← The Long Game with Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer
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- [00:04]
A
So welcome, everybody, to Jake Sullivan and John Finer's first ever Substack Live. We are the co hosts of the podcast the Long Game. For those of you who don't already subscribe, please do and give us a listen. For those who do, we really thank you. And what we're trying to do today is take a few minutes just to react to these striking developments with the United States and Israel bombing Iran, Iran responding, the fog of war unfolding. And we're going to talk a little bit about our reaction to that and also what we think the big questions are going forward. For those who hear this on the pod later, we're recording this on Saturday afternoon, just some hours into this series of strikes that the United States and Israel launched and the strikes that Iran has fired back. So by the time you listen to this, there will be new developments. We promise you that. And we will look forward to talking about this in full on the next episode of our podcast. But for now, welcome to Substack Live. Welcome to the Long Game with Jake Sullivan and John Finer. And, John, why don't I turn it over to you to start with your initial reactions to what we've seen happen over the course of the past hours and how you know how you're seeing it and. And kick us off with your thoughts and then we'll dig into some of the issues here.
- [01:29]
B
Okay, thanks, Jake. And really appreciate people joining. Interrupting your weekend to spend a bit of time with us wasn't the way we were planning to spend our weekend either. So we're grateful for it. And we know everybody has a lot going on. I guess my first reaction is like, probably almost everybody who is listening right now, as soon as we heard that this had begun, this event that we had been talking about on our podcast, reading about obsessively that we had worked on previous phases of our lives, we all of a sudden realized it's very hard to get immediate, accurate information. And we are gleaning it and grabbing it from all kinds of sources, whether from postings and photos and snippets and videos from people on X or other social media and trying to make sense of it and trying to determine whether it's accurate. And as Jake said, there is this initial period, and this period could last for a while, where there is a lot of uncertainty about what exactly has happened. We do know the United States and Israel have launch a major attack against Iran that seems to have targeted government institutions, leadership. There was a lot of uncertainty about whether the leaders of Iran are still alive. We don't know the answer to those questions as we record this right now. But separate and apart from the kind of fact finding that it's going to take a period to unfold, what I've been most struck by, and it hasn't changed in watching the President's explanation and hasn't changed in all the times we've talked about it, which is that a basic belief I have, and I think you share, is that if you're going to take the country war as the President of the United States and you're going to put Americans, our friends and allies in countries in the Gulf who are now also themselves under attack and in Israel, if you're going to put all of those people in harm's way and take the extraordinary risk that you take every time you use force as the commander in chief, there are a few things that just have to be true for that to be the right decision, and maybe top of the list is that it should be necessary. And the thing that is most striking to me is that even now, as this is underway, after having gone through the State of the Union, after having spoken to the country after the attacks began, we have not gotten a particularly compelling account from the President of why he did this, what he is even trying to achieve, although he's given some indications of objectives and how he thinks what he is doing can achieve those results. He can kill the current leaders, maybe he can inflict a punishment on Iran for any number of bad actions. And this is a terrible regime. You know, I think you and I both agree on that. He can further diminish the nuclear program he's already claimed to have obliterated. But what happens after that is going to be very hard for him to control. And it's not even clear what he is intending to happen after that. And so the necessity of this is what I just keep coming back to. I haven't. They haven't made the case. I don't understand it myself. And I think if, if you haven't crossed that threshold, you shouldn't take the country to war.
