Rational Security: The “Hip to Be a Square State” Edition

in circles?

Running isn't enough anymore.

“With PWC's managed services, your operations don't just run, they evolve continuously,”

powered by AI embedded directly into your workflows. So instead of maintaining yesterday's model, you're building tomorrow's advantage. PWC's managed services, we run your operations with tech and talent, so you can run faster, scale smarter, lead stronger. I have to say, given that you're recently returned from a tropical locale, you don't have

the usual, my usual kind of pastiche that I have, which is that I'm usually like bright bright red. But you seem very reasonably colored, obviously you are a complete native. If you figure it out, master the system. It's called makeup Scott.

Ah, that is an advantage, I suppose. But also from 18 years of living in Hawaii, I would get tanned from a, sort of, a white to kind of a beige, a known will ever believe that I'm from Hawaii unless I show pictures. Sadly. Yeah, I get a little tanned from walking by, like a fryer at a McDonald's, so that's

okay. You're all around. You're doing reasonably well. Dan and are if you guys got to do any vacation traveling yet, or you guys still have your vacations ahead of you.

So I'm actually off this weekend to a kind of local theater festival in Charleston, West Virginia, or I'm sorry, Shepherd's Town West Virginia, which I commend to everyone. It's five kind of small, little budget plays that they run throughout the weekend. So doing lots of small things like that to culturally enrich myself and maybe at the

“beach once or twice, but other than that, it's a pretty low key summer for me.”

No vacation yet, but I just came back from Ankara, which was a work trip, but, and Dan will be very excited about this. I am planning my first road trip in the Midwest, which means that I'm going to be adding a bunch of states.

I've never been to to my list of, you know, 50 states I would like to explore at some

point. So, you know, stay tuned. I will have a lot more to share about Michigan specifically and possibly in the end. You know, being from Hawaii, you know, I'd never really had been to the middle of the country. And so my thought on them was always that they were square states, because when you're

flying over them and you look out the window, you see nothing but squares. Is that not true? I mean, you're there on the ground. I will say there are a lot of grids, right? And, you know, open space meant you could keep the grid going and going and going.

So, that's not a slam, that's just good land use policy. Just take it. That's efficient, man.

“You need those right angles to run them together.”

Otherwise, you got dead space in the middle. Everybody's doing circles. The end up with those little edges. Wendy's learned this years ago. The DC LaFont design is kind of a disaster from a traffic management point of view.

So, that is pretty, so nice. Those avenues. Can't get enough. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security. The show we're going to invite you to join members of the LaFont team.

It's we try to make sense of the biggest national security news stories. I am your host Scott R. Anderson thrilled to be back for another week with my very talented LaFont family. To help me make sense of said news stories. It has been a very international week, lots of international news stories.

And I have my international new crew here joining me. Once again, joining me first off is veteran of Rational Security. Anyway, all the way back to one point out I have no doubt is LaFont as a former policy editor. General, foreign affairs, and now security may even be in diamond dan. Thank you for coming back on the podcast.

Always happy to be here, Scott.

Also joining us is LaFont contributing editor and former public service fellow. Now vice president, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Ari Tabatabai, Ari, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Thanks for having me again. And joining us is LaFont's most recent edition.

The most recent LaFont fan public service fellow following in Ari's footsteps is none other than the newly refreshed, tragically sung kiss Julia Curley. Julia, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Absolutely, Scott. You can see how tanned and ready to go.

I am. There you go. Here you go. It's better to make a bit of that like. We'll take it.

We'll take it. Well, we have had a big week in the makings in international affairs. Let me get right into it with our topics and teed up for our conversation. Topic one for this week. True or consequences.

The fragile ceasefire that had paused the US Iran war since the spring it now appears to have collapsed. If Iran struck several commercial vessels, transit in the state of Formus, the United States has launched several successive nights of strikes, hitting more than 300 targets across Iran. Iran has in turn retaliated against US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan released attempted

to do so. Speaking from the NATO summit in Ankara, one of our other topics of conversation this week, President Trump declared the June memorandum of understanding over, even as he insisted that talks toward the lasting peace could continue.

the ceasefire's fully broken down, then yesterday, President Trump escalated further declaring that the United States would keep and run the state as it self-styled Guardian, and stating a blockade on Iranian ships and charging a 20% fee of all cargo passing through, although he has since walked back. That last requirement has this morning.

