NTK: The Most Likely Outcome of Trump's Iran War is More Chaos

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This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the third

sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C., and from other, undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello, and welcome to Need to Know. I'm David Rothko. If you're host and this week, as every week, we'll talk to some people who can help us understand

or try to understand what's going on in the news. This week, obviously, our focus is on the Iran war, and so we want to turn to one of our friends who is best equipped to provide perspective on that, Stephen Cook, of the Council of Foreign Relations, who is one of the leading experts anywhere on what's going on in the Middle East.

“So I'm sure, Stephen, as you look at this, it all makes sense to you, right?”

Thanks, David. That's great to be back with you. Yeah, we're in day 11, and we have, this is the way to put it. There are three major actors in this conflict. The Iranians have their objectives, and their strategy to achieve it.

These rallies have their objective, and they're strategy to achieve it. The United States, we have no idea what its objectives are, and we don't really know what its strategy is to achieve those objectives. Part of me feels like this is by design. If you listen to what the president had to say to CBS News, and then, I guess, a presser

of sorts from Florida, just yesterday, he said, "Well, yeah, we can be done tomorrow. We've achieved a lot, but we're going to win some more. We're going to, there's more victories. How do me feel like this is intentional?

The guy is always keeping his options open.

He's looking for the angle where the leverage is, but it seems to me, I don't know, one way to do things in New York real estate.

“I'm not sure that's the best way to prosecute a war."”

Yeah, all the political pundits call it the Weave. I think that may be giving it a little bit too much crap, give it a name and a strategy, because he can say, "This is over tomorrow," and would you, except there has been incest in that beginning, right? It was to get rid of missiles, it was to get rid of nukes, it was to help the people

in streets, it was for regime change, it wasn't for regime change, it was going to be short, it was going to be long, the Israelis made us do it, we made the Israelis do it. I mean, literally all the things that I said, I mean, I just like that news cycle, because, I mean, you know, it's a war, it's horrible thing, but there was something kind of odd about the Marco Rubio argument being, "Well, there was an imminent threat."

The imminent threat was because we knew the Israelis were going to attack, and we knew that if the Israelis attacked, the Iranians would respond to the attack by attacking us, and then Trump, who can't leave well enough alone, then says, "And the reason the Israelis

is kind of brilliant. I mean, it's kind of brilliant, right? I mean, yeah, I bet you didn't study

that in graduate school, but, and then you've got Pete Higgs says, who's, you know, the secretary of Lee Thality, all he wants is Lee Thality and no rules of engagement, and he today, this will recording this on a Tuesday, after the president said it's going to be over, it's not going to be over, he today said, "Today's going to be the biggest day of bombing ever." And by the way, right, and then on top of all of that, you talk about three actors,

“but I think ten countries have gotten attacked in the course of this thing so far. So those places”

sure feel like their actors, I bet. Well, and so you're going.

No, just in talking to folks in the Gulf and elsewhere, it seems that they're hanging tough right now. If the Iranian strategy was to put enough pressure on them to put pressure on the United States to call this thing off, at least for the moment, that hasn't happened. You're starting to hear the CEO of a Ramco said the closure of the straight-up from news was catastrophic. Now, we may start, we may yet get to a point where

countries in the Gulf are saying, "Hey, let's call this off." The economic costs are too great

“for us and others. But right now, they're hanging tough in it, but they're not getting involved.”

They want the United States and Israel to continue to degrade the Iranian capabilities. But I don't have here. I mean, a lot of those countries have made their fortunes by offering themselves up a stable place as in the midst of an unstable region. So from the point of view, business model can't be a good thing. No, I don't think they're happy about having been hit, but so far

what I'm getting is they're blaming the Iranians for attacking their civilian infrastructure, for attacking their hotels, especially when they went out of their way saying they supported a diplomatic solution to this problem. So far, they haven't turned on the United States,

but it does raise a second and third order implication of the conflict, which is, as you quite

rightly point out, the UAE, the Qataris, the Saudis, over the course of the last 10 years, have swung the doors open to the world and invited the world to these places. They become logistics hubs, they become because our energy is too expensive, they've offered their own countries to be the home of data centers, make the UAE wanted to be one of the big tech companies with thinking of the UAE is basically servicing half the world in terms of the number of data centers that they

“were going to put in there. And now you have to raise the question whether that's really a thing”

that is possible, which is why at least one Gulf official said to me, now that the United States has started this, it really needs to finish it because you can't leave this regime with missiles and drones. Well, they're in lies throughout, right? Because finishing it could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. President Trump yesterday said, "Well, we could end this right now and it'd be a big success." We've destroyed a lot of things, a lot of bombs have gone up.

