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The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim
Why Trump has surrendered to Iran | Robert Kagan
00:19:43
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A
How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow
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B
Sky News.
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A
The full story first.
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B
Hello, it's Richard Engel in Washington this time and welcome back to the World podcast. We've got an extra episode for you here today. I spoke to Bob Kagan, and he is one of the most prominent neoconservative commentators in the United States. He has worked with presidents, vice presidents, and lawmakers and was a strong advocate in the 2000s for military action in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. But in 2016, he left the Republican Party and has opposed President Trump's America first strategy. And now he comments on American foreign policy. And it's safe to say he is not happy with what President Trump is doing in Iran. It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it as well. All right, Bob Kagan, welcome to the podcast.
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C
Thank you.
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B
So let me just start out by saying you are a prominent neoconservative foreign policy analyst, I think you would call yourself that you're not opposed to an aggressive foreign policy or interventionist foreign policy. And I think it's fair to say, absolutely, based on what you've been writing, that you think what the US Is doing or what President Trump is doing in Iran is wrong and was destined to fail.
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C
I've always believed that the United States supports an international order that is better than any alternative the world has ever seen. And that the world order that the United States with its allies established after World War II brought incredible prosperity, democracy and also great power, peace. And that we had an incredibly successful 80 years of international relations. Not that they were perfect by far from it, but just better than, I think, anything we'd seen before and certainly what we'd seen before World War II. And so I've always been interested in preserving that American world order and therefore when it was threatened, you know, it has been periodically in the Middle east, in the Persian Gulf. I've always thought the United States needed to play the role of providing security to those who depended on it, which was the obligation that we undertook after World War II, which is what's responsible for the peace that we've enjoyed.
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B
So how is Iran not fit? Because that seems very much like if you want to defend the post World War II order in which the US has traditionally or since World War II, been the gatekeeper, Sheriff, whatever you want to describe it, a major driving organizational force in the world politics since World War II. Then it seems like the Iran war fits right into that now.
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C
No, it doesn't. Because one thing that has become very clear in this administration and the Trump administration is that this administration is seeking to destroy that American world order. They are pulling back from our alliances. They made it clear they do not feel obligated to fulfill the security commitments that we've made, in particular to the Europeans, but also indirectly to our Asian allies. Trump is hostile to this international order. And all of our interests in the Middle east have always been derived from our broader support for the international system. They were never just about our vital interests in the Middle East. America does not have its own vital interests in the Middle East. America's interests in the Middle east derived from the commitment that it made to world order. Now that, by the way, you can make a mistake in pursuing world order. You can make a mistake in the way you're doing it. But that was the goal. And here, so clearly, that is no longer the case. So in this case, our intervention in Iran was not designed and was not in service of protecting an international world order, because Iran was not posing any particular threat to that order at the time that we launched this attack. And the other thing I just want to say, as a purely practical matter, one thing we Learned in the 1990s, for those of us who are old enough to remember, is that you cannot bomb your way into success. You cannot bomb your way into regime change. You cannot bomb your way into to changing a nation's policies. We learned that over and over again, whether it was in the Kosovo war or elsewhere. And so I just thought we had learned that if you wanted to accomplish whatever we were trying to accomplish with Iran, you were not going to do it through bombing alone. And that was the sort of basic, practical objection. For better or for worse, the reason that George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq was because he knew that you could not get regime change if that's what you wanted merely by bombing. The Clinton administration had bombed Iraq for several days without success. So in two fundamental ways, this war is different, in my view. One is that it is not in service of the global order because Trump does not believe in that order and is trying to destroy it. And the other is that, as a practical matter, this military option could not possibly succeed in accomplishing what its stated objective was.
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B
Do you think that he did this to appease Israel? That it was Netanyahu who talked him into it, that this was something that Trump did because Trump felt powerful after the Venezuela option and that Bibi got his way and pushed this over the agenda? Do you believe that, based on your thinking and studies and contacts, Trump never
- [06:18]
C
does anything for anybody else. He always does everything for himself. And I think what he saw, as he frequently does, was a bright, shining, tiny object that the Israelis put before him and said, you can be the hero of Iran. You can get your head on Mount Rushmore. You can be the one who got rid of the regime. And he thought that sounded great for him because that's what he's interested in, his personal glory. And it looked like an easy one. The Israelis had it all set up. You know, our role was actually rather limited, certainly initially. And so he picked it up without giving any thought to what would happen on day two, and apparently even ignored the advice of some of his advisors that the Israeli plan was not going to work.
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B
And continues to claim that no one could have anticipated that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed and involved. Everybody knew immediately, as long as you attack Iran, that the Strait of Hormuz are going to be involved. It's ridiculous to ignore.
