The Strait and Narrow

Summary

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The Commentary Magazine Podcast – “The Strait and Narrow”

Date: March 12, 2026
Host: John Podhoretz, Editor, Commentary Magazine
Panelists: Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Christine Rosen, Eliana Johnson
Guest: Jonathan Schanzer, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Middle East expert

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Overview

This episode confronts the rapidly changing strategic landscape in the Middle East after major escalations involving Iran, Israel, and Lebanon. The panel—joined by expert Jonathan Schanzer—dives into the military, political, and diplomatic implications of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah and Iran, the evolving U.S.-Israel relationship under Donald Trump, and the prospects for regime change in Iran without a prolonged U.S.-led occupation. Informed by breaking news and historical context, the discussion traces connections to great power competition with China and Russia, reflects on the American public’s war-weariness, and explores the future of American military intervention.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Hezbollah and Lebanon: Signals of Weakness and Shifting Alliances

• Desperation in Hezbollah:

  • Schanzer notes that the recent rocket attack by Hezbollah on Israel (100+ missiles) was less effective than intended, with many striking Lebanon instead of Israel. This “doesn’t work for Hezbollah” and signals desperation.
  • “Hezbollah did not think they were going to land any significant blows. They’re escalating right now. They’ve thrown their lot with the regime and are basically saying they’re going to fight to the end, which…is kind of music to the ears of the Israelis.” – Jonathan Schanzer [03:00]

• Lebanon’s Government Shows Flexibility:

  • Political voices in Lebanon are emerging that actually favor ending the Hezbollah threat, quietly suggesting cooperation with Israel.
  • “The Lebanese government seems interested in working with the Israelis... saying that it’s time to end this threat once and for all. That’s music to the ears of the Israelis.” – Schanzer [03:40]

• Conflict’s Diminishing Global Profile:

  • The Israel-Hezbollah war, once considered the most feared scenario in the region, is now “barely making headlines around the world... relegated to like 8th page news, right? Nobody cares about this.” – Schanzer [05:30]
  • This indifference is, paradoxically, giving Israel a freer hand to escalate military operations.

2. Israel-US Relationship and ‘The Iran War’

• Unprecedented Coordination:

  • Schanzer refutes speculation about US-Israeli friction, asserting that military cooperation is at an all-time high:
    “The camaraderie between the Israeli warfighters and American warfighters, the integration of the Israeli and American air forces right now... The relationship has never been stronger.” [14:30]
  • When Trump (the ‘big fella’) decides the major campaign is over, Israel will almost certainly have to adjust to a lower-intensity conflict (“mowing the lawn” ops).

• Different Domestic Perceptions

  • In Israel: Overwhelming support for finishing off Iranian existential threats and Hezbollah proxies.
  • In the US: No similar “rally round the flag” impulse, despite global economic implications from Strait of Hormuz blockages and tanker attacks. [07:25-09:02]

3. Iran’s Missile Arsenal, Internal Stability, and Regime Change

• Degrading the Iranian Military

  • Western airstrikes have “destroyed thousands and thousands of targets...no doubt that the regime is weaker and less stable as a result of this operation that’s a week and a half old.” – Schanzer [09:44]
  • Iran’s missile arsenal reportedly dropped from 3,000-4,000 to below half, possibly even a quarter. [10:18]

• Strategic Choke Points:

  • Short-range missiles and drones pose daunting challenges, especially for Gulf states lacking Israeli air defenses.
  • The Iranians are trying to spark an economic crisis as Trump’s Achilles heel, by attacking oil infrastructure and shipping (mines in the Strait of Hormuz).

• Regime Succession Drama:

  • Focus on Mojtaba Khamenei, likely successor to the Supreme Leader, depicted as more extreme, less legitimate, and deeply corrupt.
    • “It’s rich that the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was designed to bring down a corrupt dynasty. And we are now watching the emergence of a corrupt dynasty within the Islamic Republic.” – Schanzer [16:28]
  • IRGC’s dominance over religious clerics in picking leaders illustrated (“how many divisions do the clerics have?”).

• Roadmap to Regime Change Without Nation Building:

  • The US has a history of regime change without always resorting to costly, extended occupations (e.g., Panama, Philippines vs. Iraq, Libya).
  • “He’s [Trump] trying to placate that neo-isolationist faction...while also trying to achieve his aims of reshaping the Middle East. If he’s able to pull this off, it’s the new paradigm.” – Schanzer [33:00]
  • Regime change may mean shattering Iran’s instruments of repression and leaving local actors to shape the post-conflict order—no purple-ink nation-building.

4. The Role of Minorities and Internal Complexities in Iran

• Minorities as Wild Cards:

  • About half of Iran is non-Persian (Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, Uzbeks).
  • While some Kurdish factions have shown willingness to rise against Tehran, broader Persian skepticism about Balkanizing Iran limits US willingness to leverage minorities for regime change. [39:07–41:00]

• Potential for Defection:

  • Erosion of IRGC/Regime control could provoke splits within regime institutions, especially as economic patronage networks are destroyed (e.g., attacks on IRGC-linked Bank Sepah).
  • Cites historical analogies to Egypt's revolution: “We are not firing on the people...”

5. Military Objectives: Missiles & Nukes

• Can the war end without eliminating key threats?
  • Destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and vast—especially short-range—missile arsenal remains a necessary (but difficult) precondition for successful war termination.
  • “This is now a question of intelligence... being able to penetrate underground bases that are holding the drones and the missiles... Not easy stuff.” [45:56]
  • Unclear how much damage has truly been inflicted—US/Pentagon holding operational data close.

6. American Public Attitudes & Political Implications

• War Perception Split:

  • Washington Post polling: Framing the conflict as “Trump’s war” depresses public support by 10 points relative to a generic “war in Iran.”
  • “People are 10 points more likely to say, or...10 points less likely to oppose the war because when they don’t think of it as Trump’s war is a pretty striking fact.” – Podhoretz [59:06]

• Enduring Legacy of Iraq/Afghanistan:

  • War skepticism is deeply embedded in post-9/11 generations; younger Americans see little record of US military successes, shaping their “why are we doing this now?” mindset. [63:30–66:53]

7. Strategic Stakes: Beyond Israel/Iran – The Great Power Chessboard

• The Russia-China-Iran “Axis”:

  • The trio forms an active coalition working against US interests in the Middle East and Ukraine. Russian technical help is bolstering Iran’s drone capabilities; Iran is providing Russia with attack drones for Ukraine (and vice versa).
  • “What we’ve actually just done is we’ve shown how Russia, China and Iran are a unified front... what we’re watching right now is something a lot bigger than just, gosh, are we spending blood and treasure in Iran?” – Podhoretz [79:35]
  • US and allies (including Ukraine/Taiwan/Israel) are on one side of a global struggle.

