Iran Out Of Time

Summary

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The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: Iran Out of Time

Date: March 2, 2026
Host: John Podhoretz, with Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and Christine Rosen

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the sudden U.S.-led war against Iran, emerging from a weekend of emergency podcasts due to the conflict’s unexpected escalation. The panelists dissect U.S. strategy, military briefings, historical context, and the shifting geopolitical landscape—particularly the debate over whether regime change is a goal. Discussion addresses Trump administration messaging, allied cooperation (especially Israel), Congress’s war powers, and the legacy of decades of U.S.-Iran tensions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Military Briefing and Initial Strikes

[02:06–13:13]

• General Kane’s Morning Briefing: Podhoretz recaps a detailed and reassuring update from the Pentagon, led by General Kane (Joint Chiefs Chair) and Secretary Pete Hegseth.
• U.S. Military Readiness:
  • The war was long in the planning; preparations started a month prior.
  • Admiral Brad Cooper is in overall command, with a joint force leveraging Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Reservists, Space Command, and Cyber Command.
  • Reservists, National Guard units (especially from Wisconsin, Vermont, and Virginia) played an unusually prominent role, moving key assets like F-35s.
• Operational Details:
  • The order to activate was given at 15:38 on Friday, Feb 27. The formal launch struck over 1,000 Iranian targets in just 24 hours.
  • Cyber and space units “layered non-kinetic effects to blind Iran” before kinetic attacks.
  • U.S. and Israel were highly coordinated; Israel confirmed as the group that “got Khamenei.”
• Emphasis on Integration and Professionalism:
  • The briefing highlighted how years of intensive joint-allied exercises led to the “57 hours of unprecedented success.”
• Memorable Quote:
  • “They are achieving unprecedented levels of success in a mission like this, which is unlike any other mission that we have actually undertaken.” — John Podhoretz, [10:58]

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2. What Is the U.S. Mission? Regime Change and War Aims

[13:42–20:25]; [31:09–41:35]

• Administration Messaging:
  • Officials (especially Hegseth) reject that this is a “war of choice” or an explicit effort at regime change.
  • However, panelists note the regime has “surely changed” regardless; confusion exists in public statements about ultimate goals.
  • All Iranian conventional capacity is seen as essentially a nuclear threat by the U.S.; military action aims to neutralize both.
• Balancing Aims & Communication:
  • Calls for clearer presidential communication, especially on American losses, domestic impact (oil, markets), and war scope.
  • Observes that even if regime change is denied, history shows most wars force it in practice.
• Memorable Quotes:
  • “The regime has surely changed. Trump over the weekend...very vague. And then the question of how long it will last...But it is very crucial for this administration to start communicating sooner rather than later about some of their own goals.” — Christine Rosen, [15:59]
  • “Every other war is a regime change war in the sense that...when you’re done, it’s a different regime.” — Seth Mandel, [36:32]
  • “The forever war argument against regime change runs into a problem because the truth is…we’re getting forever wars because we don’t change the regime.” — Seth Mandel, [40:45]

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3. Historical Context: Why Now?

[19:10–29:29]; [23:09–31:09]

• Decades of Iranian Hostilities:
  • Iran’s direct and proxy attacks (U.S. hostages in 1979, Beirut barracks, Iraq casualties, support for anti-U.S. forces) all cited as possible “casus belli.”
  • October 7, 2023, and the Iran-backed multi-front war against Israel presented as the turning point.
  • Panelists argue that the U.S. tolerated Iranian aggression for far too long.
• Reflections on U.S. Policy Mistakes:
  • Critique of prior U.S. reluctance to respond forcefully, thus emboldening Iran.
  • Comparison to missed regime change opportunities in previous wars (Iraq 1991 and 2003, Afghanistan, Vietnam), with debate on the wisdom of “nation-building” vs. punishing/enforcing security measures.

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4. Legal and Congressional Dynamics

[49:46–56:03]

• Debate on War Authorization:
  • Some critics demand Trump should have sought Congressional approval; panelists argue operational secrecy and force protection preclude this.
  • Staff and leadership were briefed; however, Congress avoided a formal vote to keep political hands “clean.”
  • War Powers Act invoked: 60-day window for formal Congressional declaration.
• Memorable Quotes:
  • "If you go to Congress...in a circumstance like this, you want to move first to take out the offensive material that might hit you once you know that a war is starting." — John Podhoretz, [51:21]
  • “A lot of those claims are actual weasel words to prevent members of Congress themselves from taking a stand on what we’re doing in Iran.” — Christine Rosen, [53:25]

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5. International Scene: Coalitions and the UN

[59:01–64:11]

• Multilateralism Redefined:
  • Whereas Bush “begged” for UN and European approval in Iraq, today U.S. is “not even pretending” to involve such institutions (or sees them as obsolete).
  • Modern coalition—the U.S., Israel, and key Arab allies—is more effective than securing European, British, or UN backing.
  • Memorable exchange at the U.N.: Danny Danon (Israel) rebuking the Iranian representative, drawing applause for moral clarity.
• Memorable Quotes:
  • “If we have a multilateral coalition that includes the Arab states and the Jewish state, that’s multilateral to me.” — Seth Mandel, [61:06]
  • “This is the formation of an entirely new understanding of what it means to make alliances in the 21st century. The UN is an artifact and a relic.” — John Podhoretz, [63:46]

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6. Political Fallout and Domestic Implications

• Trump’s Historical Hawkishness on Iran:
  • Trump’s consistent aggression towards Iran (dating to 1980) cited, challenging “new right” complaints the war is uncharacteristic.
  • “Disaffected right” criticized for missing historical context—“childishness” and Dungeons & Dragons fantasies about being “co-opted by Israel.”
• Upcoming Domestic Pressures:
  • Oil prices, casualties, and new troop deployments will test American public patience and demand more presidential communication.
  • Congress’s reluctance to engage seen as a function of risk aversion rather than principle.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

[10:58] “They are achieving unprecedented levels of success in a mission like this, which is unlike any other mission that we have actually undertaken.”
— John Podhoretz

[15:59] “The regime has surely changed… But it is very crucial for this administration to start communicating sooner rather than later about some of their own goals.”
— Christine Rosen

