Rational Security: The “Attacking Iran” Special Edition

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“So Ben, I think like five years, perhaps to the day after you were savagely and unfairly”

ridiculed by room raider during the pandemic for being in front of a hostage video. I feel like you've truly mastered the live stream podcast backdrop. It is a verdable TGI Friday, as of Laugh Fair and Ben Wittis related to kitsch on the walls behind you, that keeps multiplying every time we do one of these. It's kind of phenomenal, but what is this black and white picture I know is the over your

shoulder then? That is Guy Fox being seized at the British Parliament, which he was the only honest man who ever entered, and we've got some cactuses, and we've got the Bob Mueller puppet, and some of my audience sent me a barristers wig once, for reasons that is very hard to understand. So we've got the barristers wig, and then--

Then they come with a wig stand, or is that a similar wig stand? Yeah, I love that. And then we got the sunflower that dances and plays the saxophone for reasons nobody understands. And then, you know, any time I want to, I can turn this into a very serious law fair background. This I use mostly, you know, for dog shirt TV, but, you know, if I want to,

I can just pull up the screen, and it's a very serious looking law fair background.

“I thought your Guy Fox puppet was actually stabbed on a walldorf, so I think you're”

at a different intellectual level than I am. Yeah, well, you know, the Bob Mueller puppet, I had custom made, and, you know, I'm very fond of the Bob Mueller puppet. And where does one get custom puppets? You know, if you type in custom made puppets, a variety of options will show up for you.

This one was made in Indiana, I believe. We still have a Bob Mueller vote of candle somewhere in our attic, so yeah, we certainly has his own cult. Everyone and welcome back to rational security. The show where we invite you to join members of the law fair team as we try to make

sense of the weakest national security news stories. We have a little bit of a tradition here at rational security, where when there is big big news in the national security space, we commit a whole episode to it.

And now this is the second time we'll be doing that in as many months, because, of course,

this past weekend President Trump decided to initiate what appears to be a major major military operation against Iran, opening within attack that killed the Ayatollah Ali Kaliman, a spring leader of Iran, making this an effort at, or at least something that had the effect of regime change, a major major step in the region, something people have been talking about for a very long time.

That has obvious ramifications and lots of dimensions. So we're going to commit this whole episode to talking about this obviously very major development in the national security space, possibly the most major one of the second Trump administration. And that is saying a lot, because again, we've already done at least one of these episodes.

Maybe too at this point over the last year that President Trump has been back in the White House. I couldn't ask for a better panel of law fair team members to talk about it with me. I am joined as is so often the case first by host emeritus and law fair editor in chief Benjamin Wittis Ben.

Thank you for coming back on the podcast. Of course, my pleasure.

“I think you, I think you have an almost unanimous, if not unanimous record of joining for”

these special episodes.

So, it's always good to have you on, although maybe not a good side for the state of the world,

you know, he's speaking. Yeah, the more Wittis the worse things are for the world is a good, is a good rule of thumb. That is usually how I feel about my presence and job as well. Also, joining us, somebody who probably feels the same way about their job and expertise as well as welfare, foreign policy editor, Georgetown, and C.S. IS's Dan Biamondan.

Thank you for joining us as well. Always happy to be here, Scott. And joining us as well is one of the newer members of law fair team, but a familiar sound

It's already top of the by law fair's public service fellow joining us from overseas, almost the opposite in the world, and yet no doubt, still getting a lot of the same news and affected by the same echoes and ripples out from this major foreign policy action over there as well. I thank you for joining us and staying up late to join us. No less.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm here from the future. There you go. Exactly. Hopefully it's looking a little brighter.

I somehow doubt it.

“So we are going to commit this whole episode to this one topic, but I think as is our usual way,”

we're going to try and divide up into three sort of lenses to look at the topic. So only run through our three kind of topics, sub topics we talked about today. Topic one, isn't it ironic, ironic, ironic? Trump's decision to join. Good.

Actually, I thought it was pretty good. It's suddenly occurred to me that people don't use that joke of all the jokes that people use about Iran that are puns on the word Iran. That doesn't, that one has not shown up, and I felt pretty good about it. Yeah, I've had this one on my back pocket for a while.

If I'm being honest, like I just saw this guy, at least a little bit. Let me talk about it again. I'd say it's a little too ironic. Yeah, exactly. Isn't it all these days?

Trump's decision to join Israel in removing Ayatollah Khamenei reflects a deep reversal by the president who has spent years criticizing his predecessor's own experiences with Regene Chairman, other overseas adventurers on what drove Trump to proceed this time after stopping short twice in the past year, what could we learn from the way the Trump administration

“has proceeded and how far will Trump let things go?”

Topic 2, BB's Big Adventure. Regene change in Iran is something Israel and the Arab Gulf States have advocated for frequently in the past, but they had all adopted a more cautious and even conciliatory posture towards Iran in the months before the current offensive, at least in public, although we know in private now, it sounds like things may have been a little bit different at least

in regards to Saudi Arabia. How has the region approach this conflict and what will it do moving forward? How will it be affected? Topic 3, Miga, the death of Ayatollah Khamenei is a major shift in Iran, but we don't know where it is going to lead.

One risk, a concern that people have always had about regime change in Iran that will

be highly destabilizing and end up with a failed state in a crucial corner of the Middle East. On the other end, other people have asserted that removing the Ayatollah in his regime will give the opportunity for Iran to flourish back into a democracy, or at least something else closer to a state that's more stable and free than Iran has been flasked several decades.

Between the two is a mass spectrum of possibilities, what does the future hold for Iran

“in the post Ayatollah era if that's the area that we're headed into?”

So for our first topic to kick off this whole conversation, I want to start with Ari. Ari, you've obviously worked on Iran policy from inside government, it's been a time to look at outside government. I want to start just getting a sense about what this argument and what the forces politically for regime change in Iran have looked like for the past several years. I've worked in government at this point in a good while ago, around Middle

East issues, and at the time a decade ago, more than a decade ago, during the peak conversations

our call, this possibility of taking major military action against Iran was always something

talked about, particularly in certain circles, particularly wings of the Republican Party and Republican Party, kind of conventional foreign policy apparatus, not really what has become the mega wing, the more restraint we're into the wing, but there's this very, very big coalition driving towards this outcome. First, military action against Iran more severely, and then potentially even leading to regime change, although the two always

weren't exactly linked. The first Trump administration was full of people who were from this more conventional foreign policy apparatus that was tied in with the Republican Party, which has a lot of roots in Neo-conservative movement and the kind of ideology and strategic thought that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq 20 years ago. Second, Trump administration doesn't feature as many, it seems, at least not at the high levels, at least not the highest

profile positions yet nonetheless we've seen this administration, which seemed to have many, many more people from that mega restraint oriented wing that are skeptical of regime

change and overseas intervention, this is the, in the Trump administration that ultimately

took this choice. So what do you think drove President Trump to move in this direction at this particular point? When we know, just this past January, then the prior June, then in 2020, after the Soleimani strike, he stopped short of directly attacking let alone removing the regime in Iran. What changed this time around? In a way, I think the second Trump administration is kind of taking the Iran policy of the first Trump administration

to its logical end, right? The first Trump administration started by, in the first couple years, talking about withdrawing from the JCPOA, talking about building what at the time was

going to withdraw from the JCPOA and then he and Mike Pompeo at the time Secretary of State

