Rational Security: The “Deeply Iran-ic” Edition

I mean, that's better than nature than even dream name. I don't know. So I'm not going to describe what you were wearing, but I was on my mind. In other words, I had a pocket square in only a second. But that's it. Yeah, maybe that's it.

I don't know how it stays on that point, but. So I'm a mainly a bike commuter, so I'm on my bike commuting to work. With Lauren Graff, the wonderful author, whose book Brawler, I just finished, collection of short stories, but nevertheless she is biking with me, which was, you know, pleasant. And on my way to my office, there was a stretch that was a little rough,

so I decided to get off my bike and check it out on foot. When I came back, my bike was gone. And I'm freaking out. I'm very attached to my bike. And then you show up and you point out that I'm now late for this podcast. And then because I take my deadlines very seriously, but fortunately, you have brought recording equipment with you.

So I have to say, I don't know what happens after that.

I don't know what incredible insights I had to share on Iran on the bike path.

But we were going to do the podcast from the bike path. And then I woke up.

“Honestly, wouldn't be the weirdest place you've done a podcast from before.”

Wouldn't even be in the cop five. Yeah, Ben's done it for moving trains with a questionable choice in hindsight. We realize now. So, you know, wouldn't be that bad. Well, that's good. That's for freshly normal.

I feel like most of my children people's dreams probably get to a lot of weirder than that. So I appreciate it. Scott, you're the podcast host of Dan's Dreams. Literally. Here you go.

Hello, everyone. And welcome back to a rational security. The show we invite you to join members of the law fair team. It's we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories with it. They're in our lane. Or not.

I am, you know, screaming Kalu Kalay from all the hill tops around me, because we are not in the middle of a massively escalating potentially genocide of war in the Middle East today.

Instead, we saw a breakthrough of sorts.

“Although we will talk about how much a breakthrough it actually is in the Iran conflict.”

Last night, right before President Trump's 8 p.m. Eastern time deadline, at the conclusion of which he was promising a world historical elimination of a civilization from the face of the planet or something along those lines, at least that potentiality. We thought this was a big enough development with enough angles and issues attached to it that we wanted to spend the whole time talking about it today.

I'm thrilled to have a phenomenal cross-section of my colleagues to hash it over with. Joining us first off is one of Lofer's former policy editors. CSIS, Maven, Georgetown, Maven, Dan Byman, Dan. Thank you for coming back on the podcast. Oh, he's happy to be here, Scott.

Wonderful. Also, joining us is Lofer's executive editor, Natalie Orpett, back on the cast. Natalie, thank you for joining us as well from five feet directly behind me, but we don't have a good set up for doing this in person. So glad to have you from your own office joining us here.

It's very dreamlike for me as well. I have your voice echoing from all around. You can just hear each other a little bit in the background. It is slightly distracting. But I don't think, I don't think people listening can pick it up, but we can definitely hear it.

But that's good to know. It gives me just a little preview. So if you see me react or Natalie more likely, react just a little too soon to something I say. That's why in the visual version. And join us as well as Lofer's managing editor.

I'm taking out the whole editorial leadership structure today. Tyler McBrime, Tyler, thank you for joining us today. Good to be here. Don't worry. It's been this low news month.

So nothing happened. Nothing happened. We are in half the editorial teams here. Absolutely right. Well, let us get into our three topics.

They're all facets of the same topic today. But we thought it was appropriate to view what we're talking about in frame it through the perspective of the three types of irony. In this case, IRA and dash Y.

First is of course, situational irony.

The world came into Tuesday evening, fearing a major escalation in the ongoing US and is really conflict with Iran. But instead, President Trump made a last minute choice to accept a two-exes fire. Conditional on the opening of the straight-of-remove's, condition that Iran indicated it was prepared to meet kind of. So long as open means coordinating with its military forces and paying for safe transit.

“Is this the beginning of the end of the Iran conflict?”

And what does the shape of the cease fire and the dynamics around it tell us about the conflicts likely regional implications moving forward? Topic two. Verbal irony. Irony. Irany.

Tuesdays break through cease fire. Agreement came after days of increasingly outlandish rhetoric by President Trump, including a threat earlier that day that a quote-unquote a whole civilization will die tonight. Unquote if his conditions were not met. What role did Trump's threats play in the outcome?

And what might the broader implications be of a US president issuing threats that would amount to war crimes if not genocide if actually followed up on? Topic three. Dramatic irony. While Trump's rhetoric was undoubtedly intended to communicate strength, it came from a place of increasing weakness.

Perhaps more importantly, the conflict has proven widely and popular in the United States and devastating for the US and broader global economies.

Two factors that weigh heavily on Trump and his congressional allies in an election year.

“What will this shift in the Iran conflict mean for Trump's political future in the future of policy agenda?”

Not to mention the legal and institutional arrangement that I've allowed and pursue so an orthodoxy foreign policy in recent months. So let's start with the big development that came last night around 730 or so as little earlier than that evening. I know I was sitting at the dinner table verbally stressing to my, expressing to my wife how stressed I was about the APM deadline. When I got the alert coming across that in fact, a ceasefire had just been announced on trees social, which I do not have alert set up for.

Dan, let me turn to you first.

I gave the broad contours of the ceasefire agreement as I understand it. I'm trying to re-hash it, although I invite you to supplement a for me and then give me your sort of reactions to start us off off in this. As far as I can tell, this is a deal that was facilitated by a kind of tri-partite force primarily Pakistan got most of the credit in this case. We know the Egyptians and Turks were involved to some extent, through at least earlier parts of the negotiations, kind of serving as a shuttle a little bit with a route between Iran, the United States.

Oman has been involved at various stages too, particularly earlier prior to the conflict, may have been involved some extent as well. We had seen an earlier peace agreement get put on the table that Iran had rejected United States. It said maybe something we can work with, Iran had come forward with a counter proposal that had been sort of rejected previously by the United States. But then, around 7 p.m. President Trump said, "Okay, I see the Iranian 10-point plan as something we can begin negotiations from.

“I'm going to accept a two-week ceasefire, which I think is what had previously been put on the table by the Pakistanis,”

and accept this on the condition that the Strait of Hormuz be opened up and he used, you know, his typical all-caps bluster open, I think, on conditional sort of the things. Iran then followed up by saying, "Okay, we accept a two-week ceasefire, we appreciate that of the Pakistanis, and anybody is free to coordinate, considering the Strait by coordinating with our military forces." So, query whether that means open or not, but so far, that is a peer to met the check the box in the ceasefire is in place.

And notably, through clinical clarification, the suggestion has been that the ceasefire extends both to Israel and Israeli operations in Iran, and there has been some suggestion by some of the parties, particularly in Iran, I believe, Pakistanis officials suggested much that's both to extend to Lebanon as well. Although, I'm not trying to see that confirmed on the Israeli side up to this point.

“I think Israel has actually said specifically that it does not apply and not apply.”

I suspected that was coming because I was surprised to see that Lebanon got rolled into it, particularly for the Israeli perspective. So there's at least a little bit of disagreement on the scope of this.

