← The Lawfare Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
The Electronic Communications Privacy act turns 40 this year and it's showing its age. On Friday, March 6, Lawfare and Georgetown Law are bringing together leading scholars, practitioners and former government officials for installing updates to ecpa, a half day event on what's broken with the statute and how to fix it. The event is free and open to the public in person and online. Visit lawfaremedia.org ecpaevent that's lawfairmedia.org ecpaevent for details and to register.
- [00:37]
B
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C
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- [03:03]
A
So Ben, I think like five years, perhaps to the day after you were savagely and unfairly ridiculed by Room Raider during the pandemic for being in front of a hostage video, I feel like you've truly mastered the Livestream podcast backdrop. It is a veritable TGI Fridays of Lawfare and Ben Wittes related kitsch on the walls behind you that keeps multiplying time. We do one of these. It's kind of phenomenal. But what is this black and white picture I now see over your shoulder?
- [03:31]
C
Yeah. So that is Guy Fawkes being seized at the British Parliament, which he was the only honest man who ever entered. And we've got some cactuses and we've got the Bob Mueller puppet. And some of my audience sent me a barrister's wig once for reasons that is very hard to understand. So we've got the barrister's wig.
- [03:53]
A
Did it come with the wig stand or is that a.
- [03:55]
C
It did come with the wig stand, yeah.
- [03:57]
A
I love that.
- [03:58]
C
And then we got the sunflower that dances and plays the saxophone for reasons nobody understands. And then, you know, anytime I want to, I can turn this into a very serious Lawfare background. This I use mostly, you know, for dog shirt tv, but, you know, if I want to, I can just pull up the screen and it's a very serious looking lawfare background.
- [04:23]
B
I thought your Guy Fawkes puppet was actually Stadler or Waldorf. So I think you're at a different intellectual level than I am.
- [04:30]
C
Yeah, well, you know, the Bob Mueller puppet I had custom made and, you know, I'm very fond of the Bob Mahler puppet.
- [04:39]
D
Where does one get custom puppets?
- [04:41]
C
You know, if you type in custom made puppets, a variety of options will show up for you. This one was made in Indiana.
- [04:50]
B
I believe we still have a Bob Mahler votive candle somewhere in our attic. So he certainly has his own cult.
- [05:06]
A
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories. We have a little bit of a tradition here at Rational Security where when there is big, big news in the national security space, we commit a whole episode to it. And now this is the second time we'll be doing that in as many months. Because, of course, this past weekend, President Trump decided to initiate what appears to be a major, major military operation against Iran, opening with an attack that killed the Ayatollah Ali Kalamaneh, supreme Leader of Iran. Making this an effort at, or at least something that had the effect of regime change, a major, major region, something people have been talking about for a very long time that has obvious ramifications in lots of dimensions. So we're going to commit this whole episode to talking about this obviously very major development in the national Security space, possibly the most major one of the second Trump administration. And that is saying a lot because again, we've already done at least one of these episodes, maybe two at this point over the last year that President Trump has been back in the White House, I could not ask for a better panel of Lawfare team members to talk about it with me. I am joined, as is so often the case, first by host emeritus and Lawfare Editor in chief Benjamin Wittes. Ben, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
- [06:20]
C
Of course. My pleasure.
- [06:22]
A
I think you have an almost unanimous, if not unanimous, record of joining for these special episodes. So always good to have you on, although maybe not a good sign for the state of the world generally speaking.
- [06:31]
C
Yeah, the more Wittis, the worse things are for the world is a good is a good rule of thumb.
- [06:36]
A
That is usually how I feel about my presence and job as well. Also joining us, somebody who probably feels the same way about their job and expertise as well is lafair's foreign policy editor, Georgetown NCS is Dan Byman. Dan, thank you for joining us as well.
- [06:49]
B
Always happy to be here, Scott.
- [06:51]
A
And joining us as well is one of the newer members of the Lawfare team, but a familiar sound and sight to us here on national security at this point. It's Ari Tabatabai, Lawfare's public service fellow, joining us from overseas. Almost the opposite end of the world and yet no doubt still getting a lot of the same news and affected by the same echoes and ripples out from this major foreign policy action over there as well. Ari, thank you for joining us and staying up late to join us, no less.
- [07:15]
D
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm here from the future.
- [07:17]
A
There you go. Exactly. Hopefully it's looking a little brighter. I somehow doubt it. So we are going to commit this whole episode to this one topic, but I think as is our usual way, we're going to try and divide it up into three sort of lenses to look at the topic. So let me run through our three kind of topics, subtopics we talked about today. Topic one, Isn't it ironic? Ironic? Ironic. Trump's decision to join.
- [07:39]
C
Good.
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A
Actually, I thought it was pretty good.
- [07:41]
C
It suddenly occurred to me that people don't use that joke. Of all the jokes that people use about Iran that are puns on the word Iran that doesn't, that one has not shown up.
- [07:53]
A
And I, I felt pretty good about it. I've had this one in my back pocket for a while, if I'm being honest, because I kind of saw this coming at least a little bit. At least we'd have to talk about it again.
- [08:01]
B
I'd say it's a little too ironic.
- [08:03]
A
Yes, exactly. Isn't it? All these days, Trump's decision to join Israel in removing Ayatollah Khamenei reflects a deep reversal by the president, who has spent years criticizing his predecessor's own experiences with regime cham and other overseas adventurism. What drove Trump to proceed this time after stopping short twice in the past year? What can we learn from the way the Trump administration has proceeded? And how far will Trump let things go? Topic 2 Bibi's Big Adventure Regime change in Iran is something Israel and the Arab Gulf states have advocated for frequently in the past, but they had all adopted a more cautious and even conciliatory posture towards Iran in the months before the current offensive, at least in public, although we know in private now it sounds like things may have been a little bit different, at least in regards to Saudi Arabia. How has the region approached this conflict and what will it do moving forward? How will it be affected? And Topic three Miga, the death of Ayatollah Khamenei is a major shift in Iran, but we don't know where it is going to lead. One risk, a concern that people have always had about regime change in Iran, that it will be highly destabilizing and end up with a failed state in a great crucial corner of the Middle East. On the other end, other people have asserted that removing the Ayatollah and his regime will give the opportunity for Iran to flourish back into a democracy, or at least something else closer to a state that's more stable and free than Iran has been for the last several decades? Between the two is a mass, mass spectrum of possibilities. What does the future hold for Iran in the post Ayatollah era, if that's the era that we're headed into? So for our first topic to kick off this whole conversation, I want to start with Ari. Ari, you've obviously worked on Iran policy from inside government, spent a lot of time looking at outside government. I want to start just getting a sense about what this argument and what the forces politically for regime change in Iran have looked like for the past several years. I worked in government at this point a good while ago around Middle east issues and at the time, a decade ago, more than a decade ago, during the kind of the peak conversation to recall this possibility of taking major military action against Iran was always something talked about, particularly in certain circles, particularly wings of the Republican Party and Republican Party kind of conventional foreign policy apparatus. Not really what has become the mega wing, the more restraint oriented wing, but there's this very, very big coalition driving towards this outcome. First, military action against Iran more severely and then potentially even leading to regime change. Although the two always weren't exactly linked. The first Trump administration was full of people who were from this more conventional foreign policy apparatus that was tied in with the Republican Party, which has a lot of roots in neoconservative movement and the kind of ideology and strategic thought that led to the US invasion of Iraq 20 years ago. Second Trump administration doesn't feature as many, it seems, at least not at the high levels, at least not at the highest profile positions yet. Nonetheless, we've seen this administration which seemed to have many, many more people from that mega restraint oriented wing that are skeptical of regime change and overseas intervention. This is the Trump administration that ultimately took this choice. So what do you think drove President Trump to move in this direction at this particular point, when we know just this past January, then the prior June, then in 2020, after the Soleimani strike, he stopped short of, of directly attacking, let alone removing, the regime in Iran. What changed this time around?
