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Trump's War Dilemma: A Shift in Strategy? ft. Trita Parsi | The Joy Reid Show
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- [00:01]
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- [00:33]
Unknown
Hey.
- [00:35]
Joy Reid
Okay. Welcome to the Joy Reid Show. Donald Trump has made a big deal out of his claim that he opposed dumb wars of past presidents, including the Iraq war. Although there is plenty of evidence that he was for it before he was against it.
- [00:59]
Unknown
Twenty years ago, you were skeptical of a Republican administration that attacked the Middle east country on the idea of questionable intelligence of weapons of mass destruction. How is this moment different with Iran?
- [01:10]
Donald Trump
Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction. I never thought there were. And that was somewhat pre nuclear. You know, it was. There was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today.
- [01:20]
Joy Reid
When he ran for president for his second, second non consecutive term, he claimed that not only would he end the dumb wars of his predecessors, but that he and he would do it in record time. By the way, within a matter of days those wars would be over, but that he would refrain from starting new dumb wars. Well, about six months into his presidency, it seems that Donald Trump may have changed his mind. On Saturday, Donald Trump announced via X Twitter with Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, retweeting it super professional, that the United States has bombed three nuclear sites inside of Iran.
- [02:01]
Donald Trump
Iran, the bully of the Middle east, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal.
- [02:20]
Joy Reid
This brings the United States into a war that Israel had already started when Israel bombed sites inside of Iran, provoking Iranian retaliation and bombs that landed inside of Israel. Donald Trump has been told by his own intelligence services that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon. But he decided that his intelligence services and the leader of those services, Tulsi Gabbard, were wrong.
- [02:48]
Unknown
Intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point.
- [02:54]
Donald Trump
Well, then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?
- [02:59]
Unknown
Your Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
- [03:02]
Donald Trump
She's wrong.
- [03:03]
Joy Reid
He made his own assessment, backed by Bibi Netanyahu or backing Bibi Netanyahu. And now the United States has been drawn into that conflict. Joining me now is an actual expert on the subject from the Quincy Institute, Trita Parsi, who is a co founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He joins me now. Trita, your reaction to Donald Trump's decision to bomb these facilities.
- [03:29]
Trita Parsi
I think Donald Trump has all but guaranteed that Iran will be a nuclear weapons state in five to ten years from now because nothing motivates a country more to achieve a nuclear deterrent than having been bombed in this manner by another country. In 1981, the Israelis struck the Iraqi facility named Osirak, and it was at the time deemed a great success. Later on we realized that he actually caused Saddam Hussein to quadruple his nuclear budget. And had he not invaded Kuwait in 1991, had he just waited another six months, he likely would have had a nuclear weapon because the international community was completely in the dark about how fast he was moving forward. A similar course of event is likely to happen in Iran right now because just in the last week we've seen a tremendous shift in opinion within the regime and within the society in favor of weaponization because of this attack by Israel at first and now the attack by Donald Trump.
- [04:35]
Joy Reid
And, you know, I want to pull that thread just a little bit more because, you know, it strikes me that two nuclear powers, Israel and the United States, have bombed a non nuclear power, Iran, which does not currently have nuclear weapons. And it does seem to me that that does send a message not just to Iran, but to all of the other non nuclear powers in the region, that if the two nuclear powers, you know, if you're disarmed and you don't have nukes, you can be attacked in this manner. Does this not essentially spread the idea of arming up with nukes around the region? Because it might be the only way to protect themselves from one which is an expansionist state, Israel, and from an aggressive partner, the United States.
- [05:20]
Trita Parsi
Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, we're talking about a situation in which both Israel and the United States actually attacked Iran unprovoked. This is not after October 7th in which every Western official was falling over themselves saying that Israel has a right to defend itself. And of course, in the immediate aftermath of that attack, there was an element of truth to that. There's, of course, ways in which you can do it that is in line with international law. Israel, by and large, completely disregarded that there is no such attack this time around, not against Israel by Iran, not against the United States by Iran. So this is completely unprovoked, a violation of international. Not that that seems to matter that much in the United States. But even from the standpoint of actually having achieved what Trump said he has achieved, I am very skeptical. Now, of course, we don't know yet exactly how much damage was done, but it doesn't, frankly, seem to matter that much, because it appears that the Iranians are already taking out their stockpile of enriched uranium out of the facility. They can rebuild centrifuges relatively easily. They can create a secret weapons program much, much smaller than anything that existed in Fordo or anywhere else, per the accusations of the Israelis, which was, of course, contested by the iaea. But nevertheless. So this does not in any way, shape or form, seem to be the end of the story. As Trump has been telling the American people, this seems to be the very beginning of a new, much worse story.