“started the maximum pressure campaign. And by the end of the first Trump administration,”

sort of the last year of the first Trump administration, is when we saw the killing of

Cosim Soleimani and the sort of tit-for-tat escalation that we saw in the last few months of the administration. And then the second Trump administration kind of picked up where everything was left off. And decided to adopt a posture that was a bit more forward leaning when it comes to the use of military force. And obviously we saw that over the summer with Midnight Hammer, where the administration's state objective was to go in using the kind of weakness

of the regime and building on the work that Israel had been doing to kind of take care of some of Iran's military capabilities, target Iranian nuclear facilities, the key ones, and then nothing happened for a few months. There were some negotiations that seemingly were still ongoing at the time when President Trump decided that he was going to conduct

“this large-scale combat operation that we're in right now. So I think it's just been a gradual”

kind of movement toward where we are today. I think there's a second piece to it, though, which

is that the administration since the beginning of the second Trump term has been a lot more I think at ease with the use of military force beyond Iran, right? We've seen that in the Caribbean. We obviously saw the Venezuela operation, and it seems like there is this view that the operational success of Venezuela, of the Caribbean, and the relative low cost of Midnight Hammer and its operational success have led the President to think that, or at least to kind

of view the use of force as something that can be done on the administration's terms that can be done in a fairly low-cost way politically. I mean, the Republican Party is maybe starting to fracture a little bit now around the Iran operation, but by and large, Republicans have been standing with President Trump throughout the past year or so. Economically, in terms of casualties, we haven't really seen some of the kind of worst-case scenarios, right? And so it seems like

there are lessons that are being drawn from those operations that indicate that maybe you can actually kind of start an end a military campaign and do it on your own terms. Obviously, what we're seeing today is very different from Midnight Hammer, and it's obviously coming at the end of after Midnight Hammer and a series of other things. So, you know, it's not clear to me that this is where this

“particular operation is going to go, and I think the costs are going to be significantly higher.”

We're already seeing that, but I think those are maybe two of the main things that are kind of driving the administration that got us to where we are today. So, Dan, I want to come to you to pivot off, I think that closing observation, all right, made about the differences between this and Midnight Hammer. Because Midnight Hammer, to some extent, the Soleimani strike, a lot of other actions administration has taken vis-a-vis Iran or in other contexts, the Maduro operation, similarly,

it's focused on kind of narrow, targeted military action. Sometimes with big consequences, like the Maduro operation, like the Soleimani strike, arguably high risk, but nonetheless, fairly limited in scope with an ability to kind of modulate up and down. I think the Soleimani strike may be less so, but most of these other operations. This is seems really different to me. I mean, from an early, early stage, the Trump administration has seemed to decide to go all it.

And I'm on the record on this podcast of saying, "It's such that I didn't think it was going to happen,"

which I've been very wrong about a couple times recently with the second Trump administration,

because we had seen them bulk at that proposition multiple times before. We knew there was the possibility of even allowing Israel to continue its military campaign this past summer, which instead of allowing Israel to do that, which it had begun shifting towards targeting Iran's political leadership, the Trump administration hit the nuclear sites and then said ceasefire. We're not going to do that. We knew the Trump administration had a moment in January where they

could have intervened around protests, where the President even said he intended to, and then kind of walked it back, at a moment where you might have garnered a little more international sympathy, if you had done that, at least in certain corners. You at least had a humanitarian hook that doesn't really shouldn't make a difference legally, but makes a lot of difference kind of ethically, and how a lot of people view things like this. But he didn't. He stopped short. The masquerers

continue to the protesters more or less wound down, and this is coming two months later,

And in that case, supposedly, some other governments in the region were the ones who saying, whoa, pump the bricks, pump the bricks. We don't get jump right into hitting and removing this regime. What's changed in that intervening time? We saw this big military buildup. We know part of this was to, as to have defensive capabilities in the region, but is this strategic calculus really changed that much? Like, how does this fit on your kind of sense of the risk profile of the

action to the administration has taken? And is there a way to square it? Or is this just reflect a shift

“in views on the part of the president and the part of people around them? So, I think it's more”

a shift in views. And one thing that I will say probably everyone at law fair has a different view of how the Trump administration makes decisions. And I suspect all of our listeners and viewers do as well. And to me, a long term thinking is certainly not a hallmark of this present. I think he is someone who can say, uh, in the same sentence, we completely obliterated all of Iran's nuclear program. Last year, we need to go to war to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Right? And that contradiction that would, and the other president would back at, he, he does the thing twice about. And I think he has been convinced of, uh, what Ari said that military operations are both successful and very low cost. But as you said, Scott, this is a big jump. Right? Um, this is a much more massive operation. If you look at really all the operations

you mentioned, so the money, Venezuela, around last year, these were basically one-day operations.

Right? These were quick hit and end. And this, you know, this could end tomorrow, but it will probably last at least weeks, possibly longer. Um, there's been talk of further escalation out and ground troops are at all likely, but they've at least been mentioned. And as a result, the political consequences are much bigger. The possibility of, um, more lasting price rises or economic consequences, anger from allies about kind of long-term

strain, all this is coming to the fore. But I really see this if we're going to use the word,

“I think I might use in quotes, perhaps, is learning from the talk administration, which is”

he sees military force as a way to show himself on the national and world stage in a successful way. Um, we know he has a very limited news diet that only consumes things that are largely flattering of him. And in the past, these kind of, you know, very triumphant military operations, he feels made him look good as advisors. Um, as you said are not people putting breaks on, but are actually encouraging him with their own agendas in different ways. Um, so I do see this as a

change, but in some ways as a progression from where he was a year ago rather than a complete break. Ben, you know, no one, I think is a closer trump watcher than you or have been for the last decade or so. What do you make of that kind of narrative that they're in spelling out about this trajectory, which is the idea of, uh, if I can paraphrase you, Dan, I think then get your logic here. This is trump learning and shaking loose of some of his psychological constraints, some of the,

the risk of adversity that may have held him back before. He's seen success. He's tasted success.

The institutional factors may have restrained him in the first trump administration of,

kind of fallen away. Now, his kind of frame of references, his, uh, selective memory has adjusted to use these things as a vehicle success. Does that make sense to you? And what does that vote for the future? And to the extent if, if that is a vision makes sense, you where could or would or might push back or learning on the part of trump or the people around him come from to rain in those instincts to the extent they have, which currently leased in the region, might have some

“damaging consequences. Yeah. So I, I think, uh, there's a few factors that work some of which,”

Ari and Dan have alluded to, I'm going to frame them a little bit differently. So the first is

this is fun. And he's got these, this military with these really powerful tools. And what happens is

you pointed a problem and you say, let's deal with it by blowing that up. And the first thing that happens is a whole bunch of generals tell you why you can't do it and tell you about all the political and military constraints. And then the second thing that happens is you say, do it anyway and they go and do it and it works. And you learn from that that the generals are full of shit and they're cautious in a way that is just unmanly, frankly. And, and that your instincts, which are, let's

blow these things up. Why do we have all these cool toys if we can't use them? Actually, is right. And so you get more and more confident about the instinctive, oh, let's just go