- [11:36]
D
Yeah, in a way, I think the second Trump administration is kind of taking the Iran policy of the first Trump administration to its logical end. Right. The first Trump administration started by, in the first couple of years, talking about withdrawing from the jcpoa, talking about building what at the time was called the maximum pressure campaign. By 2018, President Trump had decided that he was actually going to withdraw from the jcpoa. And then he and Mike Pompeo, at the time Secretary of State, started the maximum pressure campaign. And by the end of the first Trump administration, sort of the last year of the first Trump administration is when we saw the killing of Qassem Soleimani and the sort of tit for tat escalation that we saw in the last few months of the administration. And then the second Trump administration could have picked up where everything was left off and decided to adopt a posture that was a bit more forward leaning when it comes to the use of military force. And obviously we saw that over the summer with Midnight Hammer, where, you know, the, the administration's stated objective was to go in using the kind of weakness of the regime and building on the work that Israel had been doing to kind of take care of some of Iran's military capabilities, target Iranian nuclear facilities, the key ones. And, and then nothing happened for a few months. There were some negotiations that seemingly were still ongoing at the time. When President Trump decided that he was going to conduct this large scale combat operation that we're in right now. So I think it's just been a gradual movement toward where we are today. I think there's a second piece to it, though, which is that the administration, since the beginning of the second Trump term has been a lot more, I think, at ease with the use of military force beyond Iran. Right. We've seen that in the Caribbean. We obviously saw the Venezuela operation. And it seems like there is this view that the operational success of Venezuela, of the Caribbean, and the relative low cost of Midnight Hammer and its operational success have led the President to think that, or at least to kind of view the use of force as something that can be done on the administration's terms, that can be done in a fairly low cost way politically. I mean, the Republican Party is maybe starting to fracture a little bit now around the Iran operation, but by and large, Republicans have been standing with President Trump throughout the past year or so economically. And in terms of casualties, we haven't really seen some of the kind of worst case scenarios. Right. And so it seems like there are lessons that are being drawn from those operations that indicate that maybe you can actually kind of start and end a military campaign and do it on your own terms. Obviously, what we're seeing today is very different from Midnight Hammer, and it's obviously coming at the end of after Midnight Hammer and a series of other things. So it's not clear to me that this is where this particular operation is going to go. And I think the costs are going to be significantly higher. We're already seeing that. But I think those are maybe two of the main things that are kind of driving the administration that got us to where we are today.
- [15:17]
A
So, Dan, I want to come to you to pivot off, I think that closing observation Ari made about the differences between this and Midnight Hammer, because Midnight Hammer, to some extent, the Soleimani strike, a lot of other actions this administration has taken vis a vis Iran, or in other contexts, a Maduro operation. Similarly, it's focused on kind of narrow, targeted military action, sometimes with big consequences. Like the Maduro operation, like the Soleimani strike, arguably high risk, but nonetheless fairly limited in scope, with an ability to kind of modulate up and down. I think the Museumani strike may be less so, but most of these other operations, this seems really different to me. I mean, from an early, early stage, the Trump administration has seemed to decide to go all in. And I'm on the record on this podcast of saying essentially I didn't think it was going to happen, which I've been very wrong about a couple times recently with the second Trump administration, because we had seen them balk at that proposition multiple times before we knew there was the possibility of even allowing Israel to continue its military campaign this past summ, which instead of allowing Israel to do that, which it had begun shifting towards targeting Iran's political leadership, the Trump administration hit the nuclear sites and then said, cease fire, we're not going to do that. We knew the Trump administration had a moment in January where they could have intervened around protests, where the president even said he intended to, and then kind of walked it back at a moment where you might have garnered a little more international sympathy if you had done that, at least in certain corners, you at least had a humanitarian hook that doesn't really shouldn't make a difference legally, but makes a lot of difference kind of ethically in how a lot of people view things like this. But he didn't. He stopped short. The massacres continued or the protesters more or less wound down. And this is coming two months later, too late to do much good perhaps in that domain, or at least not stopping a lot of those killings. And in that case, supposedly some other governments in the region were the ones saying, whoa, pump the brakes, pump the brakes. We can't jump right into hitting and removing this regime. What's changed in that intervening time? We saw this big military buildup. We know part of this was to have defensive capabilities in the region. But is the strategic calculus really changed that much? How does this fit on your sense of the risk profile of the actions the administration has taken and is there a way to square it, or is this just reflect a shift in views on the part of the president and the part of people around him?
- [17:36]
B
So I think it's more a shift in views. And one thing that I will say probably everyone at Lawfare has a different view of how the Trump administration makes decisions than I suspect all of our listeners and viewers do as well. And to me, long term thinking is certainly not a hallmark of this president. I think he is someone who can say in the same sentence, we completely obliterated all of Iran's nuclear program last year. We need to go to war to stop Iran's nuclear program. And that contradiction that would and the other president would Balka act. He doesn't think twice about. And I think he has been convinced of what Ari said, that military operations are both successful and very low cost. But as you said, Scott, this is a big jump. This is a much more massive operation. If you look at really all the operations you mentioned, Suleimani Venezuela around last year, these were basically one day operations. These were quick hit and end and this could end tomorrow, but it will probably last at least weeks, possibly longer. There's been talk of further escalation. I don't think ground troops are at all likely, but they've at least been mentioned. And as a result, the political consequences are much bigger. The possibility of more lasting price rises or economic consequences, anger from allies about kind of long term strain, all this is coming to the fore. But I really see this, if we're going to use the word I think I might use in quotes perhaps, is learning from the Trump administration, which is he sees military force as a way to show himself on the national and world stage in a successful way. We know he has a very limited news diet that only consumes things that are largely flattering of him. And in the past, these kind of very triumphant military operations he feels made him look good. His advisors, as you said, are not people putting brakes on, but are actually encouraging him with their own agendas in different ways. So I do see this as a change, but in some ways as a progression from where he was a year ago rather than a complete break.
- [19:55]
A
Ben, no one, I think is a closer Trump watcher than you or have been for the last decade or so. What do you make of that kind of narrative, Dan, spelling out about this trajectory, which is the idea of, if I can paraphrase you, Dan, I think that I'm getting at your logic here. This is Trump learning and shaking loose of some of his psychological constraints, some of the risk adversity that may have held him back before. He's seen success, he's tasted success. The institutional factors that may have restrained him in the first Trump administration have kind of fallen away now. His kind of frame of reference, his selective memory has adjusted to these things as a vehicle of success. Does that make sense to you and what does that bode for the future? And to the extent, if that is a vision, it makes sense. Where could or would or might pushback or learning on the part of Trump or the people around him come from to rein in those instincts to the extent they have, which currently at least in the region, might have some damaging consequences?