Dan, what's first correct me on any detail of this, I've gotten wrong, I think I may have omitted that you think is material,

and talked was about where you see this fitting, and what's the process that led to this? How notable is this? What open questions does it lead? I mean, how close is this to a roadmap towards a potential conclusion to this conflict? Wow, there's a lot to say, and I should begin by saying, most of what I have to say begins with, well, I don't really know. And this is part of the problem is there's a lot of vagueness here, and there's a lot of statements on both sides that seem more about domestic political consumption than about actual negotiating points.

So according to the Iranians, what they put forward is that the United States will accept Iran's nuclear enrichment, that the United States will be lifting sanctions, and there's a very long list that's long been a wish list from Tehran's point of view that they're claiming, you know, really, this is the basis of negotiations. The U.S. has been, I will say, certainly not confirming any of these, and probably I think both of this is just Iran trying to justify things to its own people, but Secretary Hexas has said, you know, if Iran doesn't hand over its enriched uranium, the United States will take it out, right?

So there's the kind of threat of further war already, even as the ceasefire is just beginning. If you look at this conflict, what makes it hard to analyze in some ways is there were two different wars going on. So the United States and Israel were killing huge numbers of Iranian leaders, the post, I had a piece, you know, I want to say about 10 days ago, saying over 250 in total, and again, that was 10 days ago. So Jack that number up. Of course, you know, strikes on missile programs, strikes on military infrastructure, some strikes on, you know, steel and other parts of Iran's economy, and so a pretty massive, but relatively typical bombing campaign.

While Iran's war was really trying to put pressure on the United States by hitting U.S. allies and through the global economy.

And despite claims that, you know, Iran can take it and they're enduring losing that many people, that much destruction has certainly got to weigh heavily on the surviving Iranian leaders.

But of course, the economic pain was tremendous, especially in U.S. allies, but also on the United States. And this was an increasingly unpopular war in the United States. It was a war that was not only on popular among Democrats, but also increasingly among Republicans, including parts of President Trump's base. So, I think there was a strong desire on both sides to end this thing. And the problem in some ways is we don't have a clear agreement on what exactly is going to come out of this conflict, where the sides are still relatively far apart, just as they were before all this began.

And if you look at the demands that Trump administration has put out over the last month or half, and that includes regime change, it includes Iran's nuclear program, it's missile program, it's support for proxies, kind of a very long wish list. And if you look at the wish list Iran has put out, there's unlikely to be agreement. The good news in all this though is I don't think either side has an interest or a desire to go back to war.

And so I can imagine after two weeks, they say, okay, you know, we still disagree, we're going to extend the ceasefire two more weeks or two more months or whatever it is.

“And at some point, they're in a not peace, but not war sort of state. The important caveat to all this, I think is Israel.”

And Israel and the United States have overlapping interest, but not identical interest here, and it's Israel is certainly willing to use force against Iran, and now that Iran basically has no air defense, it's not particularly hard for Israel to do isolated rates. And as we were discussing in the introductory remarks, there's also Lebanon question, which to me is a related button, some ways very separate war. So there's a lot of uncertainty, and my guess is there's uncertainty internally on both sides.

The Trump administration seems to have abandoned any normal policy planning process in deciding to go to war and in waging this war. So it would be a surprise to me if they had a very careful deliberate process for trying to figure out negotiations. So my guess is it depends on a few individuals and President Trump's mood at any given moment.

What the US position is, and so I think we could see relatively rapid changes, perhaps positively, but it's not going to be something that is easy to predict the advance.

It's a kind of extraordinary outcome in putting a pause on what was going to be a potentially hugely consequential action by the Trump administration. We don't know exactly what that looked like for the record, you know, President Trump threatens lots of things.

“What does it mean to kill a civilization? Why put off the page to the planet? Are you talking about nuclear weapons?”

Some people infer it or the administration expressly said, no, we were not talking about nuclear weapons. We're just talking about targeting bridges and power plants, which would be very bad for Iran, but would be a little different order. I don't know what it was, but obviously this kind of curtailed that. And then that just seems to kick a lot of the questions down the road. I would say that doesn't mean it's not a diplomatic victory, like 95% of diplomacy is just kicking things down the road and getting people to maintain a status quo that involves less killing people until you can

go through the hard process of reaching some sort of more stable conclusion. And so, you know, I think that Pakistani and Turkish and Egyptian diplomats who were kind of pushing this effort to serve a lot of credit for having gotten here. But it's not clear how sustainable this is.

“The only thing I think it does really demonstrate, though, is, frankly, I think the Iranians have a degree of leverage over the administration.”

I'm maybe not leverage, but I think the administration is looking for an exit ramp. This was, I was on MPR talking about this on Monday, and this was kind of, I asked one of our closing questions, "What are you going to be looking for this Tuesday?" And what I said is an exit ramp, because I think President Trump doesn't want to have to follow through on these threats. And we're seeing that, but here's my question, I'll come to you on this, Natalie, because I'm curious if you agree with me or this or not.

If you were to take this as the new to that as well, for the time being, release a starting point for it. On the one hand, certain things are better from the perspective of particularly Israeli security. Iran has had its conventional military capability massively decimated. Even more so than it had already, and was already, frankly, pretty substantially on the decline over the last of 2025, particularly if you take into account proxies in Syria and Lebanon who had been kind of on their heels. Right?

It also seems to have been some sort of disruption with the relationship with the Houthis and the Iranians because the Houthis didn't come full in in this conflict, as one might have expected in other context, although they did get involved in the last week or two a little more than they had been earlier.

Presumably, they've hit it more this more for the set back this time, but they haven't recovered this material there, and the incentive for the remaining of the Iranian regime now, if anything, seems to be much higher to pursue a nuclear weapon, because it's not clear to me that they have a clear sense that they have other vehicles towards another bombardment, defending themselves another bombardment, like this, especially if they can never redevelop a conventional defense capability.

And then probably most importantly, before this conflict, the struggle for Moses was understood to be an international waterway that ships could transit freely.

And now in this new status quo, ships have to coordinate with and pay the Iranians to transit it. I don't think that's going to be acceptable in the long run, either to the international community or to the Americans, but before the time being, that's actually a pretty big decline. It's better than nobody getting through, and you know, impeccable oil prices accordingly, which will help the United States even if, you know, US vessels are in a loud through, really, it's the oil prices are big concern, less any direct shipping.

But it's still a big step in the opposite direction of what's traditionally been the US international community's goal, which is to preserve the straight-up for Moses and international straight as an international waterway.

“Am I right about that now? What is your sense about where the winds and the losses are coming out of this sort of agreement for the different parties?”

And what does that tell us about how much in a good position they are in terms of negotiating more final outcome?

Yeah, I mean, I'll caveat the same way that Dan did, which is that I think that there is so much confusion right now, and it's impossible to predict anything, including whether any of this status quo looks like how we think it does, because even where we are now is that the way that the Iranians and the Americans are describing what it is that they're agreeing to looks really different. And then there's, you know, commentary from others too, Pakistan is trying to explain what the deal is that it, you know, helped broker and it's sort of all over the map right now.

To take the points that you mentioned, you know, it is likely true that the diminished capacity militarily of the Iranians is good for security in the short term. We don't know enough about the specifics of where the weapons program would have gone in the future anyway, and that matters for understanding how damaging the losses have been, and whether Iran would be in a position to pivot and develop other types of military capacity.

