War Abroad, War At Home

Summary

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The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode: War Abroad, War At Home

Date: March 13, 2026
Host: Jon Podhoretz, with Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, and guest Eli Lake

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Brief Overview

In this episode, the Commentary Magazine team, joined by Eli Lake, discusses the dual threats facing American and Jewish communities: the ongoing war with Iran and a series of domestic terror attacks. The hosts analyze the motivations, tactics, and responses to these threats, examine the American government's preparedness and strategy, and reflect on the evolving reality of Jewish communal security. The conversation weaves between war policy, the psychology of terrorism, community preparedness, and media narratives. Eli Lake also discusses his new Commentary article on Israel's decades-long intelligence campaign against Iran.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Domestic Terror Attacks: Lone Wolves vs. Sleeper Cells

• Old Dominion University and West Bloomfield, MI: Coverage of two terror attacks—one foiled at a synagogue, the other resulting in casualties (00:55–04:43).
• Nature of Attacks:
  • Eli Lake argues these are “inspired lone wolf attacks,” not orchestrated sleeper cell plots, likening them to the ISIS attacks of the 2010s.
  • Quote (Eli Lake, 04:05): “These look like the kind of things that we associated with ISIS in the 2000 and tens... Individuals, literally, literally.”
• Challenges in Prevention:
  • Eli notes that digital propaganda enables radicalization without the need for physical networks (05:04).
  • Increasingly, “a single, cell of one” can radicalize and act alone, leaving few traces (Abe Greenwald, 07:41).

2. Jewish Community Security: Successes and Realities

• Crisis Averted in Michigan:
  • Detailed recount of synagogue security teams’ effectiveness, noting a joint FBI training exercise was pivotal (15:48–17:56).
  • Jon Podhoretz highlights the $750 million annual investment by Jewish organizations in security (18:05).
  • Quote (Jon Podhoretz, 18:05): “The Jewish community in America has stepped up to an unprecedented degree... nearly a billion dollars a year being spent on security.”
• Security Infrastructure:
  • Discussion of rare but sophisticated setups in large synagogues (20:00–23:50).
  • Recognition that most synagogues cannot afford such robust protection.
• Target Selection and Planning:
  • The attacker deliberately targeted one of the largest synagogues in the country, emphasizing premeditation even for “lone wolves” (Jon Podhoretz, 20:52).

3. The Dearborn, Michigan Issue: Political and Social Implications

• Political Pressures on Law Enforcement:
  • Is the FBI prioritizing Jewish institutional safety amid contentious local politics?
  • Eli Lake: “Dearborn is a cesspool... communities that have taken clearly anti American, viciously anti Israel, anti Semitic views, and that the kind of politics of extremism in the Middle east has become a kind of normal thing for the politics of Dearborn.” (25:30)
• First Amendment Dilemma:
  • The challenges of monitoring extremist activity while protecting civil liberties (Jon Podhoretz, 39:23).
• Community Divisions:
  • Eli: The best allies against radical Islam are Muslim Americans who have fled such regimes, not regime apologists or ideological organizations like CAIR (31:25).

4. Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism & Media Narratives

• Media’s Focus on ‘Islamophobia’:
  • Skepticism about the media’s framing of the issue as primarily a threat to Muslims rather than violence perpetrated by radicalized individuals (Jon Podhoretz, 03:07 & 36:20).
  • Discussion of CNN’s efforts to reposition the narrative, often refuted or corrected after the fact (32:21–34:50).
• Iranian-American Perspective:
  • Counter-narrative to claims that Iranian Americans are endangered by U.S. policy—most are refugees from the regime and likely support action against it (Jon Podhoretz, 33:40).

5. The Strait of Hormuz and Strategic Narratives

• Current Situation:
  • Iranian threats to mine and close the strategic Strait of Hormuz raise alarms in media and Congress (42:46–46:27).
• Claims of U.S. Unpreparedness:
  • Jon Podhoretz dismisses the idea that the U.S. military is unprepared; CENTCOM has planned for this for decades:
    • Quote (Jon Podhoretz, 46:27): “It is extremely unlikely... I am telling you right now, this is a lie. The press is being lied to. They're being told an untruth.”
  • Media narratives about surprise/demoralization are identified as “environmental efforts to demoralize the country” (46:26–48:12).
• Trump’s Strategy:
  • Affirmation that both military planners and Trump himself have a longtime focus on keeping the Strait open (Abe Greenwald, 48:12).
  • Critique: The administration has been inconsistent in articulating war aims—sometimes regime change, sometimes deterrence, sometimes noncommitment (Eli Lake, 49:07–51:37).
• Influence Operations:
  • The Iran Experts Initiative and figures like Robert Malley are mentioned as shaping narratives (51:37–54:40).

6. Israel’s “Generational” Intelligence Efforts Against Iran

• Eli Lake’s Commentary Article:
  • Focuses on Israel’s decades-long operation to undermine Iran’s military and nuclear capability (60:20–61:16).
  • Examples: Penetrating electrical grids, hacking infrastructure, cultivating sources, and creating conditions for swift, targeted warfare.
  • Quote (Eli Lake, 61:16): “What we're seeing is the fruits of... a generational project which is to penetrate Iran... not just through the traditional means of recruiting agents but also technical elements of things like hacking the traffic cameras in Tehran...”
• Operation Rising Lion/12 Day War:
  • Trump was initially neutral—didn’t believe Israel could pull it off, then grew enthusiastic once early operations exceeded expectations (61:16–).
• Revolution in Military Affairs:
  • Decapitation strikes, cyberwar, and airpower create a fundamentally new style of warfare (61:16–).
• Regime Change?
  • Neither Trump nor Netanyahu promised regime change, rightly resisting overpromising (66:25–70:29).
  • Jon: “All the best that we can hope for really is that there be space... for political change in Iran.” (66:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Lone Wolf Terrorism:

  • “You can now just sort of as a single, as a cell of one, you can radicalize, get the material you need, go out into the world and do your attack without leaving much of a trace around you.”
    —Abe Greenwald (07:41)

• On Jewish Community Security Investment:

  • “This is nearly a billion dollars a year being spent on security for, you know, for 5.2 million people or for institutions that serve 5.2 million people. It's an extraordinary outpouring, a very deliberate and very responsible behavior.”
    —Jon Podhoretz (18:05)

• On Iranian-American Reactions to the War:

  • “If you had to pick a community in the United States that was probably close to 100% supportive of the mission of the war in Iran right now, it would be the Iranian American community...they fled the Islamic Republic takeover in 1979...”
    —Jon Podhoretz (33:40)

• On Media Narratives and Demoralization:

  • “You are being lied to. And the purpose of the line...is demoralization. The strategy seems to be...to say they don't have a plan. I don't know what they're doing...”
    —Jon Podhoretz (46:26)

• On Israel’s Strategic Innovations:

  • “It's a revolution in military affairs. We've never seen anything like it....to do that on the scale that Israel has done, knocking out an entire level of military leadership...is an incredible accomplishment.”
    —Eli Lake (61:16)

• On American War Aims in Iran:

  • “Trump has never said that this was a war for regime change. He's never said that. Bibi has never said that. BB has said, wait until it's safe to go out in the streets. Trump kind of said the same thing...But when the dust settles, we'll see what the circumstances are....And so that's all the best that we can hope for really is that there be space if, because you know, it depends on how rooted that, you know, you can't pull a tree out by its root.”
    —Jon Podhoretz (66:25)

Lighter Moments

• Football Analogy:
  • “48 to 3 is not considered a close game...as a Jets fan, if your team is up 48 to 3, you're still biting your nails.”
    —Unknown Female Speaker, Jon Podhoretz (59:52–60:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------------|-------------------| | Intro, guest introductions | 00:22 | | Overview of recent terror attacks | 00:50–04:43 | | Analysis: Sleeper cell vs. lone wolf | 04:05–07:41 | | Jewish community security efforts | 15:48–23:50 | | Political climate in Dearborn, MI | 25:30–32:21 | | Media narratives: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism | 32:21–36:20 | | The Strait of Hormuz & military planning | 42:45–48:12 | | Debate on clarity of U.S. war aims | 49:07–51:37 | | Influence of Iran ‘experts’ in U.S. administration | 51:37–54:40 | | Israel’s generational intelligence campaign | 60:20–61:16 | | Regime change debate; war aims | 66:25–71:10 | | Podcast wrap-up, recommendations | 71:43–72:10 |

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Tone & Style

• Direct, sometimes grim but often laced with irony and humor.
• Deeply informed with historical allusions; combines current events with decades-long context.
• Skeptical of mainstream media narratives and official statements, encouraging listeners to think below the surface and avoid demoralization.
• Continually brings discussion back to Jewish-American realities and the challenges of proactive self-defense.

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Summary Prepared for Readers Who Missed the Episode:
This episode dives deeply into the current climate of war and domestic terrorism, emphasizing the shift from organized terror plots to isolated lone wolf attacks inspired online. The hosts praise the Jewish community’s substantial and effective investment in communal security while candidly confronting the political and social difficulties presented by communities like Dearborn, MI. They dissect media narratives that invert victim and perpetrator, call out demoralizing misinformation about military unpreparedness, and illuminate Israel’s extraordinary intelligence achievements against Iran. The conversation underscores that regime change may not be attainable or promised, but significant space for change in Iran has now been created—if Iranians are ready to seize it.

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Transcript

[Eli Lake]

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,

[Seth Mandel]

hope for the best.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, March 13, 2026. I am Jon Bodhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hi, John.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

Hi, John.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

And joining us today, Commentary's contributing editor and host of the Breaking History podcast, Eli Lake. Hi, Eli.

[Eli Lake]

Hi, John. Eli, I always complain. I never say, hi, John.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Yeah, hey, John. Or ho, John, you know, hey, nonny, nonny, John, whatever. Eli has an article in the COVID package of our April issue, which should be out [e-mail] as we close the issue and send it to the printer to ship it to our subscribers in physical form, but it will be also available online to our subscribers. The package is called Iran Amuck. It has an article that we discussed a little yesterday by Jonathan Schanzer called Regime Change Without Nation Building. It has an article by Todd Lindbergh about how the similarities between the logic that began this war and the logic that began the Iraq war, which we're no longer we're not supposedly allowed to say, but we flesh out a piece by me that has the plangent title, they should have Listened to My dad. And then we have Eli Lake's article, which is about Israel's 20 year effort to build the capacity to get to the point where it could fight this war as majestically as it seems to be fighting it. But we can't start there because we have to talk about what happened yesterday, both at Old Dominion University and in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Two terrorist attacks, one foiled, one partially successful until the attacker was taken down by students in a remarkable display of fortitude and courage. And we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions. Number one, is some kind of a Iranian sleeper agent or some kind of events relating to Iran's effort to fight back in this war with asymmetrical means underway?

[Seth Mandel]

Number one.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

And number two, what about Islamophobia? Because I don't know if you know this, but you know, the real issue here is Islamophobia, even though there were 140 children in the building that the terrorist smashed his car into with bomb equipment in the car that that eventually somehow was ignited and burned him to a crisp, but very easily could have gone the other way. We could have had a mass casualty event involving scores and scores and scores of children as well as the adults who were taking care of them in the nursery school and daycare center.

[Eli Lake]

So,

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Eli, you are not only an expert on war, but you are an expert on terrorism. What do you make of what's going on?

[Eli Lake]

Okay, so I want to address the sleeper cell question first. I don't think these are sleeper cells because they look like inspired lone wolf attacks. And you know, you, you would. I think the Iranians have, we know that they have certainly infiltrated the United States and other countries with people who would be kind of organizers of sorts of. But these look like the kind of things that we associated with ISIS in the 2000 and tens. These are individuals, literally, literally. The Gracie Mansion. Were ISIS inspired?

[Jon Bodhoritz]

No. And the guy who killed two people at Old Dominion served six years in jail as an agent of ISIS in the United States. The question we are going to have to have answered in the next week is what? Why did he get out of jail and why was no one watching him?

[Eli Lake]

Right. He was. He. I mean, the argument at the time from the civil liberties crowd was he was entrapped because the FBI is so good at kind of infiltrating these networks. Which gets to another part of this, which is that when we heard about Iranian sleeper cells and the threat of terrorism in response to conventional warfare against Iran, when we, when this issue was brought up, you know, between Obama and Netanyahu 20 years ago, or almost 20 years ago, it was an era when I don't think we were, we had as much confidence in our ability to take out networks inside of our country. The problem as it was then, as it, as we, we've now known for some time, is that it's possible to have these kinds of inspired attacks without networks. Until I see evidence that there was some kind of coordination, I'm just assuming that sadly there are people in this country, and we know this from the Gaza war. I mean, that, you know, that, that absolute monster filth guy, Elias, what is his name? I'm forgetting? Rodriguez, right. Who, who went to the Capitol Jewish Museum and shot, you know, two Israeli diplomats. So that person was inspired by. And that is the world we live in. And I think that that's the real terrorism threat. It's not, you know, the kind of terrorism that we associate with either the first real wave in the 1970s where you had all kinds of like, you know, financiers and other spotters and people who did, you know, forged identities and things like that. And that there was a whole kind of, you had to have a whole network in order to create, to get to one attack. Now with the Internet and kind of this constant, you know, steady drumbeat of propaganda, you can, you can get all. You can get. People you just, you know, you don't necessarily. You don't need all of that. So that's my first impression. Unless we see other evidence, I, that

[Abe Greenwald]

feels right to me too. And I think that seems to be the case with the shooter who shot up the bar in Austin, Texas a few weeks back as well. Do we still know any. What's the follow up on the January, the New Year's Day New Orleans attack? Not this year, but of January 1st last year.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

The car that drove through the crowd in New Orleans.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, that was another ISIS inspired. As Eli was talking, it occurred to me that, you know, we always talk about, in a completely different context, people doing things alone via their screens. In a twisted way, you know, as opposed to being connected in a twisted way, this is another version of that. You can now just sort of as a single, as a cell of one, you can, you can radicalize, get the material you need, go out into the world and do your attack without leaving much of a trace around you. Because there's no, there are no connections.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Well, we have these mystery killings, right? I mean, the thing is that assassins, as we know, we're constantly assuming that successful American assassins were part of a network. And that's obviously the. Lee Harvey had 60 more years, 60 plus years of presumptions about Lee Harvey Oswald and more. You know, we have never conclusively uncovered a plot that involved a network seeking to assassinate an American president or American political figure. And we're talking about, you know, going back to.