- [20:52]
C
Yeah. So I think there's a few factors at work, some of which Ari and Dan have alluded to. I'm going to frame them a little bit differently. So the first is this is fun and he's got this military with these really powerful tools. And what happens is you point at a problem and you say, let's deal with it by blowing that up. And the first thing that happens is a whole bunch of generals tell you why you can't do it and tell you about all the political and military constraints. And then the second thing that happens is you say, do it anyway, and they go and do it and it works. And you learn from that that the generals are full of shit and they're cautious in a way that is just unmanly, frankly. And that your instincts, which are, let's blow these things up. Why do we have all these cool toys if we can't use them? Actually is right. And so you get more and more confident about the. The instinctive, oh, well, let's just go blow it up. Solution, and sometimes blow it up is let's just kidnap the guy and bring him to New York. And sometimes it's, let's just blow up some boats. So that's thing number one, thing number two is Israel envy. The Israelis have gotten a lot of mileage over the last few years out of tactically brilliant, strategically unclear actions in their region, where they get a huge amount of short term and maybe long term benefit from blowing things up and killing people in ways that they have, you know, people have said was not possible or couldn't be done without a massive war or. And then they just keep doing it and it keeps working, at least in the short term. And so what you learn from that if you're Trump, is why not try it? And because the general response of the bureaucracy tends to be over caution about a lot of things. And by the way, for very good reason, their job is to think about the downside risk of things. But if the downside risk is 20%, you can get away with a string of things where you don't pay the downside risk, at least in the short term. So I think it's fun. We can get away with it, and we probably will. Which translates in Trump's mind to everybody's being hyper cautious. They're just not manly enough to do the thing. And the pressure on the other side, which is Bibi would do it and he'd get away with it, is, I think, shaping a lot of things. The final thing is that the people who would be most apt to put the brakes on things like this, the James Mattis and the former head of the Joint Chiefs, these are not people who are in government anymore. And so the larger theme of the second Trump administration, which is the brakes are off in terms of the human people, who would say no? Who would say, are you sure you want to do that? Who would take the Korean American Free Trade Agreement off the president's desk when he's not looking and hide it? The withdrawal from that, that really happened, right? Those people aren't there anymore. So I think if you take those three things, you've explained a fair bit of it.
- [24:46]
A
So there's definitely an endogenous part of this that is inherent to the Trump administration, people around him. There's also an exogenous element of this. We have seen Iran substantially weaken over the last year and a half, primarily as a result of Israeli military operations against Hezbollah. Again because of the not Israeli driven, but indigenously driven collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, because of the conflict in Hamas. That has been devastating and complicated in a lot of ways and is far from a clear win by Israel, but certainly has had the effect of decimating Hamas. So we know Iran has been in a weaker position, and that's particularly true after this past June and July operation when we saw a lot of its military and leadership capacity get substantially weakened, although they've made efforts to rebuild back from that, that built on the prior Israeli campaign against Iran that had knocked out a lot of its air defenses months earlier. That's part of the reason why they felt confident about moving into this campaign. So we've seen this capabilities, a sense of Iran, which I think really loomed its potential responses, loomed large in the psychology of a lot of policymakers as a big concern for years and years get shown to be maybe a little bit of a paper tiger, I think, or at least much less weak threat now than it may have been 10 years ago, or at least was perceived to be. So, Dan, let me ask you, as somebody with experience for the intelligence community who's looked at issues like this before, what does that tell us about the advice President Trump was getting, if he was listening to it, about the challenges of this type of operation or maybe of the range of menu of options that he might encounter here. We know that Dan Kaine has been reported as having reservations about some of the operational wisdom of an all out campaign against Iran that were serious enough that President Trump felt the need to respond to them and deny them in public, which is usually a sign that there's some element of truth there. We know that they did pursue this massive buildup beforehand in part to have lots of different resources in the region to do a bunch of different things, including defensive actions for US Targets and US Embassies So, so what is your sense about how big a strategic undertaking this is depending on what exactly the objectives are, to the extent we know. And so how much Trump is bucking the advice, I guess, of his policymakers and the people who work on these things professionally to have pursued something like this.
- [27:06]
B
So the initial question, which still has not been answered, is why is the United States doing this? And as you know, we've heard a lot of justifications, ranging from helping Democratic protesters to ending Iran's nuclear program, its missile program, its navy, its support for proxies. A lot of kind of a long laundry list of US Concerns have been brought up. But the vast majority of these, maybe even all of these, are in a much better place than they were certainly three or four years ago. And a year ago, Iran's nuclear program was set back by Operation Midnight Hammer. There's no question about that. People debate about how much, but clearly it was hit hard. As was mentioned earlier, Lebanese Hezbollah was really devastated in its 2024 war with Israel. Hamas also devastated. The Houthis still going relatively strong, but when you look at Iran's proxies in general, a much weaker force than they were before October 7, 2023. And so then you get to things like the missile program. And from what has appeared in the newspapers, yes, Iran has a missile program, but it' ICBMs that are waiting to rain down on the United States, it's short and medium range missiles that are the problems. And we've seen air defense work reasonably well for this. So one thing that to me was not incorporated into the initial decision making was how much of a threat is Iran, how much do we want to really go to a kind of war without an immediate kiss of spelli because of these issues, the broader question of should the United States go to war to help protesters, that's not a professional bureaucratic focus. Right. If the president of the United States decides that, so be it. But usually that's the sort of thing that US Advisors tend to be on the skeptical side of. And I want to be clear, I certainly don't know any inside information here, but I would be very surprised if advisors were saying to President Trump, yes, of course we can put in a good regime here. I suspect they're saying a lot of the alternatives are either chaos or a dictator with a uniform instead of a dictator with a turban, that you're not going to see dramatic regime change here. Then you get to the actual operations and what has leaked is General Kaine's warning that we don't have sufficient numbers of air defense munitions for key systems. And we've seen some of the consequences of that, where some Iranian strikes have gotten through, not huge numbers, but enough, where there have been real casualties, both for the United States and especially for US Allies. And so that kind of broader question of US Preparedness for a big struggle is one. And also that goes to broader US Concerns around the world. These munitions and US Military assets in general are wanted in Europe with regard to Ukraine, they're wanted in Asia for a China threat. So there's tremendous opportunity costs. And, and not to go too far down this rabbit hole, but we actually used a lot of this in our conflict with the Houthis in Yemen last year, which is not something most Americans really focused on. But that relatively minor conflict actually was a huge drain. So the professional military's advice that at least has come out, has been very cautious. But I take Ben's point to me, which to me is a very important one. Trump has learned that, hey, when I use force, it works. All these kind of naysayers and the bureaucracy, they're wrong. We can take some risks. The US Military is awesome, and it makes me look good. And I think that is kind of how he takes this. But that said, I'm going to say an unlucky Iranian strike that kills a bunch more Americans, increasing surges in energy prices, these are things that may lead the president to halt operations. And if he does so, I think he will quickly blame the military or blame others for not giving him good advice, for leading him in the wrong direction. Whatever specific grievance he'll want to say will vary, but I think he'll be quick to point fingers when things don't work out, just as he was quick to ignore the professionals when he thinks things will work out.