[36:32] “Every other war is a regime change war...when you’re done, it’s a different regime...that is the end goal of fighting your enemy.”
— Seth Mandel

[40:45] “The forever war argument against regime change runs into a problem because… we’re getting forever wars because we don’t change the regime.”
— Seth Mandel

[53:25] “A lot of those claims are actual weasel words to prevent members of Congress themselves from taking a stand on what we’re doing in Iran.”
— Christine Rosen

[63:46] “This is the formation of an entirely new understanding of what it means to make alliances in the 21st century. The UN is an artifact and a relic.”
— John Podhoretz

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:06–13:13] – Recap of military briefing; war origins and execution
• [13:42–20:25] – Debate over regime change, war aims, and casualties
• [23:09–31:09] – Historical “casus belli” and evolving U.S.-Iran strategy
• [31:09–41:35] – Regime change: history, political realities, and the logic of war
• [49:46–56:03] – Congressional/war powers debate and legal justification
• [59:01–64:11] – Evolution of coalitions, the UN’s obsolescence, multilateralism
• [67:43–68:35] – The “disaffected right” and historical amnesia about Trump and Iran

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Secondary Themes

• Learning from Past Conflicts: Targeting not just top leadership but the repressive enforcement infrastructure within Iran may demonstrate lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Political and Public Messaging: The hosts emphasize both the need for clarity about war aims and for preparing Americans for inevitable casualties and economic disruptions.
• International Legitimacy and the UN: Institutional legitimacy is now less important than functional coalitions, particularly in light of new Middle Eastern alignments.

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Concluding Thoughts

The episode makes clear that the U.S. response to Iran represents not only a military turning point but a significant philosophical and geopolitical inflection for American strategy. The hosts urge listeners to look beyond reflexive anti-war talking points or simplistic regime change arguments and grapple with the complex realities of deterrence, coalition-building, and America’s evolving global posture.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hope for the best, expect the worst. Some drink champagne, Some die of thirst. The way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best, expect the worst. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Monday, March 2, 2026. And I'm laughing because this is our effort to start the show because twice before I said that it was March 3rd. So I am amused that it. That this simple matter of counting is beyond me. Maybe that's because we did two emergency podcasts this weekend with the start of the war. And so I'm therefore, you know, I'm living in a perpetual past, present, future, and can't get the dates right. This is not a problem for my co panelists here, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[C]

Hi, John.

[B]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[A]

Hi, John.

[D]

And don't worry, we're all still writing March 3rd on our checks.

[B]

There we go. Let's not get into the checks thing again. We already had a whole, like, whole podcast that jumped off you making a joke about checks. And also, of course, social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[A]

Hi, John. I was going to make a joke about you all abusing our emergency podcast powers, but I'll just let that one go.

[B]

You mean we need to go to Congress to authorize.

[A]

Did not seek congressional approval for two podcasts.

[B]

I mean, you know, we, you know, the war powers act, 60 days. That's right, yeah. To, to be fully authorized. Okay. So this morning, about an hour before we started recording this, Pete Hegseth and General Kane, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a joint press conference. A lot of whining over the weekend about how we weren't getting enough information out of the administration. Which is funny because it's like we live in this hyped up 24 hour, you know, like 300. And it was a 60 second, 60 minute, 24 hour, you know, like if we don't hear from them every five minutes, it's like they're not telling us what's going on. To be fair to Secretary Hegseth and to General Kane, they're running a war. So like, give them a Break. So they did their initial briefing this morning and it was very illuminative and instructive. And I want to just go through some of the things that we heard pretty much from General Kane. Hegseth started and did a lot of rah rah stuff and, you know, attacking previous administrations for not being as brave as we are and all of that. And we can sort of put that to one side. Here are the things that we learned from General Kane. So the General Schwarzkopf of this war, the guy who seems to be running the war, is Admiral Brad Cooper. This is his joint command. He is overseeing it, along with Fleetmaster Chief Compton, General Pat Frank, who is running sort of the counter missile and counter drone activities. Kurt Renshaw, who is, who is leading the fight against the Iranian Navy and Air Force lieutenant leader of Air Force leading figure Derek France, who is, as General Kane said, crushing Iranian targets from the air. The Space Command, the US Cyber Command, both heavily involved, particularly at the very beginning of the war or in the hour just before everything went active in order to disrupt the command, control, communications capabilities of the Iranians. And what we learned is, I think effectively that it was a month ago, at the very beginning of February, that the command was given to get every, to, to get everything in place to strike. So he said, over the last 30 days, we moved our forces to, quote, reinforce deterrence and provide Americans with credible options. And the joint force began to move, to be postured, protected and ready to respond. Thousands of service members, hundreds of fighters, dozens of fueling tankers. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which was elsewhere in, in the Western Hemisphere, redeployed across the Atlantic to set the theater. They took a deep breath and began planning to conduct operations. And then, uniquely in my experience of these sorts of briefings from Schwarzkopf and from Powell and from others over the last 35 years, he highlighted the work of reservists. The Wisconsin Army National Guard and Air National Guard units, including Vermont and Virginia, said that it was their job to fly F35s to the region to put them in place, that the reservists here played an active role in preparing and making ready. And he said he wanted to shout out, the unsung heroes of warfare are logisticians and sustainment force who are sitting in control room somewhere watching everything, making sure that material is being deployed in the right place. Sort of like a kind of supply chain logistics thing. And then he said, At 15:38 on Friday 27th February, Centcom received the final go order from Trump. In the region, every element made their final preparations. Operational security was paramount as we sought to maintain in surprise and maintain the element of surprise. That was when Cybercom and spacecom started layering non kinetic effects on to blind Iran. And at 1:15 local 9:45 Iran time, the skies surged to light. He said more than 100 fighters, drones moved synchronously. First Tomahawk missiles closed in on Iranian naval forces. On the ground, precision standoff weapons. A massive overwhelming attack striking more than 1,000 targets in 24 hours. And the point that he was trying to make not only served, it wasn't just to be self congratulatory, was we have spent years learning how to integrate our forces. Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, Reservists, SpaceCom, you know, CyberCon. All of this working painstakingly, training with allies, not only Israel, but the UAE and others. And the, all of this training, all of this work, all of this preparedness came together when it needed to come together in what he clearly believes was 57 hours of an extraordinarily successful initial effort to achieve the goals of this military action against Iran. I found it listening to him, as is true, when you like, hear an extremely assured, extremely competent person laying out what, what is going on? I found it very reassuring, comforting. He wanted people to understand. He said, I wish that the American people could hear what it sounds like on the voice communications as I have from these joint communication centers, as they are transmitting messages across all of these different divisions of our military and elsewhere, how they remain calm and cool as they execute. So professionalism, he said they were steady, frosty, calm and focused. Our service members are trained, disciplined and determined. And so if you, you know, this, this what, what he was conveying was the sense that they know what they're doing, they know what they're doing logistically, they know what they're doing tactically, they are achieving unprecedented levels of success in a mission like this, which is unlike any other mission that we have actually undertaken. And we got an answer, by the way, to the question which has been raised over the weekend about who hit Khamenei. Because there were two different stories going around. The initial story was that the Israelis hit Khamenei and then Trump said, I got him. And then there were other stories about how actually the Americans hit Khamenei. And, and in fact Hegseth confirmed that it was Israel and said they did a great job. And Hegseth was full of praise for Israel, contrasting Israel with other allies whom he was relatively contemptuous of. I Assume he is referring to Keir Starmer, whose behavior over the weekend as he desperately attempts to keep his weird Labor Party coalition together so so much of which depends on Muslim support inside inside Great Britain that he was inconstant, weird, weak, then finally agreed to participate in in some fashion. So if you get a chance to listen to General Kane's briefing, which I think you can go to C SPAN and find it, or I'm sure it's on YouTube, you should do so. Hegseth's behavior was a slightly different matter, but so that that's where we are this morning with a real sense of he said we have control of the skies and that we are broadening our targets and that what his job and the job of the military now and Hegsa said this too is to present the president with as many options and to make sure that we know as much as we can to know where we need to go next to achieve our goal, which is they are not saying that the goal is regime change. They continue not to say that the goal is regime change. In fact, Tegsoft attacked the idea of regime change. But what they have said and what they said on background yesterday and what their saying this morning is that all Iranian military capacity, all conventional Iranian military capacity is a cover for the nuclear program. And that one of the reasons that it was necessary to go to war was that as we sat there trying to figure out what our options were, Iran was sitting there with conventional weapons. Those are the ballistic missiles in particular. But that the entire ballistic missile program, which could then be deployed as a conventional strike force, is really there in the end to be ready to deliver nuclear material if and when they get to the point that they can have nuclear material. So there is no division between the conventional buildup of of Iranian weaponry and the nuclear program of Iran. And so this argument that this was a war of choice and we didn't have to do it and there was no imminent threat, as it happens, there was an imminent threat to our forces gathered in the Middle East. If we're steaming in and we're just going to sit there, we could be sitting ducks if we don't go first, which is part which I think was part of the motivation for going along with the fact that they heard that everybody was gathering in that one site and that Israel could hit that one site and take and decapitate the leadership. So that's my summary of what we learned this morning. 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[C]