- [06:55]
Joy Reid
Is there any evidence that the deal that President Obama struck, that Bibi Netanyahu vehemently opposed with Iran actually deterred them or slowed them down for or changed their minds about creating nuclear weapons?
- [07:10]
Trita Parsi
Well, they would never have signed that agreement if they were intending to build nuclear weapons, because that agreement ensured that all of their pathways towards a bomb were blocked. And they signed it. They lived up to it. 14 reports by the IAEA in a row declaring that they were abiding by every clause of that agreement. Two or three reports by even the Trump administration's own State Department at the time certifying that the Iranians were complying with that agreement. So we would not be here had it not been for Trump pulling out of that deal. We would not be here if President Biden actually tried to restore Obama's legacy, which he hardly lifted a finger to do. Not on Iran, not on Cuba. And we would not be here today had it not been so that Trump, in the midst of the negotiations with Iran that actually originally went quite well when Trump's red line was weaponization, had he not shifted that red line to zero enrichment, which was the Israeli red line, once he did that. That's what triggered all of these different events. It's not that it made it inevitable for there to be this bombing, but it's where the starting point of this was.
- [08:23]
Joy Reid
It's clear that Benji Netanyahu has really wanted a war with Iran that the United States participates in, because they cannot win a war with Iran by themselves. Right? At least they don't seem to believe they can. Why does Bibi Netanyahu so want to seemingly want to be at war with Iran.
- [08:38]
Trita Parsi
There's many different reasons from Netanyahu's standpoint right now, obviously because of his legal and political problems at home. He needed this. He's been continuing the slaughtering Gaza, refusing to agree to cease fires completely, throwing the Israeli hostages under the bus, abandoning them because of his own political calculations and legal problems that he has if he were to lose his position as prime minister. But in regards to Iran, this has been going on for more than 25 years. And the root of it is actually not Iran's nuclear program. It is the geopolitical situation in the region in which Iran, if it managed to restore its relationship with the United States, ease its tensions, would be able to be a major geopolitical challenger to Israel's desire for complete military hegemony and domination in the Middle East. The nuclear program, of course, is a component of that, but it's not the only thing. At the end of the day, from Bibis to Netanyahu's perspective, he preferred an isolated, embattled, sanctioned Iran with nuclear weapons than sorry, than an Iran that actually was not equipped with nuclear weapons, but was free from sanctions, had better relations with the United States, and actually could grow as a country. So the nuclear component of this is not the critical thing here. The Israeli Atomic Energy Agency endorsed the JCPA precisely because it did prevent the Iranians from building a nuclear weapon. But that was not in any way, shape or form enough for Netanyahu because he was looking at it from a different angle.
- [10:18]
Joy Reid
Does Israel subject itself to the IAEA which monitors nukes around the country?
- [10:22]
Trita Parsi
Israel is not a member of the IAEA of the Non Proliferation Treaty. It does have some collaboration with the iaea, but not at all at the level that it would had it subjected itself to the type of inspections that Iran has agreed to or most Non Proliferation Treaty member states have agreed to.
- [10:41]
Joy Reid
And I'm struck also the countries that had nuclear weapons that had to get rid of them, right? There seems to be a Western sort of hegemony that the west gets to decide who gets to have nukes, even though again, the only country that has ever nuked another country or dropped nuclear bombs another country is us is the United States. At one time, South Africa had nuclear weapons. When Nelson Mandela and the black majority took over, they dismantled their nuclear weapons. And my understanding is that Israel supported the white South African government in getting nukes. Ukraine used to have nuclear weapons and was the storehouse for many of the USSR's nuclear weapons. When they became free of the of Russia, they got rid of their nuclear weapons. What is the criteria for whether a country can have a nuclear deterrent or not? As you can discern whether it serves.
