Financial Markets and Policy Manipulation
  • Discussion highlights potential abuses in betting markets and policymaker conflicts of interest during geopolitical crises.
    • “Part of this is insider trading, right? …It should be illegal on the betting market.” — Jonathan Schanzer (58:02)
    • “If people have advance notice of what speechwriters have written for the President, that actually represents a huge money-making opportunity…” — Podhoretz (59:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Deadlock:
  “From everything that I’m hearing, things are exactly as they were when the ceasefire began…” — Schanzer (03:29)

• On Saudi Calculations:
  “The Saudis have not bought into this normalization structure, and they’re still trying to play Muslim politics, if you will.” — Schanzer (07:06)

• On Munitions Limits:
  “The President doesn’t want to destroy [Iran’s oil infrastructure] for two reasons…if and when the regime falls, the people can inherit the wealth…he wouldn’t mind it for US companies…” — Schanzer (10:45–12:59)

• On Defining Victory:
  “If Trump ends the war tomorrow unilaterally, in Abe’s estimation, this all would have been enough. I’m not sure I agree with that.” — Podhoretz (17:26)

• On the Economic Squeeze:
  “We can cut off their banks from the international system; we can put on more sanctions…But what did they do? They probably attack Saudi Arabia, they probably attack the UAE…” — Schanzer (21:44)

• On Regime Resilience:
  “They’re not going to lose, they’re not going to win, but they’re not going to lose. We’re just going to keep fighting and we don’t care, right? …We’re on jihad.” — Schanzer (32:57)

• On the Ethics and Limits of Warfare:
  “We’ve hammered this regime, we have the ability to hurt them further economically, but they still won’t…If we want to escalate, I don’t even know what’s left.” — Schanzer (23:01–24:26)

• On the Need for Messaging:
  “We need to delegitimize the regime.” — Podhoretz (39:10)

• On Shifting Goals:
  “He maintains that maximum flexibility…what he said he wanted from the beginning of this has changed multiple times. And this is classic Trump, right?” — Schanzer (50:53)

• On Regime Change:
  “If you change the regime, you could open Hormuz. If you open Hormuz, that doesn’t mean you can change the regime.” — Podhoretz (55:06)

• On Financial Corruption Risks:
  “We are now talking about a geopolitical crisis that could be introduced by the fact that somebody somewhere using bitcoin…places $100 million position on something…” — Podhoretz (57:45)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:55–03:25: Setting the scene: Trump’s inconsistent actions; Saudi involvement; questions about U.S. credibility
• 03:29–07:48: Analysis of Iranian-Saudi detente, Saudi hedging, and implications for U.S. military operations
• 10:16–12:59: Problems with munitions supplies, limited value targets, strategic constraints
• 15:58–17:46: Seth Mandel introduces “Dayenu” as a metaphor for “enough” in terms of achieved military objectives
• 21:44–24:29: The logic and risks of economic warfare; anticipated Iranian countermeasures
• 32:57–34:38: The IRGC’s resilience and parallels to other theocratic militant groups
• 41:12–45:48: Israel’s shifting focus, continued operations, and necessity of intelligence sharing
• 52:47–55:06: Discussion about regime change as both a challenge and, paradoxically, potentially the simplest long-term solution
• 57:45–59:52: Concerns about market manipulation, insider trading, and war profiteering amid policy announcements

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

• The tone is candid, at times frustrated, and intellectually rigorous—reflecting deep policy expertise and skepticism toward easy answers.
• Trump’s flexibility and transactional style is seen as both a strength in confusion and a liability in clarity and unified messaging.
• The U.S. and allies are at a complicated crossroads: military success has yielded neither surrender nor real change, and further escalation (military or economic) is fraught with political, ethical, and practical hazards.
• Strategic patience, gradual economic strangulation, and improved information operations are recommended, though all panelists acknowledge uncertainty about true endgames, both for the regime and for U.S. objectives.
• The evolving intersection of politics, war, and economics (especially financial markets and betting) introduces new vulnerabilities and ethical quandaries.

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Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst. Some drinks and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst,

hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Thursday, May 7, 2026. I'm John Pothorz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Seth Mandel]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And joining us they are contributing editor Pooh Bah at the foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer. Hi, John.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Hey, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Jonathan, you are one of our go to guys to talk about just what the hell is happening in the war. And I think everybody in America and the world is saying to themselves, what the hell is happening in the war? And this is a fast moving, very confusing story. We now have this bit of detail that seems to explain, might explain why it is that Donald Trump, behaving in an extremely inconstant fashion over the last 48 hours, announced and then withdrew his program, Project Freedom, for the escorting of ships out of the Hormuz Strait. The story that we are getting, we got a bit of it last night and then we're getting new versions of it this morning, is that it largely ended because the Saudis said, don't be doing this. You can't base your planes or take any offensive military action out of our territory. Which then seemed extremely bizarre and was very hard to understand in the first leak story about this from NBC News. And we're getting a clearer picture of it this morning from Israeli news sources and others who say the Saudis weren't blindsided. They did know about it. They became increasingly concerned that Donald Trump was so intent on getting a deal with the Iranians to end the war that he would halt or not pull the trigger if the Iranians decided to involve Saudi Arabia in their response to Project Freedom, if it started to rain missiles on Saudi Arabia, that Trump would not intervene on behalf of the Saudis because he did not want anything to interfere with the, what am I saying? Progress to a deal. So, Jonathan, do you trust this story? Do you think this is credible? And are we looking at a situation in which the president, who has been the most stalwart person in his own administration in pursuit of the military aim of getting his hands on the dust and, you know, basically taking Iran out as a player on the international stage, that he's blinking?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