[Eli Lake]

Although, I mean, I guess John, John Wilkes Booth was right. Was absolutely sent.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

That's right.

[Eli Lake]

That's why the Confederates.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

That's correct. That's. I mean, dating from Garfield onward, these were off acts of psychopathy. I mean, there were attempts, you know, there was the, there was the attempt on Harry Truman by Puerto rican nationalists in 1951. There was there, there have been other attempts. But I'm saying that we have much more of a history of the lone wolf succeeding because of course, once you involve people in a network, the likelier it is, particularly now that somebody from that network will break, will say somebody to something to somebody else in a bar, who will then go to the cops, who will then arrest him, who will then help roll up the network. It's not a, it's not a safe bet to involve a lot of people in a conspiracy plot in the United States. People are actually Pretty good at breaking them up.

[Eli Lake]

So I say that, yeah, there's two other things. One is the MO for the Iranians historically has been that when they do networked attacks, it has been against their domestic political opposition. That was what happened with the interim Iranian Prime Minister who was murdered in Paris. That was what happens with various Kurdish leaders. There was an attack, by the way, that on the captain of the USS Vincennes, who shot down an Iranian commercial airliner. And so the Iranians will send out teams of assassins into the United States for very targeted kind of killings, but not, you know, Al Qaeda style terrorism or the kind of terrorism that they support, you know, in Lebanon or against Israel and so forth. The other thing is that, and this is just by way of inference, because it's possible that they could have dual tracks, of course, but the Iranians invested a tremendous amount of kind of resources in a charm offensive and cultivating useful idiots in the United States. We all have covered Trita Parsi and the organization he founded called the Niacina. But it was deeper than that. I mean, people like former foreign minister.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

You wrote the definitive piece on that.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, thank you very much. I did. Many years ago for the Washington Times and the people like Javad Zarif, who was the Iranian foreign minister. But, you know, he cultivated American, largely on the left, but also he cultivated, I think, you know, you could say the kind of isolationist. Right. And so if you, if that was your strategy, and I think it was, it was Iran's strategy was to try to change American foreign policy through these kind of charm offensives and saying, oh, we have Hassan Rouhani now and we really want to get a deal and all these other things and using their access to our mainstream media. If you also were playing a game where you were going to, potentially even if you didn't pull the trigger, if you had networks that were basically terror networks inside the United States, that would immediately discredit your fairly successful charm offensive. So I'm just throwing that out there as well.

[Seth Mandel]

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[Jon Bodhoritz]

Okay, so let's take that to one side. So what we have here is there is a story of a success and a failure yesterday. The success is that the Mass casualty event at the shul was prevented. And it was prevented after injuring one security guard. Another security guard shot the, the would be bomber. Somehow something went off in his car and, and fried him after he was shot. And so that this is a successful interdiction of a terrorist plot. The other not successful in the sense that the, the, the, the assassin killed. Killed two, two people and before he was himself subdued. I want to talk about what it means that that attack, that the, the foiling of the attack in Michigan was a success. It appears that in the weeks before the attack that the security team at the synagogue did a joint exercise with FBI agents on how to act in case there was a violent event. And it appears, based on what little we've heard so far, that that training was critical in helping those security people working for, you know, a wage at the synagogue were able to prevent this horrifying calamity from happening. Jewish sites all across the country have hardened themselves pretty much since 2018. Before, I mean, a lot of places were, were, were very careful about security before 2018. But after the tree of life and

[Seth Mandel]

Poway

[Jon Bodhoritz]

incidents in 2018, 2019, the Jewish community nationwide committed itself to the idea that it was going to have to batten down the hatches and protect itself.

[Seth Mandel]

And according to Eric Fingerhut, who is

[Jon Bodhoritz]

the chairman of the Jewish Federations of America, Jewish organizations spend.

[Seth Mandel]

I just want you to think about

[Jon Bodhoritz]

this for a second. $750 million a year on self defense. It's an important number because there is a certain cohort of very activist Jews in America who complain that Jews don't, aren't, you know, we're not doing enough to protect ourselves. You know, we need to go out and get gun training. We need to, you know, we need to, you know, arm ourselves and do all this. And the simple fact of the matter is that that may or may not be true in individual cases, but the Jewish community in America has stepped up to an unprecedented degree. I mean, this is nearly a billion dollars a year being spent on security for, you know, for 5.2 million people or for institutions that serve 5.2 million people. It's an extraordinary outpouring, a very deliberate and very responsible behavior. We're always complaining here on the podcast and the commentary about the failure of American Jewish institutions. And I believe that most of them have very, very deep and significant flaws. But this is something that as a kind of community, we have done right. And God only knows if this hadn't happened, and if this, if this we're going to do it ourselves thing hadn't taken place, whether untold numbers of deaths and injuries should take place. Right now we see there was an incident, two incidents yesterday, one in, I think the Netherlands and one in Norway where synagogues were attacked. One of them was firebombed, but no one was in it. These are places that don't have the same kind of protection. So I just think that's an important point to make.

[Seth Mandel]

Yeah.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

Can I read something from the times of. From the time. I don't know if there's Times of Israel or jtl Times of Israel. That. That caught my attention yesterday that I highlighted in my brain because I thought that it made this point really well. This is a story about the Michigan, you know, synagogue beyond. The synagogue's full time director of security later said Temple Israel also has a full team of armed security guards on the premises at all times, as well as a remote security system that can secure different areas of the buildings during threats. So that's a description so people know what we're dealing with here. That's a, that's a, you know, that's a kind of, you know, Fort Noxian setup, that a large Reform shul in