• The Danger of US Withdrawal:

  • Failure in the Middle East, or ceding ground to Russia/China, will have severe global consequences.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the difference between Lebanon now and decades past:

  • “Nobody’s even watching Lebanon right now... the idea that this war between Israel and Hezbollah was going to break out. It was the scariest thing in the world. Right now it’s barely making headlines around the world.” – Schanzer [05:00]

• Explaining regime change to the war-weary:

  • “You can say... We have left you defenseless. We have left you without aggressive capacities... That’s also regime change. What it doesn’t involve is us or the Israelis then coming in and saying, ‘Here’s how you write a constitution...’” – Podhoretz [30:49]

• About Iran’s internal repression:

  • “Besij are the internal repression apparatus most closely linked to the powerful IRGC... Those checkpoints were getting bombed.” – Schanzer [35:22]

• On why many Americans can't rally behind the Iran war:

  • “The public does not think of this as a national cause... We’re so scarred by what happened a quarter of a century ago [Iraq and Afghanistan]... we’re afraid of trying to shape the world in ways that would be beneficial to the United States.” – Podhoretz [61:44]

• Looking at the bigger international picture:

  • “If we can flip the Middle East and make this an American region, this is enormously important—not just for energy, but for lots of other reasons as we head into this great power competition.” – Podhoretz [73:00]

• On the generational split in confidence in US force:

  • “You're operating from the perspective of ‘this never works.’ Why on earth are we doing this now?...From ‘83 to 2000, [the use of] the American military... was an unbroken history of victory.” – Podhoretz [64:51]

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Critical Timestamps

• 01:07–05:30: Schanzer outlines the situation in Lebanon and Israel, Hezbollah’s failed attacks, and shifting Lebanese attitudes.
• 07:25–09:02: Discussion of contrasting Israeli and American perspectives on the war.
• 13:00–15:33: Israeli-US military coordination; misunderstanding about supposed rift.
• 16:28–22:50: Succession drama in Iran; the power of the IRGC vs. clerics.
• 24:53–27:45: Challenges for US strategy in the Strait of Hormuz; why the Navy has not fully intervened.
• 30:49–35:20: What “regime change without nation building” could look like.
• 39:07–41:49: Risks and backlash of arming Iranian minorities like the Kurds.
• 45:56–49:11: Can the war end without eliminating the missile & nuclear threat?
• 59:06–63:30: Polls on war support; connection to US war-weariness post-Iraq.
• 73:00–74:09: Argument for remaking the Middle East as part of US-China grand competition.
• 79:35–80:44: The global significance of Russia, China, and Iran’s alliance; the US as leader of a counter-bloc.
• 80:49–end: Closing observations on global alliances, future of the conflict, and regime change strategy.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a wide-angle lens on the multiplying crises in the Middle East, arguing that present-day operations against Iran and its proxies are about far more than just Israeli security or Trump’s legacy—they are a test case in reasserting American power, rebooting the US approach to regime change, and countering the advance of rival powers on the world stage. The panel is clear-eyed about the difficulties of such a project—Americans’ skepticism, the complexity of Iranian society, the challenge of ending the war while permanently degrading Iran’s offensive capacity—but delivers a message of strategic opportunity.

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For new listeners:
This episode offers a comprehensive, candid, and historically grounded account of the present Middle Eastern crisis—addressing both the military chessboard and the ideological battle for American public support, framed against the larger tapestry of great power rivalry in the 21st century.

Transcript

[John Podhoretz]

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

Some drink champagne Some die at first the 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, March 12, 2026. I'm John Pot Horowitz, 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.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Eliana Johnson]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And joining us today, our contributing editor, expert on all things Middle Eastern, Iranian, Israeli, Arab, Persian Gulf, Puba at the foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer. Hi, Jonathan.

Hi, John.

Jonathan, you may see us swimming in a sea of amoeba. If you are watching on YouTube, he's at a hotel that has a very odd decor. So if you are watching on YouTube, just, just, just feel like, you know, either he's swinging the scene of Miya or it's the title sequence from Marty Supreme. And I'm not going to say any more about that. Jonathan. Very interesting developments overnight, Iran or yesterday. Right. Iran seeking to increase the pain in shipping in the Gulf, attacking two tankers. Hezbollah firing 100 rockets or missile ballistic missiles, excuse me, at Israel, although apparently 80 of them hit Lebanon instead of hitting Israel. But last night was a very punishing night in for Israelis in shelters across the country. Lots of explosions, all of which, by the way, almost all of which are interceptions. So the explosion is like a good thing, not a bad thing, but very disruptive, very nerve wracking, hard to live through, people not getting sleep. And there are reports that the Israelis are now operating in complex special forces ways to disable regime control at the street level. So where and that we have leveled a major nuclear we or the combined forces have leveled a major nuclear site that hasn't entirely been on the map before. So we're where do you want to go? Give us a sense of how you're feeling.

Okay, so all of what you just said is exactly, I think what we're hearing. I think maybe let's try to break it down. What happened in Lebanon needs to be understood as desperation. Everything that I'm hearing out of Israel suggests right now that Hezbollah did not think they were going to land any significant blows. They're escalating right now. They've thrown their lot with the regime and they're basically saying they're going to fight to the end, which is, I got to say, I think it's Kind of music to the ears of the Israelis, that they're saying, okay, you want to finish this? We're ready to finish this, too. And I think what we should probably expect next is an Israeli advance probably 10 kilometers north to the Litany, the Litany river, and they're going to probably maintain full control over this area, southern Lebanon, for. For a large period of time. And this will not sit well with the Lebanese. But I think what's really interesting is that the Lebanese government seems interested in working with the Israelis. We're seeing some of the political types coming out and saying that, you know, it's time to end this threat once and for all. That's music to the ears of the Israelis. I think, you know, there's a role for the United States to play, maybe even the French, which is kind of hard to believe, but you could begin to see possibly an end game taking

shape, which is fascinating in Lebanon, between Israel and Hezbollah after 40 years, 45 years of Hezbollah bedeviling, killing Americans, killing Israelis, starting two wars with Israel from the north, kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and in general, wreaking havoc on, under the aegis and at the direction in part of the Islamic Republic of Iran and living as a parasitical force on Lebanon and Lebanese politics.

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I think there is a sense right now in Lebanon that, you know, Hezbollah has yet again dragged the country into a highly destructive battle, that it's not in the interest of the Lebanese people. The frustration is growing. And so there could be an alignment of sorts right now. Not that I expect the Lebanese armed forces to, you know, take up arms and start to really press Hezbollah, but there could be coordination, intelligence coordination. Hey, we just spotted a Hezbollah guy here. Israel, why don't you go ahead and, I mean. And bomb, right? I mean, this is the sort of thing that may start to take shape here because the Lebanese people, the Lebanese government, the Lebanese army, they're done with this. I think they see it last time around, you know, the first year or so of this conflict after October 7th, you know, there was a lot of damage incurred from Israeli counterstrikes after Hezbollah opened up this second front. The people of Lebanon are done with this. The people of the region are done with this. And you just get a sense right now, the Israelis do not feel like this. And maybe I'll put it this way, nobody's even watching Lebanon right now. I mean, this is the fascinating part of this, is that, you know, for years, and I talked about it on this podcast for years, the idea that this war between Israel and Hezbollah was going to break out. It was the scariest thing in the world. Right now it's barely making headlines around the world. It's relegated to like 8th page news, right? Nobody cares about this. And the Israelis understand that that is open season for Hezbollah and I suspect we're going to see a widening of this conflict. And there is a sense among the Israelis that whatever Hezbollah is trying to throw at them, it's just not working. I mean, Hezbollah is trying to layer in some of its longer range rockets so that it's timed with the missiles that are coming in from Iran. It's still not penetrating Israeli airspace in the ways that Hezbollah intends. So one gets a sense right now the Israelis are feeling their strength and they are going to try to finish this. They're going to try to sweep the leg.