So I think there are a couple things that are happening that it's probably worth unpacking. One is just this idea of whether we're getting close to a deal. And I think that that's first and foremost on everybody's mind right now in the region. And it's, I think, what's most important to me. And on that, I have to say I am not seeing any real progress. And this is what's so interesting to me. I think every couple of days, Donald Trump comes out and he says, we're getting closer, it's going to get better. Like, I can see it, it's going to happen, folks. Just, you know, you know, trust me. And this has been happening every, I don't know, every couple of days, every week. It's been a regular trend with him. I, I think he keeps giving the Iranians an out, an opportunity, and I think the Iranians are loathe to take it. They just do not want to walk through the door that he continues to open for them. But from everything that I'm hearing, things are exactly as they were when the ceasefire began several weeks ago. Nothing has changed in terms of the Iranian position, and nothing's really changed that much from the US Position either. And so we're stuck. We find ourselves in this position where the US has to continue to worry about the flow of oil coming in and out, or ships coming in and out of the Strait of Hormuz and oil coming out. So then that's where we get to this Saudi piece. The Saudis, I think, have been compromised for some time. You may recall that in 2023, leading up to the October 7 attacks, there was an agreement that they struck. It was a Chinese agreement, it was brokered by the Chinese between Iran and Saudi Arabia. People don't talk about this deal. The deal, actually, I think, still exists in some shape or form. And the idea was is that if the Saudis stopped attacking Iran in their media, in particular Iran International, if anybody ever reads that publication, it's actually a pretty interesting publication. It is a very Iran centric. The Iranian people, not the regime. Right. It's about basically overthrowing the regime in Iran. This was starting to really get under the skin of the Iranians. And the Saudis agreed to dial back on some of the rhetoric. And in return, the Iranians agreed to stop siccing the Houthis on Saudi Arabia. And there was some sort of understanding that the two sides had reached. I actually went with some FTD colleagues to Saudi shortly after that agreement was signed. And we were trying to get a sense from the Saudis about what was in the agreement, and they refused to tell us. They told us that this was classified, and they can't talk about it. I think this has been sort of a baseline for understanding what's happened all the way through this war. Why were the Saudis not getting attacked by the Houthis after October 7th? The Houthis were attacking all these ships in the Red Sea, and they're attacking

[John Podhoretz]

American ships, and they're attacking Israel, and yet Saudis somehow stayed out of this. In other words, what's going on here right now, at least, best as I can tell, is the Saudis are still trying to hedge, they're trying to figure out how to navigate all of this to incur the least amount of damage. And so what they've done here is consistent with everything that we've seen up until now, which is they're still trying to navigate this, they're working with the Pakistanis, they're still talking to the Houthis, they're still talking to the Iranians, trying to make sure that they don't incur a lot of damage.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Bottom line, the Saudis are not exactly a profile in courage here. They are doing what they can to preserve their investments, to preserve their wealth, to preserve their stability. This stands in stark contrast to the Emiratis, who are all in. They want to defeat the Islamic Republic, and they've. They put their money where their mouths are. The Israelis are there, you know, deploying iron beams, shooting down missiles, and they're doing everything they can to help. The Saudis have not bought into this normalization structure, and they're still trying to play Muslim politics, if you will. And that's, I think, the best way of describing what's going on without knowing all the details, because they're still pretty fuzzy.

[John Podhoretz]

So as. As you understand it militarily, if Trump called the operation off 12 hours after he started it, the American assets in Saudi Arabia must have been critical to the effort, which I think indicates the flaw in the design of the effort, which people were, like, very confused about. Right. He announced, we are opening the straits, we are escorting the ships. And then five minutes later is we're not really escorting the ships. We're going to keep an eye on the ships, and we have methods to kind of like virtually escort the ships, kinda maybe we'll escort some of them, but we have to escort others of them. No one will know which ones we're escorting, and we're not escorting something like that. And that basically, there is no cheap way around opening the Strait of Hormuz. That does not involve us putting our own shipping at risk to escort the ships out of Hormuz, and that this was a gimmick that got exposed as a gimmick. And Trump's like, okay, well, I guess we just have to pull back and not do it because, you know, we don't have the resources either to open the strait conventionally or. Yeah, I'm worried that my deal that you, as you say, is pretty much non existent is going to collapse.

[Christine Rosen]

Can I actually ask about a further question on that? I'm curious what Jonathan thinks, because we actually, in terms of a ceasefire, it doesn't really exist because Iran has continued to fire at American assets in the area and we've been able to successfully intercept those missiles and whatnot. But I thought it was an interesting question that was asked of General Kaine in a recent press briefing about exactly those attacks. And he said, well, they don't meet the threshold for retaliation. And when he was pressed on that, basically he said, that's a political question. So when the President decides that this ceasefire is sort of over because of the way that Iran is behaving, that meets the threshold. So I'm curious where, if that's a negotiating tool, like we'll take a few attempted hits to keep the peace while we're trying to negotiate a broader settlement, what's going to be the trigger for Trump? He has said if they cannot come to an agreement, we will go back to bombing them. So from your perspective right now, where we are on Thursday, what would be a trigger for Trump to actually resume some fighting in the region?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

So, okay, so I, I mean, I think what we're all putting our finger on right now is something that is, it's actually a deeper flaw and a deeper challenge that we're going to have to come to terms with. And actually, John, I gotta say, this is a piece I may want to write for you. I'm just throwing it on you now.

[John Podhoretz]

Hey, but here we go.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Okay, Here we go.

[Christine Rosen]

It's a live pitch. I love it.

[John Podhoretz]

Everybody's gonna hear it. Just made, right?

Right.

This is how the sausage is made now.

[Abe Greenwald]

You know the Shark tank.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Yeah. I've spent a few days, you know, overseas thinking about this and, you know, it's amazing what happens when you stop reading social media for a little bit and let your brain digest some of the information. But our problem actually is, is one of munitions and about putting boots on the ground. I mean, this actually keeps tracking back to some of the other things that we've talked about here and that I've written about with you, the cost of the munitions right now as they begin to dwindle. And we've all seen the reports, we've heard these reports that we have these exquisite munitions that are extremely precise and they can do immense damage to things that are of value. We ran out of things that are of value. The only thing that is left that is truly of value right now is the oil structures inside Iran. And the President doesn't want to destroy those for two reasons. One, he wants to save that oil for the people of Iran so that if and when the regime falls, that the people can inherit the wealth of the country and not have to rebuild it from scratch. The other part of it is, I think, you know, he wouldn't mind it for US Companies to get in there and make trillions of dollars through the production of oil and petrochemicals and other things that are related to the oil industry, and destroying it would be a huge problem for him. Right. So the idea of burning munitions on, you know, insignificant or relatively insignificant targets is a problem. Putting our vessels that are worth a hell of a lot more into the Strait of Hormuz and putting them potentially at risk of getting hit from Yahan missiles or other shoulder fired type of, you know, smaller munitions that the Iranians have that could do immense damage to our naval assets. That's not worth it for him either. And so when you see him continue to say we're making progress, when you continue to see him say, you know, we're close to a deal, what he actually wants is he wants everybody to stand down. And I think the, I think the regime understands this. I think the regime understands that he doesn't want to go back in because it's not worth it. It's not worth the munitions. It's not worth putting our men and women in danger.

