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- [00:04]
Abe Greenwald
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
- [00:11]
John Podhoretz
Some preach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect.
- [00:21]
Abe Greenwald
The worst, hope for the best.
- [00:25]
John Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, June 17, 2025. I am John Pod Hor, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:39]
Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
- [00:40]
John Podhoretz
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [00:43]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [00:44]
John Podhoretz
Seth Mandel is supposed to be with us, but he is having connectivity problems, so he may pop in at any moment and then he will be joining us for the balance of the show. At that point, things are moving way too fast with the story of Israel, Iran, the United States up. And here is Seth Mandel outside. The man is outside. Hello.
- [01:10]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:11]
John Podhoretz
Can you hear me? Seth, I can hear you.
- [01:13]
Christine Rosen
Can you hear me?
- [01:14]
John Podhoretz
Okay. Very exciting, very exciting outdoor visual. For those of you watching on YouTube, our senior editor, Seth Mandel, who is. I wouldn't say it's the best connection, but let's hope that all goes well. So I was just saying things are moving too fast for us to sort of talk about the news as we speak. The Trump senior brain trust is either gathered in the situation room or has gathered or will gather in the situation room. And the president has said that he is not interested in negotiating with Iran. He is only interested in surrender. And of course, surrender can take many forms. So I don't know what that means. I don't know whether we're talking about America coming in and using its bombers to destroy the Ford out nuclear site, or whether we're just standing there to force the Iranians to the table to say uncle and agree to destroy the site themselves, or whether Israel's getting a green light to destroy the site or will be given a bomb to destroy the site, which is the last remaining real issue in the, in the war. So let us put that question to one side. And I'm going to actually go very, very deep and high here, or either I'm going to be fake deep and falsely high. And I'm going to posit a metaphysical question here. Metaphysical question arises from the fact that it is 10 years since Donald Trump came down the escalator. Our colleague Matt Continetti has a very good piece about this at the Free Press today about what it means and how things have changed or not changed since that moment when Donald Trump entered politics and changed America forever. And there are consistent through lines in that speech, right? He talks about tariffs, he talks about how the ruling class doesn't know how to do anything. Talks about how terrible the Obama administration is, talks about immigration, talks about the wall, talks about, you know, people they're sending their worst. All that stuff, all of which are through lines. But I want to, I want to quote two separate sentences from the speech that also represent a through line that people simply don't recognize as a through line. He said, take a look at the deal he's meaning Obama's making with Iran. He makes that deal, Israel maybe won't exist very long. It's a disaster, and we have to protect Israel. That's sentence number one. Sentence number two is I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and we won't be using a man like Secretary Kerry that has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who's making a horrible and laughable deal, who's just being tapped along as they make weapons right now, and then goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old and falls and breaks his leg. Okay, putting aside the bicycle race thing, which I had to read because it's so hilarious, that's a through line. First speech of his political life. He says, we have to protect Israel. I will not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. Ten years later to the day, Israel is at war with Iran to prevent or make a final determination that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, whether that is the destruction of its nuclear program or that combined with regime change or whatever. And I don't think that people have reckoned with just how consistent Trump has been on this matter. The only moment in the course of his political life where it seemed as though he was going in a different direction on this was the last two months when he announced that Steve Witkoff was going to go to Iran and try to negotiate a deal. He pulled out of the jcpoa, the Iran deal. He, you know, did maximum pressure, snapped back sanctions, helped Israel in its efforts to make new alliances with the Sunnis in the region as opposed to the Shiites in Iraq, and has it, you know, so this is a, this is the consistent foreign policy.
- [06:08]
Christine Rosen
Well, well, let me, let me push back a little bit on that in terms of, you know, the phrase don't look at what people say, look at what they do. I think that's true in Trump's case, except that he also, it's look at what he does, not always whom he hires, because he has staffed his administration with people who are, who are not on board or consistent when it comes to ending Iran's nuclear power program. His Director of National Intelligence testified before Congress, didn't even think they had a nuclear weapons program. So there's that inconsistency combined with the fight that we've now seen out in the open in the last 48 hours between the populist MAGA wing, particularly people like Tucker Carlson and others fighting with that consistency, which has, I agree, has always been there. If they just look at what he did when it came to making serious decisions and criticizing what previous administrations had done. But I, but I think their surprise is a sign that they thought maybe they were turning him a bit away from that consistency.
- [07:07]
John Podhoretz
Oh, I got to add a couple of other things. The United States killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian national guard corps, in 2019, thus triggering the Iranian assassination plot against Donald Trump that we believe there were two relatively serious plans in. In place that did not obviously bear. Bear fruit. And so, yeah, the outside MAGA base is going nuts. And there are a couple of people in the administration, Tulsa Gabbard being the most obvious one. But remember, she was appointed to the administration as part of a coalition broadening exercise that involved her and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Because, remember, so Kennedy is from the most prominent Democratic dynasty of the 20th century and then he comes into the Trump coalition. And Tulsi Gabbard was a candidate for president in the Democratic Party in 2019 and was pretty devastating on that stage in the debates in which she participated, going at the jugulars of various other people. I don't even remember what her issues were, but I remember we were all kind of like, whoa, she's good. Like, that is some hard hitting.
- [08:33]
Christine Rosen
If I remember correctly, it was right at Kamala, which had made her something of a hero too, because Kamala had been on the other side taking down Biden with the busing stuff.
- [08:45]
John Podhoretz
Right, okay. So, so her presence you can look at as like a, as I say, as a sort of reward. Right. It's the classical classic patronage award. She gets a job that she wants because she crossed the, because she crossed the partisan line, endorsed him. And he likes her and she's pretty, but she looks like Cruella Deville. And so he gave her, he gave her this job, which of course her.
- [09:14]
Christine Rosen
Toughness more than, I mean, you know, than her. I mean, her appearance is fine, but like, I think it's her toughness.