I mean, you know, that's kind of his definition, right? A lot of ships have been sunk, you know, some people have been killed off of the leadership and so forth. On the other hand, there's a new leader in Iran, you know, and, you know, in the words of the old song, new boss, same as the old boss, you know, it's, you know, right? I mean, it's, it's literally the son of Hamani, except he's not just the son of Hamani, he's the favored son of the IRGC,

you know, he's kind of a right, he's, he's, if anything, he's a younger, more energetic, more right-wing version of what we had. And, you know, while Trump said, "Well, we obliterated the nuclear weapons capabilities of Iran." Obviously, we went back in because we didn't,

people have talked about, would take a very complicated and dangerous operation, to produce for change.

Go, yeah, go on. I was just going to talk about how complicated getting to an ending is.

“Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's right. I mean, especially in this kind of idea that you should”

go and get the missile material. This is not an easy operation. People talk about special forces, but it's kind of out in the open with the facilities and it's behind where this is located.

So it would not provide, there wouldn't be a lot of natural cover for anybody who goes in there

and tries to do that, which is, I mean, this whole idea speaks to the kind of armchair, general ship that happens whenever these kinds of things, you know, whenever we go to war, which seems to be too often. But yeah, the point is getting to an end game in which end game is pretty hard, especially when you really haven't planted out. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I was going to get to that next, but you know, in terms of regime change, nobody's ever, as many people pointed out,

successfully conducted regime change by air power, that implies putting bullets on the ground, both the secretary of defense and the White House press secretary said that's a possibility. Clearly, there's no short-term boots on the ground possibility. And typically, when we do that, it involves big ramping up logistically, which often takes a long long time. And Iran is not Venezuela. Iran is not even Afghanistan, right? Iran even after days and days of bombing is much more

“powerful and resource rich than the Taliban war, and we were in a war there for 20 years, right?”

And so that's the question. Isn't the only end game that doesn't take months and months or years? Just leave it. Leaving and declaring it. I think that's right. I do think that we're ever, whenever the president decides, we're done, we're done. And whatever we've achieved at that moment, he will say, this was our objective all along, and it was a fantastic achievement. One point though on this on the regime change thing. I think the theory of the case, at least the Israeli theory of the case, is that you don't need boots on the ground.

You don't need boots on the ground because you have Iranians. And Iranians are in open revolt against their own people.

“I'm not saying this is right, but I think this is kind of what they tried to do with the 12-day war in June 2025.”

And this, the extension of it, but more directly aimed at wreaking the means of political control for the state, once that would happen,

the Iranian people would get the signal and go out into the streets and then finally collapse the region. That's the theory here.

So if I was sitting here across from in Israeli planner, and they'd say, well, we don't need boots on the ground. We have the Iranian people. And again, today, Netanyahu said called upon the Iranian people to take matters into their own hats. So before they haven't listening because the bombs are falling and it's really dangerous. I don't want to seem to suggest that murdering 32,000 people has any merit to it at all. On the other hand, I don't think one can overstate the impact on the Iranian opposition of the fact that the government just killed 32,000 people or whatever the number is.

And does that periodically? So the Iranian opposition is not necessarily as organized. As we want, for example, the Venezuelan opposition, which has been in place for a couple of decades now,

And it wasn't an accident that they were killed. I think this is the divergence between the United States and Israel, which is, I don't think the Israelis want to see a delcy Rodriguez like solution in Iran. Even if it was possible, I questioned whether it was possible, but they don't even want the president to think that there's even a candidate for this, because they don't want some version of the IRGC state to reemerge from this war, because it's then it's really no different from

“before February 28. Yeah. Now, you know, I does bring this to an important question here, which is, you know, a few has stopped what Israel stopped. And, you know, what's there and game in all of this, because, you know, this is BB's life work.”

