Why is this Trump War Different From All Other Trump Wars?

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

subbasement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C. and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to Deep State Radio. I'm David Roskov, you're host and joined today by trio of your reliable favorites. Starting of course with Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University Law Center. How are you doing, Rosa? Terrific, David.

“Oh, okay, I don't believe you. And David sang her for the New York Times. How are you doing, David?”

Well, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by reliable. I hold and end those endless of the financial times. How are you doing, Ed? I am surviving, David. Well, that's all we could hope for. I love the fact that Ed is Donald Trump's newest favorite phone buddy. Well, I thought I would start this conversation. Since we're going to talk about the Iran war and since I think among the three of you, Ed is the person who has last spoken to the

president, I just thought maybe you could share a little bit. I never ever speak to the president

Ed, but I have a few things I'd like you to pass on to him at your next conversation. Yeah, but I do believe the president left it with Ed that Ed can he can keep talking. Why don't you tell us, rather than having me relay what I know? Why don't you tell us a little add about the conversation and the vibe? I mean, I'm not going over excited about an eight minute cold call, but I was surprised that he picked up, but it's not like being taken up stairs to continue

“the interview at the White House, which I believe David was. Did you end up in the Lincoln”

bedroom or where upstairs did you go? We actually, in addition to that, we went to the Lincoln bathroom, which he has recently read done in Italianite marble. I hope you watched your hands very, very thoroughly. But it was, I mean, I'd tried him three or four times before the request of my editor, so get his number and call him. And so I did. And then I thought, well, he doesn't know who this is, so I'll text him. My next strategy was, you know, texting,

whatever. So he then picked up to my great surprise and I had quite an informative interview, I guess, would be the word and he said, you can call me from time to time. Again, I'm not sure exactly sure what to do with that, because what we would like is a president who gives sort of full and frank media exposure collectively and has formal sit down interviews, et cetera. But that his preferred style is to talk to people on the phone. So it was a real Alice in Wonderland

moment, I have to say. But there were a couple of news items that came out of it about upcoming meetings with China, about about the Iran War. What did you take away that you thought was

most important? So that's where he flowed to delaying the China summit. And so, you know, I

ran with that, but I also ran with, I think the reason why he took the call, which was that he'd spoken this was Sunday earlier in the day to Keistama, Britain's Prime Minister, and got no joy in terms of British help for his getting him out of his situation in Iran and in the state of Hormuz getting no help from anybody else for that matter. And even, you know, asking for China's help and saying, well, we can't have a summit, we can't wait until a summit for China to

help China needs to help. They get their oil from the Gulf. Europeans get their oil from the Gulf. We don't get that oil from the Gulf. The sort of Uber message that I took from this call was genuine panic about the direction of this war and seriously belated reading of all the warnings that I'm sure were written down for him before the war began about what Iran could do to

and that you can start a war, but you can't control when it ends. All the cliches that we know

“about wars throughout history, I think we're only really beginning to dawn on him in the last few”

days. And so, what is the sort of standard way of blaming of distributing blame when a wars going badly? It's to say civilians stabbed us in the back. And I think, in Trump's case, it comes with a twist. It's allies who are stabbing us in the back. But I think, you know, explains why he was so vehement on on that topic. And it's continued to be all week. Yeah, it's interesting today. There was a hearing on the hill. There were several, actually.

But one that involved the heads of the Intel community, including Tulsi Gabbard, in which she made the assertion that it was not the job of the intelligence community to tell the president what would be an imminent threat or not. Which I actually, that was exactly the job of the, there's all this, you go to election polling places and, you know, exactly exactly, she did, she did not have ever want to talk about that. But David, when was the last time you talk to

“the president about this war and how does what Ed said, jive with what you have experienced?”

You know, I have not spoken to him since this war started. As Ed pointed out, we had this four and a half hour. Interesting interview, which was right after the Venezuelan experience. And I think it is a fair interpretation of the events that the president felt so confident in the US military after the bombing of the Iranian enrichment sites. And then the seizure of Maduro that he thought this one would probably go pretty quickly, not perhaps as fast as those two

did, which were both overnight operations. But a few things have become clear to me here.