[John Podhoretz]

And so we're at this sort of impasse where. And I think this actually, I mean, look, there's two or three problems here. There's. Number one, we keep using munitions that are not, you know, I mean, they're expensive and they're limited and we're now gonna have to restock them and it's gonna take some time.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

And this is, I think, weighing heavily on the Pentagon. It's weighing heavily on the White House. And I think they're trying to figure out what's next. They've arrived at a crossroads and they don't know what to do. I think that's part of this. I think there's another part of this also. Which is the rules based international order. The idea of only hitting, you know, valid military targets, if we've run out of those and we haven't won after shellacking the Iran, I mean, we've beaten them, right? But they're still hanging on. They're not going to surrender. And so there's. We're stuck exactly where we are. That rules based international order is working against us right now. And that raises some really uncomfortable questions about the nature of war.

[John Podhoretz]

You published a piece in Commentary this month about how to declare victory or how to achieve victory when your rival won't surrender, and that we need to understand that you can win a war without your rival bending the knee. But this has become very hard for us to understand or to get a real sense of. Abe has a third way, and I would call it the Dayenu way. So Dayenu, for people who don't know it, is the central song of the Passover Seder. And it is a song of praise to God for everything that God has done for us from the beginning of the exodus from Egypt. So if he had only gotten us out of Egypt, it would have been enough. Dayenu is translated as it would have been enough. If he'd only given us manna in the desert, but had not led us to Mount Sinai, it would have been enough. And so on and so on and so on. Abe has been articulating for the last couple of days the idea that what we have done in Iran, what the United States has done in Iran from Operation Midnight Hammer through this operation, destroying Iran's aggressive capacities, in the elimination of much of its, if not most of its ballistic missiles or missiles that exist, and then the missile factories and the nuclear program and the centrifuges and all of that, that we are at a Dayanu moment. If Trump ends the war tomorrow unilaterally, in Abe's estimation, this all would have been enough. I'm not sure I agree with that. But Abe, do you want to sort of like, can you lay this out a little? Well, I should say that I have

[Seth Mandel]

both gratitude and greed in my heart at this moment. Greed isn't the right word, but I also want more and am grateful for what has been done. And I just can't lose sight of the gratitude part of it because I never expected to see this. I mean, this is how I've been articulating it. We've seen so many presidents talk about hitting Iran, about the window closing, about we could have done it seven years ago, but now we can't do it today. The time is wrong now. And all of that melted away and we hit Iran's nuclear program. We hit a ton of their missile stocks. We took out levels of regime leadership. That's incredible. I really didn't think it was gonna happen. I didn't think it was gonna happen up until it happened. I didn't think Operation Midnight Hammer was going to happen and then be followed up by this. And I just think you can't look back at the past 20 something years

[Jonathan Schanzer]

of

[Seth Mandel]

US paralysis on this and then see this sudden world shaking change and not appreciate it. So in other words, if we were to walk away from it today,

[John Podhoretz]

I

[Seth Mandel]

still think it has done a world of good. I also think that if the US can bear to choke off the regime's lifeblood with weeks or months of a blockade, that would be much better.

[John Podhoretz]

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[Seth Mandel]

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[John Podhoretz]

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[Jonathan Schanzer]

So, I mean, I think it's interesting, I do think that there is a way forward with the economic war. And I, I, this is, you know, this is obviously stuff that I, I worked on when I was treasury guy, and I still very much appreciate the playbook. And I do think that, I mean, today's Thursday, May 7, right. So in about another week, I understand the Iranians may have to cap the wells, and then you start to see things really get bad for them. I think there's more we can do. We can cut off their banks from the international system. We can put on more sanctions. We can add more tariffs. We can bomb things that are significant for them. And I think it will hurt. Let Me just say though that that's what we do. What did they do? They probably attack Saudi Arabia, they probably attack the uae. They go after the oil producers in the region and they try to do economic damage to us and to the entire world. There is some measure that is, I guess, moving forward at the UN right now that's going to try to condemn the, the Iranians for what they're doing in the strait of war.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, that'll just. That's it, that's it.

Right, right.

[Christine Rosen]

That's a very firm letter.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, right.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Weapon of mass discussion, right. We don't expect anything to come out of this, right? So what I expect there, I mean, you know, the enemy always gets a vote. And so yes, we can do a lot of damage to them. But I think, look, this is what I'm wrestling with and it's this rules based international order, right? We've hammered this regime, we have the ability to hurt them further economically, but they still won't. If they're not going to surrender, if they're not going to capitulate and we want to escalate, I don't even know what's left, right? We're going to bomb and keep using munitions that we don't want to use against things that are possibly militarily significant. We have put ourselves into a bind with the rules that we've created for ourselves. And I do think that this actually has prompted us to start to think about the future of warfare. Look, the Israelis have been dealing this for a long time too. They keep beating Hamas and they keep beating Hezbollah, but they can't finish the job because every time they get close to finishing the job, everybody starts screaming about genocide. If the United States decides that we wanna actually do more damage to the country of Iran, the Islamic Republic, it may require some tougher choices that will absolutely invite condemnation and charges of war crimes and the like. In other words, where do we go on this escalation ladder? I think Trump understands that there's, you

[John Podhoretz]

know, there's the escalation that's not worth it.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

From the perspective of munitions, which will

[John Podhoretz]

harm us if and if and when the Chinese decide to invade Taiwan and we don't have enough in the tank, we don't wanna go down that road. Do we wanna do more to prevent them economically and maybe from the perspective of, I don't know, other things that the regime needs in order to survive that could invite huge amounts of condemnation internationally, we have a challenge. These are shackles that we put on ourselves. Some, you know, A century ago. Right. End of World War II, 80 years ago.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

We create this rules based international order and now we're living with it and it's hurting us and it's hurting our allies. And I do think this is a central question that we're gonna have to wrestle with. Trump is struggling with the system that he inherited right now because he doesn't know how to escalate in ways that won't harm us or invite a torrent of criticism against him and maybe even war crimes charges and the like.