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C
Can I just be clear about that? Because I think it's worth understanding exactly why that was true. Because merely hitting Iran was not necessarily going to lead to the closing the Strait. After all, they did bomb Iran's nuclear program back in the summer of 2025, and Iran did not attempt to close the strait then. The reason Iran did that this time was because Israel and the United States posed an existential threat to the regime. And so they were in a kind of break glass and emergency situation. They would never have done it had we not threatened to take them out entirely. That was the catalyst, and that's what shifted the deterrent situation from one that favored us to one that has disadvantaged us.
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B
And that's what Netanyahu and Trump said from day one. We're going to get rid of these regimes. We're going to support street protests. You're telling someone we're coming and we're coming to kill you and get rid of your regime. You've backed them into a corner from the very start.
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C
Exactly, exactly.
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B
And you don't think that this has been a success. I'm going to quote from one of your articles here that you wrote in the Atlantic, which you wrote back in May. You said, and I'm quoting you, it's hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. So you think this has been a catastrophe and a strategic win for Iran. Why is that?
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C
Well, first and foremost, because of the fact that they are now in control of the Strait and are consolidating their control of the Strait of Hormuz, which gives them just unbelievable new leverage in the region and in the world, actually, because if they control the access to 20% of the world's energy, not to mention other things that people depend on coming out of the Persian Gulf and through the Strait, then they have the ability, ability to get other countries to do what they wanted to do. And they're in the process of doing that right now. This is an even more important accomplishment for them than getting a nuclear weapon, although they're going to try to do that, too. And so if you look at Iran's strategic position compared to where it was before the war, where it was basically sort of decimated and on its back now, because of its control of the Strait of Hormuz, it's going to be able to enrich itself, rearm itself, and completely shift the balance of power in the region. The Gulf states are all going to align with it because they have no choice. And other countries around the world are also going to have to deal with Iran. And that is a major strategic shift and it means a real diminishing of the American position in the region and it increases the influence of China in the region. So it's just a, you know, all around, it's just a total setback, which has been well hidden to some extent by Trump's constant maneuvering and the media's sort of credulous treatment of all his alleged diplomatic efforts. This has not been a diplomatic effort. This has been a surrender. And we are now watching the surrender unfold sort of in slow motion.
- [10:27]
A
How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.
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B
I understand how this is a casual catastrophe, right? I get it. It's emboldened Iran. It's given Iran more control over the Strait of Hormuz. It's probably emboldened China. It's made the US look weak. It's made Trump look like he's easily manipulated. You said, well, he only makes decisions for his own interest. This war has been rough for the U.S. no doubt. But is it worse really than Afghanistan? The US was there for 20 years, spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of troops, killed many, many thousands of Afghans. Iraq, therefore, about a decade, many thousand American troops, maybe a trillion dollars spent. It's hard to even know, depending on how you include the cost. But very, very large numbers. How is this a worse if it is? And doesn't this sort of prove that the US Just isn't really good at military interventions?
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C
Look, I think the big difference is can you repair the strategic damage done? And that's the question I'm asking. I'm not asking about net overall cost or what have you, but basically from a fundamental strategic point of view. When we pulled out of Afghanistan, it was the culmination of ultimately a long, failed effort. It did not fundamentally shift the strategic situation in the world. At the end of the day, we were not in Afghanistan because it was a vital strategic area of the world. We were there because of what happened on 9, 11, even Vietnam, which was a much worse, infinitely worse and more costly loss than Iraq.
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B
Similar withdrawal. Similar withdrawal. You know, planes leaving Kabul under duress, helicopters leaving Saigon. Both a humiliating exit.
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C
Right. It was terrible, it looked bad. But from a, again, from a strategic point of view, the damage from Vietnam was not very lasting because five years after the end of the war, you've got the United States sort of re establishing itself in the Cold War. The American alliances were very strong in the 1980s. So it just didn't have. I mean, it was a disaster, but it didn't have lasting strategic impact. And similarly, you want to talk about the Iraq War. Oil prices never changed. The United States did not lose its hegemonic position in the region. It for better or for worse, depending on your perspective. And by the time Barack Obama was in office, the allies were back and the American order was. Was still intact.
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B
Why would a right as Iran war matter more?
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C
What's different about this is the fundamental strategic shift that has occurred in the Persian Gulf as a result of this, which has global ramifications. Unless the United States is going to reopen the strait and make it an international waterway and resume our historic role as the keeper of international waterways. Unless we're going to do that, and I don't think we are.