First of all, as you mentioned Tulsi Gabbard and John Radcliffe's testimony today,

the president took it on himself to determine what posed an imminent threat. And that was, that was the verbal gymnastics she went through. Of course, it's the intelligence communities, job to do that. In fact, there's a job that works within the intelligence community, a whole department that is for warning, right? It's the National Intelligence Officer for warning, which is to be able to flag for the leadership some major issue, even if it's a satellite

getting ready to fall on New York City or a meteor. The second thing that jumped out at me was that no one was making a particular effort to try to argue that there had been a change in the Iranian

nuclear program that justified the attack. The third thing that has jumped out at me in recent

times is that after the president was it now 72 hours ago or so called for this great coalition to patrol the straight of Formus, I don't see a single country that has said that it's signing up, maybe I missed one, but I haven't seen one. And why is that? Because the president did not do what George W. Bush did ahead of Iraq, right? I mean, you may think that Iraq was a great idea or you may think it was the worst strategic mistake we've ever made, but whatever you think of it,

George Bush went out for months, trying to build consensus, build a coalition, make sure it wasn't just the United States acting. President Trump came in after the fact and said, aren't you now going to put this together to bail me out? Their answer was no, at which point he said, well, we don't

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So Rosa, you know, one of the things that has sort of aggravated me in the coverage of this war and we're coming up on three weeks, is that when I'm

I'm watching people talk to military leaders, the military leaders are regularly saying, well, the military has executed in a fantastic way. We've run all our missions. We've killed all the people we're supposed to kill. We've bombed all the things we're supposed to do. They've done a top-notch job. And I'm like, well, aren't you missing the point here? And I guess maybe they're just defending the military's competence and just showing that when it's being utilized by

“a leader who has no competence, it produces a problem. But I think looking at it three weeks in,”

that there is no metric by which this adventure can be called a success, whether it's regime change, whether it's

reducing the regional threat from Iran, whether it's eliminating or even reducing since last year, the nuclear threat. Everything seems to be worse and heading for somewhere between uncertainty and worse than that. And I'm just wondering what your take is here, Rosa? I think it's operationally a success in the very narrow sense of, you know, they largely hit the targets. They wanted to hit. They killed the people they wanted to kill and all that stuff. There was a big Larry exception that obviously,

which is which is civilian desk, particularly the girl school, which seems to have been a product of,

you know, AI assisted targeting using outdated information. And that of course has been one of

Pete Heggsets's pride and joy is the use of AI to assist targeting, certainly this suggests that

“maybe not quite ready for prime time, it's killing little children. But I think, you know,”

this is the famous Klaus Vizzi in statement, right? Klaus Vizzi says war is politics by other means. And from a strategic perspective, rather than just an operational perspective, yeah, this is a catastrophe. I mean, this George Bush, George W. Bush, has he paints away in whatever, whatever little painting studio he's hanging out in these days must be thinking, man, I am so grateful to Donald Trump, because otherwise people would have thought that the rack war in 2003 was the

worst strategic decision the United States ever made. But oh, look, I have been eclipse that I am happy. You know, I think that's the issue is that this obviously, this conflict, the operational piece is completely unhinged from any, any sort of causal relationship with achieving our strategic

“goals and on the contrary, you know, from a strategic perspective, I think this is this is quite”

possibly going to set us back very substantially in terms in terms of everything from Klaus's to upheaval in the globally economy to regional instability, to potential future terrorist attacks on the U.S. and our allies and to obviously our relationship with our allies was already pretty tenuous these days, but I think this is this was really shattered it completely. So I think strategically this is a disaster. I mean, from a sort of strict time, I'm sorry, our friend Corey Shacky has

inherited join us, but from a strictly hunting Tony in civil military relations perspective, the military did what it was supposed to do. You know, the president said, "Bom, here are they said, OK, yes, they're bomb here. No problem. And we did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. Look, obviously from the perspective of, you know, is this politics by other means?" As ever, I don't get it. I mean, I think David's analysis is obviously correct that Trump had

persuaded himself that even though his base doesn't like foreign interventions, that as long as those foreign interventions were rapid and successful, that in fact it would help him. And from his perspective, I think that as well, it did help. You know, that his base was like, "Well, we're a little skeptical. Oh, we won. Yay! You know, it worked." And he thought this was going to be to use a term that famously used by Rumsfeld on the Iraq War, which is going to be a cakewalk. And was

not know what to do right now, because this war is causing problems for him across all constituencies,