[Christine Rosen]

It's interesting that you're talking about some of these, the domestic accusations that were already leveled after some of his truth social posts earlier, a few months earlier about decimating, throwing back to the stone ages and stuff like that. But was it yesterday or the day before? Vice President Vance was in Iowa stumping for a candidate and he said something that really struck me because he was talking to farmers and about their concerns and he acknowledged that fertilizer prices have gotten much, much higher as a result of this conflict. Gas prices are you 50% higher than they were when we started this. But then he said, but, you know, that's, it's just a blip. This is just a blip. This is a little thing. We're going to wrap it up. And that to me signaled something about some internal political dynamics in the administration itself that will also have to be resolved. I think if there is going to be a strong message that the war is over or that we're going forward and really making sure to end what we're doing on good footing in the region. And then all of this, obviously you brought up China, that's next Wednesday. And do you have any sense of the message that Trump wants to, or the, the feeling Trump wants to bring to that negotiation? Because correct me if I'm wrong, but one of Iranian, Iran, Iran's leaders was in China this past week. So there's a whole issue there with how we're going to negotiate and triangulate on that score. Do you have any sense of this, of there being a particularly strong position that the US could be taking going into that discussion with Xi?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think if I'm not mistaken, the XI summit was supposed to be like six weeks ago.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

And it was postponed. And it was postponed because of the war. And, you know, I think Trump had hoped that he was going to bring sort of a fait accompli to Xi Jinping and say, look, we just took over the Persian Gulf region. We now control everything here. You know, this energy is ours and you're going to have to negotiate with us. And, you know, we're carving up the, the globe into spheres of influence and this one's ours. I think it's far more complicated, it's much more opaque now for Trump heading into that meeting. And I think one could argue that maybe that has given Xi at least some advantage. I do think, though, that the Persian Gulf states have to see that the Chinese were malign actors in all of this. I think that the Arabs are going to hold a grudge toward the Chinese for quite some time. Right? I mean, they were the ones that were providing some of the precursors from the chemicals and the motors for the drones and intelligence that would attack American bases that ultimately hit some of these countries. So if you're the Saudis, if you're the Emirates, if you're the Kuwaitis, if you're the Iraqis and you see that the Chinese have been able to traverse the Strait of Hormuz and others have not, you're gonna be pretty grumpy about all this. The question is, how much does China pay a price for this when this thing is over, or do they find a way to exploit this? I think it's still kind of an unknown, but I do think that the President's probably entering into these talks not with the advantage that he had hoped. And I think Xi is probably licking

[John Podhoretz]

his chops a little bit from that.

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[Abe Greenwald]

Can I ask about another aspect of this going forward and looking ahead on not just China, but I want to ask about the irgc. It feels to me like we had years, decades even for some warning that the IRGC had to be reined in internationally. That you know, whatever, whatever you were going to, you know, what, whatever was going on with inside Iran, you could not have the IRGC assassinating dissidents, you know, in Berlin cafes, that, that there was something, there was a line that had been crossed that was, you know, Putinesque and yet it was not being treated as such and that the IRGC was not the government and not the army, but like this kind of, this, this kind of like ghost in the machine force and that therefore you had to, you could sanction them and rein them in in a way that you couldn't other governments. Right, we, we don't, we, there are limits to like official sanctions we'll put on the Chinese government even though we hate a million things they're doing. Right. But there was this feeling that the irgc, that their advantage was also their disadvantage that not being the official government, we could do stuff about them, treat them as a terrorist organization, whatever. Now that seems clear that it was a mistake not to do so. Right. So what happens now that the state essentially has been inherited by you know, the last Revolutionary Guard standing sort of situation that now it's really in the IRGC hands. What happens going forward? Did anybody learn a lesson from this and can anything be done to stop this buildup of these kinds of shadow states in the future, but specifically the irgc.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Look, yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I mean, I will say that there's been a growing chorus of countries that have decided to sanction the irgc. I think the Canadians, the Australians, obviously the Israelis, Argentina, the US There is a growing group of countries internationally that have decided to take action against it. The question is, at this point, when the regime has lost a year's worth of gdp, it has lost an enormous amount of its missiles and missile launchers and air defenses and all of these assets that the IRGC has, and yet it continues to fight on. I mean, the mentality here shouldn't be a surprise, right? But this is the same mentality that we see from Hezbollah, the same mentality that we see from Hamas. They're essentially a terrorist organization running a country, right? Then they're just like, we're not gonna lose. We're not gonna win, but we're not gonna lose. We're just gonna keep fighting and we don't care, right? Because we're. I don't know, we're on a jihad, right? And this is, you know, we've been told by our supreme leader and then his son, who may be a vegetable or maybe just a cardboard cutout, but we're still fighting in kind of the vision of Khomeini from 79. That's where we are right now. This is an ideological battle. It's a refusal to submit. And I don't know if any further action could be taken. The designation, the bombing, I mean, how much more can you do to weaken this terrorist organization that is running the country?

[John Podhoretz]

Look, at the end of the day, the answer to the irgc, the answer to all of this is still the

[Jonathan Schanzer]

people of Iran, right?

[John Podhoretz]

If the people come out and they start doing what needs to be done, and then the Israelis and the United States and maybe some of the surrounding Gulf countries provide some close air support by drone and provide the weapons and the training and the cash and the secure communications and all the things that they need in order to get this done. They. That's the answer to the irgc. That's the answer to the Basij. That's the answer to this crisis. But how do you engineer a revolution like that?