An arrangement that Tehran unspriced lands flatly rejected as I suspect I have a few other countries in the region, at least on the 20% point, is the war fully back on and is there

“any diplomatic path leftable both sides back from the brink?”

Topic 2, Route Awakening, NATO's leaders gathered in Ankara last week for a summit that Secretary General Mark Root, billed as the launch of NATO 3.0, a stronger, more self-reliant Europe inside an alliance less dependent on the United States. Allies tatted rapid progress towards last year's pledge to spend 5% of GDP on defense,

announcing more than $50 billion in new procurement, and at least $70 billion in fresh military

for Ukraine. But the gathering was overshadowed by friction with President Trump, who publicly berated allies for declining to help in the Iran War and briefly revived his campaign to acquire control of Greenland before ending on a somewhat more conciliatory note. What did the Ankara summit actually accomplish and what does NATO 3.0 mean for the alliance's

future? Topic 3, Bad Romance, the one's close alliance between Washington, Jerusalem, and between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu, is showing unusual public strain. Trump has repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu over Israel's continued military operations in Lebanon, which have threatened the Iran ceasefire, and over the stalled second phase of his gossip

peace plan, which has all but wilted as Hamas has refused to disarm, and Israel has refused to withdraw. The Defense Secretary, Pete Hegsev, abruptly canceled a plan trip to Israel earlier this month, and a possible F-35-sealed Turkey has added to the unease between the two countries. The tensions turned vivid this past week when Democratic Representative Rukana said

that it was detained for more than an hour by armed Israeli settlers and later by the IDF, during a visit to the West Bank, and armed settlers attacked to see an end crew and other journalists just days later. At home, Israeli confidence and Trump has plummeted in advance as really elections later this year, even as U.S. primaries produced a number of candidates, a record number of candidates

critical of Israel, particularly on the left.

Just how strained is the U.S. Israeli relationship and how my Israel's coming elections in America's mid-terms reshape it. So for our first topic, Julia, let me start with you on this. We have been living under the ceasefire for the last several weeks in Iran. It was a ceasefire.

“I think I'll have a lot of people raising a lot of questions about the wisdom of it, but”

the one brights of it, that most people seem to agree, is that it seemed to open the door for some traffic to come through the straighted form is. In the last week, now this has completely broken down. To the point, I think it's fair to say that it looks like we are back to square one. The United States is blockade in Iranian ports.

The United States is going back to its operation freedom that installed in May, or something similar model where it is purporting provide security to vessels transiting the straight. We don't know exactly what the terms of that look like, how effective it will be. We can talk about that. I have doubts myself.

But regardless, we basically seem to be in a situation a lot like where we were in May before the ceasefire, which is that we are not yet seeing a full resumption of the scale of hostilities, the scale of targeting that we saw in the first 30 days of the military campaign. I'm nothing close to that, but we are seeing a substantial clip up in the assertive targeting

we are seeing a Iranian target. It's moving beyond just self-defense strikes to these, as sent to come off and describes it, "Presidential Authorized Strikes," these are strikes using the presence article to authority, not premised on the basis of more direct self-defense theory that are going after Iranian capabilities.

Primarily threatening the straight so far, although who knows where it can go from here.

“How big a breakdown is this, do you think, in this ceasefire?”

I mean, is there a space to recover from this? And what is the path forward from here? It strikes me at a situation that doesn't have, frankly, an easy road out. Thanks, Scott. I think that the big picture is that this was not a piece that failed.

This was a pause that was written by a real estate developer in a son-in-law that was always

going to fail. It's going to fail because the terms of the deal could be interpreted by both sides in a mutually incompatible way. And it was going to fail if the Israelis were co-bligrants in the fight, but not actually a part of the deal.

The deal itself said nothing on Lebanon, which turned out to be one of Iran's core issues, Israel kept striking inside their Lebanon, Netanyahu said the struggle was not over. And so this was an amateur hour deal that was produced with a detonator built into it. And so what I think we're in for is a period which I would call a violent competitive bargaining phase.