“including increasingly with his own base. Well, let me pick up on a couple of those things and”

go around and go to each of you with pick up on one of them. "Ed, today the Fed met. The Fed decided not to raise interest rates. Leave them steady. Spoke of uncertainty in the global environment. There were attacks on a major gas field. The price of oil is up. As we're talking about this, the stock market is just sustained another hit. I who knows whether it will reverse by the time we're finished with our conversation, but today it's down 500 points. All of this has to do with

the fact that the Iranians have clearly come to the conclusion that while their military

options may be limited, they do have the ability to wage a kind of economic war, to put pressure on Trump and to put pressure on the world, whether it's stopping traffic in the straight-of-war moves or going after different kinds of gas and petroleum facilities throughout the Gulf. And somebody described to me the other day the US economy as a recession wrapped in a bubble. But the bubble being a few text stocks that are doing pretty well. And so it seems a pretty

precarious moment to try to pop through that bubble because, you know, if, you know, regardless of what Trump's Trump may do militarily, if we end up in a recession for the rest of

“this year, the consequences will be multiple. I mean, isn't that your, is that a concern you have?”

I'm not concerned yet about a recession. I mean, if, if Iran to the finds ways of retaliating after this attack on South Pass, which I do find pretty extraordinary, I mean, because this pushes up energy prices even further and increases the likelihood Iran will strike back at Saudi and other Gulf energy production and energy storage facilities, which will then still further push up energy prices. And since energy prices are the Iranian weapon,

I don't really understand the military logic of the United States and Israel, this coordinated attack on South Pass today. Unless it's something in Trump and maybe Netanyahu's had that look,

“we've got to escalate to de escalate, we've just got to show the Iranians, there's nothing we”

won't do and so give up, but it still doesn't make much sense. I mean, I don't degree with that logic. They're in an existential position and they're then their weapon is the chokehold, it is global energy prices. So what, what other things can Iran do in terms of naturalizing this war? Well, the Houthis, Houthis can cause the Saudis a lot of problems and the Houthis have been quiet and the Saudis and the Houthis in Yemen had a ceasefire in 2023, which has held, but up until

that point, the Houthis gave the Saudis a lot of headaches. They can disrupt shipping in the Red Sea as well as in the Gulf. They can fire rockets into Saudi Arabia and disrupt Saudi oil production.

They can do a lot of things and then the second, and this is a sort of more dreadful prospect

for people in the West is that there are Iranian terrorists cells that periodically, you know, you're getting FBI or European operation that rolls them up, a few blocks from here is Cafe Milano where the FBI prevented foiled a plot to blow that restaurant when the Saudi ambassador was eating there. This is way back in 2006, but the more existential the Iranians get, the more they're going to reach for these kinds of weapons and that there will be nothing off limits. And again,

what, I mean, to pick up on Roosevelt, Roosevelt, and all of you, you know, what's the politics here for Trump? Where does this end in his head? Why don't you know that he's thought it through that much? But David, let's take another dimension of it where, which you have spent a lot of time looking at, because ostensibly at the

we were, we quote obliterated that threat, but it's clear that we didn't obliterate that threat

“that there are still enriched uranium, there's still scientists, there's still some capabilities.”

And now one of the questions is, will should they go in and get the missile material that's in Iran or take other kind of boots on the ground steps to eliminate this threat? And all of those things seem super high risk, super potentially costly. And I'm wondering what you think the likely who it is or will we come out on the other side of this thing with Iran essentially being where they were with the nuclear program, but having a lot more incentive to get back to it if they can.