“We know, for example, that it's been able to produce drones that have been used both in Iran and in Ukraine by the Russians, not the Ukrainians.”

They've been able to produce those really quickly, and we're seeing from various conflicts right now in particular in Ukraine that drones really seem to be the future of warfare. So how much, I mean, there's no question that a lot of the military capacity of Iran has been compromised, but how quickly that can be recovered from even if it's not in the same model. I think is to be determined. The straight-of-war moves issue that you mentioned is, I mean, I think you're right that the quote-unquote solution, as it seems to be right now, which is that there would be a, basically, a toll to pay to Iran for transit through the straight, would be a negative from where things started.

You know, right now it's being portrayed as by Trump as a victory because we have convinced the Iranians to reopen the straight, though that doesn't, that conveniently omits the fact that the only reason that they closed the straight was because of the conflict.

“And as you said before, it was really considered to be an international waterway, and I think I agree with you that for legal purposes, you know, under international law, it's pretty clear that it is.”

an international straight, not subject to Iranian toll in positions. There was also some very weird tweet earlier today by Trump that, or maybe a response to a report, I don't remember in what form it took. Suggesting that maybe Iran and the United States would split the toll fees of ships going through the straight and formers. You know, this was ABC's Jonathan Carl, he said this morning, I asked President Trump if he's okay with the Iranians charging a toll for all ships, I go through the straight.

He told me there may be a joint U.S. Iran venture to charge tolls. But we're thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It's a way of securing it, also securing it for lots of other people. It's a beautiful thing. End quote. So beautiful. I suspect that's aspiration.

I have to think so, but you never know, you don't sound at all like him those, like that's so out of character.

Yeah, I point 11. And it was the goal all along, guys. This whole war was just a business deal.

which is, you know, I suppose of derivative benefit to the United States, you know, bracket is that even true, but pretend that that's the case or accept that that's the case for the sake of argument.

“I think that there was some very interesting reporting in the New York Times yesterday that was a real deep dive into how the United States went into this war,”

because as we've been talking about for weeks now, it was really unclear. It has been unclear all along exactly what the aims of the war are. They've shifted constantly and they've been in my view pretty opportunistic depending on where things stood at a given moment and very quite a bit depending on who was talking.

And we're always fairly vague as it is, but the way that this reporting explains it, it really centers Israel in the United States's decision to go to war.

“It's deeply on a meeting that took place on February 11, I believe, where Netanyahu came to the United States, actually had a meeting in the situation room.”

That lasted quite some time, gave a presentation, setting forth a plan at the end of which reportedly President Trump said sounds good to me. And Yahoo and team understood that to be a go ahead, then overnight, according to this reporting, the US intelligence community put together an assessment of the likelihood of Netanyahu's plan and sort of promises working out the way that he suggested they would. And broke it down into four different aims that the Israelis had articulated for going to war. The first two of which were basically killing the leadership and diminishing the capacity to threaten neighbors.

The US intelligence committee deemed those possible to plausible. And the second two goals were, and this echoes very much some of what Trump was saying, especially early on, a popular uprising and regime change.

The I.C. as assessment, this is the U.S. I.C. assessment was that that was as the CIA director Rackliffe put a force of goal and apparently review said it was bullshit.

You know, the idea that those were goals to the extent we should believe that just because people were saying that that they really were, but apparently they were goals of the Israelis. They got two for four of their goals, you know, do you even consider that as success in terms of Israel's aims for the conflict that even if you're being generous, the US embraced as its own. Yeah, but you know, it is a question here. I think this gets down to the process question that they noted, because that account they gave, which is a really riveting. It's actually a adapted from Maggie Heperman and Jonathan Swan's forthcoming book regime change, which I want to talk about in really short third topic, because there's actually like a weird angle about some of the media coming out about this decision.

In the last few weeks, puts a domestic politics thing, so I want to come back to that toward the end. If you take the kind of face value, you know, the last two conditions that were treated as farsical by the DNI were essentially promises that everything was going to work out for the region. That's always been the anxiety behind the idea of doing anything like this with Iran, particularly targeting leadership, is that you would be destabilizing a country so central to the region with such a direct bearing on maritime trade and a million other considerations in a very volatile region.

Those promises were intended to a suede to those concerns, for President Trump. So they're part of the package. I don't know if those were so much as strategic goals for these railways.

“I don't think these railways probably really bought into themselves. They're a hard sell. I think it's how the people described in that meeting, which is kind of notable.”

Like the only person who seemed to buy into it was Donald Trump by these accounts. Almost everyone, all of his advisors were either neutral and said, Mr. President, you do what you got to do. Vice President Vance was framed as kind of, you know, the one person who expressed opposition to this. Again, I think that might be a little bit strategic by whoever is leaking these stories. But regardless, it is putting on Trump's thing at Trump bought into this story in a way that nobody else did. It really plays it solely at his kind of feet.

But I want to push on that idea entirely. I want to come to you on this, like, about what this means for the U.S. strategic interests. Because Israel, I think is probably the good argument. It's more secure, at least in the short to medium term. Because the, you know, ballistic missiles, it's primarily worried about not to mention the variety of arms that are to be smuggled to proxies. And it's proxies, we're not as proxies now, we're already in poor shape before this conflict, probably says significantly diminished.

I used to live there myself for a couple of extensive various points in my life.

In part because they're seen as really secure and stable despite the neighborhood, despite proximity because Iran is kind of the bouncing fat as well. Do you think you can ever get that back for those countries? And this particular moment, I mean, Iran doesn't have ballistic missiles anymore. But those countries are very close to Iran. They're right across from the body of water, and they're well within drone range, as we've been seeing. And a lot of these targets, and now we have a much less stable potentially hostile regime in Iran.

“That's not, if nothing else, at least less predictable until we get to know them better. What does that mean for, for those countries, and how does that pair on broader U.S. security?”

Yeah, I mean, I think Iran had a proof of concept, not of how to win a war against the U.S. and Israel, but how not to lose it.

And I think the tactics that it used in this current conflict are they only have incentive to double down on them. So spreading out the geographical scope by attacking U.S. allies in the region. I mean, holding on to the straight-of-form was probably as it's like key strategic asset, you know, using drones, etc. And I think the attacking the allies was a big part of it, and made it very costly for Trump, I mean both economically, but also geopolitically. I mean, it was almost captured by these videos you'd see of like rich influencers in Dubai, feeling the war, like touching them, or something.

“It was this, I feel like that was an emblematic of the feeling in like in these centers that hadn't been touched before. So I think it was a big, like both reputational and just, you know, material hit to, to a place like Dubai.”

So Dan, let me come back to you on that question, like, where do we, does it leave the region? I know we don't want to prognosticate too much, we don't know this current state. But like give us a sense of your perspective about best case and worst case scenarios, that seem realistic, within a certain band of realism, right? And when we have a sense of least, I think this gives us a sense of like where the limits of the parties are, and their willingness to engage in the sort of, you know, I don't think the United States is going to do a ground campaign in Iran.

That would require a risk tolerance that the president doesn't declare, this suggests the president doesn't have currently. Iran, meanwhile, doesn't seem on the verge of collapse, although maybe that gets better once you have a functioning economy and there's, aren't bombs falling, and people can go out in the street and protest in a way they can't. But what does this mean for, not just Iran, not just for Israel, but for broader regional security in this region that has been so central to US national security interest for the last several decades?