- [31:26]
A
I do think it's worth at least mentioning in passing the legal side of this, because this is lawfare. It's something we do care about, even though we also bring in the strategic elements. And I'll say I wrote a piece on Lawfare that went up yesterday about this that folks can look at if they want a deeper dive. But I'll just say at the top level, for a lot of the reasons you noted, Dan, like, this really, in my view, pushes the limits of what the executive branch has said the president can do before. It's hard to say it goes beyond them, because the executive branch has always been deliberately cagey about where exactly to draw the line, because executive branch's views are written by executive branch lawyers. Whose job is to figure out the ways to get the president what he wants unless it's clearly in violation of the law. And so they found lots of ways to wiggle the international law arguments, the domestic law arguments. What the administration's justification, as far as I can tell, really boils down to, and we saw this in the Maduro opinion they released, is that we think we can do this without risking enough US Soldiers being killed. That's at a level with a major armed conflict. The Maduro opinion specifically referenced the second Iraq War and the Vietnam War as the big comparison points as a spectrum from like 3 or 4,000 fatalities to 30 to 40,000 fatalities. As long as we stay out of that band, we think we're safe. We're talking about American air power and American other specialized military capabilities, which you can do way disproportionate action without putting that many soldiers at risk. It's really wild because that's basically saying the president can have huge globally consequential actions that he can do on his own authority as long as he uses those technical capabilities that don't put as many US Soldiers at risk. It's potentially hugely destabilizing. As I mentioned that piece, I don't think it really jives very well with which we think the declare war clause was included in the Constitution for which is to let Congress be a bit of a check on overseas adventurism by the president. Reid, Federalist I think it's number four on that. Regardless though, the system that the Americans are looking at is part of this. We've also got regional governments involved. Israel is the biggest one. We also have reports that because of course, Israel is kind of leading this campaign, at least in terms of targeting Iran's political leadership, they appear to be the ones pulling the trigger on those strikes. The Americans are providing intelligence, but mostly hitting security apparatus sort of items. We also have reports that Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince in Saudi Arabia, has been quietly urging this campaign, even though publicly he's been voicing restraint. And this follows a trend we've seen from other Gulf governments that historically have been pretty hostile to Iran over the last year or two, I would say primarily since the October 7th massacre in Gaza, have been a little less openly hostile towards Iran, at least by my sense of the rhetoric. Ari, I want to come to you on this. Talk to us about what the kind of regional dynamics towards Iran, a regime that has been seen as a regional problem by most governments in the region for a long time. Talk about what that kind of posture has been and the ways that may or may not have contributed to this latest campaign.
- [34:23]
D
Yeah, I mean, what you're describing with regard to Saudi Arabia, I think is true for most other Gulf states, which is that I think they've just been much more inclined in private to be more forthcoming with regard to kind of pushing back against Iranian destabilizing activities in the region than they have in public. Right. Because they've had to hedge, essentially, and make sure that they did not end up in the crosshairs of a neighbor that has historically been pretty okay with interfering in their affairs, has been fairly aggressive, and has had this proxy network that is now weakened, but that has had essentially kind of little nodes in different parts of the Gulf. So obviously for those reasons, Gulf Arabs have been a lot more careful in the way they've kind of talked about the rivalry with Iran. And in terms of advocating for more forceful action against Iran in public, in private, it's been slightly different. So there is that piece which I fully buy the reporting that The Saudis and MbS specifically have been kind of advocating for more forceful action with the President. The other piece of it is the kind of growing integration that multiple administrations now in the United States have been advocating for in the Gulf and the region more broadly. And that includes both Republicans and Democrats. Right. The Gulf and Israel and others have become a lot more integrated. We're seeing some of the fruits of that in the way that the response has unfolded to the Iranian response, if you will. These are countries that have become a lot more militarily capable, especially in terms of air defense. And there's been more intelligence sharing. There's been more mill to mill kind of conversations and overtures. And all of those things have been, by and large, I think, a good thing. But they've also probably brought us to where we are today, in a sense, with regard to Iran.
- [36:31]
A
So the Gulf states are obviously a couple of major actors about US Policy towards Iran. They've got a vocal voice on it, something they've been pushing the United States in different directions for. For more than a decade, a lot more than a decade. Several decades at this point. But the big regional actor is Israel. And Ben, you're a very informed and close watcher of Israeli politics. If there's one figure that hangs over this military operation as much, if not more than President Trump, or at least might in the history books, it's Bibi Netanyahu. So talk about his motivation and the reasons why he might be pushing for this military campaign when again this past summer, he didn't go straight for the head. He didn't go straight for the Ayatollah. He did target political leadership was ratcheting it up before the ceasefire that the Trump administration pressured him into. This past January, there were reports that he and other regional governments were among the ones voicing and advising President Trump. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just jump right into intervening on behalf of the protesters. So talk to us about what's driving this change in mindset and what's led him to finally reach this moment, which, by his own description, is something he's wanted to do his whole career.
- [37:35]
C
Yeah. So I don't think. I don't believe the stories about January and the Israeli sense of restraint in January. I think that was mostly a posture the Israeli government wanted to be seen to adopt. And by the way, the same with the regional Gulf governments. I have no evidence of that. That's just an instinct. But look, Bibi is a very complicated political animal, but there are certain things about him that are very simple and actually very pure, and one of them is that he believes that Iran is the principal threat to Israel. He has always been, for the last 25 years, obsessed with the Iranian nuclear program, and he traces most big problems back to Iran. He's quite consistent about it. And his view of the subject is pretty simple, actually. And I think that general posture explains a lot of his behavior over the past few years, which is he systematically went after the Iranian proxies one after another, and did so very systematically and very effectively, frankly. He then went after the Iranian air defenses and nuclear program, recruiting the United States to do the nuclear program part. But he disabled Iran's ability to defend itself as he established air supremacy there. And then having done all that and having gotten the United States to destroy a lot of the nuclear program, he then went after the leadership of the country. And I think he's like, none of this is secret. None of this is nefarious. Like, if you. If you listen to what he's been saying for the last 20 years, you would kind of, like you started with the sort of neocon wing of the Republican Party. All of this has been in the open, that this is what he wants to do. And by the way, there's a quite. I don't mean to sound dismissive of it. There's a quite coherent understanding of Israeli security in which this makes all the sense in the world. And in fact, you know, I think if you. If you start on October 7th and say, who has been the big winner of these? This Regional conflict that has developed, Israeli power and security has been kind of enhanced at every stage. So I, I don't even mean to really second guess the premise. I think he's been effective and fairly straightforward about what he's trying to do. Now, is there a domestic Israeli politics dimension to it? Of course there is. And that is the following one, that Bibi was the prime minister at the time of the most devastating attack on Israel, at least since 73 and maybe ever. And he bears some non trivial responsibility for allowing that attack to happen and having used the time between then and now to systematically dismantle Israel's major enemies, including lopping off the head of the snake itself, which is the Iranian leadership and its missile program. And its ability to run all these proxies is one non trivial way of going back to the Israeli public and saying, I'm still your guy. And that is, you know, he's going to face an election this year. And that's the argument that he's going to make. You know, don't look at what happened on October 7th, look at what I did after October 7th. So, yeah, there is a substantial domestic politics component to that. There's also a domestic politics component to his, you know, you can call that the settle all family business approach. Right. It's kind of Corleone. There's also a, you know, he's got this precarious far right coalition to hold together. And you, if you're trying to hold together a far right coalition in Israel, you never lose by being on offense against Iran and its proxies. And so there's a, you know, a pretty simple calculation there. But I think it all points in one direction. Here's what I don't believe. I don't believe it's an attempt to distract from his criminal prosecution. Yes, he's got an ongoing criminal prosecution. Yes, he's got a serious set of corruption issues and a confrontation with the judiciary. But all of this is also what he actually believes in terms of what the big threats are facing Israel. And if you had said to me on October 5th, there's going to be a major attack on Israel in two days, it's going to be devastating. And Israel is going to respond by going after, you know, in sequence, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Syrian regime is going to fall in there and then they're going to go after Iran. Plausible or implausible? Would have said totally plausible. Hey folks, I want to tell you a story about the founding of Lawfare. I started Lawfare and it was just a blog. And then we realized we had to create an organization to support it. And all of a sudden I found myself doing paperwork, forms, logistics, personnel stuff. It just completely ate up my day. And I want to say I was bad at it. And it was repetitive, it was boring. And I thought to myself, there has to be an easier way to do this. I didn't know about Gusto at the time, and in retrospect, I wish we had. 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D
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- [51:00]
A
So that actually tees up something that I've been thinking about and wondering about in all of this, which is the Israeli strategic vision that we're seeing coming out of this.