It's a really good question David and I spent some time writing about this in the times yesterday and we have more coming on it. The central problem is this, I can't figure out how President Trump leaves this combat operation in Iran with 970 pounds of near bomb-grade uranium still buried away at Isfahan and summit that tons and perhaps elsewhere. Because as you said,

he said, this is basically the ultimate reason for this. And as you've noticed, if you're

listening to him carefully, all the other arguments helping the protestors getting rid of the missile program on which they're doing a pretty good job eradicating missiles and launchers. And so for all those, they're sort of falling away and the president is declaring he did this to get the nuclear program entered. So leaving with that uranium in place doesn't seem to me to

“be a position he can get himself into. So the little question is how do you get it out?”

As you suggest, this would be basically one of the riskiest of all special forces commando raids.

It would be quite a movie, right? Hundreds of miles from the water into where Isfahan is.

The UF6, the uranium that is enriched to 60% is probably 100 meters down in the ground in the special storage area. If when you go get one of these canisters of gas, you happen to pierce it by mistake. It's the world's most toxic material once it combines with any moisture. And it's also somewhat radioactive. If you put two of the cast together to close, it can start a a feasible kind of reaction, not a huge one, not a mushroom cloud, but something pretty dangerous.

“So this thing is like a total challenge. Now, the military is trained for this. There are special”

forces units that are out there that have been trained in how you neutralize nuclear weapons, and how you move some nuclear fuel. But the biggest decisions the President has ahead are whether to go get this fuel and whether to take over Carg Island, which is the main export site for Iranian oil. Yeah, at both of which would involve boots on the ground and some people have speculated that that's one of the reasons. A marine expeditionary force has been dispatched to the area.

Rose, we have two leading journalists here talking about half of two leading publications, and they're doing great. But these publications have some limitations. And one of the limitations that both the financial times the New York Times has is that they can't actually use the term cluster fuck, whereas we we do use cluster bomb all the time. Yeah, but that's the right. Well that's that's that's that's that's that's a fuck bomb. It's an anglesism.

How fast we as a fuck bomb? Well, it is, it is that. And today the President floated this idea said, well, what if I just left? What if I just declared it over and then everybody else could go and you don't say what to get away all out of the Persian government? I predict. I mean, if a poly-market, since I'm a U.S. citizen and poly-market apparently won't let me place huge political bets regrettably, if I had to place a bet, I would I would place two to one odds on

and doing exactly that because David, you assume he actually cares. You assume that because he's talked

he actually cares. I don't think Trump particularly cares about anything. I think that the path

to victory in quotation marks for Donald Trump is that you do exactly what he did last time we bombed Iran, which is due to Claire that we've obliterated their nuclear program. It doesn't have to be true. I mean, since when has the fact that his words are not in accord with reality,

“ever stopped Trump before. So I, you know, I think that what Trump does at some point and I don't”

know whether it's in three days or in a month. But I would say at some point in the next month, Trump says we won. We have obliterated Iran's nuclear capacity. He can just recycle the very same

things he said last time around. And so we're going home and, you know, there might be a little bit

of mopping up and, you know, that's sort of not our problem by by. And, you know, Iran, we certainly, we have an obliterated. We won't have obliterated of course not as you for all the reasons that you just articulated. But we've probably made it hard for Iran to do much of anything with it that will give the lie to his words like say in the next six months, right? And that's his time frame. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't really care. And of course, if they say if they do something

that suggests sort of dropping a nuclear bomb on the United States, Trump will simply deny to deny to deny and his base will continue to believe him because that's the way it's worked. It's frankly, even if they did, they would probably somehow continue to believe him. But yeah,