[Abe Greenwald]

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[John Podhoretz]

Available [e-mail] so if they're feeling their strength, this is interesting psychologically because of course there is overwhelming support for this military conflict in Israel. I think nine out of ten people believe that finishing off Iran or in some capacity, or finally having this fight to disable Iran's existential threat to Israel, along with dealing with this proxy in Lebanon that was shocked into paralysis by the beeper operation of 2024 and then the subsequent bombing of the Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut some weeks later that this is something that, that, that there is total consensus on. But we come back to the United States, some people listening to us may be like, why are you even talking about what's going on between Israel and Lebanon? What does that have to do with the price of eggs or the price of a barrel of butler crude or whatever, when here we are and they're setting ships on fire and they're mining the straits of Hormuz and everyone's telling me that the world economy is going to collapse and Trump is saying, we already won, but we have to finish the job. And I don't understand what's going on. There is a, there is no triumphalist rally round the flag. We're doing a great thing and we're going to finish the job feeling that is a consensus opinion here in the United States.

No And I think, you know, I started with Lebanon only because I think it's actually an easier file and one that's not gonna be particularly controversial. And I think you're gonna see hopefully some resolution over the next couple of weeks. And by the way, there's nothing that is dictating to the Israelis that they need to stop eroding the strength of Hezbollah. Even if the Iran war ends, this is like going to be a separate front and likely one that the Israelis pursue without the United States, without buy in, without a lot of coordination. I think this, it's widely understood that the Israelis just need to take care of business. Now you move to what's going on in Iran. And you know, I would say a few things to note. Number one, the operation is still going incredibly well. I mean, the US And Israel are destroying thousands and thousands of targets and they are eroding the strength of the regime. And there is no doubt that the regime is weaker and less stable as a result of this operation that's a week and a half old. The missiles that have been flying across the Middle east, we're going to start to see a drop. According to everything that we're hearing that the total number of missiles in Iran's arsenal is probably somewhere between 500 and 1,000.

It's dropped left.

Left, correct.

So there were three, two or 3,000,

3,000, 4,000, you know, something like that. So they, they've dropped probably under 50% maybe. You know, I mean, it could be actually reduced by even 75% according to some estimates. And then there's the other part of this, which is, and we've talked about it here, the math is even more interesting when you think about the, the choke point, which is the rocket or the missile launchers. And the Israelis in the United States are hunting for those and they are largely successful in winnowing down that number. So that means that the missiles flying across the Middle east are likely to drop. Now the challenge here is that the short range missiles that are being fired at the Gulf and the drones that are being fired at the Gulf, those are harder, they're more plentiful, and they're not as easy to destroy. They're smaller targets. And you know, I think we're still in for it there. And you can see the way the Gulf states are getting, you know, pretty wobbly here. They're getting pretty nervous because they're not used to this. And they don't have the air defenses that the Israelis have. They don't have Iron Dome, they don't have the ability to shoot down a lot of these drones and rockets. And so you're watching them get hammered. And that is, that's weighing on Donald Trump. Right. I mean, he's watching how some of these oil producing countries are getting weak in the knees here and they don't like it. And then on top of that, add what's been happening in the Strait of Hormuz with the, you know, we've heard about, I don't know, 10 or 12 mines that have been laid in the Strait. And on top of that, talks of, you know, possible attacks against American ships or other ships. Yeah. I mean, what the Iranians have done is they have found and they think they always knew it. This is Trump's Achilles heel. He wanted this war. I think he was willing to suffer some casualties. But what he didn't want is a global crisis economically. And this is exactly what the Iranian regime is trying to stoke. And Trump is trying to figure out how to end this on the right terms with the Iranian regime and not have a complete implosion of the global economy.

[Seth Mandel]

Hey, Jonathan, I have a question, because when you talk about ending it on the right terms and the economic crisis being Trump's Achilles heel, what do you make of all the increasing stories trying to tease out this supposed bifurcation between Israel and the US different endgames, right?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Seth Mandel]

Trump wants to stop at X point, but Israel wants to go on until Y and so on.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. And I think, look, there is a senior partner in this war, and I think we all need to understand that when the big fella decides it's over, it's going to be over. I mean, the Israelis can probably still attack, but then if that means that US Assets are still getting attacked or the Gulf is getting attacked, that becomes a problem. I suspect we're going to probably move to the mowing the lawn portion of the war. When Donald Trump says that it's over, it means that the Israelis will go in on occasion, they'll strike things and then they'll leave and the Iranians will be unhappy, but it will be more of that kind of asymmetric conflict. But let me just say a word about the friction that some people have tried to report between the United States and Israel. I've had some really interesting conversations with senior Israeli people who have been talking about the camaraderie between the Israeli war fighters and American war fighters, the integration of the Israeli and American air forces right now, the shared, literally the shared picture that they're seeing on the screenshot right in These operation rooms and the shared intelligence and the shared objectives. There has never been a war fought like this in recent memory. And the way in which American war fighters are now watching the Israelis with unbelievable respect, flying American aircraft, using American weaponry, speaking to them over, you know, their secure communications in English, this is a game changer. Now, I don't know what happens with the Memorandum of understanding and what the arrangement will be between the United States and Israel after this, but from a military to military perspective, you can't actually paint a better picture. Now, politically, you can imagine that Donald Trump and Bibi maybe still have friction here and there. And, yes, if the war goes horribly, Bibi, you know, might get saddled with some blame over this. But everything that we're hearing right now suggests that things are going incredibly well between the United States and Israel, that the relationship has never been stronger, and. And the ties have never been more integrated.

[Abe Greenwald]

John, we all read a profile published in the Atlantic yesterday by Karim Sajanpur of the younger Khamenei, who is depicted as more extreme than his father. And I'm curious whether you think there is a world in which Trump stops this war, ends this war, and leaves him as the successor ayatollah and what that world looks like. And I would say that. Noting that Trump has said he's not an acceptable next leader of Iran, but Trump allows himself to reverse himself. He leaves himself a lot of flexibility. And I think Trump, under surrender can mean a lot of things, and he's indicated as much.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, I mean, I think it's a good question. I mean, let me just first say that he is, by all descriptions, Mujtaba is more radical than his father, that he has more extreme views. He is undeniably corrupt. The guy's got all kinds of assets all over Europe. He's benefited from the Islamic Revolution. I think, by the way, it's rich that the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was designed to bring down a corrupt dynasty. And we are now watching the emergence of a corrupt dynasty within the Islamic Republic. And I think that, I think, doesn't get enough airtime. The guy is apparently just a deeply flawed human being and is not particularly adept at leadership or running a country. He is the choice of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And that, I think, will make him widely hated by the people of Iran, which I think is important for what comes next.

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Yeah, I mean, I think the question, you know, the easiest way to answer that is with a question which is how many divisions do the clerics have? Right? They don't have the military power. They don't have the hard power. The irgc, these guys are supposed to be the sort of the top fighters, the most elite fighters within the regime. They have an enormous amount of cash through corrupt businesses that they've created over time. And they have the best weapons. They control the drones and the missiles. They're the ones who are really doing the fighting. The army, by the way, is considered to be sort of a lower class group, a larger group, but they're not the elite. The clerics, I think they have influence, but maybe not at a time of crisis, when there's a war going on, the war fighters are the ones that are calling the shots. And so what you've seen is the IRGC elevate this guy who is, you know, untested and the only thing that really qualifies. Veteran, right?

He was in the IRGC as a young man, or so we're told, or we don't really know.

And I think. But the question is just like, how adept is this guy at strategy and war fighting and, you know, can he navigate the stresses of, of this war that's going on right now? And one gets a sense that, you know, he may be in over his head. And I think that that's probably a good thing. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of what happened in Lebanon with Hezbollah after Nasrallah was killed, you know, and, and the Israelis went through two other successors. They found Naim Qassim, who was like the head of the television station for Hezbollah. And the guy's like a complete idiot. I mean, I actually heard from Israelis, they're like, we have, we're going to leave him off the kill list because we actually want him to stay in power as this boob that doesn't know how to run his ball.