It was such a good, capable summary that it by turn left me feeling comforted and secure.

[B]

Well, that's my goal. If I can comfort you, I can comfort our listeners.

[A]

You're like our emotional support host.

[C]

Yes, I have.

[A]

I'm gonna, I'm gonna disrupt your comfort a tiny bit with a few questions that I think the American people still have and that will, I assume, will be answered in due course by the administration, particularly because Trump, as we know, has issued these two videos, but hasn't yet really faced one on one with the media answering questions. So, as many of our listeners know, I'm not a super fan of Pete Hegseth by any means, but I think one thing he did this morning that was really useful and helpful and I'd like to see everyone in the administration continue to do this, is not, is push back on the idea that this was a war of choice by Trump. Trump's war is how it's all being described in sort of mainstream media outlets. He correctly said there is a whole history, this is an ongoing conflict that we have had with Iran. He listed some of, you know, many of the times when Iran has murdered our civilians, murdered our soldiers. And I think it's important, important to keep that context always in front of any discussion of what is coming next. Because right now we've had some mixed signals. You know, you're right that Hegseth said it's not a regime change war, but the regime has surely changed. Trump over the weekend, you know, sort of saying things like, well, you know, we don't, they're bad guys, we want them out. Well, you know, but the Iranian people will rise up and take their country back. Very vague. And then these, the question of how long it will last, you know, we've heard four or five weeks, we've heard, you know, lots of different things. That's completely normal in a circumstance like this. I understand that. But it is very crucial for this administration to start communicating sooner rather than later about some of their own goals as, as they come into more clarity for the administrators and their war planners. But I will commend Hegseth for that. I also think we need to spend a moment saying we. I mean, we're certainly sharing in the sad news that we've already lost a few American service members and General Kaine's acknowledgment that we will lose more. This is a war. People are going to die. And I think that also has to be something that Americans are prepared for, because that is not the normal situation for us in this country, thank God. But this is something where that question has to be answered by the administration. I think Trump will probably be pretty good at that. And he has a publicly available media thing this afternoon. We'll see if he takes questions on those. So I'm, and I'm also, I wasn't here over the weekend to share in the emergency podcast, but I'm just, I'm so happy for the Iranian people who have, who, although in a very difficult situation right now, have this opportunity to have been liberated from a theocratic regime, particularly Iranian women who've been repressed by this regime for so long. So there's a lot of, I hope, hopefulness in some of the remarks that, that Trump will make when he does engage the American people again on this question.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, I think part of what we're seeing also is that there are so many reasons to hit back at Iran that people who are, that, you know, when we're concerned, we're hearing conflicted justifications for the attacks. It's not really that we're hearing conflicting justifications. It's. We're hearing different ones that are all valid. Right. I mean, that I think is, you know, they, they. There's no question that Iran poses a threat to American troops in the region. Last year, their proxy killed three, two American service members, too, in Jordan.

[A]

I think you're right. It was three. I think it was three.