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B
Isn't that what we say we're doing? Now, isn't that what the point with the blockade and, you know, at Hegseth talks about freedom of navigation? That's what the Trump administration is telling the American people they're doing currently. They are fighting to keep the strait
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C
open for the world's trade, and they are manifestly failing. And one of the reasons they're manifestly failing is they already gave it away. I mean, this is the thing that I'm a little bit surprised about, including, by the way the media handles it, because the media keeps writing that the Iranians agreed to open the strait freely and return it to the way it was before. And that is specifically not what the agreement says. Unfortunately, Trump already gave this away. This agreement specifically says that Iran will manage the process of operating the strait together with other countries, but it definitely specifies Iran. Trump is now trying to, in a way, take this back and make the strait something that that's more capable of being used by everybody. But that is what Iran is insisting on. And I don't see how Trump is gonna be able to prevent them from doing it. And they are doing it by the way they are setting up their system. They've got most of the ships agreeing that they have to go through the Iranian side of the strait so that Iran can monitor it. And that's what's happening right now. And that is what Trump gave away in this memorandum of understanding.
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B
So the Trump went to war based on Israeli nudging. Netanyahu's nudging bungled it. The Strait of Hormuz went from an international open waterway to now an Iranian dominated waterway. And what has the impact been on the Gulf states?
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C
So this is a disaster for them, and they realize it's a disaster for them. And, you know, far from the United States proving to be a great protector of theirs, which is what they had hoped, the United States proved to be unable to protect them. And that is a huge lesson for them to have learned that at the end of the day, the United States can't really protect them from Iranian drones and missile strikes. I know they noticed that the United States expended the overwhelming portion of its missile defense capabilities defending Israel and not them, and that they were unable to get access to some missile interceptors when they needed replacements. And so they have no choice but to make a deal with the winner of this war. And the winner of this war was Iran. We are paying reparations to Iran. That proves that they won. And so the Gulf states have no choice but to line up with Iran, as they are quietly doing right Now.
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B
And what about Israel? Netanyahu is still in power. He still has a popular base. He's facing elections in the fall. He has a real, you know, challenge on his hands. He's faced challenges, however, in the past. But Israelis I'm speaking to, their biggest concern is that Trump is going to break with them, that Trump is erratic, that Israel has become maybe a liability for him, and that if you said all of his calculations at the end of the day are ultimately self centered, is he going to decide this government, this country is not something that he wants to be part of because it's a drag on him.
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C
One of the strategic errors the Israelis made was thinking that Trump would be with them not only at the beginning, but also at the end. And anybody who knows anything about Trump could have told them that he would not be there in the end and that they were putting in a huge gamble on the staying power of an American president that is not known for his staying power. So that was a huge mistake on their part. And Israel is by far the biggest loser in all of this. They have suffered even bigger strategic defeat because at the end of the day, the United States can live in this new world, but Israel is going to be disadvantaged terribly. And we're already seeing that in Lebanon. The fact that Trump. This is another element of the surrender, the fact that the Trump administration allowed Lebanon to be in the agreement which effectively gives a shield to Hezbollah, effectively gives Iran a right to continue being involved in Lebanon and also to insist that the Israelis leaves. I mean, that's all inherent in the agreement that Trump signed, which has been the source of tension between Israel and this administration and will continue to be. And so it's a terrible deal from Israel's point of view and they are now in a much weaker position going forward as Iran's position strengthens.
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B
I'm going to let you go. If I can get two. Can I get two lightning round questions. You can give me one word answer, One, one sentence answers. Has Trump given up on Greenland? Was this a flight of fancy that he's.
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C
No, no, it's very much on his mind. I think he still intends to try to do something about it. He always looks like he's walking away from something and comes back to it. I don't think he's given up on Greenland.
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B
And finally, how do you think he emerges from what you're describing as his catastrophic loss in Iran if he's not someone who gives up on things? Does he go in with renewed military action? Does he try and divert attention with some other Cuba operation. Where do you think he goes from here? With some. You say he's not a deep thinker, but he doesn't like to lose. That's his whole brand.
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C
Right.
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B
So how does he try and turn his foreign policy loss into a victory?
- [19:34]
C
So he said it very clearly. He wants to put the war in the rearview mirror. He wants the American people to forget about it. He wants oil prices to go down, so gas prices go down. And then he wants the negotiations to drag on and hopefully everybody just gets bored and forgets that he lost. I mean, that's basically what his strategy is. I do think the media is helping him with this strategy by pretending that there is a negotiation going on when in fact we're just working out the terms of surrender. But in any case, that's his strategy. And if he can change the subject, 60 days in Trump time is like six months in normal time. I mean, how many events, how many crises, how many horrors are gonna be committed between now and then? And gradually we'll start. Things will, I guess things are never really going to settle down in the Gulf, but that doesn't mean Americans have to care about it. So I think that's what he's counting on. He's counting that Americans just sort of forget about the whole thing.
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B
Bob Kagan, thank you very much for joining us.
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C
Thank you.
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A
How does a banana trigger a CIA backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world shaping forces hidden inside. This is economic, told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.