There's an American ideal of how a conflict should end, which is that there should be unconditional surrender, sometimes we'll even turn our enemies into our allies, but that's not actually how most wars end. And so what I think we're in now is the bargaining phase, haggling over the terms with a strike, pause, shovel diplomacy, and repeat where the shooting and the talking are one negotiation.

So it is a difficult pattern to understand exactly where this goes in.

I mean, we saw US military action against Iranian targets, I think just days after the MOU was negotiated. And we saw it, a kind of repeated clip, but there was small, narrow targeted actions, usually directly in response to some sort of threat in action, at least as described by US forces. And clearly in my mind, intended to say, okay, Iranians, we're not going to let you

go too far in targeting vessels, but we're not going to try and re-escalate in a way to break down. That tolerance, that sense that we want to preserve the broad architecture of the semi-U, really is what seems to have broken down in the last week.

Both, and you can argue about who did it first, but at least in terms of the description

for the administration. And I actually think this more or less lines up at the reporting, it does look like we saw some really substantial serious attacks against shipping, happening, particularly more on the homonic side of the straight, where we've seen vessels kind of moving trying to evade or worried about Iranian threats, including someone where we saw a ship completely disabled.

“You saw 11, I believe there are Indian sailors having to evacuate, one of whom was still”

on account of where at least to the last report I read, so may well end up proving to be a fatal attack. And that appears just to replicate the cycle where the United States is now hitting back. You can call it re-establishing deterrence by least favorite phrase in these sorts of discussions, whatever you want to call it, but they're trying to take more proactive action targeting

the Iranians. How do you come back from that sort of cycle? I mean, we're in an esculatory cycle now, it seems to me, the response to the Iranians and respond to perceived American actions that they escalated now, the United States is escalated against Iran, Iran is escalated against regional partners.

And only a pretty broad swath of regional partners. We had missiles reportedly intercepted on their way to US military facilities in Jordan, you know, a far stretch beyond the Gulf. So talk to us about what sort of path you see out of it, how do you actually get out of this sort of dangerous cycle?

Is the MOU of vehicle to do it? Or is this about stepping beyond a MOU and accepting that we're back to square one?

Julia, I'll turn to you first and I'll turn to Ari and Dan next.

So I'm fairly pessimistic that we're going to get back to a deal that is any better than the terms that were on the table before the most recent round of violence. So Sankham is saying that it's keeping a target list as leverage, trying to use force as a messaging tool. But at the end of the day, the Iranians have the upper hand.

They have the straight of Hormuz where they can use it to throttle traffic, to match the mood at the table, to ratchet up the pressure on the United States. There's a mismatch in the level of interest and commitment between the two parties. We have Iran fighting a war of survival ready to impose costs upon the US that we're not willing to sustain in a war of choice that we began that's been unpopular from the

beginning. And so with the administration not articulating a credible outcome that's any different than the status quo ante, the Iranians are just going to wait until we eventually

negotiate ourselves down and provide greater and greater concessions for them to stop the

attacks upon vessels that are transiting the straight, which is now functionally closed. Ari, let me turn to you. I want to take your perspective on this. But we add one other wrinkle into this. We've seen at least some reports, so far, unconfirmed reports, that there was some back

channeling happening from the Iranians, at least some of the early strikes, pretty

“against them, the shipping, some reports indicate some funny in Iran, particularly I think”

really tied to the negotiating team was saying that this was actually essentially a rogue IRGC element or an IRGC element acting independently without the full sign off of the architecture saying they want to get on track towards the ceasefire, but that this was something that out of their control, not sanctioned by them. Do you give much credibility to those reports?

I mean, they are in confirmed. I don't think we really know, but it's implausible to you at least. And what does that tell us about the added difficulties of negotiating here when, again, the Iranian leadership structure, even now, even after the funeral of the Iatola this past week, still seems a little unclear, exactly who's in charge and exactly who is calling

the shots? Yeah, well, so I agree with everything Julia has said so far, which is that, you know, I think in essence, this is the new study state for the foreseeable future. We are probably, and you know, I think Scott you asked at the beginning, do we come back from this?

And I don't think we do for the foreseeable future.