[Christine Rosen]

They thought they had their own Zelensky. They thought, they said, well, it worked for Ukraine.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

They went to a TV host and he was America.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And Argentina has a TV guy. That's where Malay came from anyway, by

the way, so does the United States.

[Eliana Johnson]

Can I ask, I have a question about the Strait of Hormuz, because that was the news that we all woke up to here in the US Sort of dominating the headlines this morning with these tankers being attacked. And you said, and I think this is absolutely right, that the Iranian strategy is to really make that a long term, painful choke point for what's going on in the region. So my question, John, is what is, what are the tactics that America can use to prevent that? We've heard, you know, Trump has floated two ideas. One that the Navy will escort ships. But when the Navy was a reporter from the Wall Street Journal asked the Navy, they're like, we don't have any orders to that effect yet. There was this discussion which we had the other day about whether America standing behind and ensuring the passage of some of the cargo ships would help. That's run into some, some challenges in the insurance market. So what do you see as viable tactics for the United States to use to upend this strategy that Iran's pursuing in the Strait?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, look, this is sort of a problem from hell when you think about it. Because if you put American warships in the Strait of Hormuz and then they start getting attacked with surface to sea missiles, advanced weapons, and we start losing ships in the strait, well, then this is the nightmare, right? This is the scenario that Donald Trump was trying to say, hey, we're not going to get into stupid, you know, wars. We're not going to, you know, like, we're not going to get ourselves caught in quagmires along the lines of like in Iraq or Afghanistan. You start losing these valuable warships. That becomes a huge problem for Donald Trump. So I think there's a reason why he's probably not ordered that yet. I understand that there are things that are happening where they're calling on every civilian business along the strait to vacate. They need to get out of there because there will be, you know, drones and satellites overhead that if they see any movement whatsoever, they're going to bomb. Right. So there's going to be, I think, a clearing out of this region, that they're going to try to make this kind of a clean zone, you know, in order to allow for oil to get through. But I think this is far from settled. The thing that I keep hearing, though, is that there is kind of an egg timer that's going to go off for this conflict, that it will not. This is, this is every Israeli that I've talked to, everybody believes that Donald Trump will not allow this to go on for past October, sorry, past March 31st. Why? That's the Xi Jinping summit with Donald Trump scheduled right now. And Donald Trump wants to come to that summit with achievements and he wants to come with a sense of finality of what's just happened in the region. And that when we start to hear about how people, various governments are opening up their strategic oil reserves to make sure that the price of oil doesn't rise too high and that we kind of solve for this crisis on an interim basis, that's what's going on here right now. The idea is you open up the taps for a little bit and then the war ends and then Donald Trump has his meeting and, you know, everything is clean. But let me just say that's not how this works, because I think the IRGC right now is saying, you guys don't get to decide when this war ends. We do. And we're actually hearing that from the irgc. They are saying, you might think, think that you can end this on your terms. We can keep this going if we want to. And that's, I think, where it gets complicated. And I'm waiting to see where, where the Pentagon comes out on this. I will say I don't love the Pentagon briefings that I've seen. I don't get a lot of, like, granular information from these things. And I'd be really curious to get a more detailed briefing right now about the US Perspective on, on the Strait.

[Christine Rosen]

So I'm curious when you say, like, on the subject of, of choosing when wars end, and I don't mean to push us off the central topic, but remember Gaza, like, what does all this mean for the war that started the war? What does all this like we see that there's resolve. In other words, what you're describing seems accurate to people paying attention to the news that Israel has more of a free hand in Lebanon, that Israel has more of a decisive attitude toward solving this problem in Lebanon. And you know, doing what it takes. Obviously, they've gone further in Iran than Israel has ever got, you know, gone before. Obviously. It goes without saying, what does it all mean for Is this is. Is Hamas is. Is also, by the way, getting rid of Hamas, part of this whole sort of settling of accounts that's. That's going on now. Is there. Does it affect government, Gaza in any way that there's this whole other war involving, you know, Hamas's masters in Tehran? I mean, what. What does it look like from there?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, I mean, I had a conversation with somebody about this yesterday. Hamas is getting a breather right now. They've had, you know, 10, 12 days of. Of actually being able to prepare for the next round with Israel. It's not like the Israelis have completely ignored it, but it's just not where they're focusing their attention. They. They've got, you know, the war that they have been planning for, for years, decades, that is broken out, you know, 2,000 kilometers away from, you know, from the home front. So they've had to pivot, and now they've got the Lebanon thing going on, and who knows what other complications arise. So, yeah, Hamas gets a breather. They will turn back to this. But I think it needs to be understood the wider context of this is, you know, the Israelis want a clean house. They're already. They have the upper hand now on every front that they started fighting on October 7th. Right. Every single front is better than it was two and a half years ago. And then I think the question that needs to be answered right now is how far will Donald Trump take this? I think Trump sees an opportunity. This is the vision. I think he wants to reshape the Middle East. He wants Gaza to look different, he wants Lebanon to look different, he wants Iran to look different. It's not saying regime change out loud, but he's talking about remaping, remaking the map of the Middle east into something that is more of a pro American region than what it has been, where a lot of these different territories have been under the sway of Iran, which means, de facto, they're part of this broader axis of China, Russia, Iran, et cetera. Trump's trying to eviscerate all of that and make something else. And we're in the middle of watching it right now. And by the way, we haven't even talked about regime change and what the plans are for that.

Okay, So I want to. I want to go there because, Jonathan, you have a piece in the upcoming April issue of Commentary. We have four lead pieces in that issue, which we are closing tomorrow. I hope to get. Get up on the website tomorrow before Shabbat, trying to flesh out all of the aspects of the war. Your piece is called Regime Change Without Nation Building. So, ultimately, how you define regime change is an interesting thing, because legally, technically, regime change would involve a collapse of the institutional and even constitutional structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, followed up by a new government, new system. That's sort of like classic. If you're like a political scientist, that's how you would define regime change. But that is not necessarily a definition of regime change that you need to. You need to present. You can say, okay, we have left you defenseless. We have left you without missiles. We have left you without aggressive capacities. We have killed tens. We have. We don't know what the death toll is, but we have destroyed your police stations, we've destroyed your. We've destroyed your military infrastructure. Your civilian infrastructure is hanging by a thread. All of that, we're done. Good luck running this country. One way or another, you're probably all going to get Mussolini or ceausescood if the Iranian people can get their hands on you. That's also regime change. What it doesn't involve is us or the Israelis then coming in and saying, here's how you write a constitution. Here's how you present. Here's how you. Here, look, we'll put purple ink on your finger when you vote so that everybody knows that you voted, and we can take a great picture of you with a purple finger. Obviously, Trump will do none of that. Obviously, the Israelis are perfectly aware of the fact that they cannot go in to a Shia Muslim country and, like, say, look, this is how we do it. We set up. Can I say to you, it's all good, good. You know, like, it's not. That's not going to work either. So talk about regime change without nation building. Yeah.