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Michigan, we should say. And this is where it's interesting about the question of targeting, because, yeah, this guy was likely a lone wolf, but maybe not because he chose one of the two or three largest synagogues in the United States of America. This is a Shul with 3,300 families. That is. That is an astonishing number of members for an American for, For. For a synagogue, not only the United States, but anywhere. And so cannot be that. That choice, since he had to drive from Dearborn to pick someplace to go. It cannot be that that choice was made completely by happenstance. He must have scoped it out. He must have targeted. He drove into a specific door near the nursery school. So it's not like this wasn't a planned attack on a very large institution. That may have been his mistake in an odd way. Obviously, the Texas incident that I guess Abe referred to, there was an attack on a Texas shul where famously, the rabbi called Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue for the shoot, for the person who would invade it to talk to the head Jew and try to talk him down. One of the reasons that that invasion was successful is that it's a little synagogue in the middle of nowhere. And so access points were easy. It wasn't like, hard to get in. This is a big place, has a lot of money and spent a lot of money on Security. And anyone who, you know, lives in, I mean, I go to a synagogue that just rebuilt itself to make itself more secure. The school that my kids go to or my kids have gone to is. Has security features I don't even know about. Some of them I recognize, like, famously, man traps, you know, which are sort of a series of doors you have to go through where the doors can be locked down ahead and, and the glass is bulletproof. And so it's not so easy to get through. But there's way more there that I don't know and that nobody knows to, in fact, be able to lock the building down. This is all very, very, very expensive. And so. Right.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

And it's also rare, like what you, what they have at Temple Israel in, in Michigan is rare because of that. You know, that is like the description of what they have. How many synagogues do people think have a team of armed guards at all times on the premises? That's extremely rare. How many synagogues have a remote lockdown that you can lock down different portions of the building but leave certain exits open? Right. These are strategic things. We've all been in buildings where sometimes you have to be, you know, rushed out of a different door, a door you didn't know that was there or whatever. Like, this is a synagogue that has

[Jon Bodhoritz]

got to ask another question. And, Eli, I got to ask this of you because you're not only an expert on terrorism and you're an expert on war fighting, but you're also an expert on the FBI. And this is a. I mentioned that the FBI had done this training session with the Temple Israel with the shul. It's 2024. The FBI is under. In the Biden administration, which is very concerned about the Arab vote in Michigan. The FBI doing trainings with, with, with Temple Israel. Or has the Trump administration, which has committed itself to fighting antisemitism on campuses and in dealing with hate crime, enforcing various federal efforts to make sure that antisemitism. Is there a renewed focus inside the FBI on this? That certainly there will be now, having had this success. But I wonder. I genuinely, I don't think that the Biden administration was anti Semitic. I don't think that its FBI team and Christopher Wray were bad. I don't believe any of that. But maybe the FBI has taken this more seriously. And what happened here might the success in, you know, in interposing, in creating the conditions in which this did not turn into the slaughter that it could have been. Those training exercises may not have taken

[Eli Lake]

place at a time I don't think that's the case because, first of all, there was no political cost to the Biden administration providing security for synagogues, Jewish community centers, et cetera. The issue was. The political issue was the arms transfers and sales to Israel and the overall position of our foreign policy with regard to Israel. That was the ask. That was the demand of the radical fringe of the Democratic Party in an election year. It was not, don't help synagogues protect themselves. I think a better question to ask is Dearborn is a cesspool. And we have video from Dearborn City Council, for example, where the mayor is, like, berating somebody who wants to condemn Hezbollah. Dearborn reminds me in some ways of some of the communities that were like, you know, the police couldn't go in, in Belgium because they were a bunch of unassimilated, you know, communities that have taken clearly anti American, viciously anti Israel, anti Semitic views, and that the kind of politics of extremism in the Middle east has become a kind of normal thing for the politics of Dearborn. That's undeniable. A lot of that, of course, expressing loathsome opinions is covered by the First Amendment. And so that's a challenge in my view, as somebody who cares a lot about that for any administration. But I would like to know if there is, you know, a renewed focus on a place like Dearborn and other communities in the United.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Do you want to know or do you not want to know? Because you don't want to know. Because you want to know that it's happening successfully and. And secretly so that, you know, that's what I mean. Like, you don't actually want them to come out and say, we're really spying on Dearborn like there's no tomorrow.

[Eli Lake]

No, but, but, but I'm. What I'm saying is that if you wanted to know where the political pressure would be historically, care. The Council on American Islamic Relations, which is a direct outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood. There's plenty of court documentation and evidence that, you know, one can look at if they're interested to sort of show the evolution of that organization. But one of the things that they did is they kind of placed themselves in the position with the FBI of being the liaison with the American Muslim community, which is itself a somewhat dangerous thing given the ideological predilections of care. So I would like to know kind of how that's going and are there, because I would think, let's leave Iran out of it. I would think that if you're just sort of somebody who believed in a kind of radical vision of political Islam or the Muslim Brotherhood. You know, Dearborn would be a place where you would kind of see, you know, it would almost be like kind of a safe haven of sorts in the United States. So that's the question, and you raise a good point, John, is that I actually don't want to know about active investigations because I'd like them to be successful. But I would say it's on that side of the ledger where I would be, I would have more questions than the providing protection for Jewish institutions.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

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[Abe Greenwald]

like Dearborn is that it's not just a matter of okay, we need all sorts of intelligence and law enforcement agencies spying and stopping plots before they come to fruition and keeping an eye on who's doing what, that's obviously an important part of it. But there's the deeper problem that there is this community there and there are politicians there that, that support this community that resist the kinds of things we're talking about. And so is it okay to, to

[Jon Bodhoritz]

have

[Abe Greenwald]

a little, this, you know, little outlet of Middle east radicalism, this little pocket in the United States, as long as we just spy on it indefinitely and sort of do our best to make sure that the worst doesn't happen and otherwise just sort of let this thing thrive.

[Eli Lake]

Well, I always thought that the way to address this is that, and this is going to seem quaint and completely out of touch with the current mood of our country and the mood of the American right is that the best allies in America against radical Islam would be like Americans who are fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan or Iraq or other places, who really who served with our U.S. forces in the sense that the first victims of radical Islam are almost always fellow Muslims and that the problem is when we assume that regime apologists like Trita Parsi speak for Iranian Americans or for that matter, Muslim Brotherhood organizations like CAIR speak for American Muslims.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Important point I got to bring up, which is Juliet Khayyam, who is a terrorism expert, worked, I believe, in the Clinton administration, I think either teaches at Harvard or has taught at Harvard, was on CNN yesterday in the wake of the shul event saying this is, you know, really dangerous because of course anti Semitism is terrible and also we need to worry about the safety of Iranian Americans. This was a very interesting game because it dovetails with earlier events on CNN this week where three, on three different occasions people on CNN attempted to claim that the IED throwing of the two kids from Pennsylvania at Gracie Mansion was an attempt to attack Zoran Mamdani rather than to attack the anti Muslim protest that was going on against Mamdani so as to turn Mamdani into a target of terrorism. CNN basically had to apologize three times or pull things off or do whatever. But Juliet Kayam's moment, this is very interesting because if you had to pick a community in the United States that was probably close to 100% supportive of the mission of the war in Iran right now, it would be the Iranian American community, the overwhelming majority of which exists here in the United States because they fled the Islamic Republic takeover in 1979 and came to New York and went to Los Angeles and other places and have been remarkable. It's a remarkable success story. They are, you know, they, they, they, they are a remarkable immigrant community, you know, wildly pro American. And this is their dream come true, that the United States should be interposing itself and attempting some version of either regime change or punt the punishment of this regime that destroyed their lives and stole their country from them. And this effort to turn the Iran war into something where Americans who don't know what I'm talking about here would think, oh, this is really dangerous for poor Iranian.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

And we should note also that they have the Iranians in the States, many of them still have family there who are in danger or are in perpetual danger. Right. I mean, the people who leave an authoritarian country.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

From the regime, you mean? Not from the regime.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

That's what I mean. Right, right. To be clear, from people who leave an authoritarian regime, Russia.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

I'm sure that Iranians with family in Iran are fearful and worried that the. That the war may have consequences on their families. I don't want to. I don't want to belittle the idea that people are having sleepless nights over the fact that American and Israeli bombings are taking place in Iran.