York. And sometimes it's, let's just, you know, blow up some boats. So that's thing number one,

thing number two is Israel and the, the Israelis have gotten a lot of mileage over the last few years out of tactically brilliant, strategically unclear actions in their region where they get a huge amount of short term and maybe long term benefit from blowing things up and killing people in ways that they have, you know, people have said was not possible or couldn't be done without a massive war or and then they just keep doing it and it keeps working at least in the short term. And so

what you learn from that if your Trump is why not try it? And because the general response of the bureaucracy tends to be over caution about a lot of things and by the way for very good reason,

their job is to think about the downside risk of things. But, you know, if the downside risk is

20% and you can get away with a string of things where you don't pay the downside risk at least

“on the short term. So I think the, it's fun. We can get away with it and we probably will”

which translates in Trump's mind to everybody's being hyper cautious. They're just not manly enough to do the thing. And the pressure on the other side, which is BB would do it and he'd get away with it is I think shaping a lot of things. The final thing is that the people who would be most apt to put the breaks on things like this, the James Madison and, you know, the former head of the joint chiefs, these are not people who are in government anymore. And so the, the, the

larger theme of the second Trump administration, which is the breaks are off in terms of the

human people who would say no, who would say, are you sure you want to do that? Who would take the Korean American free trade agreement off the president's desk when he's not looking and hide it. But the withdrawal from that, that really happened, right? Those people aren't there anymore.

“So I think if you take those free things, you've explained a fair bit of it. So there's definitely”

an endogenous part of this that is inherent to the Trump administration and people around them. There's also an exogenous element of this, right? Like we have seen Iran substantially weakened over the last year and a half, primarily as a result of Israeli military operations against Spala, I get because of the, not Israeli driven, but indigenously driven collapse of the Assad regime in Syria because of the conflict in Hamas that has been devastating, complicated in a lot of ways

and it's far from a clear wind by Israel, but certainly has had the effect of decimating Hamas. So we know Iran has been in a weaker position. And that's particularly true after this past July, of June and July operation when we saw a lot of its military and leadership capacity get substantially weakened or they've made that for its rebuild for, back from that, that built on the prior Israeli campaign against Iran that had knocked out a lot of its air defenses months earlier.

That's part of the reason why they felt confident about moving into this campaign.

“So we've seen this capabilities, the sense of Iran, which I think really loomed, its potential”

response is loomed large in the psychology of a lot of policymakers as a big concern for years and years, get shown to be maybe a little bit of a paper tiger. I think. Or at least much less weak, you know, threat now that it may have been 10 years ago, or at least was perceived to be. So Dan, let me ask you, is somebody from, you know, with experience with the intelligence communities, looked at issues like this before, what does that tell us about

the advice president Trump was getting if he was listening to it about the challenges of this type of operation? Or maybe of the range of menu of options that he might encounter here? We know that Dan Cane has been reported having reservations about some of the operational wisdom of all that campaign against Iran, that were serious enough that President Trump felt the need to respond to them and deny them in public, which is usually a sign that there's some

element of truth there. We know that they did pursue this massive build-up beforehand and part to have lots of different resources in the region to do a bunch of different things, including defensive actions for U.S. targets and U.S. embassies. So what is your sense about, like, how big a strategic undertaking this is, depending on what exactly the objectives are to accept we know, and so how much Trump is bucking the advice I guess of his policy makers and

the people who work on these things professionally to have pursuits something like this?

And as you know, we've heard a lot of justifications ranging from helping democratic protestors

to ending around a nuclear program, it's missile program, it's maybe it's support for proxies, a lot of kind of a long laundry list of U.S. concerns have been brought up. But the vast majority of these may be even all of these are in a much better place than they were certainly three or four years ago. And a year ago, Iran's nuclear program was set back by operation midnight hammer. There's no question about that. People debate about how much, but

clearly it was hit hard. As was mentioned earlier, Lebanese's below was really devastated in its 2024 war with Israel. Hamas also devastated. The Houthis still going around till we

strong, but when you look at Iran's proxies in general, a much weaker force than they were before

October 7, 2023. And so then you get to things like the missile program. And from what has appeared in the newspapers, yes Iran has an missile program, but it's not the ICBMs that are waiting to rain down on the United States. It's short and medium range missiles that are the problems. And we've seen air defense work recently well for this. So one thing that to me was not incorporated into the initial decision making was how much of the threat is Iran? How much do we want to really

“go to a kind of war without an immediate case of spell eye because of these issues?”

The broader question of should the United States go to war to help protesters? That's not a professional bureaucratic focus, right? That's if the President of the United States decides that that's so be it. But usually that's the sort of thing that U.S. advisors tend to be on the skeptical side of. And I want to be clear, I certainly don't know any inside information here, but I would be very surprised if advisors were saying to President Trump. Yes, of course, we can put in

a good regime here. I suspect they're saying a lot of the alternatives are either chaos or a dictator with a uniform instead of a dictator with a turban, right? That you're not going to see dramatic regime change here. Then you get to the actual operations and what has leaked is general canes warning that we don't have sufficient numbers of air defense munitions for

“key systems. And we've seen some of the consequences of that where some Iranian strikes have”

got through, not huge numbers, but enough where there have been real casualties both for the United States and especially for U.S. allies. And so that kind of broader question of U.S. preparedness for a big struggle is one, and also that goes to broader U.S. concerns around the world, these munitions and U.S. military assets in general are wanted in Europe with regard to Ukraine, they're wanted in Asia for China threat. So there's tremendous opportunity, class, and not to,

you know, go too far down this rabbit hole, but we actually used a lot of this in our conflict with the Houthis in Yemen last year, which is not something most Americans really focused on, but that relatively minor conflict actually was a huge drain. So the professional militaries advice that at least as come out has been very cautious, but I take Ben's point to me, which to me is a very important one. Trump has learned that, hey, when I use force, it works all these

kind of naissayers and the bureaucracy, they're wrong. You know, we can take some risks, you know,

“the U.S. military is awesome, and it makes me look good. And I think that is, you know, kind of how”

he takes this, but that said, you know, I'm going to say an unlucky Iranian strike that kills a bunch more Americans, increasing surges in energy prices. These are things that make me the present to Houth operations. And if he does so, I think you will quickly blame the military or blame others for not giving him good advice for leading him in the wrong direction. You know, whatever specific grievance I'll want to say, well, very, but I think he'll be quick to point fingers

when things don't work out just as he was quick to ignore the professionals when he thinks things will work out. I do think that's worth at least mentioning and passing the legal side of this, because this is law fair. It's something we do care about even though we also bring in the strategic elements. And I'll say, I wrote a piece of law fair that went up yesterday about this. The folks could look at them on a deeper dive. But I'll just say at the top level, for a lot of the reasons

you know today, and like this really, in my view, pushes the limits of what the executive branch has said the president can do before. It's hard to say it goes beyond them because the executive

branch has always been deliberately cagey about where exactly to draw the line, because executive

branch's views are by executive branch lawyers whose job is to figure out the ways to get the president what he wants, and once it's like clearly in violation of the law. And so they found

is justification, as far as I can know, really boils down to it when we saw this in the moderoping and they released is that we think we can do this without risking enough U.S. soldiers being killed

that's at a level with a major armed conflict. The moderoping is specifically referenced the second

Iraq war and the Vietnam war as the big comparison points as a spectrum from like three or 4,000 facilities to 30 to 40,000 fatalities. As long as we stay out of that band, we think we're safe. When we're talking about American air power and American other specialized military capabilities,

“would you can do way disproportionate action without putting that many soldiers at risk?”