It's worse if you think about it. Because if the strategic position of the United States vis a vis Iran at this moment looks to the Iranian people the way it looks to Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign relations and Michael McFaul of Stanford which is, oh, boy, Trump is really getting humiliated out here. The Iranian people aren't gonna rise up. They're gonna be like, well, you know, the regime is doing pretty well, all things considering. And we had real hopes that maybe we could replace it, but I don't know, like, you know, they're stronger than they look, and we're not gonna just go stand up in front of them and then get mowed down by the tens or hundreds of thousands. And a regime controlled by the irgc, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, why we have such difficulty coping with looking through their eyes, looking in there the way that, you know, Clausewitz taught us we needed to understand war, is that we, Even Trump, even Mr. No, realist and amoral and doesn't care about democracy and all that, cannot reckon or fathom with a regime responsible for 90 million people that genuinely wouldn't really care if 5 million of them died all of a sudden if it meant keeping 120,000 people from the IRGC in power. He has that problem with Russia, in my opinion, that he still. He cannot believe that the Russians wouldn't make a good deal with the Iranians, because look how many Russians have died. And Putin, 100 million Russians could die. That Putin is Stalin. He doesn't care how many Russians die. That's not his. In fact, maybe that's a net positive for him. And we cannot get this into our heads. It's very hard for us to think, well, they're not just going to give up and, like, make a deal, because look how costly this is for them, Right? They don't necessarily see it as a cost.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

They probably don't. But I will tell you one thing, and I have been struck by this. You know, the messaging in this has been pretty interesting. If you look at, like, Abbas Aragchi, the foreign minister, you look at Pizzaski, and you look at some of the other, you know, thugs from the regime. They're trolling us, they're trolling Trump. I don't know if you've seen some of their tweets.

[John Podhoretz]

And these are non IRGC people. You're talking about the political. I know they are connected to the irgc, but these are the political leaders, the head of the parliament, they're the prime minister. They're the.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

They are the figureheads that speak basically

[John Podhoretz]

on behalf of the irgc, and they're the ones who were giving a lot of the direction to the irgc. And they're kind of laughing, right, because they understand that Trump has to play politics and all they have to do is survive. What we really need right now is an information operation that is designed to try to paint a different picture, which is, namely, that this regime, even if it's not true, we should be trying to say that this regime is on the verge of collapse. This is what eventually will bring the people out if they believe that the regime is starting to buckle, if they believe that this regime is hemorrhaging cash, that it's running out of weapons, that it's losing legitimacy, that this was kind of what we saw at the beginning of the war, and Israel was doing a pretty good job of painting that picture. Trump was. Yeah, he was not willing to go that far, but he certainly was telling the people to hold on. And some of that messaging, we've stopped doing that. We're not even trying to delegitimize this regime. I don't know. There is an information strategy that is missing here.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

That if all this regime needs to do is survive, we need to delegitimize the regime.

[Seth Mandel]

The message that the regime is collapsing got completely fouled up with the message that regime change has been achieved and we have the right people and we're speaking to the right people, and they've given us gifts, and they've given indications that they're ready to do this and to do that.

[John Podhoretz]

So

[Seth Mandel]

it's not even a question of whether or not the Iranian people think the regime is strong or weak. They have no. You know, if you're going by that, by the U.S. information, you have no idea what you're dealing with. You have no idea what's on your hands, as do the same with the American public.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

It's a great point.

[Christine Rosen]

And what John was saying earlier about. I think this ties into what John was saying earlier. If you have a president who does foreign. Foreign policy is deal making, it actually can be hard to come up with an information message of that sort, because he's holding out the option of actually negotiating with some of the people who are there. And so that is counterproductive to that form of deal making. And we saw that. I think that's absolutely exactly how he's been handling Putin all this time. And that is a weakness of that form of strategy. Once you've actually started a war. I mean, if you're fighting, then I think that has to be set aside. But the lack of attention to the Iranian people from this administration recently is very disheartening. I will say. Rubio gave some wonderful remarks, just very general remarks about how he sees the role of the US at the press briefing yesterday, I thought he did very well. There's a reason all those remarks went viral. It was a very hopeful, optimistic message about how we see ourselves in the world. And I think that kind of messaging has also been missing. And I mean, we've complained about it here and there. And I think we should all be willing to be patient as a. As he's prosecuting an actual battles, these battles. But it's time now. I mean, this is a sort of crucial moment, and people want to hear some of that. And certainly we owe that to the

[John Podhoretz]

Iranian people, I just think. And now if we sort of move on to Israel a little bit. So Israel's role at the beginning of this war was so crucial because it was Israel's intelligence on where the leadership was, the decapitation effort at the very beginning of the war, Israel's junior partner role in softening sites, targeting things, doing all of that. Israel has receded in part because the aggressive military offensive, military operations have receded, and Israel has turned its attention to Hezbollah in the north. And we have this very strange situation in which, because it is so focused and because it is actually politically so crucial, I think, to be Netanyahu's chances in the election that he be able to say that he made a material difference in ending Hezbollah's reign of air terror in the north, that if we need to go back in, we need to restart the war. We in the United States are going to need Israel's attention, help intelligence focus its ability to do what it has to do to get to maybe stimulate the sources of opposition within the regime, which is its particular strength is human intelligence on the ground inside Iran, knowing what's going on inside Iran. But I'm not saying Israel is distracted. It is engaged in a massive and very important military effort. Can it walk and chew gum at the same time, Jonathan? Can it continue the mission in Lebanon? If Trump, after this, I'm giving you a week to make a deal. Iran and Trump actually does say, okay, we're back on. Hell with you. We're back on, and we're going to do whatever we can to make you, you know, crash and burn. Can Israel go back into Iran while continuing to degrade Hezbollah?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