What this does ironically is it highlights the importance in reliance that US allies in the region have on the United States, but also the dangers of the United States. So this is a war of choice by the United States. It was something that at least a number of Gulf states were not for others may have secretly been a bit more for it, but it certainly was not, you know, a strong regional support for this war. And of course, they were the ones that were bearing the risk in paying a very heavy price, and their economies, their social calm, and in general, a number of the states have said to their own populations, you know, look, we know you don't like the alliance with the United States.

But the benefit of this is, you know, when things go really bad, the United States will be there to protect us. And the US did try to protect the rights of the United States and its hands, and did nothing, but there were limits, right, and some of these were very practical questions about the number of munitions. Some of it was simply that Iran had lots of stuff, and if you throw enough drones or shoring missiles, then you are some will get through and some did. So it kind of highlighted the limits of US power.

But at the same time, there's no choice, right, there is no other power willing to step in and play a major role in this. And Iran brought in, you know, all the Gulf states except for Iran into this conflict, and you know, some had been more commenting to Iran and some less yet they were all attacked. And you know, Turkey was attacked, right, and so these countries are going to look to Washington for more support in the future.

“But at the same time, I think, if you go even longer term, they're likely going to be hedging increases.”

Right, there is a sense that the United States, first of all, cannot fully protect us, so you want to have alternatives.

And this is something the Gulf states have done historically, you know, over many years, right, and so we've seen them by European and in the past, you know, quite used to buy Soviet even. Just that kind of have a foot and multiple camps. So we could see a greater outreach to China. There's also probably a desire to use China's diplomatic influence with Iran as a way to kind of reduce the risk of hostile Iranian behavior.

It's, you know, credit to a money diplomat for being able to kind of walk that line quite successfully.

So I would say that, you know, on balance, this war has been destabilizing for the region, but a lot's going to depend on how Iran has handled in the future.

“Right, you know, it's important to note as critical as I am of the Trump administration, Iran has been an incredibly destabilizing force in the Middle East for decades.”

And so if this leads to a more chasing Iran with leadership that might be hostile, but is at least very pragmatic with Iranian proxies that are both weaker and more afraid, that could be very positive for region stability. I could easily spin the opposite scenario, which is you have Iran that is wounded, but not morally so and quite angry. And remembers who has helped the United States and who has helped Israel and is out for revenge.

So spinning that scenario is possible as well. I don't think, you know, with the chaos in Iran, the incredible leadership disruption, the disruption of communications.

“I don't think the Iranians have sat down and said, you know, hey, let's plan for the long term. I think at best they've said, let's plan for the next 12 hours. So I think there's a lot of to be determined as things go forward.”

And that means there are openings for better US and allied policy to kind of push this in the right direction. Your point about hedging Dan and the likelihood that just because because this really blew up a lot of assumptions about how things would play out and what the dynamics are in the region. I think there's an open question as to how this becomes, you know, will history show this as a real turning point as the start of sort of a project politically and then later down the road perhaps militarily or alliance wise into this sort of broader phenomenon that we've been talking about for months now of whether we're sort of entering a post liberal new world order.

And I want to channel a point that our colleague Ari Tavada by made last night on Slack, which was to say that this was an inch to her credit she was talking about this before the the deal actually came out that she suspected that Pakistan and China would be heavily involved in sort of piecing a solution or a temporary solution together.

Because Iran would run a mediator and look like if they were making concessions it was to a more friendly party then directly to the United States.

But you know that raises the question then of what is the new place going to be even if it's for now just on the diplomatic stage, but you know where does that evolve into of states like Pakistan and China that have been just sort of peeking in here in a way that they had in the past. And to your two scenarios Dan of how does this spin out you know there there's a question of. In what way will these other states that have been involved in sort of new ways help shape that future. I don't think there's any way to know right now, but I do think there's a potential for the ripple effects to this.

Being much broader than just what do things look like in the immediate region that it's much more about who are the players on the international stage. Where are the as every state is hedging because it's seeing this much disruption of previous assumptions of how things worked.

“Where where are new alliances and opportunities and efforts even if opportunistic where will they go and I think there's a lot of room for just totally unforeseen possibilities there.”

Well that does get to one aspect of this I want to touch on before we kind of shift focus and that is China's involvement or potential involvement I should say so we have reports from the Iranians that China pressure them to move towards this deal. It could be part of an effort to have a bit of a face saving maneuver to domestic more hard light audiences to kind of project kind of some degree of foreign commitment to foreign audiences basically saying well we didn't want to do this but China really bullied us into it or maybe it's really genuine I suspect it's somewhere between the two.

China meanwhile has not kind of declined to confirm it's involvement in these negotiations at least as of the meteor proteger evening this morning but did say you know we've always been urging people towards the ceasefire towards resolution. They have been while they have very close trading and economic relations with Iran I think it's a bit of a run because trading partner they also have been you know not fully embracing you know Iran's actions in response to the US attack.

What does it mean in terms of an entree for China in the region I mean for the last 10 or 15 years we've really thought about Russia as the main kind of major power competitive for him from to the Middle East because they had. And of the intervention in Syria and because they had the Saturday Games a client state that has fallen apart in the last few years I don't think really in the last two years I don't think Russia has a major on track you know they have some clients that they sell arms to some economic relationships some you know substantial Russian populations living in the Gulf States particularly in the UAE are definitely there obviously there's a Russian Israeli kind of cultural and historical connection to but I don't think they're even quite the player that they were a few years ago not least because you also.

And because you also had Iran relationship that's now complicated by the conflict and you have the Ukraine conflict distracting them.

China has always been kind of competing for economic influence so we've had economic ties it's always been kind of the other party from the economic side less on the security side that.

“Middle Eastern states have occasionally nodded towards in the last I think thirty years I wrote a paper on Sinos out of relations in college at least last twenty years since I was in college.”

Dan, tell me what your sense of that like how big an opening is this for China on the global scene to gaining influence here and what does it say it communicate to different audiences around the world. But the world China may have played in this as a peacemaker is that a sign that it's got a little bit more sway and credibility. As a you know status quo preserving postability and government perhaps then at least the Trump administration does give in its role in initiating this conflict. So I think this is a political opening for China but probably less so on the security front in terms of kind of hard security measures.

I'm sorry pitching itself and saying you know look we are not a war like country contrast to the United States we are believers in consultation unlike the United States.

And by the way we're not the one sinking you know a third of the economies around the world with surging energy prices and you know skyrocketing fertilizer prices.

So it's gaining political influence in parts simply in a zero some way by the you know damage to US prestige and the US reputation that has come from this war. And as you say you know China will certainly play up its role as a peacemaker and will also be doing outreach other states and saying that where the ones you can depend on. The problem for China is it doesn't have the military presence in the region and doesn't have the power projection capabilities. Now if you look at the growth of the Chinese military in kind of five years snapshots you could see really steady and animal staggering increases in both different air and especially naval platforms that can go outside the region but also increases in bases around the world in jibudi in Pakistan.

And if China starts to you'll have a more global profile it can get to the point where its aircraft carriers can be present in the Gulf just the way US aircraft carriers are.