- [11:33]
Trita Parsi
Our geopolitical interest or not. India tested the weapon and what is it, 2006 or so in that war and declared themselves an open nuclear weapon state. And on the normal circumstances this should have been heavily punished by the United States as a way of upholding the credibility of the non proliferation treaty. Instead, it was hardly a slap on the wrist because at the end of the day, the calculation of the United States was such that India was too important of a country in a future or ongoing geopolitical competition with India, with China and as a result, India managed to get into the nuclear club stand outside of the NPT without any much punishment. So it's very clear that at the end of the day, these are not the principles that ultimately guide our action or the actions of other states. But we expect others to follow those rules. And in this specific case, I think there's going to be reverberations of this throughout the region. As you mentioned, in the region in particular, if I was a Turkish strategist, even a Saudi strategist, I would be very worried if I don't have a nuclear deterrence at this point. Because what's not it was also have been made clear here is that the United States, despite the fact that it does have the capability of reining in Israel, saying no to Israel, it doesn't exercise that capability particularly often. And even when it does, which incidentally Trump has done on numerous occasions, unlike Biden, he nevertheless doesn't have the ability or the willpower to sustain it. Trump did push the Israelis into a ceasefire in Gaza, but he didn't keep on pushing to make sure that we reached phase two and phase three. It required constant pressure on all parties and that perseverance simply did not exist. And the same thing, I can give you more examples of this. So you have a situation that even when a president does have the willingness and capability to use it doesn't use it sufficiently and persistently. And what does that then mean for countries like Turkey? So Saudi Arabia and others who are very worried about what an unleashed Israel will mean. Well, I think they will be thinking about nuclear weapons this tonight.
- [13:55]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And I have to ask this question because Netanyahu put a very hard press on Donald Trump to convince him to join this war, which as you mentioned correctly, Iran did not start. I think it's really important to remind people that Iran did not attack Israel and did not Attack the United States. They were attacked by both countries. Ben, who made a claim, a public claim, that Iran was attempting to assassinate Donald Trump, which seems to have been very influential in his thinking. Is there any evidence of that? Because the two people who, you know, shot at Donald Trump were Americans, in fact were Republicans. There's no evidence they had any links.
- [14:40]
Trita Parsi
To Iran, not those two examples. Whether there's evidence for other plots, we don't know. But I can tell you this. If there was convincing evidence that that was the case, I don't think you would have seen any movement towards diplomacy by the Trump administration in the first place. I do not see evidence that this was some sort of a geniusly planned scheme by Trump and Netanyahu already back in January, in which they were going to be faking diplomacy for such a long time. But then it turned out all along that this was the plan. In fact, if that was the plan, why did all of this movement of military equipment to the Middle east just take place in the last 48 hours? This is a person that makes very spontaneous decisions, not necessarily very long plans. So I do think that this is a situation that was very fluid and it turned in this direction. It was not inevitable. But had the evidence or the case that the Iranians were actually trying to kill Trump really been convincing, I don't think he would have engaged in diplomacy at all to begin with. These are things that, in retrospect, to justify an unjustifiable act of aggression the Israelis are putting out. The Trump administration itself is putting out. What the President was, certainly was talking about tonight in his short three minute speech was how the Iranians have killed so many Americans, et cetera, et cetera. Some of that is true, but clearly that was not important when he actually was going in the direction of making a deal. So now there's like this search of looking for everything we can find of what has happened in the last 40 years in order to justify an unprovoked attack.
- [16:20]
Joy Reid
It feels very, very much like 2003. My exit question to you, Trita, what would you expect Iran to do in response? I know that their proxies are very much degraded, whether it is Hamas or Hezbollah. What do you expect them to do?
- [16:34]
Trita Parsi
It really is very much dependent on the degree of damage that has happened and calculations of that kind. Trump seems to think that this will end up being a one off. The Iranians may respond by attacking a couple of bases. The US has probably largely already emptied those bases. Very few soldiers left there, or they've been put in bunkers, et cetera. And he will, like he did in 2020 after he assassinated Qasem Soleimani and the Iranians struck one of those bases, or actually three of those bases, call it a quit and leave. That could be a scenario. But it all depends on what the Iranians actually do if they manage to kill several Americans. And he will probably have a hard time not escalating things further. Moreover, there's this Israeli wildcard in all of this. The Israelis probably fully understand that this did not destroy the Iranian nuclear program. So they will continue to attack. They will continue to assassinate scientists and many other things. And there will probably be a continuous exchange of fire between the United States, between Israel and Iran. And the Israelis will then constantly be pressuring Trump to get into that war over and over again. So I think the idea that this is a non one off is far less likely than that. This ends up becoming a very longstanding, perhaps even one of those endless wars.
- [17:57]
Joy Reid
This has not made me feel better, but it's been super helpful. Trita Parsi, thank you.
- [18:01]
Trita Parsi
Thanks so much for having me.
- [18:02]
Joy Reid
Thank you, Trita Parsi. And thank you all for watching this bonus content. And if you want more on my thoughts on our potential entry into World War III, go to Joann Reid.com where I've written up some show notes on this conflict on where it might go from here. That's joyanread.com you can also subscribe over there, but be sure to subscribe here as well. Hit that subscribe button. Also hit the like and the share so that you can tell a friend telephone and make sure that you don't miss any content right here on the Joy Reid Show. See you on the next one. Thanks for watching.