It can, I think right now, I mean, I see all this as sort of interregnum, right? I mean, we're sort of not at war, but we are at war. There's this question about the Strait of Hormuz and what's going to happen next. You don't see missiles flying into Israel. You don't see sort of, there's not big booms happening. It's a lot of little things that are happening all over. And I think the Israelis are. If you look at actually what's happened over the last couple days, the Israelis took out two very senior Hezbollah leaders within the last 24 hours. They also took out Khalil Al Haya's son. This is a guy from the Nukhba forces in Hamas. So they took out the newly elected, I'm gonna put that in air quotes. But the newly elected leader of Hamas, they took out his son who was a senior figure in the Hamas military. They're notching achievements that are kind of intelligence based achievements right now while they

[John Podhoretz]

wait for some clarity from Trump about what will happen next. Let me just say the concerns that Trump has about munitions, I'm going to assume the same holds for the Israelis. The Pentagon is still the purveyor of those munitions to the Israelis. So they're probably like, yeah, I don't know if we want you to start bombing the hell out of everybody right now because you'd be using the same stuff that we're trying to conserve. So there's some interesting stuff that's happening here. I don't know where it all heads, but I do get a sense that this is and this is not the worst thing in the world. Wars go through ebbs and flows. You see this when you study other wars. There's a moment right now where I think everyone's trying to take stock about what the proper course of action will be for victory. But I think this gets right back to this idea of the siege on Iranian oil. I think it's the way forward, at least for right now. I think hold fast, squeeze them as much as you possibly can, force them to cap the wells, force them to start to suffer economically more than they already are, and see where that takes us without having to expend the munitions and letting Israel continue to fight. I don't wanna say it's tactical because they are taking out strategic targets, but they're doing so in a way that feels wise and measured and opportunistic. And that's not a bad thing for where we are right now. If you think about overall, every one

[Jonathan Schanzer]

of the fronts that Israel's been fighting since October 7, their enemies are weaker and they're going to be weaker for the foreseeable future. And this is to Abe's point. We've already achieved a huge amount in terms of weakening the Islamic Republic and putting it on its back. Foot. All of these things are good now. I think we just sort of find out can the politics and the economic warfare, can that play out in a way that further redounds to our advantage? The thing about all of this, and it does drive me crazy in the age of social media, in the age of this sort of less than 24 hour news cycles, everybody just wants to know did we win like right now, did you, did we get to where we wanted to read some history, guys. War sometimes takes it take a while to play out and I'm not unhappy with where we are. I do think that we're shackled a bit by our own rules. But I do think that if we let this thing play out a bit more, we could get more advantage from it.

[Seth Mandel]

That's such a good.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Can I ask a weird question?

[Seth Mandel]

I just want to say that's such

[John Podhoretz]

a good path, Seth.

[Abe Greenwald]

Go for it.

[Seth Mandel]

Go for it.

[Abe Greenwald]

I was just going to ask like what, what do the Israelis do we know? Do you know, does anybody know what the Israelis know about what's happening day to day? We get a lot of stories about this and we're just, you know, as you said, we're having this discussion about like we don't really know where he's going with stuff. Right. And you know, we had the report we discussed earlier. The Saudis, they knew that there was that they were going to do Project Freedom, but maybe they didn't know that they, that that Trump wasn't going to be willing to retaliate. Got, whatever. What do the Israelis know when you talk about them saying maybe we don't want Trump to use all those munitions because the Pentagon is our source, you know, their source for them too. Whatever. What do they know day to day? What do our allies know day to day? We don't know a lot of stuff. Trump is us thrown for a loop. But is that not the situation elsewhere? Like our. Are the Israelis fully informed about what's going on or does nobody know what trouble like how. What's this? What is the situation there?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

I don't know how to answer that and I'm kind of glad I don't know how to answer that to be honest. I mean that just seems like something I shouldn't know. But I mean, look, I think that there is a general understanding that they need to be smart about how they wage this next phase of the war kinetically, how much they expend and what they target. Because again, if they took out all the major targets that they wanted to, then you know, in that sense, mission accomplished. We've now reached a new phase. The regime is not capitulated. We need to fight smarter now. And I think taking a little time to figure that out is fine. I think everybody understands that that's. That is what is being called for right now, is some wisdom to trying to figure out what is the next strategy. I think if there's any frustration that I feel. And again, getting back to Abe's sort of the Dayenu thing, like, this has all been really good. What I think we didn't. Maybe we didn't think about. When I say we, the Pentagon, the Israelis, what happens if the regime is still standing at the end of all of this? What do we do next? And maybe we didn't have a good sense of that. Maybe we really thought that we were gonna bring it all down and it was all gonna collapse and the people were gonna come out okay. The John Grisham ending did not occur. Okay. What is the Messier way forward, where we still win? I think that's what we're trying to figure out right now.

[John Podhoretz]

And that's not a bad thing, right? These things happen in war, right? Everybody, they always talk about it.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

You know, every plan, every military plan

[John Podhoretz]

looks brilliant until you make contact with the enemy.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

We've made contact. It's worked, but it hasn't worked as

[John Podhoretz]

well as we wanted it to.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

So now what?

[John Podhoretz]

And I think that's what we're trying to figure out. As Trump keeps saying, the door's open for diplomacy, and we've decided not to put our ships in the middle of harm's way. And we've decided not to expend massive amounts of munitions moving forward. But we have an economic war. Follow Scott Besant. Man, that guy, his recent briefings. Gotta keep watching him, because I think this guy is gonna be the new captain for at least a little bit. And I don't mind that, because at least it gives us some sense of, you know, we're making some progress here, we're hurting the regime economically. Let's do more of that.

[Christine Rosen]

Does that, then, you think, require Trump to sort of change the initial four or five goals he gave as the purpose of the war? You know, the nuclear materials, the, you know, the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, there are a couple of things that I think were the touch points for the American people understanding why we were doing this. If those shift is, is it going to require him saying, you know, now we're in this economic war, we're in this blockade, we're doing it this way, because this is what we think is.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Christina, I love that you frame it that way, because it's like there's something like, almost heartwarming about this, as if, like, Trump's statements about the war hold from day to day.

[Christine Rosen]

I'm trying. I'm hanging onto a thread here, right.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

I mean, but you know, what he said he wanted from the beginning of this has changed multiple times. And this is classic Trump, right? He maintains that maximum flexibility, and he continues to.