You know, going going, BB Netanyahu's been after Iran as a life, I think his father started inculcating hatred of Iran and him. But, you know, I understand the existential reasons and the minds of Israelis, but the other thing that I think sometimes our Americans may not appreciate is that although Netanyahu is a divisive figure in Israel, the whole range of the Israeli political spectrum supports this war right now. That's right. Right. The last poll I saw showed 81% of Israeli supported. I thought that was low. But, yeah, if he's Israeli's endgame is is pretty clear, they want the regime to to fall and they are trying to create a pathway for that to happen. In the process, they are destroying Iranian misalantures, missiles drones, but also going heavily going on.

Going, heavily going after the IRGC that by sea age, local police stations, any instrument of repression has been targeted by the Israelis so that when, if and when the Iranian people come out to the streets, they'll be less resistance. Now, this is a regime that was willing to use heavy weaponry against its own people on December and January. So, I think you point, a potential problem here, David, is that. These people may be angry, they may be seething, they may hate the Islamic Republic and this is something that's been happening for a long time. But they were divided beforehand and they've killed a lot of people.

The regime is killed a lot of people are people willing to risk going out into the streets if there are some semblance of this regime hangs on.

“I think no. And also, regime change involves a change to something, which requires having leadership, having a mission and agenda, a plan.”

I mean, you studied this. I don't know that I see that. I mean, there are a few people, even I both live in suburban Maryland as does the son of the Shah.

And there are a few people who are like, "Hey, let's throw him in. He was the son of the Shah." To me, it sounds like crazy bad idea. It doesn't know anything about Iran and he's never been there.

And the Shah was the problem in the first place. I mean, all of this relates back to a bad US decision regarding Iran policy in 1953.

“I mean, we did see him as a result of our participation in the overthrow of mom and most of that, for certain. I think people do point, I think there's two reasons why people point to raise a pop of you as son of the Shah.”

One is the one name that they know and he's kind of been working networks in Washington and beyond for quite some time, but certainly rather intensively since before last summer.

And I suspect he's gotten a lot of help from the Israelis on that. I met him. We hosted him at the Council on Foreign Relations and I moderated the conversation with him. And he claims to have tens of thousands of followers, which, you know, some people scoff at. In the protests in December in January, there were people did respond to his call for protest and there were people who are calling for his name. And right before the United States and Israel struck on February 28, there were protests at Iranian universities where Iranian students hoisted the flag of the pop of the dynasty, the old Iranian flag with the lion in it and so on and so, which is that you had not seen that before you had not seen heard people call for him specifically, but still.

So there's really no way of knowing what we do know is that there are a lot of challenges when it comes to regime change in Iran.

“There are a lot of challenges in Iran, but there are challenges in Iran, but there are a lot of challenges in Iran, but there are a lot of challenges in Iran.”

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"When somebody asked Trump early on in this, "I mean, we're at day 11. It was just a few days ago. "But somebody asked Trump, it's like a long time." "It seems like a long time. " "But somebody asked Trump about all this."

"And he goes, "Well, you know, the worst case would be

"as if we, you know, killed this, you know, this regime "and then it was replaced by a regime that was worse than this regime." "Yeah, well, that's right." "That's right."

“"Yeah, no, and it's, you know, that's right."”

"That's right." "But another dimension of this is, if you took all the cases "and mine them up." "And said there were a thousand cases." "The most remote cases,"

"China, Iran emerges as a Jeffersonian democracy "that has warm attitudes towards its neighbors and Israel." "Right." "I mean, that's of all the things that could come out of this campaign." "That's the least likely option."

"And that almost all of the options in the middle "are a rough transition to a weak regime with deep and trenched opposition "that includes hard binders and even in that regime." "The moderates remain pretty steadfastly anti-Israel, anti-US "and not so fond of, you know, the Saudis."