[D]

It was three. I thought it was. So, you know, that's a recent thing that their proxies, you know, during a war against Israel, their proxies also targeted and killed Americans on a base in Jordan. That's. There isn't really a question that that's a threat. There isn't a question that they want nuclear weapons because they keep saying, no, you could give us all the free nuclear fuel and whatever else we, you know, we want. We offered them everything and that they could possibly need for civilian purposes. We offered them to have the energy and the fuel without having to even refine it and make it. I mean, we Basically just offered to, to spoon feed them, you know, whatever they wanted. And they said, no, we, we, we're going to. So we know that they're building a pro. We know that they want nuclear weapons. And then the third one was, is the proxies, again, all of this, the Americans that Iran's proxies killed last year. That, it, that, that's, that's two different categories, right? One of it is Iran is a threat to Americans in the region. And two, Iran's proxies have to be reined in and have to be stopped because they're killing people, they're killing innocent people. They're killing Americans, are obviously killing Israelis. And so, you know what I think we're seeing is that, like, what's the first one that comes to mind when you ask somebody why we're attacking Iran now? You get like the first thing that comes to their mind. But they could list all these different things, and it's, it's not too concerning to me to hear one member of the government say, we don't trust what they're doing on their nuclear program, and a different member of the same administration say, well, they won't rein in their proxies and they're a threat to American troops in the region.

[C]

You know what, what's come to mind for me as this whole war has unfolded is this idea that, you know, people like us have been saying for a very long time, but it, it makes it so crystal clear that there has long been in place this kind of absurdity to our posture for decades that we even let Iran get anywhere near to this point in terms of its regional power, in terms of its arms buildup, in terms of its saber rattling, in terms of its expanding its power beyond the region, in terms of its going unavenged, our American deaths, Iranian hands having gone unavenged for decades. So it seems like a sort of cosmic. It's not even cosmic. A real world writing of just this crazy thing that we let get out of hand with our fingers crossed and a bunch of band AIDS, you know, 50 years worth of band aids.

[B]

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[D]

Right? And it's also like, so after 50 years you hit. It's like if somebody you know were were hitting you for 50 years and after 50 years you hit them back. And what does the World say, well, what's your plan exactly, Abe?

[B]

Right? I mean look, this isn't a plan

[D]

back after 50 years. But what's your plan?

[B]

I mean the point I think that is important about this 47 year conflict between Iran and the United States is that we there. If you want what would the plural is it, would it be cassi belli? Like you know, if you want casus belli to explain the just justification for a war, right, the cause of war, the reason that a war takes place. There have been 20 legitimate individual casus belli. Iran has been responsible for that. We could have justly, according to any understanding of just war, have launched a war to fight against not only the taking of the hostages, which was, which was the original, but attacks on our people in the, you know, in Iraq in the, in the 2000s. Direct, direct uses of Iranian proxies and, and probably regular Iranian forces inside Iraq to kill soldiers. I think our count is that 600Americans died directly at the hands of Iran during the, during the war in Iraq. Remember, the entire war in Iraq was 4400 casualties. So we're again playing commentary math here. But that's like, you know, a seventh to an eighth of the casualties in Iraq directly caused or deaths in Iraq directly caused by Iran and various other incidents. The also the Beirut barracks bombing which was done by Hezbollah, which is.

[D]

And in Iraq they got Iranian material also. So you had non Iranian militias killing American troops with IEDs that they got from Iran.

[B]

So over and over and over again they attacked us and we did not respond. But you know, is there like a statute of limitations? Is that what we'd sort of be. It's like, well, if you don't do it immediately, it doesn't count. The point here is that Iran as a destabilizing force kicked into high gear on October 7, 2023. Now they did not directly attack us, they attacked an ally of ours, but on seven fronts. Iran went to war with Israel on seven fronts in an effort to where Israel had to go to war with Iran on seven fronts may be another way to put it. But had Israel not prevailed, Iran would have restructured the geopolitical landscape of the Middle east very much in its own favor. In a way that would have been a direct threat to us. I mean, without question, you know, they would have then had dominant not only sort of re. Establish their domination of most of Lebanon, solidify their position in Syria, strengthen their position vis a vis the Gulf states that don't, that are worried about them, meaning Saudi Arabia and others weakened Israel, strengthened Hamas and strengthened Yemen. And so they, that was a direct sort of threat to the United States. Israel dealt with it and we then dealt with it with Israel by, by doing Operation Midnight Hammer. And as I think Brett Stevens said in his piece, but a couple of other people have said, after Operation Midnight Hammer, the Iranians could have said, okay, we're done. We're not going to reconstitute our ballistic missiles. We're not going to try to reconstitute our nuclear program. We're done. We're licked. You know what? This has been a stupid 20 year effort at nothing cost us, you know, untold billions of dollars. All of our scientists have been murdered. We've been penetrated like no country has ever been penetrated by enemy intelligence services. You know what, Gnug, we're okay, we're going to move on. And they didn't, they started buying material from, they're saying, importing things from China, buying material from North Korea, maybe taking stuff in from Russia and just go like, like, just okay, we're, we're up again. And that's a we. If you think about it, they didn't have to do that. Like maybe they thought they would have to do it because like Saddam Hussein, they would think that if the Iranian people knew that they were no longer aggressively pursuing this aim, that that would be the moment at which they would look so weak that the Iranian people would rise up to take them down. But again, counter history weird. They say, okay, we're done. And then America goes, okay, well we see you're done. We see you're like decommissioning all of these plans, everyone's going home and all that. We'll relax some sanctions. We have these hyper sanctions on you that are all based on this. You stop doing. And then in December of 2025, the real isn't worth zero, doesn't go to worthlessness. Iran's in a perfectly fine place financially or not fine, but you know, is not. And then there isn't an uprising. And then all of this clock doesn't start ticking. I mean, they brought this on themselves. They could have, they could have accepted and acknowledged that their nuclear program and their ballistic missile program was something that we viewed as an act of threat and that they should stand down and they didn't stand down.

[C]

This gets to a bigger, larger point and it gets to a topic that no one likes to talk about anymore because then we start throwing around labeled neocon and this and that. The truth is, I don't want to share the planet with terrorist regimes, not merely because they do bad things to other people. And that may or may not affect us, and maybe it's none of our business and all that. There is a much more practical aspect to why we should not tolerate terrorist regimes. They don't recognize lanes. You cannot expect them to stay in their lane. Their mission is to obliterate lanes. They are terrorist regimes for a reason, which is that they are trying to break down the system of which we are a part of. And if you let that go, or if you try to give it a little bit here, take a little bit there, over time the problem inevitably metastasizes. And that is what we're looking at. And I'm sorry, you can call it neoconservatism, you can call it whatever you want. It's just a simple fact of history that that is what has got us where we are today.