[John Podhoretz]

It has and it hasn't. I would define it as follows. Part of the problem with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror declared after September 11th, if you remember, George W. Bush literally said this war could take 75 years. You'll see some of it, you won't see others of it, and we are going to fight this and fight it on the beaches and all of that. But then what did that mean? What is this war? What are the aims and the goals? If the goals are to prevent terrorist attacks on US soil, then it's been 25 years, and the war has been wildly successful. If you ask the American people, I think they would say the war on terror had been a failure. One of the reasons they would say that is because we had these defined missions in the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the war in Iraq, we were taking out Saddam Hussein's regime. War in Afghanistan, we were taking out the Taliban. And then the mission had to grow because we couldn't just leave them standing there. And we didn't know if they. The. We didn't know where the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were, which turned out did not exist. And so the wars then distended themselves. I think Trump has defined the terms of this war very clearly. And the thing is, he just has to get to the end of it without tacoing.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

I think that's true.

[John Podhoretz]

One of them.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

But I think to Christine's point, he can continue to pivot on some of the. He can say, look, some of these major goals of ours, they still exist out there, and we're still going to achieve them. But for now, we've got some new challenges ahead of us. Here's what those look like. Here's.

[John Podhoretz]

We have three. I think it's very definable now. One of them came in later, but it was inevitable that it was gonna be there. Right? So the immediate. Which is new because it wasn't part of the first thing is Hormuz has to be taken off the map. The Iranian threat to Hormuz has to be removed, and free transit in Hormuz has to be achieved somehow. That wasn't part of the original goal because Hormuz wasn't closed then. But that's what the war has introduced. That's the enemy's vote.

Yep.

But the other two are. One was not explicit, and one was. The other two are the destruction of the Iranian. The complete destruction, obliteration forever of the Iranian nuclear program, as symbolized now by the physical capture and holding of the Iranian nuclear material. So that is a goal. It's a very ambitious goal. It's a complicated goal because it means going in and digging it out and taking it with you, but it is an explicable goal. The other, which was not a goal, but I think can happen really forever. The other two goals can't be achieved forever without the third goal, which is regime change. In other words, you can't ensure that Hormuz will never be threatened with closure again until you remove the regime that closed it, because it will always have that right.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

You put your finger on it, John. This is our biggest problem. All the other problems are symptoms of the big problem, which is that there is a regime in Iran that is a problem for the entire region. For the United States, it's a blight on the planet. And I think it's increasingly clear right now, as they hold 20% of the world's energy hostage, that this is the problem. And I think. Look, I understand why Trump doesn't wanna go there. I understand why everybody is phobic of regime change after two disastrous attempts at it in the past, and especially in this region. But I think we're just gonna have to get back to the drawing board again. We've reached a different phase in this war, and every phase you're gonna reach, it's gonna require different.

[John Podhoretz]

You can't say he's phobic and everybody's phobic about it, but it seems to me that if we've now gotten to the point where we need to ensure that one of the ends of this war is that nobody ever closed the Strait of Hormuz again or goes around closing straits in the world, then regime change, which once seemed science fictional or too difficult to achieve, may be the easier of the two. In other words, if you change the regime, you could open Hormuz. If you open Hormuz, that doesn't mean you can change the regime or that Hormuz can't be closed again. So that's where the enemy's vote plays a role. Jonathan, I know you Gotta go quickly. So I wanted to just shift to a slightly different topic. We're hearing that the Department of Justice is finally launching some investigations into the bizarre fact of trading on the international betting markets in events surrounding this war. Particularly now, this question of whether or not immense amounts of money were being moved in the hours before Trump declared Operation Project Freedom, that, you know, betting on, I guess, oil futures and where they are and all of that. And this, together with several other things, Special Forces guy who placed a bet as the Maduro raid was going on in Venezuela and others, I think raises a gigantic worldwide problem with the existence of these international betting markets that we have simultaneously liberalized our ideas about gambling across the United States in particular, and sort of making it. The super bowl has. Half the ads on the super bowl are about gambling on the super bowl and that kind of thing, which would have been unimaginable to me, like 30 years ago. And we are now talking about a geopolitical crisis that could be introduced by the fact that somebody somewhere using Bitcoin that no one can track, places $100 million position on something, and that person is in charge of policy in the United States or another country, knows stuff can affect policy one way or the other. It's like Pete Rose betting on his own games. Jonathan, I mean, it just strikes me that this is an entirely new phenomenon. We've spent many wars over the last 200 years. There have been these commissions to deal with people who are war profiteering. This is an entirely different thing here. It's not like getting a government contract to build ships. It is betting on policy changes which can be affected by a very small number of people without moving a lot of levers. It's literally choices inside people's brains, right?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

And look, part of this is insider trading, right? I think we need to start to think about it, really, in those terms. You know, it's illegal in the stock market. It should be illegal on the betting market. And I think we need to have, you know, really much stricter guardrails. When we talk about poly market or when we talk about, you know, taking out positions on energy in advance of a war, during a war, et cetera, all of these things need to be better regulated. And I do have a lot of doubts as to whether the Treasury Department and the Justice Department are fully prepared for the era that we've already entered. I think that that's hugely problematic. I think there's something else, though, that I'm more concerned about right now, and that is the way in which markets have moved in response to a statement by the president or even sometimes the

[John Podhoretz]

spokesperson for the president.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

In other words, oh, well, now we're

[John Podhoretz]

close to a deal and all of a sudden the price of oil drops, right?

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Or I'm going to, you know, we're

[John Podhoretz]

going to bomb this country back to the Stone Age.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

All of a sudden the price of oil, you know, goes sky high. And you can see the way in

[John Podhoretz]

which the markets pivot just on a few words. And this, I don't recall it ever quite being this sensitive and moving in this way.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

And I think there needs to be

[John Podhoretz]

some baseline of understanding about how to regulate all of this. I'm not saying that Donald Trump has

[Jonathan Schanzer]

benefited from this, but I can tell

[John Podhoretz]

you that if people have advanced notice

[Jonathan Schanzer]

of what speechwriters have written for the

[John Podhoretz]

President, that actually represents a huge money making opportunity for, for, as you call them, wartime profiteers. This is an insane thing that I just, it's a new wrinkle in an already complex situation and we need to get a better handle on it.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

But those really are what bothers me.