"I mean, there are just things that are baked in the cake there, right." "Well, certainly if some remnant of the regime holds on "and we get to a point where, you know, we have the Islamic Republic "in some semblance of it, however compromised and weakened "the political system is in completely overthrown

"in the social order with it." "I think that's exactly right. "And it goes back to this question. "Can you have regime changed by remote control?"

"And it seems to be the answer is..."

"Okay, I mean, I'm in the mode where I'm perfectly willing "to believe anything, but it does seem to be "a not the most likely outcome of this regime change "and a more likely outcome is that the regime hangs on "the president gets bored.

"The clairs of victory, we did a lot of damage "to the Iranians, it hangs on. "The repression continues or gets worse "and what you have is a weakened angry "but still dangerous Iran that threatens its neighbors

"in that the Israelis periodically attack "because they have absolute air superiority." "Right, and that's to say nothing of the nature of the opposition "or the nature of the tactics embraced by hardliners "which could be destabilizing to that regime

"but could also embrace since they have a history of this "proxies throughout the region and terrorism "and other words, it could be destabilizing outside Iran "as well as inside." Well, as one of the things I'm most worried about

is asymmetric responses. Meaning, you know, I'm staying away from Jewish community centers. I'm staying away from American facilities abroad.

“I think, you know, Europe, Latin America”

are possible backgrounds for Iranian and Iranian response to this. Clearly, they will retain that the ability to do that and even if the regime falls so have remnants

So, this is going to be a problem that's with us

I think for quite some time. The geopolitics of this is also weird. So, I'm going to give two cases. It turns out Russia's parent,

“they helping the Iranians target Americans.”

Now, in a war, people tend to be sensitive to being targeted. And you would think that the American administration would have posed that. But strangely enough, President Trump and the people around him

are like, don't, you know, it's no big deal. Because they apparently do not want to anger the Russia. San, simultaneously, among those most egregiously affected by shutting down the streets of Formos

and the consequential consequences for oil supplies,

world oil supplies. Are there Chinese? So, yeah, yesterday evening, Trump again, said something which I found kind of bizarre, which is, I mean, bias, this is one of the new wars

where a lot of it's fought on social media. And he puts out a post on truth social, and which he says,

“"The Iranians must let ships go through to China."”

Otherwise, we will blow them up harder than we've been blowing them up before I'm doing this as a favorite at China. Which, you know, is bizarre and multiple levels, but Trump has a meeting with Xi Jinping scheduled for the end of this month.

And he wants it to go well, and he keeps talking about, "I'm doing this to help China, have more stable oil." And I was just wondering what your thoughts are in those two issues. Let's start with the Russians. And the Russians have been fairly provocative.

I guess, you know, if you're sitting in Moscow, they're going to give as good as they've gotten because the United States has obviously been helping the Ukrainians throughout. And they have been pretty effective.

And Iranians hit a very important radar installation that we have endured it. That is very helpful in the defense of all of our partners in the region. And so, and, and because the President is so sensitive

about gas prices is letting the Russians sell oil. I mean, the sanctions on Russian oil in order to keep Americans paying less than they otherwise would at the pump. In order to give himself some room for maneuvering here

as he prosecutes the war. When it comes to China,

“I think, you know, one, it's bizarre to me”

that he says, you know, he's trying to help the Chinese have more stable. The Chinese have a ton of oil in storage. And they depend on oil less than we do. Yes, we are a huge producer of oil.

But the Chinese have coal. The transportation system is increasingly electrified and so on and so forth. So the fact that the Chinese would somehow be in some desperate need of American help here

in keeping the straight open is is weird. I think your spot on is that when he arrives or meets she that he wants to have a good and successful successful needed. Yeah, now the Chinese are probably looking

at this from several perspectives. Story broke today about the amount of advanced weapon systems the US expanded in the first two days of this

and that the cost was $5 billion.

But there's another cost, which is that our stock files of those weapons are limited. And you've started to hear people in the military go, well, dude, slow down, you know, this goes on for a while.

You're going to have a problem. And although the president, you know, then said, well, let's get everybody together and we'll start producing that's going to take years. And so that's not going to solve the problem.