- [09:19]
John Podhoretz
And he likes, he likes a good looking woman. Sorry, I'm sorry. Like, the parade of good looking women remains a very serious feature of this credit.
- [09:30]
Christine Rosen
She has not gotten the Mar A Lago face like many of them has.
- [09:33]
John Podhoretz
Like, she's actually Very. Yeah, I know, I know that this is happening younger and younger and younger, and I see it on the streets of New York with 30 year olds who look like their face has been ironed unnecessarily. But, but she is, I think, 45 or 46. I mean, she's not. Okay anyway. But she's 44. 44, okay. So I would put her to one side as a kind of classic political payoff thing in a job that's very ill defined. Right. And sort of exists to coordinate the different intelligence agencies so that they speak with one voice. And you know, it's like one of those kind of bizarre jobs that doesn't actually make all that much sense because the CIA director is more powerful and probably the NSA director is more powerful and she's supposed to be. They're either their superior or kind of like their, their coordinator. And people like that usually like get their hats handed to them and they get stuffed.
- [10:37]
Christine Rosen
Well, and she, we know from reporting that she hasn't been included in some of the inner circle discussions leading this last week.
- [10:43]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, okay.
- [10:44]
Christine Rosen
But I think, I think the point of having DNI was because he doesn't trust the intelligence establishment and he wanted somebody who is skeptical of everything that comes through the intel pipeline there's. To see it first. So not necessarily anything having to do with policy, but he was so a sort of Nixonian outsider, you know, somebody who will look out for him.
- [11:10]
John Podhoretz
But you know, he's got John Ratcliffe at CIA, who is a loyalist and was in the first administration. And so I'm just saying I don't, I don't take it that seriously. The real question has always been what. What is going on in the Vance office and at the State Department and to some extent the Defense Department on this larger question of whether or not America should be projecting military power in the world and how far to go in projecting military power. So all I'm saying is all of those are well taken push. It's a well taken pushback. But he has again, with the exception of the 60 days that began when he told Netanyahu in April that he wanted Witkoff to try to negotiate with the Iranians, he has been consistent in a way that he is not all that consistent when it comes to these matters, and particularly in the question of whether or not Iran should get a nuclear weapon. Somebody a super cut Yesterday of the 211,000 occasions on which he said Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on my watch. He said it during his first term. He said it during the campaign in 2023 and 2024. And he said it when he became president. It is like one of those sentences that's one of the ones you can say has always come out of his mouth from day one until now, 10 years later.
- [12:44]
Abe Greenwald
You know, can I just add something to this again, accepting some of the people he has around him. He's also been consistent about anti Semitism. He has in his first State of the Union ever, during his first term, that was like the most philo Semitic speech ever. That was the one where he was talked about, you know, rescuing, you know, liberating the camps and where the one Jewish American soldier who had liberated one of the prisoners stood up and he was threatening Iran during that speech. And he was sort of tying the greatness of having World War II victory to our greatness moving forward. And then obviously the crackdown on campuses and campus anti Semitism. Now again, he's eats lunch with people that are terrible. He staffs his administration with people that are terrible. But there's, that's also always been in there.
- [14:01]
John Podhoretz
And what has happened in the last 48 hours is a meltdown of the Jew hating manosphere. So, and I mean these.
- [14:12]
Christine Rosen
Which includes Candace Owens. So.
- [14:14]
John Podhoretz
Well, Candace Owens. Right. Okay, so the man. Yeah, the, the gender non specific manosphere. Candace Owens, Dave Smith, Bannon to some extent, although he's a slightly more complicated figure when Ban has actually been a sort of supporter of Israeli military action. Who else? Daryl Cooper, Martyr made Dave Smith calling for Trump's impeachment because of this. So that's the MAGA base. Right. They're the people who say they are the true representatives of Trump in the world who don't work for him. And they are. Now they have had this kind of weird choice to make, which is because I guess things have been relatively vague. They can say, well, the consistent Trump position is no military adventurism. Again, not reflective of Trump's behavior as president. He has not been a warmonger. I mean he is not like moved 100,000 troops into Saudi Arabia to invade Kuwait. Right. But he had, he did, in the course of his first presidency, again hit Soleimani. I mean there, you know, he did five or six major things. He hit, he hit the ISIS in Syria. He hit. Who else? I mean, he, he used military power. He just did it in, you know, bits and pieces with no know, commit and you know, to get kind of like to get people to wave at him and say, you're a tough guy. And, and so it's not like He's a pacifist. He just, you know, thinks everybody was stupid in getting themselves involved in endless wars. He didn't even pull out of Afghanistan. Right. He was intending to pull out of Afghanistan and then he didn't do it. So it was left to Biden to destroy his presidency and essentially lead to the invasion of Ukraine with the horrific pullout from Afghanistan that he, that he actually went through with, that Trump couldn't bring himself to go through with when he was president. We don't know if he'd won the second term, whether or not he would have done the same thing with the same result, but he didn't. When he had the chance to, I would say, okay, so I'm gonna posit this sentence and I want you guys to react to it. There are people who say that Benjamin Netanyahu was put on this earth not to do judicial reform in Israel, not to reform the economy in Israel, not to sort of, you know, harden the control of the west bank, all blah, blah, blah. That he was put on this earth to end the Iranian nuclear program and that that is his purpose. That is all that he is. That is, that is the thing again, that is a through line of his. His turn, his time as Prime Minister with this one gap for two years, from 2009 until 2025, with a lot of mistakes along the way, taking his eye off the ball on Hamas and all of that, in part because he was overly fixated in some measures on Iran. What if Trump's metaphysical purpose on this.
- [18:05]
Christine Rosen
Earth.