[B]

So let's talk about this question of whether or not this is a war for regime change or not a war for regime change, because I remain puzzled by and Hegseth began the morning by saying we're not stupid like other presidents. We're not going around with open ended missions of nation building and regime change. You know, Donald Trump is smarter than that and he has other things in his quiver. So I was trying to recreate in my head how regime change became the term of art here to describe our mission after the collapse of the Soviets and the Cold War, because we had never. This was not a term that was in use. We were not ever before. Like we were not looking to change, to do regime change. So why was this the term? And I think oddly it was an effort, though it now means the opposite to many people at modesty. That is to say we were going into war with Iraq in particular, but with Afghanistan. But our purpose was not to defeat the nation of Iraq or to defeat the nation of Afghanistan. We Bush said it about Afghanistan and said it about our beef was not with the people. Our beef was with the tyrannical leaders who were oppressing the people and doing thing bad things to us. So if we go to war with them, all we're trying to do is remove the bad guys who threaten us. And then you get your country back. And we'll give you a hand when it comes to what happens after. We'll help you establish a system of elections. We'll bring in NGOs to help run those elections since you haven't had them in a long time. Or we could use your local traditions like Loya Jirga tribal meetings and things like that to try to reconstitute this. We don't have a beef with you Iraqis. We don't have a beef with you Afghanis. In fact, we'd like to help you because we understand what monster we have had to deal with the monstrousness of your regimes. You're living with it. We're going to help you. It was an effort at a kind of, you know, we don't have to go in and do what we did to Nazi Germany and to Imperial Japan and obliterate those, break the backs and wills and spirits of the entire country so that they knew they could not get off the floor or try to get off the floor or try to establish counterinsurgencies or whatever. Right. That wasn't what we were up to. So in a weird way, they're way more hawkish. Trump and Hegseth and these guys are way more hawkish than the neocons.

[A]

This is. Well, but this is interesting because one of the, one of the mistakes, I think looking back on some of the both the first and the second Gulf War conflicts and then Afghanistan slightly separately, but that inability to kind of understand just how long and punishing we needed to be to get to the point where the people would be able to create their own more functioning way of life in government, we miscalculated on a lot of those. And I think what's interesting about this conflict is looking at, after the first several thousand targets that US And Israel have struck in Iran, look at the targets they're doing in the last 24, 36 hours. These are smaller security areas in, in the country, many of them along the borders of Iran. And these are the places where the most punishing security forces who keep the population in line, the people who were shooting at protesters, the ones who were in regional areas trying to quell these uprisings, we are striking those now quite vigorously and intentionally. And I think that is a sign of, I hope, a lesson learned from previous conflicts where you can't just take out the guy at the top and one or two of his henchmen, because there's this entire superstructure in countries like Iran of enforcement, and some of it's quite localized, but it reports to the top. But you do have to take out those units as well, because if you're going to rebuild, if you're, and this is another question I think Americans should be asking, who will be leading Iran in the near future and in the long term, you have to take those people out. And we were unsuccessful in doing that in some of our previous conflicts, we stopped too soon, we withdrew too soon. And there's lots of arguments about, about that, that over the years we've all had. But I think in Iran, I hope to see that lesson continue to be pursued because the people of Iran will have no choice and have no options if those, if that level of security, state intervention, they are armed and they are perhaps willing to shift their loyalty to someone new. If they're willing to continue to enforce the theocratic regime's vision for what Iran should be in the region, then we're going to be right back where we started.

[C]

I just want to say I think there's something kind of silly about or that's exposed that's silly about this regime change. Knock, you know, because everyone's, everyone's. No regime change. No regime change unless you go to war with another country for a piece of land like Azerbaijan and Armenia, or to capture the entire country like Putin and going into Ukraine. Every other war is a regime change war in the sense that if you have a problem with another state power, you're fighting to change that regime, either personnel or when you're done, it's a different regime. We could be the same people, but it's not acting as the same regime. That is the point of an actual war with another country. Unless I said, unless it's about land. That, that is, that is what. That is the end goal of, of fighting your enemy. I mean, you don't, you don't, you don't want to end the fight with the same enemy in place. So it is by definition regime change that you're looking for.

[B]

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[D]

you look at the literature on this is basically not the bringing political science, but it's the only way wars have ended, right? It's not. It's not even just the goal of the war, it's the only way wars end. If you look throughout history, the way to end a war is to change a regime and get a more pliant regime in place that is willing to play by the rules that you want them to play by. Now you can argue, you know, whether that's right or not, blah blah blah. The point is that that's how wars end and that in the real world that that's how wars end. And so the forever war argument against regime change runs into a problem because the truth is that we're Getting forever wars because we don't change the regime, and the regime changes how you usually end the war.

[B]

That's a really important.

[A]

Picked the wrong. I mean, I'm sorry, the whole history of Iran, the Shah instantly. I mean, we have in the past exercised that power in ways that have ended badly. Perhaps not the goal, but we have often put our weight behind regimes that we've, you know, held up a little bit in Iran, too. And the people turned against that. That.

[B]