So, I mean, one of the fascinating things that I think we just all need to understand is the United States has toppled something like three dozen regimes in modern history, and not all of them ended up, like Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, for that matter. Right. I mean, it's not always a disaster. You know, you've got these examples of, like, the Philippines or Panama where we've had, you know, successful outcomes. And I think, you know, first let's just, you know, be aware of the fact that there are different ways of doing this. And. And I think Trump needs to figure out how to do it without expending, you know, blood and treasure. He is trying to figure out how to placate that neo isolationist faction of his party while also trying to achieve his aims of reshaping the Middle East. I don't think it's easy, but I do think that if he's able to pull this off, it's the new paradigm, it's what we start to do elsewhere as the United States looks to reclaim its place as a superpower in the world and as we enter into this era of intense great power competition with the Chinese. I mean, this is the context where I think we just need to understand what's going on here. It's a lot bigger than Iran now. When you drill down to what's happening in Iran, nothing is going to happen as far as regime change is concerned. Until the guns fall silent, the people of Iran will not come out into the streets while the streets are getting bombed. I mean, I think that's pretty self explanatory. Nobody's gonna want to risk their life and limb to get out into the streets and to challenge the regime when everything's getting bombed to smithereens and will likely that'll be the trajectory for the next couple of days, couple of weeks. What I think is, is fascinating. I mean, two things. One, we've started to see the Israelis soften the ground for the Iranian people. Reports overnight that besieged checkpoints were getting bombed by Israeli drones.

Okay, again, who are the besieged?

Just quickly besieged are the internal repression apparatus most closely linked to the powerful irgc. So these are the elite kind of police, if you will. These are the internal repression thugs of the regime. And there were dozens of them that were sent to hospitals across Iran last night because their checkpoints designed to keep the people of Iran down. Those checkpoints were getting bombed. And that I think is just a little foretaste of what we're going to start to see. I think that let's say it's April 1st or whatever is the date where the fighting stops and we reach some kind of calm or stasis in the region. That's when I think you start to see Israelis carrying out these kind of asymmetric operations, or more of them. We start to see information operations, psychological operations. You know, the Israelis, you know, maybe try to hijack the airwaves and to start to message to the Iranian people the text messages, the opening up of the Internet, Starlink. Right. All of these things that can help the Iranian people organize better. By the way, that doesn't even include cash and weapons and other things that I would be shocked if they're not pre positioned somewhere on the borders with Iran, maybe Azerbaijan, maybe Turkey, who knows. But the idea being that once the fighting stops, if you ask me, that's where it gets really interesting. That's where the great game begins, where the Israelis and the United States are actively working through intelligence and other kinds of operations to bring down the regime from within.

[Christine Rosen]

Two questions on that. One, doesn't this mean that there was, that there was clearly a plan that the stories were hearing about? Well, they didn't really plan, they didn't really know what to expect. There wasn't a plan for this war. Doesn't the fact that, you know, Bibi can say, wait, don't go, don't, don't go out into the streets just yet, you know, we're planning something and five days later every besieged checkpoint blows up. And like, doesn't, doesn't that show, that's the first question. Doesn't that show that there really was a plan? And, and second, is there any role for the Kurds in what you just described about the war after the war?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So I mean, first of all, I think there was always a plan. And I think if Donald Trump was saying that he wasn't interested in regime change, he was lying. And if, you know, Bibi was saying that he has patience, he's lying. They want this happening now and they want to get it over with and they want to get it happening. Here's the question on the Kurds, I think is more interesting. So you probably saw those reports last week that there were Kurdish factions. It was Jennifer Griffin from Fox that had first reported that there were Kurdish factions that were amassing on the border with Iran and they were going to come in and they were going to start fighting the regime and that this was something that was blessed by Donald Trump. The, it needs to be understood this was not well received by the majority. Iranian kind of Persian core of the country. They were not comfortable with this and they started to speak out about it and then Donald Trump started to roll back the plans and the story kind of fizzled out. What needs to be understood. And it's a highly complex country, Iran, the 51% of the majority, they are deeply uncomfortable with the empowerment of the minorities in this country.

So the Kurds include, so include the

Kurds, the Kurds, the Arabs, the Azeris, the Uzbeks. Right. They make up 49% of the country, give or take.

Right.

And the majority is, this is not

a homogeneous, this is not a point Persian homogeneous, you know, like Poland 96% Polish Catholic. This is a 90 million person country that has minority populations in it who have been living under the boot of the Persian Shiite regime of the last 47 years and lived under the boot of a Persian regime for the last 250 years, without question. But that huge number of people, 40 million, 45 million people, very large.

It's very large. And there's concern that if the Kurds went in, that they may want to try to Balkanize the country, they may want to carve out a space of their own, and that's not sitting well. And so once again, we're kind of back to the complexities of the Middle east, the sort of sectarian stuff that, and I'm not saying that Iran is Iraq. I actually think there is a middle class, it's educated, there is a sense of history that, you know, we didn't see in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, where people actually are still remembering fondly, at least in some way, the monarchy that existed before the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic. There is, you can see those flags out in the streets, those Iranian flags with the lion that people are still rallying around. And you can still imagine the crown prince or exiled crown prince of Iran coming back and becoming a figurehead maybe to lead some kind of constitutional monarchy that would unify the country. But what we're seeing, though, is some nerves surrounding this empowerment of minorities that could threaten to Balkanize the integrity of the country. And you'll hear more and more about this. I think it will be important that we not stoke that right now. The idea is to, you know, end the fighting, begin to destabilize the regime, and hopefully begin to identify figures that can be unifying for the Iranian people and not get into these discussions about, oh, well, let's use this minority to do that. One thing that will make the majority of the country nervous. We just, I think we need to move carefully here. This is where having, you know, an understanding of the country, an understanding of the region would be really helpful.

Right?

Having seasoned diplomats who've been working in this space, you want them deployed. And I think right now I don't see exactly where their role is. And that'll be something to watch in the, in the coming couple of weeks.

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[e-mail] 149 okay, last question on this and then we can move on quickly. So there are two. Okay, there are two issues here that we haven't talked about, one of which is the location of and the destruction of the rebuilding nuclear program or the nuclear materials that the Iranian negotiators bragged to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that they still either had control of or that they knew where they were or whatever, that there's enough for 11 bombs. Which is a very weird thing to say while there were two hundred and fifty American ships off your shore and saying we're going to go blow you up if you don't give us the nuclear materials. And then the Iranians are like haha, we have a lot of nuclear materials. Kind of a weird thing but like the final, the final trigger for the that and the information that they were all meeting together in the building in Tehran that Israel could could bomb. So can this war be over without either the locating, destroying, seizing or whatever of what is supposedly a nuclear program? That's number one and number two, you mentioned the short range missiles bedeviling the Gulf. Marco Rubio, in his first statement on the war, said we had to go to war because of Iran's short range missile capacity, that Iran was developing a short range missile capacity so significant that if we didn't move now, if we moved in a year, we couldn't hit them because there would be too much danger to our aircraft, too much danger to Israeli aircraft, too much danger to the region. So can we say that the war is won or over if we don't have some indications that their short range missile pipeline has been irrevocably destroyed?