It's really wild because that's basically saying the president can have huge, globally consequential actions that he can do on his own authority, as long as he uses those, you know, technical capabilities that don't put as many U.S. soldiers at risk. It's potentially hugely destabilizing. As I mentioned that piece, I don't think really died very well with which we think

the declare war clause was included in the Constitution 4, which is DeLette Congress be a bit of a

check on overseas of interest and buy the president read federal, I think it's number 4 on that. Regardless though, this is the system that the Americans are looking at is part of this. We've also got regional governments involved. Israel is the biggest one. We also have reports that because, of course, Israel is kind of leading this campaign at least in terms of targeting Iran's political leadership. They appear to be the ones pulling the trigger on those strikes.

The Americans are providing intelligence, but mostly hitting security apparatus to the fight we also have reports that mom had been summoned. Crown Prince and Saudi Arabia has been you know quietly urging this campaign, even though publicly he's been voicing restraint.

And this follows a trend we've seen from other Gulf government that historically have been

pretty hostile to Iran. Over the last year or two, I would say primarily since the October 7th massacre in Gaza have been a little less openly hostile towards Iran, at least by my sense of the rhetoric. Are I want to come to you on this? Talk to us about what the kind of regional dynamics towards Iran, a regime that has been seen as a regional problem by most governments in the region for a long time. Talk about what that kind of posture has been and the ways that may or may not

have contributed to this latest campaign. Yeah, I mean, what you're describing with regard to Saudi

“Arabia, I think is true for most other Gulf states, which is that you know, I think they've just been”

much more inclined and private to be more forthcoming with regard to kind of pushing back against Iranian destabilizing activities in the region than they have in public, right? Because they've had to hedge essentially and make sure that they did not end up in the crosshairs of, you know, a neighbor that has historically been pretty okay with interfering in their affairs has been fairly aggressive and you know, has had this proxy network that is now weekend, but that has, you know,

had essentially kind of little nodes in different parts of the Gulf. So, you know, obviously for those reasons, Gulf Arabs have been a lot more careful in the way they've kind of talked about the rivalry with Iran and in terms of advocating for more forceful action against Iran and in public. And private has been slightly different. So, there is that piece which, you know, I but I fully buy the reporting that the Saudis and MBS specifically have been kind of advocating

for more forceful action with the president. The other piece of it is the kind of growing integration that, you know, multiple administrations now in the United States have been advocating

“for in the Gulf and the region more broadly. And that includes both Republicans and Democrats, right?”

The Gulf and Israel and others have become a lot more integrated. We're seeing some of the fruits of that in the way that the response has unfolded to the Iranian response, if you will. You know, these are countries that have become a lot more militarily capable, especially in terms of air defense and you know, there's been more intelligence sharing, there's been more mil to mil kind of conversations and overtures and all of those things have been by and large,

I think a good thing, but they've also probably brought us to where we are today in a sense with regard to Iran. So, the Gulf states are obviously a couple of major actors about US policy towards Iran. They've got a vocal voice on it, something they've been pushing the United States in different directions for more than a decade. A lot more than a decade. It's a little decade at this point. But the big regional actor is Israel and Ben, you're you're a very

informed and close watcher of Israeli politics. If there's one figure that hangs over this military operation as much, if not more than President Trump, or at least might in the history books, it's BB Netanyahu. So, talk to about his motivation and the reasons why he might be pushing for this military campaign. When again, this past summer, he didn't go straight for the head. He didn't

ceasefire that's from administration pressure to me too. This past January, there were reports that he and other regional governments were among the ones voicing and advising President Trump, well, well, well, you can't just jump right into intervening on behalf of the protesters.

So, talk to us about what's driving this change in mindset and what's led him to finally

reach this moment, which by his own description is something he's wanted to do, his whole career. Yeah, so I don't think I don't believe the story is about January and the Israeli sense of restraint in

“January. I think that was mostly a posture. The Israeli government wanted to be seen to adopt and by”

the way, the same with the regional golf governments. I have no evidence of that. That's just an instinct. But look, BB is a very complicated political animal, but there are certain things about him that are very simple and actually very pure. And one of them is that he believes that Iran

is the principal threat to Israel. He has always been for the last 25 years obsessed with the

Iranian nuclear program and he traces most big problems back to Iran. He's quite consistent about it and his view of the subject is pretty simple, actually. And I think that general posture explains a lot of his behavior over the past few years, which is he systematically went after the Iranian proxies one after another and did so very systematically and very effectively, frankly. He then went after the Iranian air defenses and nuclear program recruiting the United States to do

the nuclear program part, but he disabled Iran's ability to defend itself as he established

a air supremacy there. And then having done all that and having gotten the United States to

“destroy a lot of the nuclear program, he then went after the leadership of the country. And I think he's”

none of this is secret, none of this is nefarious. Like if you listen to what he's been saying for the last 20 years, you would kind of like you started with the sort of neocon wing of the Republican Party. All of this has been in the open that this is what he wants to do. And by the way, there's a quite, I don't mean to sound dismissive of it. There's a quite coherent understanding of this Rayleigh security in which this makes all the sense in the world. And in fact,

you know, I think if you start on October 7th and say who has been the big winner of these regional conflict that has developed is Rayleigh power and security has been kind of enhanced at

“every stage. So I don't even mean to really second guess the premise. I think he's been”

effective and fairly straightforward about what he's trying to do. Now, is there a domestic Israeli politics dimension to it? Of course, there is. And that is the following one that BB was the Prime Minister at the time of the most devastating attack on Israel at least since 73 and maybe ever. And he bears some non-trivial responsibility for allowing that attack to happen. And having used the time between then and now to systematically dismantle Israel's major enemies,

including lopping off the head of the snake itself, which is the Iranian leadership and its missile program and its ability to run all these proxies, is one non-trivial way of going back to the Israeli public and saying I'm still your guy. And that is, you know, he's going to face an election this year. And that's the argument that he's going to make. You know, don't look at what happened on October 7th. Look at what I did after October 7th. So yeah, there is a substantial domestic

politics component to that. There's also a domestic politics component to his, you know, you can call that the settle-all-family business approach, right? It's kind of corely own. There's also a,

hold together a far-right coalition in Israel, you never lose by being on offense against Iran

“and its proxies. And so there's a, you know, a pretty simple calculation there. But I think”

it all points in one direction. Here's what I don't believe. I don't believe it's an attempt to distract from his criminal prosecution. Yes, he's got an ongoing criminal prosecution. Yes, he's, you know, got a serious set of corruption issues and a confrontation with the judiciary. But all of this is also what he actually believes in terms of what the big threats are facing is real. And if you had said to me, you know, on October 5th, there's going to be a major attack on

Israel in two days. It's going to be devastating. And Israel is going to respond by going after, you know, in sequence, Hamas has Bala, the Houthis, the Syrian regime's going to fall in there. And then they're going to go after Iran, plausible, or impossible. What is that totally possible? So Max, streamer stories like Harry Potter and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Superman and feel more. Now, HBO Max, I'm Theresa and my experiences with all entrepreneurs started a

Shopify erfolgreich. I understand that the first day has been the first day. And the platform

makes me no problem. I have a lot of problems, but the platform is not one step away. I have the feeling that Shopify is a platform that can only be obtained. Everything is super simple, integration, and balance. And the time and the scale that I can't completely invest in, for all of them, in Waxtum. So that actually tees up something that I've been thinking about and wondering about in

all of this, which is the Israeli strategic vision that we're seeing coming out of this.