So the Chinese look at it and go, oh, that's interesting. And they're moving assets from the Indo-Pacific over here does that open up options for us. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are looking at this going in a minute. These air defenses that they are, you know,

expanding where the things we need at most and we're not going to get that. And, and, I mean, Trump stopped providing what Biden was providing directly, but he was selling it to the Europeans, but if we don't have it, we can't sell it. So, you know, it does create knock on potential for

I think certainly, you know, the very sophisticated weapons

that we used in the opening of this war were not intended to be used against Iran. They were for other future conflicts. And it does take a long time to replenish that. And it does, you know, if you're a Chinese,

“you have to like the fact that the United States is once again”

engaged in military operations in the Middle East, we're expanding munitions.

We're potentially bogged down there.

And it just provides a potentially strategic advantage for the Chinese there. It comes to Ukraine. I think Zelensky's paid this pretty well in terms of, you know, saying we've been fighting the Iranians for years now because the Russians used Shahid drones

and offering, you know, Ukrainian expertise to the Gulf States in order to, in order to, you know, garner goodwill for Ukraine.

“But again, what is being used to protect GCC states”

and others are not, the Ukrainians aren't going to get

and that we know that the Russians have been eager to and have just gone after civilian targets all over Ukraine without this Ukrainians are in worse shape than they were before the war. Yeah. And by the way, and again, this is such a tangled web

to use the Shahid experience here. Not only are we looking the other way on the Russians and some things, but pushing up the price of oil and making people have greater difficulty getting it out of the Gulf

“actually helps the Russians who sell oil.”

And if that weren't enough, we're now saying, you know, in order to relieve stress on, you know, the Indians will let them buy Russian oil. It's like, it's not a question of whose side are we're on. It's how many sides can we be on it once?

You've got the strength to get the oil back. Just to get some rest and then get it out of the mouth. No, not at all. How much is your safe space? You're all right, right?

Yes, exactly. How much is your safe space? Which is just a simple thing. A game, a job or a home. A safe space?

I don't think so. How much is your safe space? With this size. >> I'll let you know. I'll let you know. >> And all this underlines the fact that while there may have been, you know, excellent tactical planning on the parts of the US and Israeli military is at the political level, the president of the United States by, you know, destroying the foreign policy bureaucracy by, you know, listening only to his gut. Clearly doesn't have an appreciation for these second and third order effects. Of taking on a major military operation like this without any kind of planning or sense of what it takes and what the cost might be, not just direct financial costs, but strategic costs in other parts of the world.

>> Well, let me gently and respectfully and ever so slightly push back on it because there was an article written in the New York Times about how Trump is using his gut and not using his policy apparatus. And I've written a couple of histories of policy apparatus, so they quoted me in the article, so I read it closely because, you know, I wanted to see my quote. And, but you know, it framed it as Trump using his gut, which, if you're pro-Trump, you're kind of like, oh, that's cool, you know, we hired this guy because of his endowish and right, but, but I think it gives him too much credit, I don't think it's gut.

I think it's kind of raw moment-to-moment impulse, almost animalistic without any, you know, the, like you woke up in Monday morning and oil was eighty-eight dollars, about eighty-five dollars barrel, it's like, oh, that's okay.

I just think that what we've got is not gut, but a combination, and I say this as objectively as I can, a combination of unprecedented incoherence and unprecedented incompetence, because, you know,

“pedags that shouldn't be running the Department of Defense, and a lot of the people around Trump are not up to this. And the advisors that would normally be in a US government who could say, well, you know, Mr. President,”

there's a reason we haven't fought this war in forty-seven years, even though there's been tension with Iran throughout, you know, is that they're all these knock-on effects. So, so, to me, it's incoherence and incompetence, not, oh, well, here's, here's the King relying on his great instincts.

I know that's not exactly what you were saying. I'm just saying there is this kind of, the time's presentation of this was, well, maybe doesn't need those things. He does.