“I think what we're going to likely see is this episodic kind of escalations and whether”

it's accompanied by some sort of message from Iran saying, oh, it was just rogue IRGC people doing this or not, I think we're going to probably see these episodic tensions and then kind of at the same time on enough negotiations between the two sides that are not really going to go anywhere and by not going to go anywhere, I mean, nowhere substantive, right? Like we're not going to end up with a comprehensive deal that actually addresses the various

things that the outside of the war were laid out as the key objectives for these operations

weapon and so on and so forth. So I think this is just the new study states and, you know, I think that to Julius earlier point, the Iranians have seen the writing on the wall. They got a bunch of concessions on the front end of the negotiations that essentially gave them everything they had been wanting for years and years that no other administration had

given to them and that includes language on US withdrawal from the region and includes a language on determination of all US sanctions on Iran including things like human rights that were not even on the table at that point.

Second, the president has signaled over and over again that he is not particularly interested

in focusing on this issue for the foreseeable future. He feels like he's kind of, you know, done what he set out to do and he can kind of control the situation the way things are going and he is interested in moving on to Cuba and other issues and three, the elections are just four months away and this is, as far as foreign policy issues go, this is probably going to be one of the issues that actually sticks on some

level in the minds of voters as they go to the ballot box not because they particularly care about what's going on in the Middle East but because they care deeply about the economic impact of this conflict and from everything we've seen from fertilizers to oil to, you know, basically gas to prices all of those things are being affected by this conflict. To your second question about this IRGC rogue narrative, it is an narrative that has been,

you know, there for a long time. That is a very convenient one for Iran to dangle in front of us every few years when things happen. Is it possible sure is it likely, yeah, I don't think so especially in this environment where the IRGC has really attained a more consolidated influence over the political situation

in Iran and so I do think that especially in times of conflict where the regime is actually really trying to kind of maintain its grip on power, it's trying to consolidate, you're not really going to have a ton of rogue activity by IRGC operatives. I do think it is a very convenient narrative for them to put out there though and say, hey, we're negotiating with you, we don't know what the other guys are doing.

“I mean, you know, you have to, you have to, it's the kind of narrative that we've heard”

over and over again. I don't think it's typically proven to be correct for the most part and I think in this case it is even less likely that it is an accurate depiction of what's going on domestically within Iran. Dan, let me turn to you on this because, you know, there's a lot to be said, we've heard from

Julian already about this idea that we're returning to a new steady state in this sort of situation. Part of that steady state is something that President Trump does to gest in his tweets he's trying to address, but it's something that's proven hard to be, which is that the general military control of the straight of her moves and he says we're going to essentially become

the guardian of the straight of her moves. We're going to start asserting control over it and then be able to guarantee safety and

“that's why we get our 20% or our lucrative trade and investment deals with the Gulf”

countries, which is what he's kind of replaced the 20% with as of this morning. The problem with that strikes me that this is what the United States said it was going to do in early May with Project Freedom, I think was called, said what they're going to do

this at various points and it's always been kind of ruled out as a possibility or it's

at least their assertions of military presence hasn't actually stopped their wave attacks enough to allow maritime shipping to come back to the level that you would need to address the economic problems from this. So, so operationally what would be needed if you were actually able to accomplish that gold, we have a sense of that and how feasible is that what would the cost be, what would

the trade off speed? So, the cost is a human cost to end up political cost. You could imagine kind of multiple types of deployments. One is a continual large scale US Navy deployment in the region where the United States is really trying to control or leave shape, naval traffic, anywhere near or around, especially

as you get to the straight. And that is certainly doable, you know, we have it exceptionally capable Navy, but errors

in an incredible strain being put on the force.

And we've already seen that in terms of very basic things like maintenance and in general kind of modernization efforts and training and given the demands on the Navy, especially in the Pacific, there's a real opportunity cost to keeping large forces.

“And then if you want to talk about actually opening the straight, there you get to ground”

troops. And this could be relatively limited numbers with a lot of air power, but you're still putting people on the ground and you're giving the Iranians a target. And you know, military operations, especially of the sort, it's really hard to make predictions

would die in these operations.

And the longer they went on, the more that likelihood is, and President Trump is exceptionally sensitive to US casualties.

“I think he embarked on this operation on the kind of naive assumption that this could”

be immaculate from a US point of view. We'd go in and the Iranians, after a couple of days, would just surrender or at least cow-tow, and this would be over. So there are certainly our possibilities, but there isn't enthusiasm, at least to my knowledge on the US military side for this.