[Seth Mandel]

That is.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

That. That is normal. But. But, yes, the thing is.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

But I just mean when you. When they. When they leave that. When they leave a country, they're not free of its. Of its grasp. They're not free of the stress, in many cases of living with it. The regime still, you know, fuels fear in their lives. It still keeps them sort of paralyzed in certain ways. They're afraid for family back home and all this other stuff. And so, yeah, it's not just, they did bad stuff to us and we got out, and I'd love to see them fall. It's. As long as that regime remains in place, a lot of people who have made it out, they. They still can't sleep through the night necessarily all that comfortably, because their parents, their cousins, whatever, are there, and they worry for them. And the fall of the regime is the one thing that would truly free them.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

This effort, though, there seems to be a weird effort to characterize the American and Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran as a moment that will incite anti Muslim or anti Iranian or anti Shiite activity in the United States. Whereas, in fact, almost the opposite, as these three attacks this week would seem to suggest. What it's triggering is Shiite violence inside the United States, in part, and obviously,

[Eli Lake]

no, we don't even know Shiite. The guy in Bloomfield was Lebanese.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Lebanese. Right.

[Eli Lake]

I mean, he may have been from a Shiite family, but.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Well, his brother was Hezbollah. His brother, he was probably Shiite. But in any case, I'm saying that. That the. The violence that we've seen so far is Muslim violence against Americans, not American violence against Muslims and this constant effort to invert the threat. We're a free society, a free people who don't go around taking potshots at, you know, the only people who get, you know, punched in the back of the head in the United States for religious reasons are from Jews walking in Brooklyn. I never. I haven't seen a story in 25 years about how some guy was walking down the street in Brooklyn, and there are many Muslims wearing, you know, Muslim garb in Brooklyn, getting punched in the back of the head by a Jew or by. Or by anybody, for that matter. And there is this constant effort to refocus and to blame the United States for the violence done to the United States. And that's now happening in the. In the discussions of the Strait of Hormuz, which we could move to, if that's okay.

[Eli Lake]

Well, just. Just really quick on Julia Cayenne to show us. I mean, this is not scientific, but social media, Iranian social media was flooded with videos of Iranians doing the Trump dance when Khamenei was killed. Right. What does that tell you? Juliet? Come on, little sickle.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

One point about Dearborn, though, I gotta just say, I'm sorry, Seth, but Dearborn, Michigan, a prominent Shiite organization in Dearborn, Michigan, this is from the Christian Post, held a memorial for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over the weekend honoring him for his martyrdom. Hassan Salameh, one of the speakers at the memorial held at the Hadi Institute. We're gathered here today to commemorate the martyrdom of the great leader of our time, said Ali Hussein Khamenei. So that's what's happening. But that's.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's what I mean about Dearborn being this larger problem. Like, it's. It's not.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

We.

[Abe Greenwald]

We can't have that.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

I mean, we can't. We can't not have it. That's the problem. The question is, how do we not have it? This is America 2026.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's a challenge.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

We have a First Amendment. We have freedom of religion. We have freedom of expression. All we can do is determine whether or not such people are, you know, like paid agents or actually working for a foreign government that we're at, you know, we're at war with or something like that. But without that, you can't stop it.

[Eli Lake]

There's a retort.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Shine a spotlight on it.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

So this Juliet Kayamism, it is strangled in its crib.

[Eli Lake]

But on what you said, I bet if you went to Dearborn, you would find very similar talking points that have now been adopted by, you know, I don't know, the based right, the Tucker Carlson right, and certainly a lot of more and more mainstream elements, the Democrats, which is that this is a war for Israel. It's not in America's interest. And then when you see a celebration of the martyrdom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Someone who has gallons of blood on his American blood on his hands,

[Jon Bodhoritz]

and who last month or six weeks ago ordered the killing of 30 to 40,000 Iranians in the streets of Iran, his own people.

[Eli Lake]

Yes. But I want to get something very important here because there is a really disgusting kind of calm strategy right now to try to say that this is a war foisted on America, foisted by Bibi Netanyahu, which kind of gets into our next conversation that is not in America's interest, and that people who support the war are placing the interest of Israel above America. That is clearly a rhetorical strategy beyond Dearborn. But then I look at Dearborn and I look at kind of an element of this stuff which focuses on uncritically saying whatever the Iranian regime says about things that are happening in the war. And some of that, by the way, is true. The girls school is a horrible tragedy. And that was on America. It was a misfire as an accident, but a horribly tragic one. But the point is that, like, who are you calling un American? Whose loyalty are you questioning when you've got Dearborn, Michigan, celebrating the martyrdom of a vicious, disgusting thug of a leader who's responsible for the deaths of. Of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans, and you've got top podcasters who are uncritically parroting the line of this regime which has been at war with us for 47 years. And you're the one telling me that I'm a disloyal American, that I'm subverting the Mashka national interest. Get out of here. And I think in a weird way, because I think our side sometimes does. Is uncomfortable simply pointing out that I think that there are a lot of disloyal Americans right now, a lot of people who in a time of war, are taking the enemy's side either indirectly or in the case of Dearborn and this, you know, martyrdom ceremony, directly. You know, so I just. It's an important point to sort of make out because I.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

That's. I want to move on. I want to move on to the straight of four moves.

[Eli Lake]

Okay.