- [18:08]
John Podhoretz
As an unseen divine hand functions as the prime mover? His reason for becoming president and then becoming president again is to remove Iran's nuclear capacity from this earth, just like Bibi Netanyahu. I can promise you that there are a great many religious Jews who believe this to be the case. Bible is full of stories of sometimes non Jewish figures in the Bible who end up playing interesting and fascinating roles in praising God and helping the Jewish people. Balaam, the non Jewish prophet who was supposed to curse God and, and ends up praising him, Jonah Job. I mean, like there are, there are figures in the Bible who end up non Jewish figures who end up playing key roles in, in Jewish history. So I am not a fundamentalist, I am a believer. I do believe that there, you know, that Israel is a providential nation and that something metaphysical is going on with Israel with the survival of the Jewish people over 2000 years when they should have been wiped off the earth and the survival after Auschwitz and the, and the, and the, and the military might this ragtag nation of poor people who had never picked up a weapon before in their 2000 years since they were sent into the diaspora, was able to develop an army in 1948 and 1949 that retarded the effort of 22 nations to take them out, and then 9th and then, you know, 17 years later, destroyed the armies of three much more powerful nations in six days. That something is going on here that is, you know, beyond our capacity to understand. And that Trump now, in his behavior in the past week is. I don't know. Trump is. Something's happening here that may not be explicable in rational terms. I don't mean. I mean, it's irrational. I mean beyond, you know, beyond the merely rational.
- [20:35]
Christine Rosen
I would say if it was. If that is the role that Trump ends up playing, it won't be one he would embrace in the same way that Netanyahu might, because anything that happens on a global stage, Trump wants to take credit for, regardless of whether he's had help or not, or is playing a part in a larger story that he, like, he's the main character in every story.
- [20:58]
John Podhoretz
So whether or not there he. After Butler, that God saved him for a reason.
- [21:03]
Christine Rosen
Yes, no, I understand that, but I. But I. I would say that the story is more focused on Netanyahu's understanding and capacity for understanding broader narratives in the way that you've laid out. Trump does not have that skill, but the skill he does have is one that Netanyahu recognized early on and has cultivated, and that is to see and say things very starkly, very clearly, as he has done with Iran and its nuclear weapons program. I don't think Trump's really capable of grasping in providential terms, except, as you say, post assassination attempts. But he did that for about five minutes, and then he was back to being Trump, which. Which is, again, both a strength and perhaps a weakness. And it's certainly something voters appreciated. So that's. I like the. I like the way you have laid this out, particularly with regard to Netanyahu, because I do think he understands his role in a broader historical context. I'm not sure Trump does. Perhaps he will, but he's also really an inconsistent policymaker. So that's why I think the next 24 to 48 hours will be critical. He might still see his role as the epic providential deal maker, you know, slash diplomat, and not the, you know, the destructor of Iran's nuclear program. I don't know. I'm a little more skeptical of his role in that scenario.
- [22:33]
Abe Greenwald
I was actually thinking to myself about a very related point yesterday, which is that, okay, I think Trump does believe that God has chosen him for some great task here, or some combination of great tasks to play some great role. But then I started thinking, I wonder if every president, once you get to that point, thinks that actually even the non believers can make an exception for themselves. Hey everyone, this is Abe. Are you a yo yo dieter? You diet, lose weight but gain it all back plus a few extra pounds. Then later you lose it and regain it again and again. It's dangerous. Studies show that can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes and other health problems. Breaking free of your yo yo diet pattern is a main reason doctors created Lean. Lean is a supplement, not an injection, and you don't need a prescription. The science behind Lean is impressive. It studied natural ingredients target weight loss in three powerful ways. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar, it helps control appetite and cravings, and it helps burn fat by converting fat into energy. Listen, if you're tired of losing weight and gaining it back, if you want to lose meaningful weight at a healthy pace, Lean was created for you. Let me get you started with 20% off when you enter commentary20akelean.com that's code commentary20akelean.com hey, it's John here.
- [24:16]
John Podhoretz
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- [26:04]
Christine Rosen
You know, well, and Trump is not a very. I mean, does he even go to church regularly? He's not do the performative believer stuff, right?
- [26:12]
John Podhoretz
He does not go to church.
- [26:14]
Christine Rosen
He has weird.
- [26:15]
John Podhoretz
I guess, kind of Abe is kind of doing the There are no atheists in foxholes. It is a job that is too powerful for one man. It is to. The authority and the responsibility are so great that not believing that there is some kind of assistance from beyond that is helping guide you to make the right decision is of course empowering in a Nietzschean way. Right. It's sort of like, you know, we're beyond good and evil.
- [26:55]
Christine Rosen
Well, it can be empowering or it can encourage humility depending on the person. And I think that's the difference.
- [27:01]
John Podhoretz
Right. But in my scenario, and remember I mentioned Balaam, who is this non Jewish prophet who, this is not Trump, but who is directed by his sponsor, by his financial sponsor, that he's supposed to go and curse Israel and God puts the words of praise in his mouth rather than curses. That Trump doesn't have to know that he's God's instrument to be God's instrument. It's not that God says, you better do this to him personally. It's that things have gotten us to this pass. I'm being metaphorical and not metaphorical at the same time because I'm genuinely. Let me just put it this way. For 20 years now, people like me, Commentary magazine, the person of my father who wrote the first piece called the Case for bombing Iran in this publication in June of 2007, have been saying Iran's nuclear program has to be destroyed because this is a country that wishes to wipe the Jews off the map. It would be the second time in 100 years that there would, there would be some kind of a mass murder of Jews. Judaism cannot survive. The Jewish people cannot survive two such blows. Israel would not be able to survive. Western civilization, sort of like beating heart would be snuffed out with unbelievable consequences. And I just have to protect my own worry about protecting my own family and my own people. I didn't actually ever really believe, sort of like the collapse of the Soviet Union that we would ever get to this day now it may not happen that Israel bombs fordow or that we bomb Fordow, it may well be that there'll be some agreement that makes this remain and it's some weirdly ambiguous way still at extant possibility, despite the destruction that has been done to Iran's ambitions over the last four or five days. But I just genuinely never actually thought that realistically we would be at this moment. And I. And my cognitive dissonance is getting to me. It's like I preached the idea of containment for many years, as many people did about the Soviet Union, that if you contain the Soviets, the. They would fall apart of their own internal contradictions. That was George Kennan's argument in the article that launched the doctrine of containment, the sources of Soviet conduct in 1947. I believe that, but I never really believed it. I never thought the Soviet Union would go away.