“They don't do strategic vision. Well, I've actually kind of, I think they did”

contact the operations. Well, I think that's kind of it, which I think is revealing about

where this operation may end or the ways away may end, because it does, it does not seem like the United States has a super strong strategic vision going into why it's doing this. It seems like a lot of that is in my mind coming from the Israelis. And what we've seen, particularly be able to do, although I think this is a strand of thought in kind of Israeli defense thinking generally, although through one element of it, I know it's kind of virtually in Israel and parts of

Israel, is that you know, you've seen a kind of super strong version of the mode of the grass strategy, where essentially, since particularly October 7th, there's been an effort to just kind of keep the areas around Israel that are a threat week and down and disorganized. We saw that in Gaza most clearly, we've seen it in Syria where that's part of the anxiety over the new government that's taken over there kind of unexpectedly that we've seen the New York government be surprisingly

hostile towards and takes steps to destabilize before getting kind of reigned in by the United States. You haven't seen it, Lebanon may be a little bit of the exception, because knocking his ball about has allowed kind of centralized Bay Route government to be a little more influence, but not really in the areas closest to Israel, those areas are still kind of like no man has ballad dominated lands where his ball has been substantially disorganized, although still you're

“going to take a military action. I think some which are we've seen the idea that you can move”

into in the last 24 hours. So what does that like tell us is this depiction ban of Israel's kind of strategic posture accurate? Like are they comfortable with kind of a region that is disorganized in weak if destabilized in certain ways? And I'll say I'm a little skeptical this area, because that sounds a lot like what the strategy was in Gaza from 2007 onward, which is keep it disorganized small, cabin, yeah, there's no governance, yeah, as bad for people

live there, but we can contain the threat, and obviously that would be very bad bet in Gaza at the end. But this seems to be still exporting that whole strategy kind of to the region now. Is that accurate? Is that tell us where the real line is? Is all this talk about regime change and freedom and democracy and Iran really is just a bit of an illusion, a fantasy covering up the actual end goal at which point this operation may end, which is just a

talk about strategy in English, and to be that kind of sums it up, right? When they're talking

to their U.S. counterparts, they'll give a vision and they may go God forbid even use PowerPoint,

“but when they're talking internally, it's much more tactical, and there are a couple, I think”

reasons for this, some of which are understandable, some of which are not at all. One is Israel for its entire existence, has had to deal with a very fast-moving regional situation. So to say, where do you want to reach into being five years or ten years, they think is laughable. Right? That's saying to American AI developers, let's plan 20 years ahead, right? They're just like that's not a sensible way of doing things. And Israel's domestic politics are so fraught that

they are often thinking, how do I gain advantage over my rivals this week? And if you try to do

long-term planning, someone's just going to leak it and try to embarrass you, add a critical moment.

So I think there are legitimate reasons and less-quiet main loans for not going down this road. Israel in general also has an assumption, which is everyone that we can hate us. And therefore, if we look at whether it's Gaza or Jordan or Iran, yes, governments might change, but the people are probably going to hate us. And a lot of what we want is either a dictator who will go against popular opinion.

Right? So if you look at Egypt or Jordan, popular opinion is very anti-Israel, but the governments are very cooperative with Israel. Or we want the country to be weak.

“And as you mentioned, that is certainly Syria. And I think that the idea that I think these”

Israelis are very skeptical of regime change in Iran, part of it is they don't think it would necessarily lead to a pro or a better government for Israel, but also I think they just don't think it's going to work. That you might end up getting a more competent Islamic revolutionary guard corps commander in who's just as anti-Israel just often a little smarter about the whole thing. And as a result, they're often thinking about weakness. And they are thinking, you know,

there's a whole line of, you know, in war, you're watching enemy to be weak and in peace,

you want them to be strong. And I think their view is, we're kind of always at war,

therefore we always want these people to be weak. And therefore, you know, when and out, the weakening seems to be the Israeli approach, I actually think that's misguided.

“I think that in many cases, you would want a stronger government that could enforce order at home,”

could actually make deals in a credible way that is not a prisoner to fractions bureaucratic and domestic politics. But Israelis are very skeptical of that. And it is this kind of, we will face perpetual conflict. And if so, we'd rather enemies be weak and off-balance and easily defeatible rather than have the time to gain your national support, build their militaries and pose a bigger threat. Yes, I actually think there is a Israeli strategic vision. Only it ignores the thing that most

non-Israeli is think of as the thing they need to have a strategic vision about, which is the Palestinian's. But if you look at the Israeli regional posture, it is keep the groups closest to you weak, particularly in Lebanon, particularly in Gaza, particularly in the West Bank, have a piece where you can have it or non-aggression where you can't have peace with Sunni Arab states. And by the way, they've been enormously effective at that.

In part, thanks to Iran. Thanks to Iran. And be unremittingly hostile to Iran, which sets this up on its own. And I think this is a pretty cross-partisan cross-ideological Israeli attitude that there's no part of the Israeli political spectrum that's against doing business with the UAE or having cordial relations with and cooperative relations with Egypt and Jordan or with real hostility to Iran.

So, and by the way, the day that there is a central government in Lebanon that is in a position to assert power over the South, Israel will be thrilled by that. And I don't think that's likely to happen any time soon, though. It is more probable now that Iran is not in a position

posture through the lens of what Israel does over time, it is a preference for every regional actor that is Sunni over every regional actor that's Shia. It is a preference for authoritarian but not murderously authoritarian states, Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan, and it is a preference for entities that are not right on its borders. And so I do think there's a coherent vision here and it's just one that completely ignores the Palestinians.

So there's one last set of actors outside this immediate region but that are clearly players in this broader scheme. And that's traditional U.S. allies. Before the strikes in June on the nuclear

program, we saw G7 win basically in support saying Iran is to say, "Well, I cannot have a nuclear

program and that, you know, I take an actor to do that is appropriate." Even though question by international law, a question like that, that kind of targeted action, perhaps they knew how limited the scope, the Trump administration tended perhaps not up, we don't know, led them to let them in their support behind it. That hasn't been the trend this time. We've seen Australian Canada say basically the same thing, Iran can't have a nuclear weapons program

and it's okay for the United States and Israel to stop it. France, Germany, the UK have been much, much more reserved. Have not really come to the operation or it's law for us other than to say,

“we need to return to stability and come back to the table. But that's, I think, for close U.S. allies,”

it's close to a coordination as you're ever going to get, honestly, for something like this. And for the rest of the international community, you really have not seen many states step up and back with the United States and Israel are doing. Ukraine has, perhaps on surprisingly, a few handful of other states but no other major players. Instead, you see in a fair amount of condemnation from a lot of the traditional, you know, China and Russia and a lot of people saying let's get back to

the table, we shouldn't turn a negotiation on, we have to return the negotiations, we can't let

it destabilize things from the rest of the world. And actually, like pretty strong critical comments from