[Seth Mandel]

Okay.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Because. So the Strait of Hormuz is the narrow passageway, you know, in. In, you know, the shipping passed from the east to the west, mostly some from the west to the east. And the Strait of Hormuz has been an issue in international politics going on six decades. The shutting of the Strait of Hormuz was one moment in the Six Day War in 1967. And so, you know, this is a thing where they 73, the Saudis kind of shut the Strait of Hormuz in order to succeed with this oil embargo. We go on. There have been attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. Noah Rothman has a really great piece about this in National Review. Right now, America has been dealing with the question of the straight of Hormuz and how to keep it open. There was an effort to close it during the Iran Iraq War in 1987. We actually had an air campaign to keep it open. The United States flew and had a mission that had its specific name to ensure that it was kept open and so on. So now we have this accusation. The accusation which has now come in the pages of the New York Times, on CNN and elsewhere, is that the administration was, was shocked and surprised to see the Iranians think that their asymmetric strategy, since they could not attack us directly because their air defenses are down and they're, you know, they don't have any real weapons at hand, would be to mine the Strait of Hormuz or close the Strait of Hormuz or something like that. And this came as a terrible shock to this administration. And that cannot be true because American military planning in the Middle east at centcom. Question two is how to keep the Strait of Hormuz open if there is going to be military action. Question one is what should the military action be? And question two is in order to make sure that the world economy doesn't collapse and that, you know, the lifeblood of the west isn't choked off or that the cost of oil goes up to $250 a barrel. What do you do about the Strait of Hormuz? We have 60 years of obsessive focus on the Strait of Hormuz. Where are these stories coming from about how they didn't take the Strait of Hormuz seriously? From former officials, lawmakers briefed on the situation, and experts. So former officials work for the Obama administration and Biden administrations and want Trump to fail in this war. Lawmakers are. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut are my key targets because they're the ones who are coming out and saying. What I heard in the briefing yesterday shocked my soul and da, da, da, da, da. But it may not be them. Maybe other Democrats. It is extremely unlikely. Unless it is Rand Paul. It is extremely unlikely that a Republican lawmaker came out and said they have no plan for the straight. They were shocked. They said they didn't know that the Iranians would do it. I am telling you right now, this is a lie. The press is being lied to. They're being told an untruth. Then when you feed the untruth to experts and others who have no way of knowing since they're former officials, so they don't have any intelligence and they're experts. So they're just sitting around, they're as expert as I am and bullshitting as they talk. There's no way this is true.

[Abe Greenwald]

John, can I add to this point?

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Yeah. Can I just point out the final point? Iranians we know set 16 mines a couple of days ago, and within an hour, those mines were retrieved by American minesweepers. So are they not watching the Strait of Hormuz? They are watching the Strait of Hormuz. Are they acting in the Strait of Hormuz? They're acting in the Strait of Hormuz. Is this a problem? Because it's actually, it's actually very low cost to make trouble in the Strait of Hormuz. And it's a, you know, and you could take a little boat and drop a mine. It doesn't have to be a big boat to drop a mine. Is that a problem? Without question. However, you are being lied to. And the purpose of the line, then I'm going to finish my rant here is demoralization. The strategy seems to be not to say this war is terrible, not to say we shouldn't be doing this, but to say they don't have a plan. I don't know what they're doing. What the hell is going on now? Oil prices are going up. What on earth is going on? And it is having an effect on people who would ordinarily be perfectly supportive of this. Because when you get hammered over the head with the. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing. They don't seem to know what to do in the straight over moods. They don't know. And then like Eli and I have a text exchange yesterday afternoon going, what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz? Do they even know what the hell they're doing in the Strait of Hormuz? And then if you then take a pause and you step back for two seconds, as Noah Rothman does in this excellent piece, and nationally, you're like, of course they're not. You know, you may hate Pete Hegseth and think he's an idiot or that Trump is an idiot, but centcom is not an idiot. And centcom has been fighting wars in the Middle east without let up for 25 years. And it knows it has to keep the Strait of Hormuza open.

[Abe Greenwald]

But, but, excuse me, Trump as well, I mean, it has to be said here, Donald Trump has been much more cognizant of the Iranian threat for far longer than anyone realizes, than people give him credit for. People think he's dumb about this. He's dumb about. He doesn't know anything about this. He's been talking. And so someone today on X pulled up about 10 old Trump tweets of him, specifically saying during one conflict or another, what are they doing about securing the Strait of Hormuz, that we need the shipping to go through the Strait of Hormuz. Complaining about other administrations in the past, this is not something, as you say, John, it's impossible that this, that this would not be on. Forget centcom. His mind.

[Eli Lake]

Can I, can I, can I be a, can I add a counterpoint here? Of course, the one sliver I know, I don't want to give the Senators Blumenthal and Murphy any, any credit here.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

I don't know.

[Eli Lake]

I know, I know. But I don't want to give, I don't want to. I agree with you that it's, it's, it's strange credulity to think that the administration doesn't have a plan, plan for the Strait of Hormuz and isn't aware of it and that it's just a failure of planning and so forth. But the one point that I think is fair to make is that this administration has been all over the map about what the objectives of the war are and why we did it. And there was no, you know, it was no process. And we can argue about the War Powers act. And I grant that there is a, that there's precedent for major military actions like Obama with Libya. We, without going to Congress, I totally understand all that. What I'm saying is that this administration, if, depending on who's talking on what day, we have a completely different mission for the war. When J.D. vance is asked about it on Fox News, he says it's all about making sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. And then Trump is like, the Iranian people will have their chance once the bombs stop dropping. Netanyahu sort of says that, too. And then you hear Rubio saying, well, it's about projecting power in the region, but also we're going to be, I mean, like, it's all over the place. And that's really the fault of the improvisational maximum flexibility position of Trump, which some people can say is an advantage. I think in some ways, you Could, I mean, I wouldn't even open to saying it's an advantage. The advantage is that he doesn't box himself into a ground war in Iran where we have a bunch of, you know, 22 year old infantry soldiers running checkpoints. That's a good thing. However, on the other hand, one of the downsides of it is that we haven't gotten this kind of very clear process where the American people were brought along saying this is why we're doing the war. It's been 47 years. They are not going to negotiate. They are going to try to build a conventional weapons missile shield so they can finally get their bomb. And when they do, let me tell you, these, these maniacs will use it. That's the argument that needs to be made in a sober way, not with memes and action movie clips. All of that, I just want to say is why you get these stories and they maybe have some resonance because the, the case for the war has been all over the place.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

Can I add one thing on the, on the, on the, where this information is coming from? It's also worth noting that these former administration, when we talk about former administration officials, we have to remember that there was a pretty wide influence operation, the Iran experts initiative that I don't, I don't want to say infiltrated. I don't want to, you know, I choose my words carefully. I'm not. But, but that was, that had people who were, were who were considered experts and who had the ear of the Biden administration, figures from the Biden and Obama administration that, you know, that, that group of people and who were happy to spread, who were in contact with Iranian government officials and would coordinate talking points and strategies with Iranian government officials and then speak them into the administration. Some of these people ended up becoming advisors in some way or another to the administration because that's what happens. You start as a, as a think tanker and oh, this guy's an Iran expert or she's an Iran expert, you bring her on. And slowly but surely this Iran experts initiative got closer and closer to the centers of power. Then the other thing is that Robert Malley, who was Biden's main guy on the Iran negotiations and the nuclear negotiations that he tried to rejuvenate after Trump pulled out of the, the, the nuclear deal. Malley left the administration under a cloud of suspicion because he was being investigated apparently by the FBI for the mishandling of classified documents. And all the reporting pointed to the likelihood that those documents were Iran related because that was his, that was what he did in the administration, but also because he was in contact with Iranian groups in Iran and elsewhere and in the diaspora and, and, you know, trying to formulate these plans and whatever. And, and that he, and that, you know, the accusation was that he was either sharing stuff or mishandling or whatever what he was, he was acting inappropriately on the issue of secret American information on Iran at the same time as Iranian sort of mouthpieces. We can really say we're getting closer and closer to being able to whisper into the ears of the other people in the administration making policy. So when we say former administration officials are saying they didn't know they were going to mine the Strait of Hormuz or something like that, you have to understand we have what has been a sort of decade long or almost a decade long influence operation gaining ground throughout the years with this group of people. I'm not trying to accuse them of being spies for Iran, but I'm saying they're marinating in regime talking points. That part is undeniable, right?