- [29:49]
Christine Rosen
Can I say I actually am not. I have always assumed we'd have some form of conflict with Iran, but not because I grew up reading any of this strategy or understanding foreign policy at all, but because culturally I grew up in an environment where the Ayatollah was a supreme enemy of America because he kept saying, death to America. And culturally, that message was actually filtered through just nightly newscasts when they'd show you, I mean, obviously the hostage taking in Iran. I was very young, but I have sort of little snippets of cultural memory. And also just it was an acceptable thing for Americans to say, that's our enemy, that's our enemy. They hate America so that these are not people we should trust. It was, for me, the shock was when an Obama administration started sitting down at the table and going, let's just all get along. So I wonder if culturally and generationally there are different messages there. And again, because I don't. I didn't follow foreign, you know, theories of foreign policy when I was young, but that message has been consistent throughout the culture until I would say Obama, when it shifted dramatically. And that was the same time. I mean, it came out of the 90s really, this idea that instead that war was over, we don't need to have wars anymore. We can negotiate, we can have trade, we can have all these things that will end war, which was always a fiction.
- [31:08]
John Podhoretz
Look, that's a very. Look, culturally, Iran was the country that took 52Americans hostage in the embassy after the Iranian Revolution. 441 days that they were held hostage in the embassy contributed to the massive revolution in American politics represented by the election of Ronald Reagan because of the impotence of Jimmy Carter and finding a way to deal with this or to reverse it. And yes, like Iran was the number one enemy of Americans on Earth.
- [31:45]
Christine Rosen
Remember Nightly News would show them burning Iranians, burning American flags in the streets. Like there was this whole imagery about Iran that I think.
- [31:53]
John Podhoretz
Right, so you're sort of saying, you're saying that America or Iran has had an appointment in Samara with America for 45 years from a.
- [32:04]
Christine Rosen
What I got trickled down growing up as a child of the late 70s, early 80s, that was absolutely a clearly defined message.
- [32:10]
John Podhoretz
Right, well, okay, so let's go to Trump's favorite sport, wrestling. So when I was a kid, I wasn't a kid, I was like a late teenager. And wrestling had not yet made this cultural turn into sort of like mass market. It was still kind of like a very low rent thing that was on Channel 9 here in New York at one o' clock in the morning on Saturdays.
- [32:34]
Christine Rosen
It was bigger in Florida, but that speaks to Florida.
- [32:36]
John Podhoretz
No, but it was big here too. But it was very. It wasn't. Cyndi Lauper hadn't started making videos with Fred Blassie and you know, stuff like that and wrestling.
- [32:47]
Abe Greenwald
But Vince McMahon was still involved.
- [32:49]
John Podhoretz
Vince McMahon was the, was the telecast man, was the, was the color commentator, you know, anyway. But it was very much a sort of. But one of the signs of the impending revolution in American culture and American politics was the introduction in early 1980 of a villain in the. Was it called the World Wrestling Federation? I don't even know what it was called then, I guess in. Of the Iron Sheik. The Iron Sheik from Iran or the Purple Sheik or the Iron Sheik. And basically all the other hero wrestlers took turns beating the crap out of the Iron Sheik. Right? Because a lot of other America was like, oh, the hostages and tie yellow ribbon around the. We need the hostages to come home and tie yellow ribbon around the old oak tree. And you know, maybe we can send the helicopter to rescue them in the desert. And meanwhile, this voice out of American subculture, pop culture, proletarian culture was like, no, beat them up. They're evil. Kill them and destroy them and throw them out of the ring and take revenge on them. Look at what they're saying about us. And somehow that never translated into policy in the United States in very weird ways. It never translated into policy even under the Reagan administration. What was, you know, the Iran Contra deal involved hawkish Americans, like saying Reagan.
- [34:28]
Christine Rosen
Should have had a camel clutch. Foreign policy. Right, that was, I mean, look, a lot of it was also racist, I have to say. I watched the. I mean, they had him all. I mean, he actually was Iranian American. He was.
- [34:39]
John Podhoretz
Was.
- [34:40]
Christine Rosen
You know, he was Iranian. But, like, there. Yeah, the cultural imagery there was a little. Not something I think we would tolerate today in a good way, if you.
- [34:49]
John Podhoretz
If you insist. But I was going to say that even in the Reagan administration, like hawkish Americans, like the recently passed on Michael Ledeen, we're still in the. No, no, no. We can make a deal with them. I'm going to go over, I'm going to take a. A cake in the shape of a key and show them that maybe they can. We can find common ground. Because they're hot. They're hawks and doves, blah, blah, blah, blah. There was always this delusion on both sides of American foreign policy that because Iran had only till very recently been an American ally, that somehow it could be coaxed back into the fold or something like that. And this delusion seized the right, seized the left, seized Obama. And the great fear, I think, that we all had in April was that it was this. It was starting to capture Trump's brain a little bit also. There's a real chance here maybe we can make a deal with them. They love deals. They're in the bazaar. They have 3,000 years of trading in the bazaar. And I'm a great deal maker, and so is Steve Witkoff. And. And some of us were like, oh, no. Like he's falling for even. He's falling for it, too. What is this magical power that the Iranians have over the American brain that they can walk around every Friday saying, shouting, death to America every Friday at their big, you know, at their sort of big religious events, and we just ignore it and pay no attention to the fact that this country that is 90 million strong, the most militarily powerful country in the Middle east outside of Israel, and all that are, like, openly hostile to us, plotting assassinations on American soil, and we don't do anything about it?