UN Secretary General and other folks, little unsurprisingly, people are much more concerned with the legal aspect of this, which from conventional international law perspectives is highly dubious. There's just not an argument there that this meets those standards. Although the U.S. and Israel have long been dissenters from that view and embraced a broader view where maybe you could squeeze the center but I'm highly skeptical of that, even. But let me turn to you on the political aspect of

this. What is the calculus for these European allies? Is this purely international law concern? That's where you saw the UK site. And I do think there's an element, nobody the UK has domestic

“legal requirements that feed in international law. That's why they say they didn't allow”

the United States to use their facilities for these initial strikes. Now, Spain's in the same category

as well, causing a bit of controversy. But no, the UK has walked this back a little bit about the reprisals that Iran is pursuing. Now, you can say, yeah, you can use our basis to hit Iranian targets that are related to the Iranian responses, hitting different civilian targets of military targets around the region, just not the initial wave because I think the self-defense international legal justification there actually is a lot more credible. And a lot of states may find themselves

somewhat positioned if Iran's kind of reprisal campaign continues at its current scale. But talk to us about the calculus for kind of those other major players and to something that the rest of the international community, how are we likely to see them approach this? A war that has a lot of problems, going to trigger a lot of international problems, but also is addressing what other of the international community thought was a real problem, which is Iran is state that

does sponsor terrorism. And that did have an active nuclear weapons program in the recent

“memory that they seem to be pursuing. How does this fit into that product calculus?”

Yeah, so I mean, you laid out essentially, I think a lot of things that many of these countries, especially let's start with NATO allies are grappling with, which is one, everything is playing out against the kind of fracturing essentially of NATO, right? We are just a few weeks after the Greenland crisis. The president and the administration are still kind of using coercion against NATO allies and seemingly the goalposts change on a daily basis as to why we are pursuing coercion.

Whether it's trade one day or tech related issues related to censorship and social media platforms, there has been reporting about what the administration is trying to do internally within EU countries and Canada with separatists. So, you know, there's a lot of kind of domestic

think about everything that's going on with regard to Iran and that context or obviously trying to

manage the Trump administration and not kind of get it to not lead it to kind of take to up that coercive diplomacy against them on the one hand. And on the other hand, they have a lot of the issues that you're laying out with regard to Iran, right? Then, for three European countries, especially there is the added piece that, you know, they were members of the Joint Companies of Plan of Action, sorry, not members, but they were participants in that whole process that's

Germany, the UK and France. They have kind of mixed views about this because on the one hand, President Trump is the one who withdrew from the deal. The three European countries really wanted

to maintain the deal in place, really pushed for some sort of arrangement that could brought us back

into it. So, you know, they hold the Trump administration the US sort of as responsible for where we are essentially what regards to the nuclear program. On the other hand, Iran has been pushing the limits of its nuclear program. It has kicked out IAA inspectors. So, you know, they do not like that all those things have been going on. There's also a piece where if this whole conflict continues, they are going to have, they're going to see the ripple effects of this conflict a lot more

than the United States, right? Immigration is going to be one of those big challenges. You know, Iran kind of targeting Jewish centers, for example, terrorist attacks, assassination, attempts, etc., are not going to be limited to the immediate region. They're also going to be unfolding in Europe

“and Europe is very much aware of this. So, there is concerns I think of what the Trump administration”

might do and how it all plays into the intra-NATO dynamics on the one hand. We're seeing it as you lay that very clearly in the case of Spain where Spain is kind of, you know, has questions about what we're doing in the region and present Trump has been coursing Spain saying that he's going to cut off trade saying we're going to use your bases, whether you like it or not. So, you know, they're trying to not get in the crossers of the Trump administration more than they are,

but they're also having to manage all of these security challenges and the dynamics that come from the conflict that are essentially beyond their control. So, talk about one more international player that I think is maybe worth highlighting specifically. China, I think, is an interesting one because number one, it is a huge consumer of Iranian oil. It's obviously not to really happy with the instability in the region and it's just not something that has been

“official to it economically. However, I think politically, it's actually benefiting from the situation”

because number one, the United States is back being extremely entangled in the Middle East, which is good from the Chinese perspective, right? Because that means that we're just too busy and our attention is too diverted to care that much about the Indo-Pacific. The administration had obviously de-prioritized the Indo-Pacific in any case, but the more I think distractions the United States has and the more, and this is to the point that was made previously, I think Dan

could have started talking about the readiness piece and the trade-offs, right? The more we're spending time resources in the Middle East, the fewer of those resources we're going to have to dedicate to the Indo-Pacific. And on top of that, if China were to actually take over Taiwan militarily, it is going to be a lot more difficult for the United States, incredibly say,

“"Hey, we oppose this," right? So, I think from the military and political perspective, China's”

deeply benefiting from the current situation, although economically, is perhaps at least in the short-term medium-term, you know, of seeing this as a bit of a challenge, especially in terms of its, of meeting its originates. So, I want to, with the time we have left, spend some time thinking about what Iran is going to look like coming out of us. Before we get there, I think we need to think about where it is right now, three days, four days into this campaign. So, Dan, let me come

back to you on that point, for a little least, a little bit of the operational perspective. We know Iran is launching this reprisal campaign in various corners of the region, makes them to other corners of the world at some point in the near future. Part of the concern about taking such

reaction against the regime has always been how it might be able to respond through various

proxies, where we've seen Iran take action in South and Central America, in targeting Jewish

that was actually an express reason why the Australian government linked Iran to terrorism in its

statement supporting this kind of ongoing action. So, how, what do we think the state of that capabilities is, the types of action this regime can still take around the world, and what is the trajectory of that capabilities moving forward? Is this a period of instability that the world will write out, and then Iran will no longer be able to take, or these actors or not, be able to take these action or inclined to do so, or is this a sustainable capability, regardless of the U.S.

“and Israeli military campaign? So, I think the risk of your national terrorism both right now”

and in the future is quite high assuming this regime or some variant of its days in power. Let me give a couple of reasons. So, one is when you think of attacks in Europe, but especially attacks in the United States, Iran for the most part has been cautious about this in recent decades, in part for the obvious reason that it's incredibly escalatory, and one thing that people like

me have always said is, yeah, they may have some capability, but they tried to be careful about this,

in part because they really want to save it for when there is an existential threat. All right, well, right now this is an existential threat, right? The United States and Israel are openly saying we want to fight and bomb until the fall of the regime and calling them people to rise up. So, that disincentive is removed, that disincentive about escalation. As you mentioned, Iran has shown a capability to act around the world. I suspect there is a

cat and mouse game going on or spy versus spy game where the United States and allied security services are trying hard to identify a stop possible Iranian efforts. Having said that, as you know, I rate terrorist famously said about trying to kill Margaret Thatcher and British officials, we only have to be lucky once, right? So, if the United States stops, you know, 19 out of 20 plots, that's a 95% success rate, but that 5% is incredibly consequential. And the last thing I would

say is, this is a long-term problem, again, assuming this regime stays because the incredible

number of high-level assassinations, especially this period later, right? And we have seen the past Iran try to respond to killings of customs of the money, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Could's force leader. We've seen his follow-up try to respond to killings of its operational leaders, notably about Mulea, but this isn't even bigger one. This is the religious head of state along with dozens perhaps more other senior Iranian officials. And there are also personal reasons

of almost four Iranian leaders to do so. These are friends, these are relatives. In addition, these are senior members of organizations and it's hard for organizations to simply say,