So this might be something to be thinking about in a five to ten year time horizon rather than an immediate one.

“I certainly think you know the short term political possibilities there and I think the long term security possibilities there but the security role is more of a question mark.”

So let's step away from the regional geopolitical consequences of this and think a little bit more about the consequence that we may have avoided. And that are the threats that the President Trump has been levying against Iran for the past week or two and particularly intensely over the past 48 hours before this he's fire was reached. We had specifically President Trump planning to specifically target bridges and power plans in Iran. I suspect that is because they are dual use items that one can conceivably develop a case for being legitimate military target but that if eliminated and mass would have massive consequences for the civilian population and for the Iranian economy.

And then in the last 24 hours for the deal we had the quote I mentioned earlier were President Trump said we may be seeing the end of a civilization and another point had another particularly unnamed true social message essentially saying you crazy efforts and open the straight.

“You need to open the straight or else we're going to turn around into a living how it's pretty extraordinary rhetoric that I have never heard American presidents say before.”

I can't think of a historical example of it being used before. It takes the idea of the no-quarter comments that have been controversial. Hexat that we've read it before both in the context of Iran, the context of maritime strikes, but it takes it to a whole new war.

Talk to us about why these sorts of comments have international lawyers so alarmed in regards to what the Trump administration may have planned or intended to do if the ceasefire had not been reached.

Why are international lawyers so upset about this? All right so targeting power plants and infrastructure as you say Scott is not per se a violation of international law. It is however an area of significant disagreement between the United States and the rest of the international community that which put the threshold at very different places with respect to.

“Whether or not power plants are a legitimate military target and how you should perform the IHL analysis in terms of proportionality, precaution, humanity and distinction, distinction being sort of the most important thing.”

The only thing which is is this a civilian item a civilian object or a military object and for dual use it is both the United States legal interpretation puts sort of.

This is an oversimplification but this sort of like what percentage of this object is civilian purpose and what percentage is military purpose at a different place than the international community. In this case, I suspect that even under the United States is much more permissive standard for what is an appropriate military target among dual use objects. I mean certainly the scope of President Trump's comments that talked about destroying all power plants like there's just no way that that's legal even under the most generous of.

“Or at the United States is already much too permissive in my view analysis of this question.”

So that would be a violation of international humanitarian law which is love war.

The comments about destroying the entire civilization would implicate at least two laws, two legal issues. Number one is as you said earlier potentially genocide which is has among the groups so genocide is acts committed with the intent to destroy and whole or part. A national ethnic or racial or religious groups so this would be a national group obviously all of the people if you run and so depending on whether in a court you could prove the intent element which is always the most difficult to prove this could be genocide.

It could be litigated in the international court of justice as with the United States as a state party having the action attributed to it. Obviously as we know prosecution of war crimes is much more difficult for US persons because we are not parties to the room treaty which is the international criminal court. But potentially other sorts of legal consequences for that sort of crime slash violation of international law. The other one that that implicates that's gotten a little bit less attention is collective punishment which is really one of the most clearly illegal things in international law.

Actually the prohibition on collective punishment goes back to the hate convention in 1907 which even at the time was considered a codification of existing international law and collective punishment just means that when you are in a conflict. You cannot just wipe out an entire population including civilians as a means of punishing the state with which you are in a conflict or the party with which you are in a conflict.

“There are other issues too but I think those are the easiest high level to just put a little more meat on the bones of some of the discussions that have been happening in the press.”

And maybe this can go with it but I was curious to pick up on the intent element which I know is notoriously tricky anyway to to prove but I don't know if this is like a philosophical question but is it is it even more difficult with a figure like Trump when it's it's really hard to describe his intent to anything because it switches so much. I guess what is the legal standard for using written or official statements to establish intent for example, especially when the politician issuing these statements it's very difficult to ascertain the seriousness with which he's making them.

Yeah so it is in part it's notoriously difficult to prove and to answer this question because there have been so few cases that have successfully found that a state has been responsible for genocide there have been more instances where the international criminal court has done some analysis on specifically the intent element but.

So in so said this but these other people said this and what can you infer from this type of action and you know it's there it would be a factual question really and it would be subject to litigation and frankly I don't think there have been very many instances.

“I think we can safely say none where the head of state has been so mixed in messaging that you know you would if you were putting on the defense on behalf of the United States and the ICJ trying to argue why there was no intent.”

You know bring up the fact of the inconsistency as demonstrating that there wasn't sufficient intent that there would be plenty of counter arguments that the opposing side could bring but it's it's a very weird issue to have to litigate.

And sitting aside the litigation context like I do think the intent question really bears in on the broader context in which a lot of these rules.

And I think the other side question right setting aside the even the war crimes question all that kind of get implicated the fundamental premise of any legitimate military action under an after material is that you're pursuing a military necessity objective. I'm pushing from civilian targets and any harm to civilian targets is going to be necessary and proportional to the damage to the military necessity being pursued.

“The problem with that here and I know that I should say like that is why I think you see Dan Kane saying well we're only still only going to hit lawful targets like we're only ever going to hit lawful targets.”

And that's why you hear them focused on at least in the earlier comments and in the military comments bridges and power plants something where you have at least a potential use in battle argument one that part of the national communities going to disagree with a lot of national lawyers are going to disagree with but at least the United States military has bought in on for several decades now to some extent.

The problem with that is when the president is saying we are hitting these targets because you want to agree to open the straight of removes.

The reason Bella rules something what you know are supposed to be are kind of conceptually kept separate from the use of the rules about the legitimacy of a conflict but they're not actually that easily segregable because they're concept of military necessity what you're way in against is inherently tied in with her strategic objectives. How if you have a really illegitimate strategic objective it becomes really kind of a hard case to say like all of things are valid validly targetable. I think that really is what the damage that President Trump's comments do in this context and particularly is hard I think for us service members.

We'll say we're hitting a target because we think the Iranian military uses their enemy force and how we think about this bearing in mind in the U.S. system. We're going to have a chance to defer the political leadership on use addbell and questions or rough divide between the two you know it puts them in a position because they're being asked to do something for a reason that inherently aren't clearly lawful.

“I mean that's what we've heard multiple times both before and after the ceasefire our military objectives have been accomplished if they have them what's the basis for continuing the armed conflict in the first place.”

That's a use at Bellum question fundamentally, but it really begins to draw in the question the military necessity scale you're applying in the U.S. and Bellum context too particularly for two U.S. objects where it's so fundamental to the the trade-offs that U.S. and Bellus pushed away at which is civilian harm versus military necessity. One more question that because I've been thinking about this connection between use and Bellum and you said Bellum I think it also especially is complicated when just months ago the last round of strikes on Iran.

President Trump said that we've completely wiped out I mean especially there are nuclear capability which I feel like undercuts both use addbellum and use and Bellum arguments that the U.S. are made in terms of you know the military necessity of of each strike when when he's only just months prior said that they.

basically have wiped out certain capabilities. Yeah, I'm just wondering how that complicates things as well.

Yeah, I mean I think this is actually pointing to one of the real tensions of where you know in some international law experts opinion you really do have to have a firm line between the legal analysis in a use in Bellum versus use addbellum framework and.