- [36:43]
Christine Rosen
But part of that, I think part of the reason is actually indicative of a good thing about the American people over the last several generations, and that's that they understood that the Iranian people themselves were in some ways captured by a regime that tormented them, arrested them through, you know, veiled the women who used to be able to walk around in Western attire if they wanted to, and that. That the religious revolution brought in by the mullahs was not necessarily the choice of the people, even though they obviously had problems with the regime of the Shah. So I think the sympathy, the deep sympathy that Americans have long had for the Iranian people is a good thing. And that is at war with the regime. You know, the regime is separate in some sense from the people in a way that in other conflicts we have not really gotten.
- [37:35]
John Podhoretz
Okay, here's where I got to push back on you because this was the doctrine of the anti Soviet movement, which was this is a regime that is oppressing its people. And what did the dissidents tell us when they came out and when they escaped? If Solzhenitsyn or whatever, what messages were they imparting through the work that they did that they were then was getting transmitted here, that they were getting arrested and sent to the gulag or to psychiatric prisons? Was go as hard against this regime as you can. We take heart and strength from your saying that they're evil and that they should be destroyed.
- [38:18]
Christine Rosen
Right.
- [38:18]
John Podhoretz
We are not. We. We are the suffering people of the Soviet Union or Poland or Czechoslovakia. And we want you to be tough. We don't want you to say, oh, you know, we. We understand that you're on our side. Similarly, we're now in this peculiar position where some people that I won't mention who used to work here are claiming that, you know, we should not be doing what we're doing to Iran because it's too dangerous for the suffering Iranian people.
- [38:53]
Christine Rosen
Well, and those are.
- [38:54]
John Podhoretz
Had been spending 45 years suffering under the jackboot of this millenarial military and corrupt totalitarian regime that is evil and should be extirpated. Go ahead.
- [39:10]
Abe Greenwald
I have a different thought about why we've been sort of scared off for decades. The regime came into power, took a bunch of American hostages off the bat. There was a rescue attempt, a kinetic operation undertaken that failed. The hostages got out through other means. They got out via diplomacy. Right.
- [39:38]
John Podhoretz
Well, via the election of Reagan and the fear of antagonizing him. Yeah, yeah, that's my phone to see, I guess.
- [39:45]
Abe Greenwald
Well, yeah, but I mean, but the actual operation isn't.
- [39:48]
John Podhoretz
Right. Yeah.
- [39:49]
Abe Greenwald
So I think that became a kind of template. Like, you know, we're. We're not going in there. Hands off. We'll deal with them. You know, talk. Talk quietly or whatever, you know.
- [40:07]
John Podhoretz
Right.
- [40:08]
Abe Greenwald
But keep the power in reserve.
- [40:10]
Christine Rosen
And strategically it is worse. I mean, and this happens all the time when. When we look at ways to strategically weaken an enemy without actually sending in troops. The question of whether to knock out Iran's the island. I forget, what's it search with? A K. The island. That's their major oil and gas refinery that if. Which we could hit or Israel could hit. But that Actually would not just lead to higher, likely higher gas prices for the rest of the world, but would cause a lot of suffering for the Iranian people. So that those kinds of calculations are the way we have long done, done strategic planning in terms of these sorts of attacks. And I'm not against that. But I take your point about the dissidents. And that's why I think the late 90s, the Global Citizen sort of sensibility in America that started to spread, particularly among wealthy, well educated, more elite class folks, you could say, embodied by Obama and embodied by this, I would call it hubris. They thought it was sophistication, which argued the world is different now. We understand it from a different perspective. We are not these, you know, stark Manichean Reaganite, you know, regime change types. We, we, we see things that you can't see. And he got the Nobel Peace Prize for just spouting that rhetoric in execution. It was a disaster, as we now know. But I think that appealed culturally, that message. The public was really ready for that message. And that worried, I think a lot of us who had a more conservative sensibility.
- [41:38]
John Podhoretz
Well, it was ready for that message because Iraq became such a goat rodeo and the American government had lost the faith of the American people that it knew what it was doing in this, you know, in these efforts. Even though I will argue until the day I die that where it's now 2025, Saddam Hussein has not been in power for 22 years. And Iraq may not be the model democracy that we wished it to be, but it is not a threat to its neighbors. And it is not. But I'm just saying.
- [42:10]
Christine Rosen
But this, let me just say this, that's a good point because I think it speaks to the Vance more isolationist wing too. And the argument should be demoralization, which is, I think what the country experienced after enduring and after Iraq is not a good starting point for thoughtful foreign policy going forward. But that's actually where they come from. It all goes back to Iraq for that crew that's now currently one of the wings in the White House.