I don't think that's right about Iran, but I do think, for example, that we did weird things in the. In, you know, in the early days of our conflict in Vietnam. You know, we interceded to remove DIEM and in 63 and change the government in Vietnam to one, because we didn't think that they were in the right frame to do what we needed to do. And that was clearly a catastrophic error. But that was regime change in pursuit of a. Of. That was a friendly that we were on. They were on our. We were on their side. And then we wanted to do regime change. We've had. We've had that. Like, we worked to change the political culture in El Salvador while we were helping El Salvador fight. Fight the communist rebels in El Salvador successfully, as it happens. So there is regime. There have been regime changes, often friendly, the other. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's. It's really bad. The United States is unique probably in world history in that almost all wars are fought for, you know, like two or three different reasons, right? Either seizure of land because of. Because that's what you do. And you want to admit. You want to glorify yourself and make your country bigger and grander and dominate your neighbors. And that's, you know what. That's Alexander the Great. You know, like, you go out in order. That's. That's. That's your purpose. Or you want resources. You want to take somebody. Somebody's got something you want. You want to take it from them because it's valuable either, you know, route to the sea for trading. And in the. In the 19, as the industrial revolution progressed, getting hold of raw materials that are necessary for the creation of the modern industrial state. We in the last 40 years, have been fighting wars in a totally unique fashion. You know, we go into. We go. We stage this massive war against Iran, Iraq, in 1990, for the purpose of pushing Iraq out of a third country that it had invaded, which was great. But then we stopped because we had defined the war as Saddam Hussein needs to be out of Kuwait. We didn't Say as Seth, which is why that war ended up being a failure long term. Obviously, since we had to go in, we went in 12 years later. We didn't say, well, because he did this, he's gotta go. Because if we let him stay there, he'll do a lot of other bad stuff. He's a bad actor. He's been a bad actor for 20 years. He started a war with Iran. You know, like, we're not just sending in 500,000 people to fight in the Gulf to take out. To remove him from Kuwait. And then. And then Colin Powell says to George Bush, we should stop now because then we're just gonna, you know, like, get everybody mad or something like that, you know, so that's like the original. The original sin in some ways was not doing what Seth says, which is the obvious logic is we just had to go fight a gigantic war, do this, something we didn't want to do, and the person who was responsible for it can't be left standing. It's crazy. If you go back and think about it, what 47 countries go to war to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and then Saddam Hussein is still in power 12 years later. What the hell was that about? That's not rational. Because we are not an imperial power, despite what everybody thinks. Because we were so worried that that would look like imperialism, that we. That we stopped. And then we're like, oh, yeah, it's okay. Go kill the Kurds as they try to rise up against you. We're going to let you fly your helicopters because you say you need to get around, so then you'll just kill thousands of Kurds. That was our contribution to the good working order of the world after we had succeeded in this mission to get him out of Kuwait. So we didn't pursue regime change there, ruinously had to go back. And similarly, we would never have gone into Afghanistan in a million years except that they hosted Al Qaeda on their territory. And that's the other reason you go to war, which is you have to go to war to revenge an injury that has done you, or to. And revenge. I use the word revenge honestly, like, for some reason people think revenge is bad. I don't think revenge is bad. You know, we say in Judaism, when somebody is murdered, may God avenge their blood. Like, you don't treat a murder as though it is the same as a natural death. And you don't treat and, you know, an aggressive act of war against you or, you know, murder of thousands of your people as though it is something for which you know, you should mourn and then feel sorry and think that the people who did it should ask for forgiveness so there's revenge. But then you want to then do something more, you know, useful or, like, better for the world. So you, you have to go in, you have to take out the Taliban. And then the question is, what, what, what follows that? And as Charlie Wilson, I quoted yesterday as Charlie Wilson, Representative Charlie Wilson said, we did great. And then we effed up the end game because we went in, we helped them, we set up elections, we did this, we did that. And then we took our eye off the ball and we kind of left. And then the Taliban started reconstituting themselves. And then at the end of the decade, we had to go back in with 150,000 people to try to get Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban. And then we, we were in this war of attrition for another decade until Biden made the catastrophic error to pull us out, thus leading Putin to believe that he had a green light to go into Ukraine and that thus the 2000s turned into the. What the 2000s turned into.

[A]

Well, I mean, we are, we are projecting forward a lot because right now, I think Trump is going to do fine doing what he's done so far, which is saying, you know, I think he told CNN this morning, like, we're beating the crap out of him, the newer wave is coming. And he can, he can talk about the ongoing attacks and hits and what, what we're achieving strategically. But very soon, he's going to have to speak to the domestic impact of this. Americans are usually going to be pretty tolerant for a few days or weeks about that. But then, you know, oil prices are going to probably increase already, have started increasing. You have questions about whether, whether and how many troops will be in the region. They have announced that they're sending more troops to the region, and they're kg on, you know, troops on the ground versus, you know, support troops. So those are completely legitimate questions for the American people to have of this administration. And that's where I think it's been interesting to see how much control over the public messaging they've had over Trump for the last few days. But he will have to talk about that. He will have to say, these are our goals. When we reach these goals, this will be. Will consider this a victory. We're doing this, this and this. And we can expect, you know, some loss of life. We can expect some turmoil in the markets. The stock market is down. So all of these are Issues that come up in any conflict that we start to pursue. But he has to be a good spokesman in these times. This is literally the President's role as commander in chief is not just to lead this extensive strategic mission with our allies, but to talk to the American people about what he's doing and why.

[B]

I want to point out one other interesting thing that Cain said that speaks to a different political issue that people have been raising. It seems to me a disingenuous thing. I mean, I believe it constitutionally, but I don't believe in the seriousness of purpose of the people who are making the claim that Trump needed to go to Congress for an authorization of this effort. He should have gone to Congress, either gotten a declaration of war or some version of the authorization for the use of military force like we did with Iraq. Kaine, if I can find the quote, because I stupidly closed this file, Cain basically said that they needed to maintain operational security paramount as we sought to maintain and protect the element of surprise. So here's the question I want to ask you. While people say should have gone to Congress and you know, Josh Shapiro said he should have gone to Congress and David French says he should have gone to Congress and Andy McCarthy said he would have preferred that he went to Congress and, you know, did all these, you know, senators, they should have gone to Congress. Okay, imagine he goes to Congress. Are we maintaining operational security? And surprise.

[A]

Well, and he did go. He briefed the leadership, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. They, they were briefed before this event. Sound as if they were caught, you know. Yeah, by surprise. He, they were briefed.

[B]

Literally, literally. If we are with troop, with forces in the region, then Trump says, hi, Congress, please vote on an authorization of military. No, do it now, whatever. And this was the point that was made in this background briefing, that, which is extensively detailed in Axios by Mark Caputo and Barack Ravid, that if you go to Congress, like they have all these ballistic missiles and our ships are sitting there and our bases are sitting there and the Israelis are sitting and we're not moving. So in a circumstance like this, you want to move first to take out the offensive material that might hit you once you know that a war is starting. If we had a two week period in which we had a national debate over whether or not to undertake this mission, a national debate which is what essentially people are trying to use as a, as a, as a cover for their keeping themselves at arm's length from saying whether or not they support what we're doing. That is jeopardizes the safety of American forces worldwide and the ones in the theater from surprise Iranian attack. Number one. And number two, and let's now talk tacless like you seriously expect that it wouldn't leak out of a meeting if there was like a big briefing of the Senate or of the, of the House of what's going on and what we might do. I don't trust those guys. I don't know if we were in a better position and this weren't the world that we live in right now. They wouldn't. But you think Elizabeth Warren wouldn't go out and tell everybody what what was being planned or Chris Van Hollen or somebody like that? They can't be allowed to know ourselves.