So those people who really differentiate would say well, that's actually very different from the ihl analysis which is what you apply when you're use in Bellum when the war has started.

And that is a question that isn't as much directly and this is where there's a big point of attention even among experts there is not necessarily a connection to the overall strategic goals of the conflict or how you connect that back to the original legal justification that the state reports to have for entering into the conflict in the first place. But instead any use in below in below framework the military advantage is the question of whether. In combination with the other principles, if I had told that you have to apply it is advantageous for really much more the military campaign and how that measures up with respect to the other obligations that a state party has to you know distinguish and exercise.

“Or caution measures and humanity measures and so that's it's it's tricky right because I think Scott that those sorts of experts or analysts would say.”

actually the straight of foremoo's focus is legitimate in terms of its military advantage if we'd properly among the other factors that need to be weighed because it's become a crucial part of the fighting and it's one of the areas of leverage that Iran has.

By the way, I am raising this for the benefit of the people who make these arguments that I do not agree with at least to the strictest sense that they argue.

But I think it is worth sort of putting a finer point on that and it's it's one of those areas where unfortunately the terminology is really complicated and and really there's a philosophical question of whether to at least for the sake of discussion or analysis. Separate use in bellow and use adbellum because the idea with or the the premise for those who think that they should be strictly divided is that. Even if use adbellum the entry into the conflict was completely illegal you still want parties to adhere to the law of war once the conflict has begun and so you don't judge.

Whether or not entry into the conflict was illegal the party like that's over and done with now that you're in war you have law of war obligations that's that's the thesis there.

“I understand those arguments and I hear but I think there's still a fundamental issue here where the concept of military advantage depends on your objectives.”

I think it's a good idea. But the point is that that legitimacy under use in bellow does not mean the strike is lawful I mean it's lawful on the use in bellow but the whole other set of legal obligations that that's ignoring if you're describing those and conceiving of those is lawful and that's what's really getting undermined here by this. The broader spectrum use in bellow isn't the only law that applies in an armed conflict. So let me let me take this back to the political room with Danx I want to pull you in on this.

“We've seen this become a point of conflict between the United States and key European allies and it's a big point of distinction between for example the juvenile ice strikes last year and this military campaign last year we had the G7 issue.”

Fairly you know, strong statement of support, you know, with some caveats or some careful language, but no, it's generally supportive tone. This time we only had can in Australia actually step in and voice support for the military operation and I don't not sure if they're just going to involvement with it that hasn't really been many. Last time we did not hear about any reports about Europeans posing major obstacles do use of air bases or airspace this time we've seen in actually expanding universal objection.

Now we have limitations by smudge of Spain and the UK all the UK is kind of waffled and mocked back some of it a little bit. We have Austrian and airspace, you have France setting limits. Talk to us about what the sort of rhetoric and the general posture of the Trump administration has taken means for those long-term relationships. To setting aside even the hostility that President Trump has expressed towards those conventional allies.

So certainly it's going to harm the relationship. The question to me is how much and also are there any kind of perhaps second order effects that might be beneficial.

“So the United States kind of had the worst of all worlds where it didn't consult allies at all, especially got key allies in Europe.”

And then as soon as things began to go bad in the war immediately began to berate them for not playing a major role. And this was especially galling to Europeans when the United States is calling on them to open the state of our moves, which would not have been closed as naturally pointed out earlier if it were not for the war.

And which the US Navy was reluctant to do because of the incredible difficulty of the operation.

So there is a sense of, you know, being seen as a relevant, there's a sense of insult, which is not a great combination. However, it again highlighted the dependence these states have on the United States militarily. And for those who have been kind of following European security, there has been a big shift in Germany to increase the power and budget of its intelligence service. And part of it is because they recognize they're incredibly dependent on the United States for almost everything. And that question they have is a legitimate one, which is will the United States be there? Should Europe need it. And we have contradictory signals from this administration.

But certainly if you focus on actions rather than words, there are genuine question marks to be raised. This has meant that Europe is actually increasing its own defense efforts, which can be a very good thing. I as someone who believes in democratic values want the Europeans to be more involved on the world stage. And I as an American want European partners to be playing a role. And sacrificing just as American sacrifice for broader security goals. But part of the reason for this otherwise very desirable end is that the European States don't trust the United States.

And rather than doing these sorts of build-ups in harmony with the United States and trying to complement US forces, it's often done to supplant the US role. So I can see some benefits of this, but it's being done for reasons to me that are very strongly against long-term US security interests, which can be dependent very much on the United States having close alliances with other democracies around the world. And you're being very much at the center of this. So I want to shift or focus and talk a little about the domestic front.

And Tyler, I want to come to you first on this one.

“This administration is, I think it's fair to say, like pretty obsessed with projecting strength, right?”

It is in the rhetoric, it's in the framing of everything. The President's Secretary Hicks has lots of people talk all day, would talk all day about the strength of the United States.

It's incredible military capability. And we see that on display in this conflict.

From a tactical, from a technical perspective, what the United States and its real accomplished in the first 48 hours of hostilities is pretty extraordinary. We just saw this really extraordinary rescue operation take place using all these emerging technologies, although the fact that details of them are now coming on the New York Post, I find, maybe slightly dismay. So that now our adversaries are fully aware of exactly what the constraints and limits of our capability are, including geographic range.

But nonetheless, there's pretty exceptional tactical and technical stuff happening throughout this conflict. That is pretty extraordinary.

“And I think probably does give adversaries the United States and Israel some pause to say, wow, this is actually kind of amazing.”

What the United States can accomplish, maybe even more than we fully expect it. That said, the United States ability to force its main media goal, like the opening of Strait or Muse, has been pretty limited. And as limitations come from the, you know, to some extent, the domestic political sphere and the economics sphere that feeds into that sphere. So talk to us about what you think are the big constraints there that we've seen, and how this kind of feeds into it. How much was President Trump and the Trump administration constrained by some of the outer limits of what's happening in this conflict and the kind of second and third order effects from this conflict?

Or am I exaggerating and reading too much into this idea that there's the worst proving on popular and proving very expensive and damaging to the global economy? Maybe that's not enough to actually have swayed them this way. What's your sentiment? Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen the most recent poll figures, but I imagine that the stunning military success in the very strict sense has made the generals look great to Trump's base, but maybe Trump not so much.

You know, if you look at all of the, the many shifting goals that that Trump threw out there of opening the Strait, that never happened, a regime change, that didn't happen.

In fact, it may be, I have just replaced it with a, a more extreme and, you know, more revoncious leader, diminishing Iranian military capacity.

It's not like a, I think those will be loom large and, you know, among the base. This is by no means scientific at all, but I, I opened up Facebook this morning for the first time in, I think, a year.

And the first post, I grew up in a fairly conservative area of Georgia. The first post was a guy went to my high school, very, very, like strong Niagara supporter, I've always seen and this was the first post he's ever made that was like an anti Trump post. He, he said, he highlighted the civilizational line and he said, this is not what I signed up for. This is not America first. This is not, you know, no more forever wars. And I was, I was like, I was shocked. It sounds like I'm making up a conservative, a mega voter, just like a strong man, but this is a real person and, you know, obviously it's just one person, but the, I think the civilizational line after the, one of the biggest single civilian casualty events in recent US military history happened.