“I think, I think we're overlooking that very Trumpian option, which is that we declare victory,”

we go home, we lie through our teeth and he assumes that mega, mega space just continues to believe his lies. And let the double take the line most. People as we say, yes, sir. Well, I agree with you. I don't think Trump cares about it, but I think it cares about it. And in terms of them, you know, we have the China trip,

as you hinted at in your first column following the conversation, looking like it's being

postponed a month. Of course, Trump wouldn't postpone it a month, if he didn't think he was going to do what Rose is talking about here in the next month. He thinks he's getting out. But does that mean I'm not getting my visa, David? Is that what you're telling me? No, you'll probably get your visa. I don't think I said a lot of things back. Really screwed here are the Ukrainians, because Russia's getting a lot of money out of this thing,

because we somehow for some reason have lifted sanctions and countries dealing with Russian oil. And, you know, we're using up all of our advanced air defences with other math to replenish. The Ukrainians are now the only people who know how to combat drone warfare, so they're going to be much, their set skill is now about to be much in demand

“throughout the Middle East. Well, yeah, and there's some discussion about that, but I think there's a”

broader sense that, you know, given that it's going to be harder to get these advanced air defences for the Ukraine. That's going to be a problem. And of course, allies everywhere in Europe, they try to put, I mean, it was very painful watching the Irish head of government yesterday. Like, what is, how do you say this? T-shirt? T-shirt? T-shirt is the Irish name for Prime Minister. Yeah, I've just, I look at it like my eyes crossed. I, you know, I've been doing this while,

but okay, so the T-shirt is sitting there, and he is like trying to like be friendly with Trump, but at the same time going, yeah, well, you're wrong about Kirsta and you're wrong about this, and you're wrong about Europe, and so there is this kind of tension in this relationship that doesn't look like it's getting any better. Looks to me like it's kind of a lose lose across the board, everywhere you look geopolitically, but I don't want to be accused of oversimplifying it,

so I'd rather you were accused of oversimplifying it. I'm familiar with, I've had to deal with that accusation before. As you know, I'm married to an Irish woman, we have our own sort of Israel, Palestinian kind of marriage, so I'm acutely attuned to Anglo-Arish relations. You get in here to verify that your pronunciation T-shirt is correct. T-shirt, yes, because I've been

completely different things. Yeah, because it looks to be from New Jersey like Tauziac or something, but I don't see Tauziac. Tauziac, Tauziac, right? Yeah, well like PADRIG is Patrick,

“and my wife is Neve and I am age, so there are, you know, you have to be very clear with our”

pronunciation, because you can get it wrong, but it's T-shirt. And when the T-shirt stepped in to

defend the British polloster from the US president, I thought this to me was a first. I mean,

I don't think there's ever been a moment in history where the British and Irish Prime ministers have been more in sympathy and affinity with each other than either are with the US president. So it was just another measure, a sort of mood music, not in itself, hugely important measure, of just how curdled the transatlantic situation has got. I think the moment that was most important was the Greenland moment. That's when the panning drop, that's when people no longer

believe that article five of NATO, the mutual defense clause could no longer fully trust

“invest the credibility in that being exercised by Trump as the president of the United States,”

and that therefore a post-NATO world or a NATO minus one world, a European defense world with Canada and possibly others, was what they should all work towards. And unfortunately they're working towards it and a European pace rather than, you know, a Chinese bullet train pace because it's, you know, a complicated continent with a lot of different languages and militaries invested in threats, but there is no doubt that the direction and the planning and the nuclear talk

from the French now, extending their umbrella, talking, extending their umbrella to act and neighbors,

and the debate with the Britain, which I've never in my lifetime ever heard, which is how do we

get a really independent nuclear deterrent, not one that's partially dependent on the United States. I never expected to hear that debate. So there are all kinds of things happening that Iran is accelerating, but they were happening anyway. And more broadly, you know, Gulf states are feeling really let down. They were supposed to be behind the American security umbrella. They were not only not consulted, but their advice not to attack Iran was ignored. And so there's going to be

a global arms race, a global military boom. We're already in the early stages of it, but it's

going to pick up. We're entering a world of much, much more consequential geopolitics, and it's

not something I say with any pleasure at all. No, no, no, indeed not. So by two questions, I do want to say one thing, by the way, the referencing back to Rose's comment about polymarket. Did you see polymarket is opening a bar in Washington where people can go and watch global affairs unfold? Well, they drink in bed. And play, while they drink in bed, it's kind of like a geopolitical sports bar is being more and more like, you know, roam under colligula with every

passing day. It's really, I just thought David's face like he was like, what? I'm just thinking