- [42:34]
John Podhoretz
Right. So, but to get back to this sort of saying that I can't quite believe that we're here and that I'm trying to deal with the possibility that this is really going to happen. Abe and I have now been talking for a couple of days about this and this is a subject that comes up intermittently here because Commentary, of course, is one of the founding journals of neoconservatism. And if there is such a thing as do conservatism commentary is its, you know, remnant in some fashion. And it has always been grievously and profoundly misunderstood. It was the doctrine of the non neoconservative conservatives, the hardline conservatives after the Second World War that Soviet communism and then Chinese communism were so evil, so barbaric, so anti christian. I mean, it was like the godless communism that was represented here. That the only proper moral policy was called rollback. That our foreign policy goal should be to affirmatively roll back communism, to remove it from the regimes that the Soviet Union had essentially helped take over in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states and maybe from the Soviet Union itself and maybe China. Who lost China? That was the big cry was who lost China? We need rollback. The answer to rollback was what I mentioned earlier, which was the policy of containment. Rollback was an unachievable utopian dream because the United States was not going to go to war. Just after having come back from war to liberate countries under the Soviet yoke was not safe. They had, they had already, you know, they were on their way to becoming an atomic and then a nuclear power. And we didn't know what the order of battle was. We ended up having a proxy war instead between a communist and a non communist regime that was in Korea, right, where we backed the regime that was trying to prevent its takeover by communism but had not yet been taken over. That was the first war of containment. Containment was the policy that what you try to do to the extent that you can is contain your enemy in the space that it already holds. Do not let it be adventurous, do not let it expand its reach. Do not let it expand its financial reach, its ideological reach or its geographical reach. And that if you did this, and we did it haltingly and mistakenly and in a lot of bad ways over the course of the next 40 years. But if you do that, communism is unworkable. Not only is it an evil philosophy, but it is an unworkable governmental system. It will fall apart of its own internal contradictions. Power cannot be levied this way forever. The country will become incredibly poor because it's going to use a command economy structure and an anti market structure and all of that. And it will end up oppressing its people to the extent that they will not believe anything that's said and anything that's done and, and stuff will happen and they will collapse. Collapse of its own accord. The policy against Iran that was enumerated in that article by my father, the case for bombing Iran in 2007 that John McCain supported when he said we should bomb Iran. That everybody who said we need to prevent Iran from going nuclear was a policy not of regime change and not of revolution in the Middle East. It was a policy of containment. Iran cannot be allowed to extend its power in the way that is extending its power.
- [46:40]
Christine Rosen
And it worked. I mean, in 1988, Iran, Iraq war, it, it stopped after what, 2003? It all Iran was like, nope, we don't want to be next. I mean, that weirdly, that policy, the threat of that worked with Iran in the past.
- [46:55]
John Podhoretz
Hey guys, it's John here and I want to talk to you about Quince. Because Quince has become such a part of my daily life that people who know me listen to this podcast, literally come over to my clothing, look at the collar behind my neck to see whether what I am wearing is in fact a quint sweater, a quinted shirt, a Quince polo shirt, and more often than not, in fact it is. That is how committed I am to Quince, which I only got to know because they started advertising on the podcast. I got one free sample shirt that was so great that I started buying more and buying more sweaters and buying more shirts. And so I am very much a walking advertisement for Quints. And this is a non walking advertisement for Quince, which has all the things you actually want to wear this summer, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. 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Our talks discuss why so many young men are struggling to find purpose, connection and identity in today's world. We dig into what's really going on Politics, culture, loneliness, even rage. And what we can do to help change the narrative. This is a six part series that will challenge your assumptions and encourage you to continue the conversation from the dinner table to the office. Follow and listen to Lost Boys on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to Lostboys Men and sign up to get the latest episodes and news. Now, Israel is a smaller. It is 10 times smaller than Iran geographically and in terms of population. And it came under threat, right? Ahmadinejad and his predecessor, the two presidents of the 21st century, Raf Sunjani and Ahmadinejad said we are going to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Israel is a smaller country and at least then a weaker country in the sense that it did not have a standing military of, you know, I mean Iran had a standing military of, I don't know, 300, 400,000 people, 125,000 of them in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, huge air force and it was starting to develop nuclear weapons. The idea was we're not going to war with Iran. We don't want to invade Iran, we don't want to take over Iran. And regime change, regime change. All we should do, said my father, said John McCain, is Eliminate the Iranian nuclear program with military means. We're the world's largest military. It is very low cost to us. We go, we bomb these sites that are now nascent and then we get out. Israel did it with the osiric reactor in 1981 and Israel did it with the Syrian reactor in 2007. Why don't we follow that model, retard them, destroy the program, make it clear to them that they can't advance this any further and that they should stop threatening Israel because threatening Israel is wildly destabilizing. Aside from being evil and immoral. There was no regime change. This was not Iraq. Nobody was preaching the idea that we needed to go into Iran to save the Iranian people from their evil regime or to. All we were talking about was eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat. What follow on consequences there might be from that were questions otherwise. And we know that the failure to contain Iran has had incredibly deleterious consequences for Israel and for the United States. The failure to deter Iran meant that Iran felt like it had a free hand to interfere with Iraq, right? And we didn't deter them in Iraq and we didn't deter their military, their nuclear program. And Israel ended up with these two Iranian Kadamite organizations, Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, that were either paid for or directly under the control of Iran that they could not, in the end, as it turned out, particularly in October 7, could not contain and had failed to contain. And had something happen in 2007 to say to the Iranians, you cut this out, would Hamas have become an Iranian satellite? Would October 7 have happened? Would Hezbollah have had 400,000 rockets to threaten Israel with for 20 years? I think the answer is pretty clearly no. This was not a wildly crazy, you know, you're a lunatic who should be put in an insane asylum policy. It was measured, it was limited, it was narrow, and it had one target and one target only.
- [53:12]
Christine Rosen
But I agree. But so to play devil's advocate, that was precisely. Those are precisely the terms and words that all the people, particularly in the Obama foreign policy era, but even under some Republican administrations, used about sanctions, about, you know, freezing assets overseas, assets that were used by the Iranians. So I think it's not that there was no deterrence. It's that our understanding of what was effective deterrence had become very, very weak. And the idea of going back to an era where deterrence actually involved even targeted military action, to Abe's earlier point about the hostages, became so unpalatable to so many people on both sides of the aisle that the caution became the policy, which, as you say, actually led, meant there was no genuine deterrence from Iran's perspective.
- [54:00]
John Podhoretz
Right. So you're right. I mean, the thing is that deterrence isn't. Can't just be. We're going to be mean to you international organizations and vote terrible things about you, and we're going to make sure that you can't travel easily to Paris to spend the money that you stole from the government's coffers. And we're going to make sure your banks have trouble trading. That doesn't deter anybody. I mean, it makes life difficult for them and it makes, it means that they might be less efficient at what they do.