“This is really hard to stomach, no matter, I think, where you stand on America first, just the combination of those two things, I think, would give any normal person pause, you know.”

So I, I don't know. I think this is a, a quagmire for Trump for sure. And, and I know we've been talking about the war in the past tense a bit, but, but I'm, maybe not as hopeful about the prospects of this ceasefire.

And so I think, you know, I don't want to even discount the idea that it could get even worse for Trump politically, domestically speaking.

I think that this really reflects an issue we've seen constantly with this administration, which is that it is so juvenile when it comes to the use of the military and it really feels sometimes including in the rhetoric that we have a bunch of,

“sorry, I'm going to try this time to not insult teenage boys as a general matter, but let's say the stereotypical video game playing teenage boy who's just like,”

these are cool weapons, we have cool capacity, we can do cool things with our fancy technology and our cool weapons, and it has no bearing whatsoever and is completely detached from any sense of strategy.

So, yes, it is true that there have been some incredible military successes. They are completely detached, that is completely detached from the question of whether they are of any strategic value.

And especially when you take into account the fact that some of these amazing tactical successes have been in response to problems of our own making, right? The rescue of this kernel which was genuinely incredible was because of a mission that I have seen some critics question the necessity of the need to figure out a means of reopening the straight-of-form moves as because the United States took all of these actions that were tactical successes. Query, you know, there are some people saying, how could they, they must have surely not been realizing that the Iranians would turn to the straight-of-form moves.

Everyone who's been in administration before this has said that's always been when thinking about potential conflict with Iran, the main deterrent is that obviously they would turn toward their ability to affect traffic in the state of Formus because that's a huge point of leverage. But, you know, tactical successes are impressive, yes, but it's really, I mean, it really bears thinking about the bigger picture, and that is that the technical and tactical capacity of the military is really secondary to the question of what are we even doing here in the first place.

I just want to kind of footstop and then footstop again, a point that Natalie made, which is the kind of strategic gap here.

“I think this is a administration that really almost doesn't have an interest in strategic objectives.”

Where if you look at what the kind of, you know, times and others have revealed about decision making, there wasn't any here's what we want to accomplish and here's the means we're going to put forward and here's how we hope to use the piece that results to achieve our interest, you know, all of that is lacking. I think President Trump wanted to look good with his own supporters, which I think is the kind of very strong motivator of most of his actions. And part of the reason he is seeking an offer amp is not just that this war is a popular with the American people and that this war is going to cost problems for his party over time.

And so when we think about domestic politics, usually that's a factor that is shaping foreign policy, but with this administration, I would really say that is the factor shaping the Iran war in particular.

“And let me ask you about another aspect of this, which is the sustainability of the US war effort, particularly at the tempo it's been pursued for weeks and going five weeks at this point.”

You know, we've gotten reports about interceptors that you know, supplies running low supplies and particularly, you know, kind of the recoup supplies were originally intended to be given to Ukraine's security assistant be divided to support the war effort there.

And there are a lot of these are the same systems that they rely on to shoot down the sorts of threats they're now facing quite regularly and the form of drones and ICBMs and other things from Iran.

And then fundamentally, the administration says it needs, you know, 200 billion dollars of middle appropriations to fund this ongoing effort, which it's only going to be able to get through reconciliation and even then it's slim margins. The slim control of both chambers and there are a whole book in skeptical of that paycheck if not the military campaign more broadly unwilling to say as much publicly. So, so how feasible would it have been for the Trump administration to sustain or you will it be, I guess, to sustain a conflict like we've been seeing for the past several weeks.

In the future and what is the limit on that? We know the war price resolution says 60 days and certain circumstances that would be a hard stretch here, but maybe in up to 90 days, then you've got this hard statutory bar. Presidents have kind of disregarded in the past and certain contexts, but nothing quite this dramatic.

And in theory it does open the door to a potential loss food or something if you wanted to see it.

So you've got that deadline and then you've got the funding and practical deadline as well.

“So is it true that President could have continued to keep continuing on this campaign or are there real limits there?”

So I think the limits are actually probably a bad phrasing, but limits are quite limited. I'll defer to others, in fact, everyone else on the session about the War Powers Act. Other than to say, I think politically he could probably blow it off and Congress would whack a lot of fingers, but not much would actually happen. Right, so there might be, you know, kind of some vehement calls that he should be paying attention, but I actually don't think people would vote to cut off funding for the US military app or anything else that would actually matter.

So, you know, it really depends on really his level of fear towards Congress, which I think is pretty close to zero.

The broader sustainability question certainly the munitions were running low, especially kind of certain key systems. Having said that the number for running attacks was also had a more limited level. The risk was borne by US allies, especially the Gulf States. And as a result, you know, the United States could keep finding, right, it's not the sort of thing where, you know, you're in Washington DC. We are, you know, going to shelters all the time because of running attacks, right, that's something that's happening in other countries rather in here.

But of course, there was Gulf State pressure that, you know, this is unsustainable, it's as we discussed earlier. More broadly, the munition shortage is a huge issue for the effort against Russia and contingency is against China. And these things, you know, some of the Tom Hock missiles, you know, they take months and months and months to produce relatively small numbers. And we used huge parts of our stockpile in this conflict. No, we can increase that, but it's a much more massive effort bureaucratically and politically to increase production numbers, and it's not something we've done.

There is of course, you know, the question of, can we replace all this? And the answer, you know, in, in the theoretical sense is yes, but there hasn't been much interest in Congress in kind of a massive long-term sustained increase of military spending.

“And doing it for more than is unpopular, I think is relatively unlikely.”

It's not all the question the US military remains popular, support for the military remains popular, but the idea of spending hundreds and billions of dollars and decimating. Some social programs that have already been shredded in the name of an unpopular war is just a bad political optic. And as midterms come up, I don't think many members of Congress want to be seen kind of voting in that area. So one more issue, because I flagged it up front before we wrap up our conversation night. And that is, I want to go back to the Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan article in excerpt from the book you mentioned, Natalie, because it's kind of a broader trend.

I've seen in coverage in the last 48 to 72 hours.

And particularly, particularly, that's kind of lined up as Trump's rhetoric has gotten more in my, by my reading, fairly desperate about it.

And they all have kind of a consistent theme, which is that they frame JD Vance as the person who opposed it.

“And if seen an article that does this in the Washington Post in the Politico, I believe in the Wall Street Journal, although I don't know if I actually got to read all that one all the way through.”

So maybe if I have a different conclusion, of course, with this piece in the New York Times coming from this book. It's pretty interesting. Possibly that they are all, you know, the fact that if this book forthcoming is kind of breaking the DM, although I don't think the book is actually scheduled to be released for another couple weeks. If maybe they're all coming, I'm certainly back on the same reporting, although I don't believe any of the other piece I saw attributed directly back to this account.

And it's a super detailed account, particularly they haven't read it so on piece, they go down to the specific places people are sitting in a meeting to which even the ODI and I was not invited, like Tulsi Gabbard, right? So it's only a group of like 12 or 14 people in this meeting. So, you know, my sense is when you see a wave of stories all doing the same things, that's because somebody is leaking it and putting it out there. And frame to shape a narrative and doing so. And that's why it kind of suspect is happening with people either J.D. Vance himself, people around him, or people who are worried about, you know, what this war, if it proves to be a disaster, could do for other people in the Republican Party, who might be seeing a standard bearers.