[Jon Bodhoritz]

That is a very important point anyhow. Your point is very important, though. I have a defense for it, but we can get to that. But I brought up the Strait of Hormuz things specifically because your accusation is serious. Your, your line or your counterpoint is serious. The American people don't exactly know what we're doing there, okay? That's a big thing. Saying that the Pentagon, the Department of War of the United now called the Department of War in the United States was gobsmacked that the Strait of Hormuz would become a naval battlefield is a lie. It is just like saying, you know, I can't believe that someone would attack the Pentagon on 9 11. Who could ever have imagined such a thing? The Strait of Hormuz has been a preoccupation of the what? Keeping the straight Hormuz open has been the key geopolitical, economic obsession of the planet Earth for 60 years. So don't believe them. They are telling you untruths or they are being credulous about something that an ordinary reporter with any sechel, as you would say, would, would know was an untruth. But they're so happy to hear a negative line about the war effort because of what I think is a not deliberate but almost sort of like environmental effort to demoralize the country about how this war is going in its 13th day. A war, as somebody said to me that if you were like scoring it as the. It's the middle of the game, right? It's a football game. And you're scoring it in the middle of the game. Well, right now we. Let's say we're closing in on halftime. It's like 48 to three if you're scoring it, that America and Israel have 48 and they maybe have three, if they even have three. And the idea is, oh, the second half. Oh, boy, wait till they come out with the second half. Yeah.

[Eli Lake]

Can I. Along these lines? I just want to read a tweet from Robert Pape, who is a professor at the University of Chicago who is wrong about everything and wrote a book 25 years ago called Bombing to Win, which I believe has been discredited by events. But he still seems to think that he's a genius. This is what he wrote. Iran hit 16 vessels so far in the Strait of Hormuz. That's all it takes for Iran to control 20% of the world's oil and become an oil hegemon. The number one strategic outcome US has sought to prevent in the Middle east since the 1970s. Iran is not weakening its gaining power, to which I responded by losing its nuclear program, missile industry, navy, and most of its top generals and supreme leader. Iran is actually winning. This is at a certain point, like, again, Dr. Pape, settle. Which is.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

But how many ships, how many ships do you think go through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis? Not right now, because there's a war on, but how many ships go through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily. 100, 150 ships a day? How many is that a week? That's 1,000 ships a week. That is, therefore, 5,200 ships a year. So 16 have suffered some form of damage. They haven't been sunk. We haven't had, like, a ship go down to the Davy Jones Locker, they're hit by a drone or something like that. It's not good. I'm not saying. I'm not saying that's fine. But the idea, yes, that a minted professor at my alma mater would say all it takes for Iran to do Is to hit 16 ships. Yes, it increases insurance. Yes, it means that shipping firms don't want to do it. And yes, it means that the United States needs to be act aggressively to counter these threats, which it is doing. As Trump himself said, they are locating the drone factories and the underground drone factories. One of the things that are being bombed now is we continue to bomb are locations as they zero in on where the drones are being kept and where they're being manufactured. And if you can really cut that off, Then either the mining isn't going to. And you have minesweepers cleaning up the mines, the Strait of Hormuz will stop being threatened in a week. That's what I mean by it being 48 to 3. You know, if you're scoring, the 3 is the 16 Ships and the 48 points is everything else that has gone on, including everything that you cite, Eli. But like, so, so that is, I

[Unknown Female Speaker]

just want to explain for fellow jets fans out there, most of the time, 48 to 3 is not considered a close game. I have time. I just.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

And now, you know, look, look, next year, Gino Smith, your team is up 48 to 3. 48 to 3.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

Where, you know, as a Jets fan, if your team is up 48 to 3, you're still biting your nails. I just want to say that you're using that example because if you're not a Jets fan and your team is up 48 to 3, you're usually feeling pretty good.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Yeah, fair enough. That's a, that's a, that's a very. Eli, let's, let's spend a couple minutes before we go talking about your article in which will be available later [e-mail] what you provide here is a historical account of a almost multi generational, really generational, but it's even data back further Israeli effort to consider Iran, consider the threat from Iran and figure out ways, modalities, capacities and innovations to make sure that this regime that declared its purpose was to destroy Israel in the voice of its president in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, what, what they've done. So that is your, that's, that's the subject and that is what you try to tell the story of over time.

[Eli Lake]