So on the, the latter, I'll start there. It's complicated, right? I mean, the Iranians have a massive amount of. And you're talking about short range missiles. I just want to talk drones for a minute. People talk about this regime as a drone superpower, that they have just thousands of them and they can swarm. And by the way, they're learning from the Russians who are giving them guidance on how to organize these drone swarms in ways that will evade American detection or that will evade the defenses. And of course, we've been hearing about the Ukrainians sending advisors to try to help in this regard. This is complicated stuff. And then you've got the short range rockets that don't require the same rocket launchers that the Israelis are hunting. There's, it's a more bountiful arsenal and it's going to be a challenge. I will say it's probably better that we're doing this now and we're eroding the regime and trying to weaken it. Because, yes, if we had allowed them to continue to amass the long range and the short range and the drones and, and potentially develop this nuclear program as they have been. This, you know, we were looking at a regime that was going to become too powerful and difficult to stop. And this was the moment, right? So right now we've got zero air defenses or near zero air defenses that the Iranians are able to operate. And that means that the United States and Israel can just operate in the skies over Iran with total impunity, attacking what they can. This is now a question of intelligence and it's a question of being able to penetrate those underground bases that are holding the drones and the missiles, both long range and short range. This is not easy stuff. And it's one of the reasons why everybody in Israel is saying, I hope Trump can hold on until the end of March. They're worried that he's going to Stop. When there's a lot more to damage, there's a lot more work to be done. You know, they're carrying out like, I don't know, 1200 or 1500 strikes a day or something crazy like that between the United States and Israel. And I'm hearing that they could do this for another two to three weeks and still have ample targets left in the target bank should they wish to continue into April. So there's a lot of work to be done there on the nuclear front. Look, I'll just say this. The know, everybody's read about the reports of this one facility and, you know, it sounds like the United States is dropping, you know, the mops, the Massive Ordnance Penetrators, into, you know, underground facilities and they're doing more damage to the nuclear program. Again, this is, I think, where it would be great to get a, maybe a more fulsome readout from the Pentagon about where we are, but that's kind of not what the M.O. is right now. I think we're getting a lot of General bda, the battle damage assessment. We're not getting into, like, here's how many targets in this vertical, here's how many in this vertical, and this is how many more we have to go. We're not really getting a sense of how far along we are on all of this. They're keeping it close to the vest maybe because they don't want the Iranians to have a sense of what the strategy is.

Well, the Iranians may not know how damaged they are in weird ways, because if we did disrupt their command, control and communications, their ability to know from Tehran what's going on up, you know, north by, by the northern borders, they may not have any idea except that there's radio silence from some of these facilities. And therefore they're flying blind or pushing a button that doesn't launch anything or, you know, like saying, we'll get you, and then finding that everybody who could have gotten them is dead. Like, those are. That's psychological blows from which it's hard for a regime to recover.

Oh, absolutely. And again, I think when the fighting finally stops and everybody should know, I mean, the Turks are trying to work, you know, a ceasefire. And I think the Omanis are involved. I mean, the Qataris for sure, they've gotten weak in the knees and they'd like this whole thing to end, and they're lobbying the United States to end the fight when it eventually happens. That's where you start to learn how much damage there was. You'll start to get reports from the ground in Iran, you're going to start to have maybe better satellite imagery. It's going to take a little bit, but I think you're going to see that the regime is significantly degraded. The only question from there is, can you parlay that into regime change? And that's the untested question. And can you do it as an America first? Regime change, in other words, regime changes we just discussed without nation building, without spending trillions of dollars, without putting boots on the ground.

[Christine Rosen]

That means making Rubio the Ayatollah, or.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, of course, he has every other job. Eliana, you also had one more question you wanted to ask. Sure.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yes. If the US in, let's say, by March 31, the date that you set, achieves its strategic objectives here, you know, neutralizing the nuclear threat, destroying the missile launching and production capacity of the regime, and crippling the naval, Iran's navy. How should we think about that if the regime, as we're discussing it and the Ayatollah 2.0 is still in power?

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And, you know, I think everybody should expect that at the end of the fighting period that the regime will still be in power. Whether this ayatollah survives, you know, I think is an open question. The guy clearly has, you know, a

target on his back and severe injuries, and he's coping.

He already had a broken leg and a lacerated eye or something, you know, as a result of the attack that killed his father. And, you know, that that's why they trotted out that weird cardboard cutout with his face pasted on it. It was just bizarre, right? And this guy's kissing it and like, it was absolutely weird theater. But, you know, it actually almost doesn't matter who is the supreme leader. It's a question of the regime and everything. You've probably seen these reports, you know, overnight. There are apparently multiple intelligence reports from the US System suggest that the regime is still intact, that it's still operating. And I think here's where it's important to remind people a few things. This is not Maduro, right? This is not Venezuela. This is a deeply ideological regime where people were raised on the Islamic revolution and its core ideological tenets from age zero. And they're not going to be deterred by the United States where the US Says, hey, we're about to bomb the presidential palace in Venezuela. Get the hell out and we'll pay you or we're going to bribe you or we're going to, you know, we have compromising material on you you need to get out. We were able to maneuver some of that so that it was easier for that special operation to take Maduro off the chessboard. I don't think you're going to get that in the Islamic Republic. It's a more ideological regime. People believe in it more, and so it will remain in place. But again, the key is once the fighting stops, that's where I think all of the, you know, the communication, the arming of the opposition, the funding of the opposition. You know, hopefully we're going to see the hijacking of Iranian airwaves, all the things that you want to see that will begin to make the regime even more wobbly, so they will not have the same abilities to attack the broader region. Hopefully we're going to see fewer abilities to be able to crush the Iranian people when they come out, hopefully in larger numbers. And. And then you're going to have all this other stuff that creates chaos for the regime. This is, and my expectation is this is going to be not just Mossad. I think it'll be Mossad plus CIA plus, I don't know, maybe the, you know, Azerbaijan intelligence or the Saudi intelligence. Nobody wants to see this regime survive. And especially these Arab states that just got hit that have a lot of money, that probably don't mind paying for operations that further erode the stability of this regime. So I would just say keep an eye out. April, in my view, assuming this thing goes until the end of March, it could end sooner. But I think the weeks ahead are going to be fascinating as we watch the kind of things that are happening just below the surface in Iran. So start to bubble up.

[Abe Greenwald]

The Iranian a shorter term military operation and a longer term, not US Led, you know, regime change or US led

[John Podhoretz]

or US quietly led. Right. But maybe it looks like the Israelis are running it from the front.

Right. What we do know is that the Iranian regime has, during the uprisings of the last 20 years, in 2000 and 2009 and 2022 and 2019, they have tools in their toolbox. When after the people rise to try to quiet the trouble, they arrest the thousands of people, but then they've opened spigots. They open social welfare spigots, they lower the price of food, they start throwing money at certain regions. They do what they can to pacify the population and keep them from continuing the fight. Scare them and then, you know, like, give them opium and let them, let them sort of try to live on that way. And that second game, we don't know how strong the first game will be meaning their ability to suppress because they really might be just staggered beyond belief. They'll be there, like there'll be a guy called the president and there'll be a guy called the ayatollah and there'll be a social service structure where if you are a retiree and you need to go get your Social Security check, there's a building where you go to get your check. But their ability to quash contrary opinion and their ability to provide goodies to the people that they like may be completely gone by. So it's not just that we have a vote or that they have a vote, but they may be denied their ability to have suasion over the Iranian people. And that doesn't have to happen by March 31, obviously.

No, I think that's the point, John, is that. Yeah, you know, the month of April or into May or June for that matter. I mean, there is no timeline. There's no handbook for how to do a successful regime change operation. And, you know, in a crazy theocratic country, you know, it's going to be trial and error, but there are going to be things that are done to this regime and the pillars upon which it has long sat that we will begin to see the erosion of that. I mean, we saw the attack on bank SEPA the other day. This is a major bank that is one of the key financial institutions that funds the irgc. If they're not able to access funds from this bank, there's a couple things going on. Number one, they can't placate, you know, the population in the way that you've just described. But also you've got IRGC officials that are expecting their payouts once a week, their salaries or their, you know, whatever the perks that they've been enjoying. If they can't get money out and they can't rely on the regime to pay them, well, then that's where the defections might start happening. And by the way, don't forget that if the regime starts crushing Iranian people again, Right. Because we saw 40,000 killed in the month of January. There may be people this time around that come out. And maybe they're from the army, maybe they're from the Basij, maybe even from the IRGC itself, where they're like, we can't do this anymore. Right. And that's what happened in Egypt.