- [54:35]
Christine Rosen
In some cases, it drives them towards even worse actors in the, on the international stage who will help them launder their money and do those things.
- [54:43]
John Podhoretz
Exactly. I'm only saying this because if Donald Trump joins in the fight and, and orders the American air Force and strategic bombers to take out Fordow, or if he gives Israel the green light and they have the means, or he gives Israel the bomb, or however it would work, what he would be doing is enshrining the policy of military deterrence in relation to nuclear weapons for the next half century. It is not. And that's why I don't like all this regime change talk and why I was. I cursed it yesterday on the podcast. That is not what this is about. I mean, I think it would be wonderful if the Iranian regime disappeared. They're monsters and they treat their people horribly and it's all that, but I don't care about that. And we're, it's not like we broke it. You know, the Powell Doctrine, that we broke it. You know, we broke it and we own it. We didn't break it. They broke it. Israel said you stop. They didn't stop. Israel took them out. Israel's not responsible for rebuilding them. We're not responsible for rebuilding them. Let them take their oil revenue or whatever and see what they can do to build a pacific country that will not be bombed again. They have money, they have resources, they have material, they have a talented, educated people. Let them be for a force for self improvement rather than international evil and that will be more than enough for me. And if they decide not to do that, fine, then let them stew in their own evil juices. That's not the point. And we were never able to get this argument to penetrate to people because all our antagonists would do is say, oh, you just want to do regime change like you did in Iraq. That went really great, didn't it? Fantastic. Oh, aren't you guys. But that's so stupid.
- [56:49]
Abe Greenwald
That's the thing. The post Iraq sense of self doubt, like ruined everything. You know, it's from our approach to Iran to why we haven't given the Ukrainians enough to win, to everything. And Trump in some ways is the perfect person to reverse this because he's so not on board with, with things like regime change because he, you know, when last time he was in the region, all he did was denounce American force and regime change. So he's so clearly not doing this because he's been captured by a school of thought. You know, he's. If he's doing, in fact doing this and whatever he's done in greenlit so far, he's done because he sees the good sense in it and, or the, or the, the that. That it's a note that we have no choice.
- [57:52]
Christine Rosen
Well, in the fear, that's the, that's what's stoked this really large fear on the part of some of the maga. MAGA media, I would call it, not necessarily MAGA base. There was someone sent me a meme that was going around which was the Don Draper where. And the joke was he's saying it's neoconservatism but we're going to call it America First. And that captured perfectly, you remember, when he gives the presentation that. That captures perfectly, I think, that anxiety that you're pointing to, Abe. But in the same way that it took a Democratic president to reform welfare, perhaps it takes an America first president to reform that sort of anxiety.
- [58:31]
John Podhoretz
But that anxiety, again, that's. That's, I think, why. Look, neoconservism, never a developed philosophy. There was no philosophy of neoconservatism. It was a bunch of people who, first in social science and then in foreign policy, said the prevailing consensus on a lot of these things is unworkable and is causing more harm than it is, you know, than. Than good. And it's obviously the people who do it don't want the Soviets to dominate the world and don't want, you know, people to remain on welfare for seven generations and all of that. But their ideas are bad and they're not workable, and they need to be replaced by other ideas. So that was reformist domestic policy. And in foreign policy, it was, you cannot give an inch to this evil regime in Moscow because it is a bad actor looking to do bad things. And every time you play footsie with it, you give it an inch, it will take a mile. And then our strategic position is weakened. And then before you know it, Iran's taking 52American hostages. When you don't do anything about this and you don't do anything about that and you're enshrining Soviet superiority in the SALT II treaty in terms of nuclear warheads, you look weak, and then people try to take advantage of you. This is stupid. You should do it another way. It's a reformist movement. If it's a movement, it's not okay.
- [60:02]
Christine Rosen
But when it succeeded, particularly in domestic policy in this country, it required Democrats, people on the left, to stand up and say, these are our policies and we know they're not working. How do we change them? And that was that intellectual journey. So my question is, we've determined that Trump's actually pretty consistent, but who among the MAGA elite, the MAGA folks who are actually making policy, foreign policy, who needs most to be mugged by reality? I would say it's J.D. vance, but that's probably not going to happen because of his own position post Iraq.
- [60:35]
John Podhoretz
So I don't know. Okay, so let's game that out a little bit. Assume for a minute that this ends decisively. And Trump said he wants surrender, doesn't want to negotiate, he wants surrender and surrender again. Can Take many forms. Trump said earlier this week when Tucker Carlson said that he was betraying MAGA or America first, he said I am America first. So this is a cult of personality. It's built around one man. If he likes what happens in Iran and he says I did this, America gets the win, that movement falls right in behind him. It's not committed to a preceding doctrine that says that America should be isolationist. I mean the movement isn't. The movement is Trump is great. Liberals are terrible. Go Trump. You oppose Trump on Iran, he'll primary you. Now isn't that the great fear? He was primary ing all the neocons and the budget hawks in 2017 and 2018 because they were coming after him. Is that group of people really going to like stand up and say that he was wrong to do what he did in Iran or that there aren't lessons to be taken from a victory in Iran, assuming there is a victory? I don't think so. Tucker Carlson is not Trump. Tucker Carlson is a podcaster. Tucker Carlson didn't get 77 million votes.
- [62:11]
Christine Rosen
I do like that he's now known as kooky. Fantastically retro word that really is kooky.
- [62:19]
John Podhoretz
Tucker Carlson.
- [62:20]
Christine Rosen
Tucker Carlson.