And they don't give Mark Rubio, you know, the top pride, they give it to J.D. Vance as a person who said, "No, this is a mistake."

You know, first, it might be a way to cynical in this kind of framing, I mean, this is what happens when you work with Ben Wittis and journalist for, for better part of a decade,

is that you become highly, highly cynical of the whole enterprise and that when I see stories, I'm assuming there's always some of classified meanings, there's always some strategic reason between leaking it.

“But me, the broader question is, if, if I am onto something, like what does it mean if people are trying to shift blame to Trump and away from J.D. Vance and kind of lie and eyes him?”

And what does that tell us about, like, the role of this, this set of decisions could play in the future trajectory of the Republican Party and in the future trajectory of American politics, whether, you know, we have our next presidential race, which people are already teeing up for, you know, does it say something that, at least by my estimation, people close to the president, seem to be trying to pass the responsibility off on him in a way on, you know, the next person in line. Does that make sense to you as a possibility?

Yeah, I think it definitely speaks to like, it seems motivated by survival of J.D. Vance, the presidential candidate, but also survival of the Republican Party.

I mean, if you can just offload this unpopular war on, like a lame duck president, then you don't have to be known attached to the party and, like, it doesn't poison the entire candidate pool is just sort of isolated to Trump. I don't think it's going to work, but, yeah, I don't know. Can I interrupt with some speaking news? Because as we have said, we don't know what's going to happen here. Our colleague, Kate Klanek, just dropped in our slack that the times of Israel and the Jerusalem post are both reporting that Iran has shut the straight of Formus again,

as retaliation for Israeli strikes on his Bella. So we'll see where that reporting goes. We haven't seen, I took a quick look on a couple of US news sites and didn't see that reported. But just in case, dear listeners, the entire conversation we had before this seems irrelevant. Just know that it's because things keep changing, which goes to our point about why it's unpredictable,

and this is entirely crazy-making when you're trying to analyze it.

“Yeah, the concept of open has always very relative, and I think that is likely to remain true in the new future.”

But my suspicion is at least for the next couple of days, as long as there's some colourable argument that's open or on its way to opening, and it kind of already was even before this deadline with a couple of ships being able to skirt by and on, and get some shipments at you in another region. I think it will be enough to keep the ceasefire in place if not, it's still a point of contention. But we will have to wait and see, I can be proven very wrong, very quickly.

With that, we are officially out of time today, but this would not be Russia's creative. If we don't leave it with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come until we're back in your pod catcher Dan, what do you have for us this week? So Scott, as you know, I've taken my personal mission to make sure that Russia's security has more references to different games. This is why I have you on Dan. This is the I rely on these, for your regular appearances, for my holiday shopping, and then happy purchases.

Some people can paint, yes. And so a game, and I'd like to shout out my older son for this one, recently played is a 1960 colon, the making of the president, which is a game that simulates the 1960 election campaign. I'd like to boast that thanks to me, tricky did win the 1960 election, although it was, again, a very close election,

Wonderful. I love these historical simulation games that you've been bringing it away.

Natalie, what do you have for us this week? I have a book recommendation that I have been reading, which has been really enjoyable. I picked it up again recently because I was diverted by life and wars and such, but it is called this strange eventful history by Claire Mesoud.

“I believe I apologize if I'm mispronouncing her last name.”

It is the story of a family over the course of, I don't know, 70 or so years, written in chapters from different families.

From different family members perspectives and weaving together their experiences living in all different parts of the world starting in Algeria. Family that lived in Algeria, but considered themselves French, and this was during World War II, and different parts of the family spread out, moved to all different areas of the world. It's very interesting. It's not super historical fiction in the sense that it's portraying historical events, but it is very much adjacent to it. So it's sort of one of those books where you feel like you're getting a flavor of what living through those times was like, not the events themselves, but what it was like to live.

“And I think the thing I'm actually enjoying about it best is it most is that it is just really, really beautifully written in a very unique way, including in the sense that I think that some of her sentences go on for, you know, ten lines.”

But they're just beautifully composed and they sort of follow the way that we think and anyway, I will stop. I will stop explaining it because it's worth picking up and experiencing on your own, but it is just such a delight to read really, really good writing. Wonderful. Wonderful. So you know, just in there, I'm going to go a little more low brow with my object lesson this week. I was reminded by another pop culture podcast. The wonderful blank check of a cultural artifact that I completely forgot and for the last decade, but went back and rewatch and I felt like has a little bit more relevance as we tried to understand the psyche of the man making such big decisions that affect all of our lives and lives.

Everyone around the world, that is of course our president Donald Trump. And that is in 2002, arrow Morris, the documentarian, did a series of documentary interviews for the Oscars, interviewing various celebrities about their favorite movie. And they've clipped that aired for that Donald Trump recorded with him was about King Kong, but he also did another extended conversation with him specifically about Citizen Kane.

“And movie about which Donald Trump doughed out has strong feelings. I think he's actually identified as his favorite movie and kind of prior comments to this.”

I don't back and watch the clip and it's kind, it's really extraordinary because actually for a little good part of the conversation, this has also done through arrow Morris's signature interetron, where you're like looking down the barrel at the person speaking and a way that's a little unusual, I feel like for video documentaries. Donald Trump actually says some like things about Citizen Kane that are like insightful and perspective and show a little bit of, you know, sensitivity to some of the themes that I think the filmmaker certainly meant to communicate around the choices made.

And then ends it on a note, that may have been editing, but I run it over with our more sense of it was not, this is actually how the interview ended. That is so discordant and leads in such a different direction. It really changes the whole interview. It's really extraordinary to watch. I highly recommend it. So I'll throw that out there. Watch the 2002 interview with Donald Trump, but Citizen Kane, it is a weird window into an odd man who controls a lot of things about our lives these days. And with that, I will leave it to you Tyler, bring us home. What do you have for your optic lesson this week?

For a second, I thought you're going to recommend revisiting the apprentice. I never visited the apprentice in the first place. It's really no basis for revisiting it in my mind.

I'll be best, but I'm going to, yeah, anyway, so much to be cynical about, I'm going to recommend consuming as much Artemis to content as humanly possible. I mean, it's just been like just a hopeful bright spot. I mean, watching the video of the astronaut naming the spot on the moon after his late wife was like, if you don't cry, if your eyes are dry after that, you have no hope. I think, or I have no hope for you. It's just been, I think, a really delightful and hopeful news story. So I'm recommending something that probably everyone listening to this is already very aware of, but if you haven't seen that video, watch it if you've seen it, watch it again.

It's, it's a, yeah, it's very, there's a lot of humanity happening up there. Yeah, really extraordinary. It's been something really touching to watch. And it's something that could have been a really positive unifying heartwarming story for the Trump administration, which can legitimately take some credit for the Artemis initiative,

Well, with that, that brings us to the end of this week's episode.

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Our audio engineer producer this week was Nome Osban of Go Rodeo, and our music has always was performed by Steve Hanna.

“We're once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha.”

Beth, my guest, Dan, Natalie, and Tyler. I am Scott, our Anderson, and we will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.