Right. And I think it, what it is is what we're seeing is the fruits of, as you point, a generational project which is to penetrate Iran, originally its nuclear program, but now I think we can safely say the entire regiment and really a lot of its society, not just through the traditional means of recruiting agents, which, of course, the Israelis have done well. And I think that they have an advantage because most Iranians hate their regime, but also the technical elements of things like hacking the traffic cameras in Tehran so that the Israelis kind of can see everything. And if you can imagine that on a wider scale, I didn't put this in the piece, but I was going back through some of my early reporting. I wrote a piece almost 20 years ago for the Daily Beast when I was there about how I had gotten a hold of an assessment from the US intelligence about what Israel would be able to do in a war. And this is again almost 20 years ago. And they talked about the ability of Israel to penetrate the electrical grid and control, you know, when they could, you know, the lights in major cities and the wireless platforms and the ability to send messages, as we already know they have, you know, through texts and other kinds of things. This was so long ago that there was the ability to send beeper messages and stuff. But the point is that the Israelis have been working on this ability to as, as, as. I think that was your edit to put Iran under an MRI machine now for some time. And there is a strategic, there's an important. When you know that and you put that in perspective, it really does put in, put it helps explain Trump's decision making, which is that Trump did give the go ahead. And I think he, he, he was willing to give the go ahead even before, you know, he, he took a sec, he started a second term. I think there were discussions about this. But Trump gave the green light in June to Israel for Operation Rising lion that became the 12 Day War. But the first response from the administration was one of neutrality because he didn't know it was going to work. So he was getting, you know, Netanyahu was telling him, listen, we have extraordinary intelligence and we can do things that you wouldn't believe. And I think Trump sort of was like, thought it was a little bit of science fiction. What. Once Israel demonstrated that within the first hours of Operation Rising lion, then you could argue this is the first FOMO war in American history, which is that Trump wanted to be part of it. He wanted to have the glory. And there was also obviously an important role for the United States to play because Israel doesn't have the large, what is it, the ordnance penetrators, the bunker buster bombs that were capable of burrowing into Fordo and the facility in Isfahan, which is what Midnight Hammer was. But Midnight Hammer was a, was almost a cost free, risk free operation because Israel had knocked out all of the air defenses and everything else. And as a result, I think the planning for the second phase of the Iran war this time around, I think it's true that probably Trump believed that the gunboat diplomacy would maybe yield a deal that would be acceptable. But I think he always kind of was prepared to do this. And he thought, as I think we use the phrase, it's like Israel was offering Trump to place a very large bet on a fight that they had already fixed. And that's the key, is that if you just look at it from the perspective of what the kind of combination of American and Israeli air power and then the intelligence targeting. It's a revolution in military affairs. We've never seen anything like it. Yes, there have been decapitation strikes before. They're almost never successful. We tried that in the beginning of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. But to do that on the scale that Israel has done, knocking out an entire level of military leadership as well, is an incredible accomplishment. And I think that that more than anything is what persuaded Trump that now was the time that you could do this and really be successful. Now, we are now faced with a situation where even Netanyahu is beginning to hint that perhaps the war will end before the regime falls. I'm not sure that I think that that's a failure as much as I want to see the regime fall. And I would like to see it replaced with something better, because I also think that it's going to be so weakened. And if you look at the Israeli strategy now that I think Jonathan Schanzer spoke about yesterday on the podcast of going after these local Basiji and IRGC headquarters that are basically just instruments of state repression against their own people, that is a chance to even the odds. And my hope, and I don't think it's that crazy, I would have said this a year ago, I would have thought it was crazy that you could see a color revolution in Iran at some point. Maybe not in the next week or two, but maybe in the next couple months where you could see a color revolution for the first time with close air support.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Okay, so this is amazing, very important point here. And this is where I want to defend Trump, even though we have been saying now for two weeks he's not serious enough. And, you know, and the, the memes and stuff coming out of the White House are self destructive and stupid and it's embarrassing. You know, this is a serious business and they shouldn't be, you know, going cartoonish. And, and, and it's just, it's, it's cringe inducing. But Trump has never said that this was a war for regime change. He's never said that. Bibi has never said that. BB has said, wait until it's safe to go out in the streets. Trump kind of said the same thing. Meaning we're going to fight this war when we're done. We don't know what the circumstances are going to be, but when we're done, take back your country. You can't do it in the middle of the conflict. We're, we're doing, we're running 5,000 bombing runs a day. Stay in your houses, don't be crazy. But when the, when the dust settles, we'll see what the circumstances are. And it turns out that Trump and Bibi keeping their powder dry. I'm not saying we, we will consider this war a success when the mullahs fall and something else takes their place. I think is not only rational in terms of not over promising because you can't bomb to win in some ultimate sense in that way, but saying we are taking out the threats that we see to the United States and to Israel. Nuclear program, conventional missile program, regime planning, Navy counter strike capability and making sure that we make it clear to Iran that if it tries to threaten its neighbors ever again, we're just going to, we'll just fly right back and do what we have to do. If they start rebuilding air defenses, we'll take them out before they become live. We're keeping them demilitarized in some fundamental sense. What happens after is in the hands of the Iranians. Bibi has said that Trump has said that over and over and over again. And I think maybe we have underestimated the degree to which they understand that there's no magic that that is going to create a structure to replace the mullahs with something else. They don't have it. We're not going to occupy Iran and make a regency with Paul Bremer at the head of IT and then start elections and nor, nor the Israelis stuff is going to happen in Iran. It is not predictable what that stuff can be. We don't know who's going to be, who's going to survive after the war, what leaders, what military, what civilian leaders, who's in the parliament, who, you know, all of that, what people are going to say, what they're going to want. But they are opening a gigantic amount of space for political change in Iran. And so that's all the best that we can hope for really is that there be space if, because you know, it depends on how rooted that, you know, you can't pull a tree out by its root. You know, there, there are trees. You can't pull a redwood out by its roots. Now the regime is only 47 years old. It's not like a redwood, but one hopes but you know, it, it is supported by deep reservoirs of, you know, religious fundamentalism and Persian nationalism and all kinds of things that go into this. So I think, John.

[Eli Lake]

Yeah, I actually think the Persian nationalism plays against the religious part of it. Fair enough, fair enough.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

I'm sorry, I just meant, like, it's a complicated country, was never colonized. It's its own thing.

[Eli Lake]

Well, it's kind of colonized.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Well, not.

[Eli Lake]

Not during the Great game in the 19th century, under the Kajar Dynasty, the Iranians were effectively colonized by the British in the south and the north and the Russians in the north.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Effectively, but not. They were not India.

[Eli Lake]

No, they were not India. You're correct. They were not India. But they were like.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Were not India. They were not. I am. They were not. They were not. In that sense, they were the sick

[Eli Lake]

man of South Asia.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Right. But they have always been their own state. It's a very complicated country.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

But that complication is also what helps, in a certain way, work against the mullahs too, because Iran is not a country where you would have to implant ideas about pluralism and democracy.

[Eli Lake]

So. Glad you mentioned Seth. Yes, 100%, that there's a tension in Iranian history between recent Iranian history, which is that since the late 19th century, there has been a real organic push for something like a constitutional system.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Okay, everyone's gotta. I'm gonna stop here because we're running. But this is Eli's Breaking History podcast, History of Iran.

[Eli Lake]

Right?

[Jon Bodhoritz]

The must listen of the weekend. I mean, you gotta go dig back in the article.

[Eli Lake]

We reissued it, so if you go to Breaking History, it's one of the first ones that'll come up.

[Jon Bodhoritz]

Yeah, okay. There it is. Anyway, it's in your feed. Go subscribe to Breaking History and listen to. Because it will. It will inform you remarkably well. Don't buy the hype. Don't get demoralized. Don't let them get you down. And for American Jews, take a moment to consider that our investments in Jewish self defense and self protection have borne real fruit this week in a way that should make us feel. I don't think we should feel more safe because we're not more safe. We're less safe. But that we have. But that this, this effort to protect ourselves has shown real, you know, fortitude and, And. And that things are. In that sense, the money has been spent wisely. So that's something. As we look at the horrors that are being visited upon our community here and across the world and at Gracie Mansion, a place I would never have you put in this list. Can't believe I have to now. But, but, but, but that is. That is something to. That is something to be grateful for as we go into the. Into Shabbat and this weekend. So have a great Shabbat. Have a great weekend. We'll be back on Monday. Thank you, Eli Lake, as ever. And for Abe and Seth and John. But Hort's keep the candle burning.