- [04:25]
A
But, yeah, it comes down to a very basic set of questions. Number one, is there an imminent threat to the United States or to the American people necessitating the United States launching a war against another country? They have not articulated one because there is not one. There is not one from their nuclear program which was not totally obliterated, but was set back in ways where they're not currently even enriching uranium. There is not one from any other indication that the United States is under direct threat from Iran, despite a single sentence in Trump's video last night saying, oh, we're under threat without any justification or explanation for why. So there's no imminent reason to launch this attack. Number two, does it have the informed consent of the American people? It does not. He has not explained this to the American people. He has not sought their consent through the constitutional mechanism you should do so, which is to get authorization from the Congress where there is no imminent threat. Even George Bush for the misbegotten war in Iraq went to Congress and got authorization. Donald Trump has not done that. And opinion polls show the American people have real questions, to say the least, about this. Number three, is there a clear objective? Will there be a moment where the President can say, we did what we came to do? Whatever you think of last year's 12 day war, there was a clear objective. Neutralize the enrichment facilities at Fordo and Natanz and the other nuclear facility at Sfahan. They did that. The war stopped. So you can agree with that, disagree with that. But at least they had an objective this time. The objective seems to be a bizarre mishmash of we're going to set their capabilities back, undefined to what extent and what constitutes completion of that task, and we are going to try to decapitate the regime and somehow then hope that what comes as a result of that is an uprising in the streets, that leads to change in Iran, that leads to a better outcome in the future. But we're not even necessarily going to go out and say explicitly that we're for regime change. We're just going to tell the Iranian people, hey, at some point you may want to go out and take your government. And what we know is that when you don't have a clear objective, when you just start bombing a country and then kind of hope that what happens next is a good thing, that that creates massive risks. It creates risks for this to go on and on. It creates risks for Americans to die. It creates risks to the economic well being of the American people, because I guarantee you, we're going to see the price of oil go up in the short term, at least as a result of this. So the administration really owes people an answer to those basic set of questions. And in the absence of that, I think we are going to be stuck asking what really is this all about and what is the end game? And right now, I do not think we have clear answers to that.
- [07:16]
B
There's another thing that I think is important to say. I assume you'd agree, but I want to speak for you, which is that you can hate this regime, as I think we both do, and as many Americans who pay attention to these things probably do. And you can believe, by the way, that the world would be better off if this regime were gone, which I think we also both do, and also not believe that our country should go to war to make that so. There are any number of things in the world that I think we all find objectionable. I could make a very long list, and maybe Iran would be close to the top of that. But that does not mean that the United States military should use force to address every single one of those problems. And if you lose track of that principle, which this administration, I am concerned, now seems to be losing track of, God knows where this ends. And it's easy to forget now, given how often President Trump has ordered the use of force in just the first year of his second term, that this is a guy who came to office, at least in part, pledging that he would be the person who ended a lot of wars and who avoided some of the terrible mistakes of the past in American foreign policy, like the Iraq War, which you just referred to, which I started my career as a journalist covering, that he would be the person who stood against those things. And to be honest, he was right about that. And I found that in a sea of things that I found objectionable about Trump, even as a candidate, I found that somewhat reassuring. That seems now to be totally out the window at this point. And then one last thing. From his statement last night, President Trump said something to the effect of, and I don't have the exact quote in front of me, casualties happen on our side when there are wars. And that is true, casualties do happen. And that is exactly why you don't go to war when you don't have to. Because if there are casualties on the American side, which you know, we will be praying there are not in this case, I don't know how you explain to the families of the people who suffer those casualties, to the American people why that had to happen if we can't even explain why this war was necessary in the first place.
- [09:22]
A
I think that's very well said and underscoring the point that we can all agree this regime, this Iranian regime is terrible. It does have a history of blood on its hands, including American blood on its hands, it should go. And, in fact, the Iranian people came out into the streets in incredibly brave ways before. But going from that to let's start bombing the country and try to produce regime change from the air is a big leap, and I think from our perspective, not a leap that we should make. So one key point that you raised near the outset, John, is when you sit outside of government and you look at all the information flowing in on X and on Substack and on, you know, your news sites, you can't be sure what's true and what's not true. But we can say from firsthand experience that when you're inside a government, you don't know for sure what's true and not true. You're, you're trying to collect information. But there's a reason, there's a phrase, the fog of war, because it's real. And I think even the US Government right now is trying to get its arms around exactly what's happened. So there's a few big questions. First, to what extent has Iran's ability to strike back been degraded by this initial round of strikes? Or do they have more arrows in their quiver to fire at the US At Israel, at other countries in the region? We've seen attacks in a number of different countries at this point against American facilities, frankly, just against civilian population centers like in Dubai. What is likely to come in the next few days on that? Second, will Iran specifically target the oil trade? Will they actually try to close the Straits of Hormuz or otherwise disrupt shipping or oil infrastructure in a way that has a big impact on the global economy and a direct impact on the pocketbooks of Americans? We have to watch