[A]

The Office of Legal Counsel in previous conflicts has given a lot of thought to the legality of these sorts of strikes. My colleague Jack Goldsmith at AEI writes about this a lot. He, he has a good sort of summary of where the legal justification is for this. Regardless of what you think about whether we should be there or not, there are plenty of legal justifications for the short term. He's got some time and some leeway as the commander in chief. I do think that we, if this is going to extend into a conflict of many months and more troops and more lives are lost, then that actually is where Congress needs to assert itself and say you got to come here and you got to, you got to talk about and lay out for us to strategically what the plan is and that. So we will see if this is a sort of quick, I think Trump's preference, this administration's preference is for something quick and done and we're out of there. But, but we'll see if he, if he wants to send more troops and he's going to need more munitions and we're going to, it's going to look more like a traditional war. Yes, he has to go to Congress, but for now he's got a window of time where I think you're right, John. A lot of those claims are actual weasel words to prevent members of Congress themselves from taking a stand on what we're doing in Iran.

[B]

Just quickly, just quickly. Mike Johnson has said or said last night that the House would take up the War Powers act on Thursday. I believe so that and the War Powers act as it, as its constitute, you pass the War Powers act and the president has essentially 60 days to go and ask for a formal declaration of war. That was how it was sort of like written in the 70s in an effort to make sure that we did not repeat the Vietnam situation in which we were at war in a conventional standing war with hundreds of thousands of people. And Congress had done nothing to say that it was, that it was, except appropriate money to say that it was a war that we should fight. So as it happens, the War Powers act kind of worked in reverse, basically giving presidents a free hand to act in some ways or having a defensible claim, as Jack Goldsmith says, having a defensible claim that, that, that the, that the thing, the congressional role is only necessarily triggered 60 days after, or, you know, the, the full involvement of the legislative branch is only triggered 60 days after the beginning of hostilities. So that may happen this week. I don't know what it, what the Senate is up to or will be about. And, but that, that's, that's, that's on the table.

[C]

I was just going to say it's not just that Congress doesn't want to have to take a stand on the war, it's that the Democrats and a few Republicans want to preserve the ability to attack Trump over it. Should anything go wrong.

[B]

That's, yeah, I mean, or, or to jump on the bandwagon, should everything go right. Let's do it in reverse here or let's, let, let's flip the script. Like Bush in 2002 said, weirdly enough, he said, I don't have to go to Congress over Iraq because the,

[C]

what

[B]

was passed in the wake of 911 gives me authorization to go into Iraq. But you know what? I want to go because I want, he said, very like, ominously, he said, I want the Senate really or basically, but I want Congress to be a participant. I want them to say yay or nay. Like if they say nay and we don't go, I want the public to know who said this was a good idea and who said this was a bad idea. Now this may be amazing to people thinking about it 23 or 24 years later, but that scared the Democrats. Half the Democrats voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Right? 24, 25 Democrats voted. It was 77 senators voted to authorize the war in Iraq. So it worked. That was then when it looked like if you didn't do that and obviously we would win, they thought, so you better jump on the bandwagon. That was safer than not. And then of course, it turned out that it was politically vastly more complicated. And Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama, who of course didn't have to cast that vote or not cast that vote, cuz he wasn't in the Senate yet. But that that was the politics then, now Congress, irresponsible, refusing to play its proper role. Republicans are worse, as bad about this as Democrats were under Biden. Terrible set of circumstances, but you know. Yeah. So they've now gotten to this point where it's like, what can I do to keep my hands as clean as possible? Or like to not get, you know, to not get have to sully myself with actual politics. All I want to do is performative stuff. That's all anybody wants from me anyway. Right. So, you know, maybe this will back them into a greater sense of responsibility, though. I don't.

[C]

There's another interesting happening. There's another interesting difference between the Bush and Iraq and what's happening today. And that's in the international politics, in terms of international institutions. We're not even pretending that they have a legitimate role to play here. Right. Bush, despite the cowboy diplomacy knock, was actually very, very desperate to get the UN on board, to get Europe on board with inspections in Iraq. Really thought that if he wanted to avoid war desperately. So he went multiple resolutions to the un we need to get inspectors back in there. We're hearing that Saddam has everything over and over. And you know, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, you know, European Liz just said, you know, they, they pushed by killing these resolutions, they pushed Bush into this, into the final last ditch effort, which was war. At the UN we saw people fighting over the war after the fact this weekend. But, oh, it was beautiful though.

[B]

It was beautiful because it was Danny Danone taking a two by four and bashing it over the head of the Iranian guy sitting there who said, stop yelling at me. And he's like, stop killing your own people, you piece of garbage. Like, it was one of the great moments of all time. Finally an Israeli gets to like bang his shoe on the, on the podium, you know, in a position of total moral high ground with an Iranian, you know, hack creep, you know, complaining that they, that, that Israel was being uncivilized.

[C]

Yeah, Much better use of the UN than, than trying to get crooked European leaders to do something.

[B]

Yeah, right, exactly.

[D]

And there's also how we define multilateral. Right? I mean, yeah, there's plenty of multi going on. UAE is not siding with Iran. No, they're siding. Like if we have a multilateral coalition that includes the Arab states and the Jewish state, that's multilateral to me.

[B]

It's. It.