Right, well, no, I don't, that, I think that your, I take your pushback as being very gentle, because I think we're almost in the same place. I guess it's the way you define gut. I wasn't saying it was superior intuition. I was just saying, it's whatever he thinks, will serve him as gut tells him, and he goes ahead and does it. The problem is, is that, again, I think we both agree, heck, Seth, not up to the job, the people around him, not up to the job, and the gutting of the professional farm policy, Dr. Arxy, which would have one to any other president presented, you know, the cost and benefits downside risks, and then done a better job managing those risks. Once the president started to, decided to go.

“We don't have that, and that's why we're in this deeply odd situation.”

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a super insight baseball, but yeah, 20 years ago, there was a very big three week long war game on all this, where they've gameed out a war with Iran, and in that Iran won, you know, nobody expected that was going to be the outcome, but, but there's a reason one goes through these processes. And even if Trump says, hey, this is a big victory, and even if a lot of Iran is in rubble, if he's given a new lease on life to the hardliners, if he's given them new pictures, killing, you know, killing 120 school girls or whatever it is, has, has lit a flame under the opposition to the United States.

“If he has weakened or fragmented America's relations with some of its allies in the region, because as pissed as they are at Iran, they're also pissed at the United States for doing this, which was not necessary at this time.”

You know, et cetera, et cetera, there is a way to look at this, where Trump made declare victory, but the day after Iran is racing towards a nuclear weapon, because they know they need it more than ever before.

They're pushed closer into the arms of adversaries of ours.

And, and it's actually a worse outcome, we could be worse off at the end of this. Right, yeah. No, no, I think this is one of the outcomes that we have to entertain. I think I think that, you know, there's been some discussion of kind of messy outcomes and some discussion of, you know, that the rainbow's unicorn is unlikely, but I don't think there's been enough discussion in the fact that. It could, you could end up with a, a fiercer, more violent, more, more conflictual country that is, as you point out, seeking and doing everything that they can to develop a nuclear weapon to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

The ultimate, the ultimate regime instrument of regime security, without a doubt, Trump clearly, as a result of Operation Midnight Hammer this past summer, as a result of Venezuela, clearly has gotten in his head that, you know, these military operations can be clean and neat and quick. And he's got to tell them that it would be a big win if he would do this and we would knock over Iran and he could, you know, establish some new order there, whether it's with a delcy Rodriguez like solution or a new regime.

Also, all, all evidence evidence, evidence of the contrary, notwithstanding with regard to those two outcomes because we did bomb Iran and we did obliterate some facilities, but we didn't stop their nuclear program, so that didn't actually work. We may have gotten rid of Maduro, but Maduro regime is in place, we haven't changed much about Venezuela's behavior at all. We've just gotten some sticky, buggy oil, which is being sold to the benefit of somebody I'm not sure who, but in the midst of all of this, there is this and this will be my last question, but there is this secondary effect, right, which is the one that you referenced.

If the United States is viewed as a country that will go in and impose its will in other countries, and we're living in a world where that is a more acceptable behavior, though US is okay with the Russians doing it and getting land and so forth, and maybe China going into Taiwan. The impulse to middle-sized countries to get nuclear weapons goes up because that's what stops people from doing this, and the last major strategic nuclear arms limitation agreement expired six weeks ago, so we could be all looking at the intricacies of the Iran conflict because that's what's in front of us now.

But the biggest knock on negative effect of this thing could be to actually accelerate arms race, global nuclear arms race to point out.

“Isn't North Korea the perfect example of this? We haven't bomb North Korea, we haven't destabilized North Korea, and I think that's what the Iranians have always saw it was that nuclear option so that it would protect the Islamic Republic.”

North Korea is one illustration, Libya, and Ukraine are other illustrations of the same point, right, thank you.

Yeah, and look where we ended up. Well look, this is extremely complicated, more complicated than it needs to be, and the potential outcomes are extremely complex, so we're going to have to follow this for a while, so we're going to have to come back to you for a while.

“But I really find it, it's extraordinary, extraordinarily useful to talk to you because of your great understanding of this all, and also your clarity about it.”

And so thank you very much, and to everybody who's listening, we've got more on this every day, so follow us on YouTube or follow me to subscribe at the DSR network.

And of course follow what Steve's doing at the Council on Foreign Relations. So until next time, thank you, Steve, thank you everybody. and the action of the action of the action of the action.