- [51:11]
C
They don't do strategic vision.
- [51:13]
A
Well, that's actually kind of.
- [51:15]
C
I think they do tactical operations.
- [51:17]
A
Well, I think that's kind of it, which I think is revealing about where this operation may end or the ways away may end, because it does not seem like the United States has a super strong strategic vision going into why it's doing this. It seems like a lot of that is, in my mind, coming from the Israelis and what we've seen particularly be able to do. Although I think this is a strand of thought in kind of Israeli defense thinking generally. Although through one element of it, I know it's controversial in Israel and parts of Israel is that, you know, you've seen a kind of super strong version of the mow the grass strategy, where essentially since particularly October 7th, there's been an effort to just kind of keep. Keep the areas around Israel that are a threat weak and down and disorganized. We saw that in Gaza most clearly. We've seen it in Syria where that's part of the anxiety over the new government that's taken over there. Kind of unexpectedly that we've seen the Netanyahu government be surprisingly hostile towards and take steps to destabilize before getting kind of reined in by the United States. You haven't seen it. Lebanon may be a little bit of the exception because knocking Hezbollah back has allowed kind of centralized Beirut government to be of a little more influence, but not really in the areas closest to Israel. Those areas are still kind of like no man. Hezbollah dominated lands where Hezbollah's been substantially disorganized, although still, you know, taking military action. I think some of which are we've seen the IDF even move into in the last 24 hours. So what does that might tell us? Is this depiction, Dan, of of Israel's kind of strategic posture accurate? Are they comfortable with a region that is disorganized and weak, if destabilized in certain ways? And I'll say I'm a little skeptical of this theory because that sounds a lot like what the strategy was in Gaza from 2007 onward, which is keep it disorganized, small, cabined. Yeah, there's no governance. Yeah, it's bad for people who live there, but we can contain the threat. And obviously that proved to be a very bad bet in Gaza in the end. But this seems to be still exporting that whole strategy kind of to the region. Now is that accurate and does that tell us where the real line is? All this talk about regime change and freedom and democracy in Iran really is just a bit of an illusion, a fantasy covering up the actual end goal, at which point this operation may end, which is just a substantially weakened and disorganized Iran.
- [53:36]
B
So there's a line I heard in Israel which is we only talk about strategy in English. And to me that kind of sums it up right. When they're talking to their US counterparts, they'll give a vision and they may, God forbid, even use PowerPoint. But when they're talking internally, it's much more tactical. And there are a couple, I think, reasons for this, some of which are understandable, some which are not at all. One is Israel, for its entire existence, has had to deal with a very fast moving regional situation. So to say, where do you want the region to be in five years or 10 years, they think is laughable. That's saying to American AI developers, let's plan 20 years ahead. They're just like, that's not a sensible way of doing things. And Israel's domestic politics are so fraught that they're often thinking, how do I gain advantage over my rivals this week? And if you try to do long term planning, someone's just going to leak it and try to embarrass you at a critical moment. So I think there are legitimate reasons and less legitimate ones for not going down this road. Israel in general also has an assumption, which is everyone in the region hates us. And therefore, if we look at whether it's Gaza or Jordan or Iran, yes, governments might change, but the people are probably going to hate us. And a lot of what we want is either a dictator who will go against popular opinion. So if you look At Egypt or Jordan, popular opinion is very anti Israel, but the governments are very cooperative with Israel or we want the country to be weak. And as you mentioned, that is certainly Syria. And I think that the idea that I think the Israelis are very skeptical of regime change in Iran. Part of it is they don't think it would necessarily lead to a pro or better government for Israel. But also I think they just don't think it's going to work, that you might end up getting a more competent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in who's just as anti Israel, just often a little smarter about the whole dynamic. And as a result, they're often thinking about weakness. And they are thinking there's a old line of in war you want your enemy to be weak and in peace you want them to be strong. I think their view is we're kind of always at war, therefore we always want these people to be weak. And therefore when in doubt, the weakening seems to be the Israeli approach. I actually think that's misguided. I think that in many cases you would want a stronger government that could enforce order at home, could actually make deals in a credible way that is not a prisoner to fractious bureaucratic and domestic politics. But Israelis are very skeptical of that. And it is this kind of we will face perpetual conflict and if so, we'd rather enemies be weak and off balance and easily defeatable rather than have the time to gain international support, build their militaries and pose a bigger threat.
- [56:40]
A
Yeah.
- [56:40]
C
So I actually think there is a Israeli strategic vision only it ignores the thing that most non Israelis think of as the thing they need to have a strategic vision about, which is the Palestinians. But if you look at the Israeli regional posture, it is keeping the groups closest to you weak, particularly in Lebanon, particularly in Gaza, particularly in the west bank, have affected peace where you can have it, or non aggression where you can't have peace with Sunni Arab states. And by the way, they've been enormously
- [57:29]
A
effective at that, in part thanks to Iran.
- [57:32]
C
Thanks to Iran and be unremittingly hostile to Iran, which sets this up on its own. And I think this is a pretty cross partisan, cross ideological Israeli attitude that there's not, you know, there's no part of the Israeli political spectrum that's like against doing business with the UAE or, you know, having, you know, cordial relations with and cooperative relations with Egypt and Jordan or with real hostility to Iran. So. And by the way, the day that there is a central government in Lebanon that is in a position to assert power over the south. Israel will be thrilled by that. And I don't think that's likely to happen anytime soon, though it is more probable now that Iran is not in a position to, you know, put a big stake on Hezbollah. But I actually think there's a, you know, if you look at the Israeli posture through the lens of what Israel. Israel does over time, it is a preference for every regional actor that is Sunni over every regional actor that's Shia. It is a preference for authoritarian, but not murderously authoritarian states, Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan, and it is a preference for entities that are not right on its borders. And so I do think there's a coherent vision here, and it's just one that completely ignores the Palestinians.