Right.

The Mubarak regime. There are army officials that are just saying, we are not firing on the people. We are Egyptian first and foremost, and we are not doing this to Our people. These are the sorts of things. We don't know how they're gonna play out as we head into phase two of this war. And again, phase one is all the big booms and fireballs in the air. Phase two is the quiet stuff that is so much more interesting to somebody like me.

Quick point, and then we should close. This is Trump's war. Trump wants everyone to know it's his war. Democrats want everyone to know it's his war because Trump wants everything to be about himself. And Democrats know that their followers hate Trump and they call something. They put a Trump label on it, and they immediately have an active resistance and opposition. Washington Post did something interesting last night. They did a poll of a thousand Americans, and they asked about the war, and they said, what do you think of Donald Trump's war in Iran? And the number was 52 opposed, 39 in favor. And then they asked, do you support the war in Iran? And the number is 42 support, 40 oppose. So does that tell you that the American people are more supportive of this war? In theory, when you think about it as a national cause, and that they are more. They. They take a much more partisan tinge. It's a literal parallel to Trump's approval rating, you know, which is around 39%. Fascinating numbers, because I think it. It suggests something that Trump will, I don't think, psychologically be able to do, which is that he should step back. Not. Not that I think I still agree with Christine that he should be a wartime leader and be the person who is explaining why we're doing what we're doing. But politically and in terms of public support, the fact that people are 10 points more likely to say, or. Or they're 10 points less likely to oppose the war because when they don't think of it as Trump's war is a pretty striking fact. And it does suggest there's political play here that the administration and Republicans and everybody should be thinking about.

[Seth Mandel]

I only wish that they also asked, do you support Donald Trump and Netanyahu's war?

[John Podhoretz]

Oh, great. Yeah, that would be. I don't know what that would do with the numbers either. But I'm just saying, like, I think the idea is that this war does

[Abe Greenwald]

not war, that Netanyahu ordered Trump to

[John Podhoretz]

start using his witchcraft. Right. According to Tucker Carlson, using his witchcraft

after manipulating the weather. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just think we're in a very weird place here because the public does not think of this as a national cause. No, obviously.

Yeah. But this gets back to the point that I made in the forthcoming piece for Commentary, a lot of the opposition to this is it's continued opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

Right.

And maybe Libya. Right. We're like, we're so scarred by what happened a quarter of a century ago and the disastrous withdrawals from these places and the mess that that emerged that we've, you know, we're afraid of trying to shape the world in ways that would be beneficial to the United States. We've given up on this idea, and Trump clearly hasn't. Trump clearly has a very different idea in mind. And again, I think that if he's able to somehow figure out how to do this in ways that appeal to the, you know, interventionists, the internationalists, whatever we're calling it within the Republican Party, let's just call it the Rubio wing of the party and then also avoid the mess, the morass that all of the isolationists, the Vance wing of the party that they're warning about, if he can somehow show people that MAGA can thread the needle, that America first can thread the needle. We're dealing in a different paradigm. And so the polls right now, I mean, I think they're instructive and I think they're important, but I think that the most important thing is to figure out how to get this thing to look like a success so that Americans can start to feel comfortable again with the idea that, hey, we're a superpower and we get to decide if we have a real problem with the regime. We can do this and not lose, you know, 6,000Americans and trillions of dollars. These are the sorts of lessons that I hope we can take away from this war.

[Abe Greenwald]

I agree with John. Like, you know, I think Seth and I are about the same age. And for people in our generation, we came of age during the Iraq war, and we haven't lived really during American military conflicts that have been extraordinary successes. You know, we didn't live through world World War II, and there was a previous generation that lived through Vietnam and were was shaped, their worldview was shaped by that. Our generation worldview was really shaped by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think to the extent Trump through some of these actions can shape the view of how the American military can be used and what the American military can do will really change the outlook of both those serving in the military and those who aren't serving in the military. But his view of what the country can do on the world stage and how it can reshape, you know, the world and what America. America's role in the world. It could be a really powerful thing.

[John Podhoretz]

Look, I'm so. I'm a generation older than you and Christine and Abe are between all of

[Eliana Johnson]

us and John, we're the best generation Gen X. Yes, that's correct.

[John Podhoretz]

So. So I lived through. I was 14 when Vietnam, when, when we, when we fled Saigon. So I was there. I went to the moratorium in 1968 as a seven year old. I. I saw all of that then I saw this change from beginning in 1983 when we used American troops to rescue medical students in Grenada and effectively effect regime change on this Marxist island, tiny island in the Eastern Caribbean. And then I saw us have fights over funding the Contras. But I did see the Sandinista regime fall and be replaced though now they sort of came back. Panama success first Gulf War success. Strikes over Bosnia success. So you are right that like from 83 to 2000 the use of the American military not on a massive scale except once, except for the Gulf War where there were half a million men under. Under arms fighting in 1991 in expelling Saddam Hussein of Kuwait. We. This was an unbroken history of victory. And I'm operating from that perspective. You're operating from the perspective of this never. And maybe most of those people who are your age and younger, this never works. Why on earth are we doing this now? And so you do have this fascinating mindset shift.

[Abe Greenwald]

The other thing that I was gonna say is the first presidential election I remember is, is Bill Clinton's election, which means I'm too young to remember the American victory over the Soviet Union. So if you haven't read about it and you just turned 40, you don't know about it.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. And Bill Clinton said that George H.W. bush, a extraordinarily brave American fighter pilot in, In World War II, 58 missions dunked in the Pacific Ocean had to be rescued fought war said he had no vision and that in particular in relation to the breakup of the Soviet Union, that he had a certain level of dishonor because he hadn't properly supported the democratizing forces. And Clinton, who himself had been a draft dodger and had written this letter about how he had a disrespect for the military when he was avoiding going into the National Guard in Arkansas, nonetheless came at Bush from the right on the grounds that he wasn't good at stewarding American power and that Clinton would be better and that that was where America was in 1992 was fight over who would be more hawkish or who would be more Regime changey or who would be more interested in going around the world in search of monsters to destroy, to democratize the planet. That was where the debate, our conversation was taking place. So that by 1998 you had Charles Krauthammer very skeptical in some ways of a mission in Bosnia because the UN was involved in. And Clinton saying, no, no, no, no, we're going to win this. We'll have a 40, you know, we have 48 days from the air and we're going to get our, we're going to achieve our objectives without a single boot on the ground. I'm just saying, like this is the transition to the American military power is useless and self defeating is a proper generational understanding. I mean, like you have a reason to believe or your generation has a reason to believe what, what, what you believe. Abe and Christine, you guys, again, sort of like 10 years up. What do you, where are you on this?