- [62:21]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, I'm just saying like I don't, I don't see that J.D. vance, who is 40 years old, he could. Ten years ago he was a neocon. Now he's a restrainer. Who knows who will be five years from take, take Richard Nixon, his Predecessor as a 39 year old person becoming Vice president. Nixon came in as the hard right person to help push Eisenhower over the line with conservatives who didn't know whether he could be trusted ideologically. Where did Nixon go to? Nixon became a good loyal soldier of Eisenhower and then he ran for president, lost. Then when he came in in 68, 69, this guy, the tormentor of communists, the, you know, the, the, the red, the tricky Dick, the monster who you know, wanted to suppress all free speech, invents the Environmental Protection Agency, does detente. You know, I mean this.
- [63:18]
Christine Rosen
Okay so this is, this is a.
- [63:20]
John Podhoretz
Good example because maybe dance could be anything is right.
- [63:23]
Christine Rosen
Well maga, which whose only the only principle that holds them all together still is owning the libs. Otherwise there's really. They're all over the map supporting Trump. So maybe what, maybe what comes after MAGA is Vance, which is a protean politics. It shape shifts, it adjusts to the moment, it just wants to win. And however it does that, that's both and you know, perhaps that given the state of either political party right now and the growing dissatisfaction, particularly younger voters have with both sides, the whole omnicus crowd, which doesn't like the uniparty, maybe that's where we're headed. That wouldn't actually be the worst thing. If we do the right thing now.
- [64:05]
Abe Greenwald
Though, or if this plays out as it's playing out. If Trump goes ahead with one of the scenarios you've laid out and it ends up in the destruction of Fordo and Iran's nuclear program altogether, and Vance had remained a voice against it the whole time, maybe he's not the successor at all. Maybe it's, maybe it's Rubio or whoever else.
- [64:35]
John Podhoretz
Right. I mean, and remember, success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. So the question is, who's running to claim the success? Right.
- [64:50]
Christine Rosen
Well, in this case with MAGA world, particularly with Trump administration world, they always wait to see what Trump defines as success. And then you see the rushing to.
- [65:00]
John Podhoretz
The well, that's what I'm saying. So we don't really know. In other words, like, if we come out a week from now saying Trump, like, blinked at the final moment and so let, let the Iranians, he called it surrender, but they're living to fight another day. This just means Israel is going to have to do something like this again in five years. And he blinked, then Trump will say, you're raw, you're evil. And then all of MAGA will say, you see, the neocons, all they care about is destruction and viciousness and monstrousness and evil. So there is that fourth scenario where, where, you know, we people say he's Taco Trump. In the end, he couldn't, you know, he couldn't pull the trigger because he's actually not. He doesn't have the balls, excuse me, to do what, what really needed to be done. Right. So that, that would be the other way.
- [66:00]
Christine Rosen
Or he doesn't have a sense of what you were, what you were talking about earlier in the podcast. He doesn't have a broader sense, sense of either philosophy or purpose. He's very like a businessman. He's always in motion, always willing to cut a deal, regard with changing circumstances.
- [66:17]
John Podhoretz
Look, we also have this final phenomenon. BIBI Netanyahu is 76 years old. He will not be prime minister that much longer. I mean, it could be three years, it could be whatever. He's not going to be running the country when he is 90. This is his moment. His father trained him for this. His father said the Holocaust never ended. His father said the Inquisition. His father, who was the great 20th century historian of the Spanish Inquisition said the Spanish Inquisition never ended. The Holocaust was an outgrowth of the Spanish Inquisition. The world wants to destroy the Jews. Israel has become the nation that it has become. To make sure that that doesn't happen. If Trump and Bibi end up in some kind of a conflict here that Bibi can resolve without American support, that is to say, if Trump says, I can't do it, or I'm not giving you the bomb, whatever, however he does it, or he says, I'm negotiating this, Bibi may have no choice, both in his own head, his own soul, his own heart, and this metaphysical question that I started the podcast with, which is, what does God want? Bibi may have, may have no option but to defy Trump and do what needs to be done to its conclusion and go crosswise with Trump, because this is why he was put on this earth and he will not. He. He already saw the consequences of blinking and not going, doing what he promised he would do in 2014 when he said he would destroy Hamas in the first big conflagration with Hamas, you know, of the, you know, that led to October 7th, and I think. So that's why it's not even over. Trump is not the determining figure here. Now, technology may be the determining figure because it's possible that Israel does not have the means to do Fort Error.
- [68:14]
Christine Rosen
Well, we've only been talking about the means from the air and dropping that way. They have, as we've seen already, they have people on the ground. They built a drone factory basically within the Iranian right outside Tehran. There's you. Obviously, they have gamed out multiple scenarios that include embedding their own strike teams to get inside that base.
- [68:35]
John Podhoretz
Right. So I think it is important to note that, that we're focusing here on this, you know, remarkable moment because Trump left the G7 to come back to the Sit Room and is giving all these signals. But if Trump in the end doesn't do it, I think Israel will continue to press the war until it says it has destroyed Iran's nuclear program. And it will have to face the wrath of the president, who at this moment, I think we can say without question, is unambiguously the best friend that Israel has ever had. No, no, no. No competition, no question, nothing else. And, you know, honesty requires even somebody like me who couldn't bring himself to vote for Trump in 2024 to say that, you know, he is, he is on his way to seeming like one of the righteous gentiles who has helped save the Jewish people in history. And let us hope, or I'm hoping, that I'll be able to say that unambiguously over the course of the next week. So, sadly, we lost Seth in the middle of the podcast to a bad signal. So we. We will see.
- [69:57]
Christine Rosen
But he did. I liked his special guest star appearance. He looked like he was covering a hurricane or something. You know, he looked like one of those.
- [70:04]
John Podhoretz
Behind them there's a bus.
- [70:05]
Christine Rosen
Like reporting from a wall.
- [70:07]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Reporting from. In front of a wall. Anyway, so for the absent Seth and Christine and Abe, I'm John Paborz. Keep the camel bur.