- [59:30]
A
So there's one last set of actors outside this immediate region, but that are clearly players in this broader scheme, and that's traditional US Allies. Before the strikes in June on the nuclear program, we saw G7 weigh in basically in support, saying Iran's stabilizing, it cannot have a nuclear program, and that taking action to do that is appropriate, even though questions about international law questions, things like that, that kind of targeted action, perhaps they knew how limited the scope the Trump administration intended, perhaps not, we don't know, led them to lend their support behind it. That hasn't been the trend this time. We've seen Australia and Canada say basically the same thing. Iran can't have a nuclear weapons program, and it's okay for the United States and Israel to stop it. France, Germany, the UK have been much, much more reserved, have not really commented on the operation or its lawfulness, other than to say, we need to return to stability and come back to the table. But that's, I think, for close US Allies, as close to a condemnation as you're ever going to get, honestly, for something like this and for the rest of the international community. You really have not seen many states step up and back what the United States and Israel are doing. Ukraine has, perhaps, unsurprisingly, a few handful of other states, but no other major players. Instead, you see a fair amount of condemnation from a lot of the traditional China and Russia and a lot of people saying, let's get back to the table. We shouldn't turn the negotiation on. We have to return to negotiations. We can't let this destabilize things from the rest of the world. And actually, pretty strong critical comments from UN Secretary General and other folks. A little unsurprising. People are much more concerned with the legal aspect of this, which from conventional international law perspectives is. Is highly Dubious. There's just not an argument there that this meets those standards. Although the US and Israel have long been dissenters from that view and embraced a broader view where maybe you could squeeze this under. But I'm highly skeptical of that even. But Ari, let me turn to you on the political aspect of this. What is the calculus for these European allies? Is this purely international law concern? That's why you saw the UK site. And I do think there's an element, Nobody the UK has domesticated legal requirements that feed into international law. That's why they say they didn't allow the United States to use their facilities for these initial strikes. Now Spain's in the same category as well, causing a bit of controversy. But know the UK has walked this back a little bit about the reprisals that Iran is pursuing. Now UK is saying, yeah, you can use our bases to hit Iranian targets that are related to the Iranian responses hitting different civilian targets and military targets around the region, just not the initial wave. Because the, I think the self defense international legal justification there actually is a lot more credible and a lot of states may find themselves in similar position if Iran's kind of reprisal campaign continues at its current scale. But talk to us about the calculus for kind of those other major players and to some extent the rest of the international community. How are we likely to see them approach this, a war that has a lot of problems going to trigger a lot of international problems, but also is addressing what a lot of the international community thought was a real problem, which is Iran, a state that does sponsor terrorism and that did have an active nuclear weapons program in the recent memory that they seem to be pursuing. How does this fit into that, that broader calculus?
- [62:40]
D
Yeah, so I mean you laid out essentially I think a lot of things that many of these countries especially, let's start with NATO allies are grappling with, which is one, everything is playing out against the kind of fracturing essentially of NATO. Right. We are just a few weeks after the Greenland crisis. The president and the administration are still kind of using coercion against NATO allies. And seemingly the goalposts change on a kind of a daily basis as to why we are pursuing coercion, whether it's trade one day or tech related issues related to censorship and social media platforms. There has been reporting about what the administration is trying to do internally within EU countries and Canada with separatists. So there's a lot of kind of domestic and transatlantic tensions that are still playing out. So NATO allies are having to kind of think about Everything that's going on with regard to Iran in that context, they're obviously trying to manage the Trump administration and not kind of get it, to not lead it, to kind of take to up that course of, of diplomacy against them on the one hand. And on the other hand, they have a lot of the issues that you're laying out with regard to Iran. Right. Then for three European countries especially, there is the added piece that they were members of the joint company as a plan of action, sorry, not members, but they were participants in that whole process. That's Germany, the UK And France. They have kind of mixed views about this because on the one hand, President Trump is the one who is withdrew from the deal. The three European countries really wanted to maintain the deal in place, really pushed for some sort of arrangement that could have brought us back into it. So, you know, they, they hold the Trump administration and the US Sort of as responsible for where we are essentially with regards to the nuclear program. On the other hand, Iran has been pushing the limits of its nuclear program. It has, has kicked out IAEA inspectors. So they do not like that all of those things have been going on. There's also the piece where if this whole conflict continues, they're going to see the ripple effects of this conflict a lot more than the United States. Right. Immigration is going to be one of those big challenges. Iran kind of targeting Jewish centers, for example, terrorist attacks, assassination attempts, et cetera, are not going to be limited to the immediate region. They're also going to be unfolding in Europe. And Europe is very much aware of this. So there is concerns, I think, of what the Trump administration might do and how it all plays into the intra NATO dynamics. On the one hand, we're seeing it as you laid out very clearly in the case of Spain, where Spain has questions about what we're doing in the region. And President Trump has been coercing Spain, saying that he's going to cut off of trade, saying we're going to use your bases whether you like it or not. So, you know, they're trying to not get in the crosshairs of the Trump administration more than they are, but they're also having to manage all of these security challenges and the dynamics that come from the conflicts that are essentially beyond their control. To talk about one more international player that I think is maybe worth highlighting, specifically China, I think is an interesting one because number one, it is a huge consumer of Iranian oil. It's obviously not particularly happy with the instability in the region, and it's just not something that is, that is beneficial to it economically. However, I think politically it's actually benefiting from this situation because number one, the United States is back being extremely entangled in the Middle east, which is good from the Chinese perspective. Right? Because that means that we're just too busy and our attention is too diverted to care that much about the Indo Pacific. The administration had obviously deprioritized the Indo Pacific in any case. But the more I think distractions the United States has and the more, and this is the point that was made previously, I think Dan could have started talking about the readiness piece and the trade offs. The more we're spending time resources in the Middle east, the fewer of those resources we're going to have to dedicate to the Indo Pacific. And on top of that, if China were to actually take over Taiwan militarily, it is going to be a lot more difficult for the United States to credibly say, hey, we oppose this. Right? So, you know, I think from the military and political perspective, China is deeply benefiting from the current situation, although economically is perhaps at least in the short to medium term seeing this as a bit of a challenge, especially in terms of meeting its energy needs.
- [67:54]
A
So I want to, with the time we have left, spend some time thinking about what Iran is going to look like coming out of this before we get there. I think we need to think about where it is like right now, three days, four days into this campaign. So Dan, let me come back to you on that point for at least a little bit of the operational perspective. We know Iran is launching this reprisal campaign in various corners of the region, may extend to other corners of the world at some point in the near future. Part of the concern about taking such severe action against the regime has always been how it might be able to respond through various proxies. Where we've seen Iran take action in south and Central America, in targeting Jewish cultural centers there, recently in Australia, where the Bondi beach attack has been tied to Iran, that was actually an express reason why the Australian government linked Iran to terrorism in its statements supporting this kind of ongoing action. So what do we think the state of that capabilities is the types of action this regime can still take around the world? And what is the trajectory of that capabilities moving forward? Is this a period of instability that the world will ride out and then Iran will no longer be able to take, or these actors are no be able to take these actions or inclined to do so, or is this a sustainable capability regardless of the US and Israeli military campaign?