[Eliana Johnson]

Well, I would, I mean, I would, I would say I have, I saw the. I graduated from high school in 1990, so the first Gulf War was very formative in my college years. And, and there was plenty of patriotism. There was plenty of support for that war and for the troops. And it was viewed as, again, like you said, a very effective use of American power. I think my generation, part of my generation that I hung out with at least, became very skeptical of international operations at a certain point where it seemed like America's soldiers in America's people were putting themselves more at risk to solve problems overseas. Not in the way that the isolationists talk now, but in just a skeptical posture about, okay, do we have to go around and fix every problem in the world? But it was, there was still generally support for those conflicts. They were viewed as very strategic, I think, at the time. So even though, you know, I might not have been a fan of Bill Clinton's foreign policy in general, he was very specific, like, we're doing this and this is how we're doing it. We have this coalition and there we go do it. And so I think it was always seen as limited, a limited and effective and targeted use of American power. So for me, the, you know, the second conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was old enough and although I did have friends who served and I have relatives who did multiple combat tours in both of those theaters. So that was where I think, to Eliana's point, some of my optimism about the use of American power started to become more pessimistic. But it was not the shape, the formative moment because the Fall of the Soviet Union was the formative moment of my childhood. And then the success in the first Gulf War was the other.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah, I have a similar trajectory. I was once very enthusiastic about America's ability and will to intervene when the time seemed right. And my optimism was also dimmed a little bit by what happened during the Bush years. But where I'm not, and this is what disturbs me about a lot of what the Iraq and Afghanistan war has produced on the right and in the country in general, where I sharply diverge from, like, the new right, there's this idea that it's immoral to intervene to help other countries if they're, you know, who are seeking freedom and where there is a shot at lifting the yoke off of them. And that, to me, is crazy. I understand that we, as Christine said, we shouldn't go around looking for the most mission impossible, like, challenge to do this, and we shouldn't expend any amount of American blood and treasure to do it either. But the idea that there's something wrong, immoral, you're not serving the American people and the American vision, if you're out there doing that, to me, is crazy, wrong, and dangerous, because we are the only ones who can do it, who have a history of doing it. And if no one does it, things get worse for everyone, including us.

[John Podhoretz]

Totally agree. Let me just add that, and I associate myself with Abe's remarks, but what I would just note here is that we are now entering into this moment of intense global competition with China. And if we cede ground to the Chinese, we give them more influence and more control over more regions around the world. This is not going to end well. Right, right. We're going to see this totalitarian, just dystopian regime start to expand its power into places that we don't want to see it. And this actually is probably one of the most important arguments in favor of what we're doing right now in Iran. People are like, oh, it's for Israel. No, actually, if we can flip the Middle east and make this an American region, this is enormously important, not just for energy, but for lots of other reasons as we head into this great power competition. So I think, you know, folks are, I think, missing the point in huge ways. Like, we're. They're just not focused on what's happening globally. It's just, oh, we can't have another Iraq or Afghanistan. Okay, yeah, we shouldn't. And let's do our best to not have that. But let's understand some of the Other, larger forces at play.

Look, I just to complete this point, because we haven't mentioned Ukraine and Russia and in this regard, and part of what happened here with us going into Iran, there was an opportunistic quality by which I mean things happened on the ground in Iran in December that we did not anticipate this uprising that began on December 28th. Rural everywhere, because the rial, the currency, went to zero. People's money was worthless. They couldn't buy anything. They were suddenly completely immiserated. And that has something to do with what happened in the 12 day war five or six months earlier, that is that the regime was humiliated, things were bad, sanctions were biting. They had no capacity to really argue against them. And so this thing happened and Trump's like, okay, help is on the way. And Israel's like, this is great because we really should go back and finish the job that we started. And, oh, look, we can hit the ayatollahs. Ships are starting to come in. You know, American forces are starting to gather. And part of it is Trump saying, you know what, the Iranians are showing signs of weakness. The regime is showing signs of collapse. And the Israelis have this fantastic system wired maybe to do great work. We'll jump in, it'll be our war. But, like, this is real world. Conditions say we can go in at very low cost. We're not going to. They're not going to be able to hit our planes. They have no air defenses. All of that. Opportunistic. Ukraine, similarly opportunistic. And we complained on this podcast throughout the Biden years that it was an unbelievably low cost for us to support Ukraine. It was just materiel. It wouldn't be people. They were showing real signs of military innovation, tactical brilliance, and the Russians showing that they stank. They were a terrible army, they were a terrible military. They were losing people at an astonishing clip. There was all sorts of weird tensions inside the country that led to that weird moment when the Wagner group started to march on Moscow to take over the military and all of that. And the great tragedy is, and it's a trap. We'll, we'll understand it at some point later that Trump, when he came into office because he was constantly attacking Biden on Ukraine, did not similarly see the opportunistic possibilities in supporting this effort that would cost us very little, that the Ukrainians needed very little from us, just some only equipment. And that right now the Ukrainians have turned the tide. I mean, it's a tiny tide, but they've Taken back several hundred kilometers of territory that the Russians spent, lost a couple hundred thousand men taking over the last year.

John, let me actually just add that I think there's a moment here. I'm hoping there's a moment because the Russians have been providing intelligence on American troop movements to the Iranians. They have been providing guidance on the tactics of the drone swarms and some of the other military tactics that are going on. They're sending advisors to the Ukrainians, are sending advisors right now to try to counter the Iranian drones against the Gulf. This could be the moment I'm hoping that Donald Trump says, huh, okay, Putin not a good guy. Ukraine probably actually an asset here. And, you know, maybe I can see where, you know, I need to make a correction of sorts. I don't know how popular that'll be. Again, the isolationist wing of the party is constantly a challenge for him. But I do think that this could be a moment of awakening.

And I hope Trump said something almost inadvertently comic last week in which he said, you know, I'm trying to make peace between Ukraine and Russia. And I think the Russians are kind of interested in that. But the problem is Zelensky, he doesn't want to make peace. And it's like, of course he doesn't want to make peace. They're advancing their military goals. They're starting having had a really bad or very depressing year and a half after an incredibly amazing start to their effort to retard this invasion and take over their territory. Something has changed in the last couple of months that is favorable to Ukraine's position. Why would they unilaterally quit now? Right. They don't need to sue for peace. And that's where you see this thing about Trump having a cognitive dissonance problem with understanding what's going. He's mad at them because they won't let him make peace when there's a war going on that they may be starting to win is just. That's exactly the opposite of how he would be thinking about this if he were thinking about it in terms. The same terms that he's thinking about Iran.

So, you know, what I love about this conversation is what we've actually just done is we've shown how Russia, China and Iran are a unified front, effective. They're an axis, and they're operating against the United States and all of our allies, and that what we're watching right now is something a lot bigger than just, gosh, are we spending blood and treasure in Iran? And is this stupid? There is something far bigger and more profound going on. And I think this is the message that the American people need to hear more than anything else, John.

[Christine Rosen]

And it supersedes ideology.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

The ideology the world doesn't know.

[John Podhoretz]

It's great.

[Christine Rosen]

You know, right wingers don't really like Ukraine and left wingers don't really like Israel and whatever. But when Israel took out those Iranian rocket factories, it lightened the war against Ukraine because the Russians were using those Iranian missiles and drones on Ukraine. Like the, the fact is the three of us are on the same side, the United States, Israel and Ukraine in this war. There's, there's no other way to, you know, the missiles are flying very specific directions.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. Throw Taiwan in there and you get to. You start to see what's going on worldwide.

Right, Exactly. So anyway, this is a great power competition and entente and alliances shift and move over time as long as the through line remains what it is. Anyway. Jonathan Schanzer, please watch commentary.org hopefully sometime tomorrow his piece Regime Change Without Nation Building will be up, as well as articles by Eli Lake and by Todd Lindbergh and by me in a package we are calling Iran Amok. I hope you like it when you get a chance to read it. Fantastic to have you on Chanzer, as always. And for Seth, Christine, Eliana and Abe, I'm John Paborz. Keep the candle burning.