[Christine Rosen]

There has been some questionable trade and movements in the market just before statements by the president or, you know, changes in policy. I mean, there hasn't been any charges leveled against anyone in the administration. But clearly there's information flowing to that.

[John Podhoretz]

And look, it is an unfortunate fact that everybody, including people who admire Trump, have to deal with that. There is bizarre, nepotistic, double, triple, quadruple dealing going on with the children of members of this administration, not just Trump's own son in law, but Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary's children and others going around the world bitcoining this, that the other thing, playing games with their position that make Hunter Biden's $10 million contracts, you know, look like, you know, look like he won, you know, a gumball out of a gumball machine. Compared to what?

[Abe Greenwald]

There were questions with the Witkoffs also

[Jonathan Schanzer]

while the Witcraft, while one, while Steve

[Abe Greenwald]

was conducting foreign affairs.

[John Podhoretz]

So we are in a very weird position where the administration seems not only not to be thinking that it should be Caesar's wife, but that it should be the Wynn family and betting on their. Or they should be Pete Rose. And that is a kind of permission structure, to use our friend Noah's old term, that suggests a kind of loosening of the, of the grip of proper international hygiene relating to matters that get people killed and that control economies like.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Yeah, John, I'm going to have to jump here in a minute. But the thing that, I mean in addition to just the way that markets have moved in response to speeches that are prepared or sometimes unprepared is certainly one thing that I'm concerned about. The other is these are all at least purportedly moves that are being made in anticipation of policies that, at least in theory, are designed to benefit the United States. The question then becomes, do people start to make moves in the other direction where they undermine the interests of the United States and money is made that way as well? And that is, I think, the real concern here. Right. That with the wrong people having their levers or hands on their levers of power, what does that do? There can be a lot of money made in ways that should make us all very concerned.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay, well, Johnson, Shanza, you gotta go. I want to go on a little further. So, as ever, unbelievably illuminating. And you're in a reasonably good mood, I think, actually for, for you on this show. So I'm glad that, you know, if we're Prozac for you, that's you, you know, that's really. I don't know what, where you were before, but, you know, we're not going

[Christine Rosen]

to have to re examine his life choices if that's true.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

But anyway. All right, guys, take care.

[John Podhoretz]

So I did want to make a recommendation before we go, unless anybody has anything else you want to bring up. Okay. My recommendation is one of the most positive that I have made in the history of the Commentary recommends. It is a memoir by Nicholas Lemon called Returning. I will stipulate that Nick is a friend of mine, though ideologically we are not particularly congruent. But he is a friend of mine. His wife is a friend of mine. His friend, his daughter is a friend of my daughter's. But he is a award winning journalist of 50 years standing, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his remarkable book the Promised Land, wrote a very important book on the SAT called the Big Test, which was, I think, of immense help to Abe when Abe was trying to formulate and deal with articles we started publishing in the early 2010s about what meritocracy meant in the United States and how maybe we shouldn't be standing here on the right defending meritocracy, because what a meritocracy was and had become was different from what we thought it was. And the Big Test played a role in Abe's formulation of those ideas. So he's a somewhat heterodox liberal thinker. But this book, A Search for Home Across Three Centuries, is a memoir about Lemon's family. Very interesting. Journey. He comes from New Orleans, and his family members got to Louisiana in the 1830s or the 1840s and started setting up shop. And his father ended up as his grandfather. His father were important lawyers in New Orleans. After a couple of generations in which they ran plantations, they had slaves, they set up shops, they did various types of things, and yet remained Jews throughout through thick and thin, did not convert out, but led this very peculiar Jewish, ultra Reform Jewish life in New Orleans. His great grandfather came, married a Cajun woman from the area. She converted to Judaism. He actually moved his family to New York in the 1850s so that his children could get some semblance of a Jewish life, since there was literally no community there, but then returned home and built this life and the portrait of this world of Jews who remain Jews, but were unbelievably conscious about not being too Jew, not asserting any kind of pride, identity, or separateness to the extent that they possibly could, since everybody knew who they were, everybody knew what they believed and all of that, there was no need for them to proudly wear the baggage of separation and the kinds of compromises that they made along the way in order to maintain their own viability within the system in this very peculiar Southern city with its own very peculiar set of cultural rules and preconditions. How these people related to Israel, which is, say, they were extremely hostile, how they related to the outward expression of religion and religiosity, to which they were extremely hostile and yet nonetheless remained Jewish. And then along comes Nick Lemmon, who goes off to Harvard like his father and his grandfather, and starts feeling, in his 20s and 30s, starts feeling a pull he cannot understand to understanding the faith of his ancestors. And how that pull gradually dragged him, almost unwillingly, into a form of conservative observance that was disturbing and discomfiting to his father, who had long ago made peace with the idea that it was fine to be a Jew as long as you didn't wear a kippah, as long as you didn't pray openly, as long as you didn't do much and make much of a show of who you were. And it is a uniquely American story. As an American memoir. It stands very much in the, you know, particularly over the last 25 years, as a kind of layered portrait of American history. Personal history, family history, regional history, cultural history, religious history. It's very original. It's beautiful. It's extremely moving. It's like a kind of listening to a great old family saga being spun out over time. That's Returning by Nicholas Lemon I cannot recommend it more highly. And I believe that my special pleading here. Nick's published a bunch of books in the years that we've done the podcast that I've never recommended one. So just to make.

[Christine Rosen]

Just spell his name for our listeners who don't know.

[Jonathan Schanzer]

Yes.

[John Podhoretz]

L, E M A N. Nicholas Lemon. And man, oh, man. Like, did he hit this one? Did he hit this one? Out of the park? So returning by Nicholas Lemon. We'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Seth and Christine, I'm John Budhoritz. Keep the candle burning.