[D]

Maybe it didn't go through the U.N. but it's like, okay, so you know, Starmer is not part of it, but Keir Starmer is not the, you know, that, hey, that's not my, you know, barometer for whether something is unilateral, multilateral. He's free to stay out of it. But I think they did this to Bush wrongly too. I think Bush, he put, he was putting together a multilateral coalition. And in Afghanistan, we obviously had a multilateral coalition. I mean, now we had NATO at our back. We had, but we, you know, he, he was. The war began, the war Responding to 911 began with an undeniably multilateral coalition. Countries saying, we are all America. We are, you know, we all have your back. NATO there, you know, everybody sending troops, all this other stuff. And so I think honestly, Bush got a bad rap on the unilateral stuff too. I don't think it was ever really true. But I, and I think now it's like if you can look at this and say, you know, it's unilateral because the US and Israel agree or something like that. But the truth is that the, these people, these critics, especially on the left because of the split, this weird partisan coding of the Saudi, Iran split in the Middle east where, you know, Republicans felt, you know, they were going to support the Saudis, Democrats supported the Iranians. This was during the, the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. It really became a partisan flashpoint. It just kind of stuck there. You know, this situation is like you've, they've just been ignoring the allies that are part of multilateral coalition. Jordanians scrambled to shoot down Iranian rockets at Israel during the first, you know, a year and some ago or whatever it was.

[B]

And they did. And they did it this weekend too. 50 from Jordanian territory, 50 Iranian ballistic missiles were, were shot down. So that of course is a science fictional multilateral coalition. We have going here the United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, uae, Bahrain and Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt and Israel. And Israel and Israel with the space

[D]

lasers if you want to make the science fiction coalition. Really, you know.

[B]

Right. Anyway, so I mean, you know, the hell with the un. Like this is, this is the formation of an entirely new understanding of what it means to make alliances in the 21st century. The UN is a, is an artifact and a relic of the post World War II era. You know, how long ago that was the UN was established. It's like, you know, almost 80 years ago.

[D]

And this is the bad actor. Yeah, this is the theater, right? The theater of war. They're on our side, part of our coalition. People miles out of it, who are not participating.

[B]

Right.

[D]

Are grumbling about it. But that, that's a ridiculous thing, is to replace the people who are sitting there having missiles fired at them by Iran and have, you know, the French or the British say, oh, I don't

[B]

know about firing back, but this thing. Because we'll use Starmer as the example then. We can, we can, we can. But I mean, this is a domestic political problem for Keir Starmer, who is in a domestic political crisis in which having won this colossal landslide only a year ago, is seeing his entire coalition collapse and he may not survive much longer. And his only hope is to somehow stanch the bleeding of the far left and the, and the Muslims who voted him in. And so he's not making decisions based on Britain's national interest, as is understood in terms of the world order. That's a, that's a no brainer, you know, like siding against Iran. I mean, Iran just shot 30,000 people in the streets. It's not a hard call unless you're worried about your boroughs going to the Greens, as happened last week, while the anti immigration party that isn't the Tories, surges into the lead. I mean, it's a very, you know, this is a very odd situation in which there's no principle attaches to what Starmer is up to. It's a desperate effort to cling to power. So it's pretty dismissible. It's not like, oh, you know, what Bush is doing to cowboy diplomacy and Trump, even though you could say that about Trump much more readily. That's why I said that Trump's anti regime change logic ends up being way more hawkish than the regime change logic does. And I just want to cite one unexpectedly. I'm going to cite a publication I would not have cited before, but which has been crushing it over the last six weeks. And that is compact under the leadership of Matthew Schmitz. Schmitz has a piece today called Trump was Always an Iran Hawk and he goes through systematically. I think I strongly recommend you read it. Everything Trump has said about Iran since 1980. In 1980, what historians Charlie Lederman and Brendan Sims describe as Trump's earliest recorded statement on foreign policy to a national audience. Trump said in an interview with NBC that America no longer commanded international respect because of the hostage crisis. And Trump said, we, you know, we should have gone in there. He was asked, should we have gone in there with troops and brought our boys out? And Trump replied, I absolutely feel that, yes. And he went on, 87, 88, 2000. It's like, we need to go in, crush those Iranians and take their oil. He has had this view for 45 years. It hasn't changed. It's a consistent opinion that he has had about Iran, that Iran played us for fools and suckers. And it did and it has. And he's right. And now, you know, so it's a very interesting.

[C]

No, I think it's such an important point because a lot of what we're seeing on the right, on the disaffected right, is all this. I didn't vote for this. And then they play, as I said on Twitter, they sort of overlay real world politics with their Dungeons and Dragons idea of what's happening. You know, Trump got co opted by the Israelis. Vance was always a crypto neocon, you know, in hiding and all this.

[B]

I wish. Yeah, yeah, right.

[C]

And they're just not looking at any, any of the actual real world circumstances and contingencies here and pressures and they're missing the entire picture. And it's the child childishness that they're evincing is astounding.

[A]

They also seem to forget Trump's age and that he marinated in the popular culture of the 80s, which was just full. I mean I remember pictures in my high, in my elementary school yearbook of all the high school guys with like get the ayatollah signs. I mean this was part of popular culture too. And he was very much in the mainstream seeing Iran as a constant villain. I mean the Shiite Muslim was always the villain in all these big blockbuster movies. So he, he's old just because his methods of politics are quite new to our system and of recent vintage. They have forgotten and actually many of them on the new right were never, you know, they, they were not even a spark in their parents eyes. I do want to just to, just to piggyback a little bit on Seth's and John's absolute wonderful raking over the coals. The uselessness of the, of the un. An old recommendation. I think I made it years ago. But if people are interested in understanding just how long this rot has been going on there, what the UN's found in what, 1945, in 1967, the wonderful novelist Shirley Hazard, who had worked for the Secretariat, wrote a wonderful book called People in Glass Houses. That's just tears to shreds. The UN bureaucracy and everything she diagnosed then has only gotten worse since. So if you're interested in a kind of.

[B]

That is an amazing book. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that. All right, so there we have a recommendation. Shirley has the cuff.

[A]

But yeah, I might have recommended this before, so I think you did.

[B]

And then we had a conversation about how Shirley Hazard played a key role in the outing of Kurt Waldheim as the Austrian Chancellor as basically as a Nazi transit of Venus.

[A]

Also, great novel. He's a great novelist. Yeah.

[B]

He had been the Secretary General of

[A]

the UN Yeah, She's a great novelist in general. If you haven't read her work, it's well worth. Well worth reading her novels too.

[B]

Yes. Okay, so we'll. We'll be back tomorrow. For Abe, Seth and Christine, I'm John Pod. Horowitz. Keep the candle burning, Sam.