“here that you need to go to the deep state radio events department. Yeah. And we need to do a”

broadcast from the bar. From the polymarket bar, while drinking on deep states. No, I think you're absolutely, yeah, okay, well, that'll be what water all around, but although I have to say, I could just say, and now coming to you live from the polymarket gym. It's going to be great. It's the state radio. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It's perfect. Yeah. Okay, so I have to, I have two followers last week. Next week, next week, next week, next week in polymarket is they say I'm

pass over. So two questions, David, at the end of all of this, even though Trump wants to present it as going well, he knows it is not going well. Can Pete Hedseth survive all this? Pete Hedseth can survive anything, because he's not being judged by the question of how well he is performing. He is judged being judged by how loyal is he to President Trump. And there, he wins an award that even, you know, Vice President Vance could get it. I mean, you know,

if I listen to Vance very carefully, to hear him say, well, the President made his decision and

JD Vance would tell you that he probably was less than enthusiastic about this. But to get back

to this sort of central question, we've been hovering around here, which is, what makes this Iran conflict different from the previous two interventions that we saw the President do, Iran bombing

“Venezuela, maybe whatever he'll be doing in Cuba. I think it's another for our listeners,”

this is another Passover reference. Oh, yes, why is this? Why is this one different from all other words? Exactly. Exactly. So what's different here? That in the previous two, the political objectives and the military objectives completely overlapped, right? We had to just send the B2s

out, blow up as much as you could at the three enrichment sites, go home. Go to Venezuela,

grab the leader, leave the rest of the government in place, and you're done overnight. In this case, the President had a series of bombing targets, which is we've discussed before their meeting, but they don't overlap with the political objective, which is to bring about a regime change in the government, to get the nuclear material out of the country. These are things you can't really do from the air or in a quick overnight commando raid. And all of a sudden the

President is discovered that you can win militarily and still not win the political battle. And that should have been the real lesson of Iraq. And Afghanistan, right? When we went into Afghanistan, the Taliban were in charge. When we left Afghanistan, the Taliban were in charge.

“So that's really I think what the President is discovering here now. And I think everything that”

you're hearing, including all of this back and forth about maybe I should go, maybe I should stay

and so forth, is basically him struggling with that reality. Okay, I'll accept that. I have to

because we tend to try to look forward to your rosin. Then say, one of the ways he's trying to change the subject, he's saying, "But I believe I will be the President until I have the honor of taking Cuba." And it's like, "So we're just going to turn the page?" Yes, next. It's that your expectation? Yes, that is my expectation next. And then everybody's everybody. Then we all run around saying, "Oh my God, the U.S. invasion of Cuba or Obama, if you were whatever, is totally illegal,

“which of course will be." And we're all distracted and meanwhile, whatever is happening around”

is having an Iran and that's victory for Donald Trump. Okay, last night after the United States lost to Venezuela and a beautiful grace note of the World Baseball Classic Trump posted on social media, one word response, which was statehood, meaning let's take over Venezuela, making a state that could be next for Cuba, too. I thought that was going to be Canada. That's also going to be a state. They're going to be a lot of states.

It's a big part. It says it's a good start. Yeah, well, that's exactly what I was going to say. It says invest in defense stocks, he's right, but also flag stocks because you're going to have to change all the flags. They're going to be a lot more stars on them. All right. Well, look, it's very good to talk to you guys about this complicated situation, which has a certain clear implications and I'm glad we were able to get to them. We'll keep talking

about it on this and each and every other podcast. We're very grateful, by the way, support everybody showing us, especially on YouTube. This is the biggest month by a very substantial percent in terms of viewers that we've ever had at deep state radio in 10 years of deep state radio. So thank you for that and keep tuning in. For now, thank you, Ed. Thank you, David. Thank you, Rosa. Thank you, everybody. Bye, bye. I've got...

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