“"Okay, we were devastated. We're going to do nothing about it." So, I think they're a”

bottom-end sentence for Iran to use terrorism to escalate. And these in terms grow, the worst situation gets for the regime, right? So, any restraints of, you'll look if we hold off and just keep our heads down, the United States will grow tired and the bombing will stop. If that possible path to survival goes away, then Iran has more its eyes to strike. So, with that picture of the capabilities of Iran and the incentives of Iran, are I only trying to you about where

we have a sense of what the political pictures are on? That's the only beginning to come into focus. We now are seeing the reports of that. The Ayatollah Sun is in position to likely become the next Supreme Leader. We've got kind of a council of senior figures, some of them are from the prior government that's kind of advising and shaping and leading this sort of interim authority. It's still highly kind of chaotic. We have talks about the CIA engaging, Kurds and Kurdish movements

and supporting them as try and support some sort of challenge of regime. We know there is a protest movement that was very active, although brutally suppressed as a few months ago, but it's kind of spontaneous. It's not clear there's a real centralized opposition. What is the range of political actors that might come out of this particular moment and how do we see themselves position themselves to either take advantage of it, like Trump and Netanyahu have urged the resistance of various

folks on our careers, actually, who they're talking to do, or the different factions within the former regime that might now have more or less leverage to accomplish their different perspectives on

“what's in Iran's national interest? Yeah, so I think that's a really complicated question to answer”

right now. For one, because I think the president just yesterday said something, he was asked a

guys." And there's going to be the second tier that are going to be the people who are going to

replace these individuals, but we also killed them. And then, you know, we are also now going to kill the third tier and so on and so forth. And so it's not clear to me, there's, you know, to the point of, we're apparently kind of mowing the lawn. This was generally used in reference to the nuclear program. It's clear that we're also mowing the lawn when it comes to the political

“leadership right now. So, I think part of it is we need to kind of wait for the dust to settle”

to see where the chips fall to mix metaphors here and see who actually ends up even being alive to be a potential contender. As you said Scott, there is a council that is sort of a transition

council that exists, it's composed of three individuals who are already in leadership. And the

image that is becoming, at least that is emerging right now is that the decision making process around the nomination of this next Supreme Leader is either has been concluded and we just don't know the result of it because precisely they are worried that if they announced that who's going to be the successor that that person might also get targeted or the decision has not yet been made. Nevertheless, yeah, one of the, I guess one of the major figures that we're hearing about

“and is not particularly surprising is the son of Ali Hamanay. Mostaba is his name.”

His succeeding to his father would not exactly drive Iran into the kind of, you know, friendly

toward the West reform kind of direction that the United States and Israel may want to go into.

He's somebody who has been, you know, he was close to his father politically. He was one of his advisors. He is not by any stretch of the imagination. There were four minded person. He is fairly corrupt. He is known to be somebody who is probably going to be as ruthless as his father. So the image that is emerging is not one that gives me a ton of hope if the regime in his current structure does survive and that is a big question. There is still in my mind a spectrum of things

that can happen and a lot of it depends on how far we're willing to put here, right? Are we actually trying to get rid of the entirety of the Islamic regime architecture? If that's the case, then we would be looking at kind of alternatives outside of that construct and, you know, some of the people who are out there who might be potential contenders is, you know, the crown prince Resa Palavi, but there might also be individuals within the country that we don't really know about.

On the other end of the spectrum is if the structure remains in place but, you know, eventually we stop killing whoever might be the next kind of the next person who might replace the existing leadership. And there, you know, again Israel, for example, it's been reported. It has been also hitting individuals who have been part of the system, who've been part of the regime, but who've had maybe a falling out with the regime. I'm thinking in particular of the leader

of the Green Movement, Musavi who since the Green Movement had actually been under house arrest and apparently does release hit his residence, right? So these are the types of individuals who might actually be alternatives from within the regime who might be much more reformminded, who would still keep much of the structure of the system that is in place, but that would try to obviously make a lot of changes within it. And if we're also if the idea is also to not have those individuals

kind of replace the the current leadership or the previous leadership, then I don't really know

“what the plan is. So, you know, this can go in a lot of different directions. I think it's way too early”

to say who the potential contenders might be and what the system might look like. What is clear, though, is that at least so far, the kind of fundamental architecture of the system is intact, right? The individuals are not, but you still have the IRGC as kind of the core security system within the regime that is operating, the, you know, leadership that gets targeted, gets replaced, the kind of different councils and different power centers that exist within the regime are still

intact. And obviously that's been by design and that's something that how many himself had done actually in the 90s to ensure that the system would be able to operate beyond just the kind of the few individuals and leadership and key positions. And so, you know, as long as those kind of

musical chairs, if you will, rather than more fundamental change that Israel specifically might be seeking here. Well, I will say, we are just about out of time for this episode, but obviously there is tons more to talk about. We could talk about this for another several hours. And I know that

“we're going to be talking about this for a very long time to come out. But if I think this military”

operation, if not the campaign itself, consequences of ramification from it will be with us for quite a while. But for the time being, we're out of time. Yet this would not be Russian's great. If we not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come until we were back in your podcast or Ben, what did you bring for us this week for in object lessons? So, I have a completely non-erron related object lesson, which is that I spent the day yesterday

doing something I had never done before, which was vibe coding. I decided to use

clawed code for the first time to see if I could build a system for tracking, Trump-related, a Trump administration related rule of law litigation in federal courts. And I asked clawed to build a system that would take law fairs, the data from law fairs existing litigation tracker, and created dashboard for it, that would then, if you clicked on one of the cases, create an AI summary of the docket with links to the underlying documents.

And this took about four hours of work. And it produced, it's not quite ready for prime time yet,

but I would say, a positively amazing tracker that is leagues better than anything that is in

public, that is publicly available, is super useful in terms of connecting you with like if you have an idea of what the subject that you're interested or who the plaintiff is or like it's a law firm case or maybe a doge case, you find the case, you click on it and it'll tell you what the posture of the cases. And so I have to say, I am kind of a tentative convert to vibe coding,

“and I think I'm going to spend an inordinate amount of time making useless products that”

nobody wants, and then being frustrated that nobody uses my products or credits, my brilliance. So that is my experience. I am now social friends with Claude and we, you know, we hang out. It's pretty amazing. I have played around the bike coding. I actually have been a gentleman user and I just got anthropic or Claude for various reasons you can probably guess in the news. And now playing and trying to find ways to teeth them off against each other, because you can have Claude co-work

on your desktop interacting with your computer programs, including Gemini, which I'm very excited about. So I may have some results coming back from this as well. I've been using it trying to develop various scraping and research tools for instance to download like hundreds of diplomatic texts and history histories. And hopefully put them in one searchable database that can be processed. So I'll let the listeners know how that plays out, but I am cost out to bestick. It's going to be

pretty amazing. I'd be terrified if I were a software programmer, but it is pretty amazing for a software consumer I have to admit. Dan, what did you bring for us this week? So Scott, as you know, I decided my self-appointed role for object lessons is to flag for podcast listeners, various games that may or may not be relevant. I am probably the only consumer of this advice. You're an audience of one. And so what I want to highlight here is the game I've ordered, but I've actually not played.