that. Third, is the Ayatollah alive or dead? We've seen reporting out of Israel that the Israeli government thinks he may be dead. We've seen no confirmation of that. So what's actually happened with Iran's leadership, we will have to watch for that closely over the next few days. And fourth, you know, comes back to the point I was making earlier. What's the off ramp for the United States eventually? What brings this war to a close? Is it that we just declare, well, we've hit enough of their stuff, we've taken out enough of their leaders, now it's over to you, the Iranian people, do whatever you're going to do. And that raises a fifth and final question, which is what actually happens inside Iran, this regime's relationship with its people, as we, we had Yegana Torbati on our podcast a couple weeks ago, who's the Washington reporter covering Iran who got laid off just before this kicked? And we should put a plug in for foreign correspondents who are badly needed right now. And Yegan made the point that the relationship between the Iranian people and the regime is irretrievably broken. So we do have to pay attention to dynamics inside the country on the back of this one way or the other. But this could go badly in that you could end up with even worse people in charge, irgc, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership, or you could end up with a Syria style breakdown of the state because you have a lot of ethnic groups in Iran who will be looking to arm up and assert their own interests. So those are all the things that we have to watch over the next several days. And we can't rule out that, you know, Iran has a difficult time responding militarily to this. We can't rule out that the United States chooses an off ramp in a couple, three days time. We also can't rule out that this war goes on for quite a while. So we'll just have to stay tuned and stay focused on all of those things. And then the final point, John, our, our podcast is called the Long Game for a reason. We're not actually that great at hot takes. We're better at kind of looking at the longer term implications of things. And I think we have to ask ourselves, what does this mean for the United States 1, 2, 5, 10 years from now? And when you look at it, the long Game, you have to ask the question is the US Going around the world starting wars like this in long term national security interest the United States. And we got to keep our eye on that horizon in addition to following the hour to hour of what's happening right now.
- [13:27]
B
You know, you're totally right to raise the Iranian people who have kind of been lost in all of this from the messaging in the US Government. You know, easy to forget that the reason President Trump initially inserted himself this time into the Iran issue is because he threatened to use force to defend the demonstrators. Those demonstrations have now been crushed. The president referred to maybe 30,000 dead from that, a crackdown during his State of the Union. But this is clearly no longer about that for him. But the Iranian people deserve better than they have gotten from their government since 1979 and before that as well. And they deserve better than now having to face bombs and other munitions falling from the sky to apparently try to topple that government. They do deserve better. I hope they get better. It's hard to be too optimistic in the current moment. Your point about the long game is one that's really stuck with me as well. I do think this administration does count on people's attention span not being particularly long, shifting away from this issue and other issues like it, after the initial kind of flash and bang of military action and hopefully from their perspective, operational success and counting on that, if ultimately this doesn't work out very well, which we have made very clear, we're concerned it will not. That will be sometime down the road, maybe even there'll be a different president when that becomes clear. But even if it's later on in this administration, the bill will not really come due to this president because people will be paying attention to other things and I can tell you we won't be. I hope other people are not. But I do worry a bit, even in seeing some of the reactions to what the president has done, statements from people that are quite critical of the president on a number of issues. Some have been quite clear and critical and strong and direct, and I think that's been a good thing. Others have been surprising in the sense that they almost seem more afraid of looking weak in the current moment. Weak as in against the war. We too often kind of equate strength in our country with support for military action. So there are too many people who are afraid of looking weak in this moment than they are of being wrong. And I worry that people are going to live to regret that and we will see how it plays out.
- [15:42]
A
And I think, John, your point earlier about Iran being and this Iranian regime, you know, being a long term adversary of the United States, that only amplifies this kind of discomfort of people say, well, I don't want to be against going after these really bad guys. And we get that. You know, in the time that we sat in the seat as national security advisor and principal deputy, national security advisor, we took a lot of actions to put pressure on the Iranian regime on its nuclear program, on its missile program, sanctions, on the way that it treated its people. So we're not arguing like let these guys off the hook. What we're saying is don't start a war, don't start just dropping bombs when there's no actual imminent threat to the United States and you haven't gotten the informed, consenting American people and you don't have a clear answer to the question, what is success? How does this play out? How does this end? That's, I think, really a kind of key and fundamental thing. I will be very interested to see also how the region ends up reacting to this because, you know, one of the more striking images we've seen just in the first few hours, I haven't seen this corroborated, but it certainly looks real is A strike right into the heart of Dubai. So this is not even against a US Military base. It's just an attack on a city in the Middle east that is a financial and commercial center for the world. And it goes to show you that this war can quickly spread beyond just an effort to attack some instruments of the Iranian state. It can come home to people, including a lot of Americans, who make their home in the Gulf and across the broader Middle east region. So we should just not lose sight of the human dimension of this, that people will die as a result of this. Innocent people will die. And that too has to be factored into how we watch the next several days unfold, both in terms of what Iran does and in terms of the US And Israeli military strikes in. In Iran. So what do you. I've kind of laid out some of the questions I've asked about what comes next. What are you most focused on for the next 24, 48, 72 hours?