- [69:16]
B
So I think the risk of international terrorism both right now and in the future is quite high, assuming this regime or some variant of it stays in power. Let me give a couple reasons. So one is when you think of attacks in Europe, but especially attacks in the United States, Iran for the most part has been cautious about this in recent decades, in part for the obvious reason that it's incredibly escalatory. And one thing that people like me have always said is, yeah, they may have some capability, but they are trying to be careful about this in part because they really want to save it for when there's an existential threat. Well, right now this is an existential threat. The United States and Israel are openly saying we want to fight and bomb until the fall of the regime and calling on people to rise up so that disincentive is removed. That disincentive about escalation. As you mentioned, Iran has shown a capability to act around the world. I suspect there is a cat and mouse game going on or spy versus spy game where the United States and allied security services are trying hard to identify and stop possible Iranian efforts. Having said that, as IRA terrorists famously said about trying to kill Margaret Thatcher and British officials, we only have to be lucky once. So if the United States stops 19 out of 20 plots, that's a 95% success rate. But that 5% is incredibly consequential. And the last thing I would say is this is a long term problem. Again, assuming this regime stays because the incredible number of high level assassinations, especially the Supreme Leader and we have seen in the past Iran try to respond to killings of Qassel Soleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force leader. We've seen Hezbollah try to respond to killings of its operational leaders, notably Ahmad Mulniyyah. But this is an even bigger one. This is the religious head of state along with dozens, perhaps more other senior Iranian officials. And there are, I'll say, personal reasons almost for Iranian leaders to do so. These are friends, these are relatives. In addition, these are senior members of organizations. And it's hard for organizations to simply say, okay, we were devastated, we're going to do nothing about it. So I think there are a lot of incentives for Iran to use terrorism to escalate. And these incentives grow the worse the situation gets for the regime. So any restraints of, look, if we hold off and just keep our heads down, the United States will grow tired and the bombing will stop. If that possible path to survival goes away, then Iran has more incentives to strike.
- [72:14]
A
So with that picture of the capabilities of Iran and the incentives of Iran. Ari, let me turn to you about where we have a sense of what the political picture is in Iran that's only beginning to come into focus. We now are seeing these reports that Ayatollah's son is in position to likely become the next supreme leader. We've got kind of a council of senior figures, several of whom are from the prior government, that's kind of advising and shaping and leading this sort of interim authority, but still highly kind of chaotic. We have talks about the CIA engaging, you know, Kurds and Kurdish movements and supporting them to try and support some sort of challenge to the regime. We know there is a protest movement that was very active, although brutally suppressed just a few months ago, but sign of spontaneous. It's not clear there's a real centralized opposition. What is the range of political actors that might come out of this particular moment and how do we see themselves positioning themselves to either take, take advantage of it? Like Trump and Netanyahu have urged the resistance of various folks, I'm not clear exactly who they're talking to do, or the different factions within the former regime that might now have more or less leverage to accomplish their different perspectives on what's in Iran's national interest.
- [73:29]
D
Yeah, so I think that's a really complicated question to answer right now, for one, because I think the president just yesterday said he was asked a question and he said something to the effect of, well, we've killed the first tier of their guys and there's going to be the second tier that are going to be the people who are going to replace these individuals, but we also killed them. And then we are also now going to kill the third tier and so on and so forth. And so it's not clear to me to the point of we're apparently kind of mowing the lawn. This was generally used in reference to the nuclear program. It's clear that we're also mowing the lawn when it comes to the political leadership right now. So I think part of it is we need to kind of wait for the dust to settle, to see where the chips fall, to mix metaphors here and see who actually ends up even being alive to be a potential contender. As you said, Scott, there is a council that is sort of a transition council that that exists. It's composed of three individuals who are already in leadership. And the image that is becoming, at least that is emerging right now, is that the decision making process around the nomination of this next supreme leader is either has been concluded and we just don't know the result of it because precisely they are worried that if they announce who's going to be the successor, that person might also get targeted or the decision has not yet been made. Nevertheless, yeah, one of the, I guess one of the major figures that we are hearing about and is not particularly surprising is the son of Ali Khamenei Mushta is his name. You know, him succeeding to his father would not exactly drive Iran into the kind of, you know, friendly toward the west reform kind of direction that the United States and Israel may want to go into. He's somebody who has been, you know, he was close to his father politically. He was one of his advisors. He is not by any stretch of the imagination a reform minded person. He is fairly corrupt. He is known to be somebody who is probably going to be as ruthless as his father. So the image that is emerging is not one that gives me a ton of hope if the regime in its current structure does survive. And that is a big question. There is still in my mind a spectrum of things that can happen and a lot of it depends on how far we're willing to push here. Right. Are we actually trying to get rid of the entirety of, of the Islamic regime architecture? If that's the case, then we would be looking at kind of alternatives outside of that construct. And some of the people who are out there who might be potential contenders is the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. But there might also be individuals within the country that we don't really know about. On the other end of the spectrum is if the structure remains in place but eventually we stop killing whoever might be the next person who might replace the existing leadership. And there again, Israel, for example, it's been reported, has been also hitting individuals who have been part of the system, who've been part of the regime, but who've had maybe a falling out with the regime. I'm thinking in particular of the leader of the Green Movement, Mousavi, who since, since the Green Movement had actually been under house arrest and apparently the Israelis hid his residence. Right. So these are the types of individuals who might actually be alternatives from within the regime, who might be much more reform minded, who would still keep much of the structure of the system that is in place, but that would try to obviously make a lot of changes within it. And if we're also, if the idea is also to not have, have those individuals kind of replace the current leadership or the previous leadership, then I don't really know what the plan is. So this can go in a lot of different directions. I think it's way too early to say who the potential contenders might be and what the system might look like. What is clear though, is that at least so far, the kind of fundamental architecture of the system is intact. Right? The individuals are not. But you still have the IRGC as kind of the core security system within the regime that is operating. The leadership that gets targeted gets replaced. The kind of different councils and different power centers that exist within the regime are still intact. And obviously that's been by design. And that's something that Khamenei himself had done actually in the 90s to ensure that the system would be able to operate beyond just the kind of the few individuals in leadership and key positions. And so, you know, as long as those kind of power centers remain in place, I think we're kind of looking at, you know, kind of moving the musical chairs, if you will, rather than more fundamental change that Israel specifically might be seeking here.
- [78:56]
A
Well, I will say we are just about out of time for this episode, but obviously there is tons more to talk about. We could talk about this for another several hours and I no doubt we're going to be talking about this for a very long time to come because I think this military operation, if not the campaign itself, consequences and ramifications from it, will be with us for quite a while. But for the time being, we're out of time yet. This would not be rational security if we not leave you with some object lesson to ponder over in the week to come until we are back in your podcatcher. Ben, what did you bring for us this week for an object lesson?
- [79:28]
C
So I have a completely non Iran related object lesson which is that I spent the day yesterday doing something I have never done before, which was vibe coding. I decided to use Claude code for the first time to see if I could build a system for tracking a Trump administration related rule of law litigation in federal courts. And I asked Claude to build a system that would take Lawfare's the data from Lawfare's existing litigation tracker and create a dashboard for it that would then, if you clicked on one of the cases, create an AI summary of the docket with links to the underlying documents. And this took about four hours of work and it produced it's not quite ready for prime time yet, but I would say a positively amazing tracker that is leagues better than anything that is in public, that is publicly available, is super useful in terms of connecting you with like if you have an idea of what the what the subject that you're interested or who the plaintiff is or like it's a law firm case or maybe you know, a Doge case. You find the case, you click on it and it'll tell you what the posture of the case is. And so I have to say I am kind of a tentative convert to Vibe coding and I think I'm going to spend an inordinate amount of time making useless products that nobody wants and then being frustrated that nobody uses my products or credits my brilliance. So that is my experience. I am now social friends with Claude and and we hang out.
- [81:42]
A
It's pretty amazing. I have played around with Vibe coding. I have been a Gemini user and I just got Anthropic or Claude for various reasons, you can probably guess in the news. Am now playing and trying to find ways to tee them off against each other because you can have Claude cowork on your desktop interacting with your programs, including Gemini, which I'm very excited about. So I may have some results coming back from this as well because I've been using it to try and develop various scraping and research tools, for instance to download hundreds of diplomatic texts and histories and hopefully put them into one searchable database that can be processed. So I'll let the listeners know how that plays out, but I am cautiously optimistic. It's going to be pretty amazing. I'd be terrified if I were a software programmer, but it is pretty amazing for a software consumer, I have to admit. Dan, what did you bring for us this week?