The very well reviewed next-war Iran game, which is of course very, very relevant. The focus of the game is Iranian attempts to close the straight of her moves. So it's other countries attacking

“Iran rather than Iran attacking others. But it's part of the, I think, quite excellent next-war”

series, which is trying to integrate a bunch of more modern military concepts into work gaming.

And I always enjoy these things because I can do a lot of kind of what if thinking in my head.

And it also forces some of the geography into my brain, which times have a hard time getting through more normal means, such as actually looking at a map. So I commend it to other people, and although I should have the caveat that, I'm going more off-reviews than my own experience. Wonderful suggestion. I have also heard great things about the series. I've not played any of them,

tons of work gaming colleagues at CSIS because I've read a number of reports by some of your colleagues based on very complex work games. So I can only imagine what the lunch tables look like over there. I'm very jealous. Well, I will say, for my object lessons this week, the days events happen to align with a visit to my folks house where they have all of my old college and law school books up on the bookshelves in what was once my room, their house, at least the ones I haven't

bothered to bring over to my house yet. And that includes all the ones from my Middle East and studies classes. And so I dug into and looked around a few in light of the weekends events to try and refresh myself on a few things remind myself of a few great books that I've read back in the day about prior or crises in relation to Iran. I should say, one book I did not, I have not read, although I actually did just order it. And I did not write is Scott Anderson's

book, King of Kings, which has gotten a lot of attention yet. That is the other Scott Anderson, just to clarify. Occasionally, everyone's talking about people message me about this. I'm not sure if there's Scott Anderson. One other is Scott Anderson. He is the reason I use the Middle Initial of anybody's wondering. But I do hear it's very good book. The preview I read, I thought it was very compelling and well done. So I will give a cautious endorsement to that,

although not one from first experience. But I pulled out two books that I remember reading and finding

“a very seminal on how I think about not just U.S. Iran relations, but also frankly, a lot of”

bigger questions about politics and policy. And they're very good compliment because they're so wildly different. Run one is kind of a classic. I think mantle the profit by Roya Mataheda, which is kind of a kind of a literary vision of the intellectual traditions and thoughts and patterns and trends and historical and cultural that led to the revolution, a really, really compelling book. I found my old copy, which I bought in the State Department Basement, used and is stamped to an

ambassador's name escaping me right now. Mahoa, one point was an ambassador in the Middle East,

which I think is always fun to see whose hands these books have passed through. The other book,

which is pretty much unknown at the point, which is real crime if you are a student of U.S. National's Gerney policy because it's phenomenal and a great read is Gary six all fall down America's tragic encounter with Iran. Gary was a, I can say like I don't know, I don't know Gary second, but he's a great guy. I've read a lot of a number of his books. He's a became an academic, and Middle East studies, but he was an anti-ceystaffer during the Iranian Revolution. I wrote this book that is

an incredibly in-depth play-by-play about how the Carter administration tried to deal with it. It is phenomenally interesting if you are interested in policy, if phenomenally interesting if you're a lawyer because they spent a lot of time talking about what became economic sanctions, because that's kind of one of the things that came out of this crisis at this particular moment.

“It's a incredibly detailed read. I think one of the best policy histories I've ever read and”

recommend that. And the third thing I'll recommend, which I've recommended the podcast before,

and is impossible to find, I haven't been able to find it in years, but maybe someone out there can help me, although last time I asked it did not help. It's a Dutch documentary called The Birthday that was produced in 2006. I think it's like 20 years old now. I saw it as an independent movie festival two decades ago, but it's incredibly touching and interesting. It's a vision of several transgender Iranians navigating the very complex system of ideas, religious ideology, and then even public programs

to have their gender essentially reassigned within the Iranian system, something that was permissible, in part as an effort to reinforce a very rigid gender binary. And part as a result, because one of the people interviewed in this documentary, who was transgender, was involved with Revolution and was a correspondent of comedy. And actually, perceway didn't talk to him about this in a close or meeting that they refused to disclose what they were talking about. At the time,

but came out of it with this kind of unique structure about how to approach this issue said. But the documentary is both compelling on that subject matter, but it's really compelling because it really gets into the personal lives of these families in Iran. And it's a really touching compelling vision of just everyday life in Tehran, a particular and really showcases what it is incredibly gorgeous city it is. It's just visually a really, really stunning piece. I haven't

seen it in 10 years, but I have been talking about it since I saw it and have been trying to find that. So if anyone finds it, watch it, and please send it to me, I would love to see it again. Even if it's not in English, even if it's still in Dutch or whatever else, right? I'll figure it out. I've tried, I can have vibe code my way to a translator. But with that, are you, let me

“attend over to you to bring us home? What did you bring for your object lesson this week?”

Well, before I get to my actual object lesson, since you have been laying out all these books about Iran in the Middle East, let me add one more, which is Persepolis, a great graphic novel

and wonderful movie that I always recommended as a movie or a book that my students read for my

Iran classes. It is just wonderful, really well done and pretty accurate too. All right, for my actual object lesson, though, I also have a game, but mine is decidedly not like, you know, the tanker wars that Dan was describing. Mine is Final Fantasy VII, the redo, for Switch II, which I've been playing and I've been absolutely hooked. I played the actual, the initial game

it was just one of the best games I've ever been made. Really great gameplay, really fun story

and the new graphics are just out of this world. So, it's been really fun to do and it's been a

“good little way to escape the current news environment, so that's what I've been up to. Wonderful. Ben,”

you had a supplemental object lesson you wanted to drop in, you want to drop that in here because I think

this is actually a really good one that I am going to check out as soon as I get off this recording.

I will just say for those who like the rest is history podcast, which I enjoy a great deal, they recently did a four-part series on the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which took place when

“I was a small child and the Iran hostage crisis is really one of my earliest political memories”

that I followed in detail as a nine and ten year old and I found it a really useful and compelling kind of refresher on events that I was ambiently aware of as a child but did not follow in an adult kind of way and I thought it was a really useful overview in a fashion that I actually enjoyed. It is such a good podcast. I started listening to entirely on your recommendation then and it's great, although I had missed these through somehow. I kind of been skipping around

a chapter because there are so many episodes like back on. I have not only do videos too which

“I just learned when I just googled this, which I didn't know so if you want to check out the”

visual element by all means, check that out as well. But until then that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Laugh Fair so be sure to visit Laugh Fair Media.org for our show page, for links to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other Laugh Fair computers and for information on Laugh Fair's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Laugh Fair in social media, be sure to leave

a rating or review where you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Laugh here on Patreon for an ad-fee version of this podcast among other special benefits. For more information visit Laugh Fair Media.org/support. Our audio engineer producer this week was

me of me and our music as always was performed by Sophia Anne. We were once again edited by the

wonderful Jen Batcha. By half of my guest Anne, Ari and Ben. I am Scott Ariander so we'll talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. [Music]