- [17:50]
B
Yeah, I think a few things. And one of them is the last point you just made. There are a lot of civilians in harm's way now with bombs flying all over the region, maybe five or six countries at this point under attack. By the way, civilians in Iran there will likely be Iranians killed. They almost certainly have already, who have nothing to do with the regime. And that is its own tragedy. And there are likely to be innocent civilians killed in a number of other countries the longer that this plays out. And this could, by the way, go on for quite some time, I think. You know, we plan to look at it in more detail during our podcast this week, but I suspect this is an issue that we're going to keep coming back to because this conflict may well not be over soon. And so civilian harm kind of rises to the top of the list. Leaving aside all of the various strategic considerations that we are also going to analyze when you think about this. And then does this instability that has now been generated spread in some way? Is there some sort of contagion? And here I think back to events like the Iraq War or the Arab Spring, which begin in one country and ultimately have knock on effects that are unforeseen, that spread to other countries that create, in the case of the Iraq War, a giant terrorism threat in the heart of the Levant that maybe existed to a much lesser degree but ultimately became Al Qaeda in Iraq and isis and problems that we ended up dealing with for quite some time. In the case of the Syria civil war, it generated a massive migration crisis. Millions of Syrians who understandably fled Their country ended up all over the world, but including quite prominently in European countries and shifted the politics of Europe inexorably after that. And so what are going to be sort of second, third, fourth order effects of this, to your point about the long game, are things that we're going to be paying attention to for quite some time. One last thing I wanted to say, and we are going to look more closely at this in maybe a more analytical way. This has been more reactive than we normally are. But we are not pacifists. We are people who have recommended to presidents of the United States that he use force in situations that met the criteria that you described that we believed were warranted.
- [20:05]
A
This is not about including, by the way, Iranian proxies who were attacking American soldiers.
- [20:10]
B
Correct. This is not about being against military action or against the use of force in all cases. It's about being profoundly concerned about unnecessary use of military force, the risks it generates, the harms it causes.
- [20:22]
A
So, you know, one more thing we should just add to the list is, and this goes to the long game point, what's China going to be thinking about this as it goes on? To what extent does Xi Jinping say, well, wait a second, and all the rules are gone, we can use military force whenever and wherever we want. Does that create a new risk with respect to Taiwan? That's something we will have to take a look at, particularly because he's also going to be thinking, hey, the United States seems pretty tied down elsewhere, focused once again on a war in the Middle east, which China saw as a strategic boon for many years through the 2000s.
- [20:56]
B
They made some of their greatest gains during the Iraq War era. When we were tied down. Yeah, exactly.
- [21:02]
A
Okay, so we are going to sign off now, but we will have a new full episode of the Long Game coming out this coming week where we dive into this issue in a systematic way and really try to unpack both what's going on and what may be coming. We're also going to try to touch on the anthropic Pentagon debacle, the absolute shameful move by the Pentagon and the Trump administration to declare anthropic a supply chain risk and all of the implications of that. We will dig into that as well, because we shouldn't lose sight of that even as this unfolds. That is a seismic event in its own right. But we would really appreciate everybody tuning in joining us. Thank you. For those of you who joined just right now, and we'll be back on here soon enough to continue the discussion.
- [21:54]
B
Thanks, everybody. Appreciate your time.
- [21:55]
A
Take care.
- [22:02]
B
That's it for this episode of the Long Game.
- [22:04]
A
If you like the show, please follow, share with friends and leave a review. It really helps listeners.
- [22:09]
B
Find us for updates and more analysis in your inbox. Join the community@staytuned.substack.com the long game is
- [22:17]
A
a Vox Media Podcast Network production Executive Producer Tamara Sepper Lead Editorial Producer Jennifer Indig Deputy Editor Celine Rohr Senior Producer
- [22:27]
B
Matthew Billy Video producers Nat Weiner and
- [22:30]
A
Adam Harris Supervising Producer Jake Kaplan Associate Producer Claudia Hernandez Marketing Manager Leanna Greenway
- [22:39]
B
Music is by Nat Weiner we're your hosts John Finer and Jake Sullivan.
- [22:43]
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