- [82:28]
B
So Scott, as you know, I've decided my self appointed role for Object Lessons is to flag for podcast listeners various games that may or may not be relevant.
- [82:39]
A
I love it. I am probably the number one consumer of this advice, an audience of one.
- [82:44]
B
And so what I highlight here is a game I've ordered but have actually not played, the very well reviewed Next War Iran game, which is of course very, very relevant. The focus of the game is on Iranian attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz. So it's it's other countries attacking Iran rather than Iran attacking others. But it's part of the I think quite excellent Next War series which is trying to integrate a bunch of more modern military concepts into war gaming. And I always enjoy these things because I can do a lot of kind of what if thinking in my head and it also forces some of the geography into my brain which at times have a hard time getting through more normal means such as actually looking at a map. So I commend it to other people. Although I should have the caveat that I'M going more off reviews than my own experience.
- [83:38]
A
Wonderful suggestion. I have also heard great things about the series. I have not played any of them, but especially for intense real modern Wargamer, it's supposed to be great. You have tons of wargaming colleagues at csis because I've read a number of reports by some of your colleagues based on very complex war games, so I can only imagine what the lunch tables look like over there. I'm very jealous. Well, I will say for my object lesson this week, the day's events happen to align with a visit to my folks house where they have all of my old college and law school books up on the bookshelves in what was once my room of their house. At least the ones I haven't bothered to bring over to my house yet. And that includes all the ones from my Middle Eastern studies classes. And so I dug into and looked around a few in light of the weekend's events to try and refresh myself on a few things, remind myself of a few great books that I've read back in the day about prior crises in relation to Iran. I should say. One book I have not read, although I actually did just order it and I did not write, is Scott Anderson's book King of Kings, which has gotten a lot of attention. Yet that is the other Scott Anderson. Just to clarify, occasionally every once in a while people message me about this
- [84:40]
C
one other Scott Anderson.
- [84:42]
A
One other Scott Anderson. He is the reason I use the middle initial if anybody is wondering. But I do hear it's a very good book. The preview I read I thought was very compelling and well done, so I will give a cautious endorsement to that, although not one from personal experience. But I I pulled out two books that I remember reading and finding Grace Semmel on how I think about not just US Iran relations, but also frankly, a lot of bigger questions about politics and policy. And they're a very good compliment because they're so wildly different. One is kind of a classic, I think, Mantle of the Prophet by Roy Mataheda, which is kind of a literary vision of the intellectual traditions and thoughts and patterns and trends and historical and cultural that led to the revolution. Really, really compelling book. I found my old copy, which I bought in the State Department basement, used and is stamped to an ambassador whose names escape me right now, who at one point was an ambassador in the Middle east, which I think is always fun to see whose hands these books have passed through. The other book, which is pretty much unknown at the point, which is a real crime if you are a student of U.S. national Security Policy because it's phenomenal. And a great read is Gary Sick's All Fall America's Tragic Encounter with Iran. Gary was a. I can't say like, I don't. I don't know Gary Sick, but he's a great guy. I've read a lot of a number of his books. He became an academic in Middle east studies, but he was an NSC staffer during the Iranian revolution and wrote this book that, that is an incredibly in depth play by play about how the Carter administration tried to deal with it. It is phenomenally interesting if you are interested in policy, phenomenally interesting if you're a lawyer, because they spent a lot of time talking about what became economic sanctions because that's kind of one of the things that came out of this crisis in this particular moment. It's incredibly detailed read. I think one of the best policy histories I've ever read and recommend that. And the third thing I'll recommend, which I've recommended on the podcast before and is impossible to find. I haven't been able to find it in years, but maybe someone out there can help me. Although last time I asked did not help. It's a Dutch documentary called the Birthday that was produced in 2006. I think it's like 20 years old now. I saw it as an independent movie festival two decades ago. But it's incredibly touching and interesting. It's a vision of several transgender Iranians navigating the very complex system of ideas, religious ideology and then even public programs to have their gender essentially reassigned within the Iranian system. Something that was permissible in part as an effort to reinforce a very rigid gender binary in part as a result. Because one of the people interviewed in this documentary who is transgender was involved with the revolution and was a correspondent of Khomeini and actually persuaded and talked to him about this in a closed door meeting that they refused to, you know, she refuses to disclose what they were talking about at the time, but came out of it with this kind of unique structure about how to approach this issue set. But the documentation is both compelling on that subject matter, but it's really compelling because it really gets into the personal lives of these families in Iran. And it's a really touching, compelling vision of just everyday life in Tehran in particular and really showcases what an incredibly gorgeous city it is. It's just visually a really, really stunning piece. I haven't seen it in 10 years, but I have been talking about it since I saw it and been trying to find it. So if anyone finds it, watch it and please send it to me. I would love to see it again. Even if it's not in English. Even if it's still in Dutch or whatever. That's right. I'll figure it out after. I can have vibe code. Way to a translator with that. Ari, let me hand over to you to bring us home. What did you bring for your object lesson this week?
- [88:03]
D
Well, before I get to my actual object lesson, since you have been laying out all these books about Iran and the Middle east, let me add one more which is Persepolis, a great graphic novel and a wonderful movie that I always recommended as like a movie or a book that my students read for my Iran classes. It is. It's just one wonderful, really well done and pretty accurate too. All right. For my actual object lesson though, I also have a game, but mine is decidedly not like, you know, the tanker wars that Dan was was describing. Mine is Final Fantasy 7, the redo for Switch 2, which I've been playing and I've been absolutely hooked. I played the actual the initial game when it came out in the 90s. I was hooked at the time and I'm remembering all the reasons why. It was just one of the best games that's ever been made. Really great gameplay, really fun story, and the new graphics are just out of this world. So it's been really fun to do and it's been a good kind of, you know, little way to escape the current news environment. So that's what I've been up to.
- [89:10]
A
Wonderful. Ben, you had a supplemental object lesson you wanted to drop in. You want to drop that in here? Because I think there's actually a really good one that I am going to check out as soon as I get a off this recording.
- [89:19]
C
I will just say for those who like the Rest is History podcast, which I enjoy a great deal, they recently did a four part series on the Islamic revolution in Iran which took place when I was a small child and the Iran hostage crisis is really one of my earliest political memories that I followed in detail as a 9 and 10 year old. And I found it a really useful and compelling kind of refresher on events that I was ambiently aware of as a child but did not follow in an adult kind of way. And I thought it was. It was a really useful overview in a fashion that I actually enjoyed.
- [90:13]
A
It is such a good podcast. I started listening to entirely on your recommendation, Ben, and it's great. Although I had missed these through somehow, I kind of been skipping around to Chapters. There are so many episodes to look back on. Evidently they do videos too, which I just learned when I just googled this, which I didn't know. So if you want. If you want to check out the visual element, by all means, check that out as well. But until then, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to visit lawfaremedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media. Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening, and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast, among other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineering producer this week was me of me, and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan. We are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guests Dan, Ari and Ben, I am Scott R. Andersen. We'll talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. If you've used Babbel, you would Babbel's conversation based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com acast spelled B-A B-B-E-L.com acast rules and restrictions may apply.