And certainly not on the side of the politicians and the Trump administration, especially as I can tell, including the President of the United States himself.

Every person you've talked to on this podcast probably has their own personal working

model of President Trump. So I'll give you a couple of, you know, my insights or that people can take with many grants of salt. But he does seem to be exceptionally short term in his thinking, right? It seems to be how do I get through the problem of facing right now and, you know, just

have it off the front pages this week, and we'll move on.

“And I think that showed up to a degree in the MOU, which as Julia Sawasio was just not”

written by serious professionals, because that would have taken more time and required more effort. And instead there was a rush to it, and not surprisingly, the problems with the MOU contribute

to the collapse of a very fragile ceasefire.

But I don't think Trump is thinking particularly long term, I think he was putting pressure on Israel earlier on Lebanon, because he wanted a ceasefire now, and I think he's thinking, okay, how do I get the Iranians back on the table in the short term? I do think I'm perhaps a bit more optimistic than Korean Julia about this, not in the sense of maybe optimistic strong word.

I believe in a greater likelihood of a return to more of a ceasefire and think of this as a spectrum rather than as an absolute. But part of why I believe that is, I believe the Trump administration is willing to make concessions. And for everyone, who is part of the session, we've all kind of watched Iran, U.S. relations

over the years, and the concessions that were already on the table were actually rather staggering from a historic U.S. point of view.

“But I think Iran spots weakness on the U.S. side, and is probably correct.”

So I think there's at least a possibility the Trump administration might return to even more concessions, especially as the price of oil and gas starts to rise as anger from U.S. Gulf allies who do have access to the present increases. So that's at least one scenario that's a possibility. So you know, that brings us to this question about what the Middle East begins to look like

if this is something like the new reality. I think what you're describing, Dan, is in the spectrum of saying close enough to the status quo or the status quo on average of the last month, somewhere in that kind of spectrum is where we may lie. And if that's the case, it strikes me as like that's a pretty dramatic shift in the region

from a lot of different perspectives. One, it means you got the Gulf states rely on upon a major export route for a lot of their goods on Iran that's going to give them a persistent point of leverage. Even if you get some sort of negotiated solution from the United States, you know, how long are the Gulf States going to be completely willing to work through the United States?

I suspect a lot of them are going to have an incentive to work side deals. You've also got, you know, countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, over the ones most heavily hit by the direct ability to get these exports, export energy exports from the Gulf, important in particular refinery facilities like Singapore, India, or particularly extremely hard hit by this, they're probably going to make deals with Iran.

As you have a revenue source for Iran, you have it increased leverage for Iran over some pretty strategically significant parties if you think about India on the one hand, the Gulf states on the other, I suspect this also causes fairly substantial complications for the Gulf is being a place to host US military forces because it really increases the cost of transit and of location.

I mean, what does the region begin to look like if this is the new normal? Dan, I'll start with you on that. So this is a really great and to be very important question. The United States is stepping back in some ways from big attempts to shape the region. So we're not we're seeing movement away from trying to, you know, do deals on Israel-Palestine

for example, but at the same time we are seeing this continuation of US military presence. So I can imagine lots of allies going in very different directions and some of that might be positive, they might take more of the burden on themselves for security. Some of them might work more with one another than they have in the past, you know, we're

But a lot of it's going to be allies and partners working across purposes and that historically

has required a lot of very patient US diplomacy and that's something that this administration has not really focused on. And so I could easily imagine in some parts of the region, you know, Turkey and Israel coming into your blows in Syria, it's just one example, not just because they have different interests but because the United States early on did not knit problems in the bud because

it wasn't paying attention to these. We could see some of the Gulf States trying to play Kate Iran rather than confront Iran because they believe perhaps correctly that the United States is not going to be backing them if there's a dispute. You could imagine, you know, some degree of military action at times by some states against

others probably in a much more limited way. But nevertheless, the kind of, you know, hard to call it a packs of Americana, where there's been so much bloodshed. But the idea that the United States is going to armitary disputes and push partners to work together, at least not fight each other.

That to me is probably going to go away or at least imagine a significant thing.

So are, are let me turn to you and pull in a little bit of what's going to be our second

topic. But I want to pull in relevant nexus here, which is European, particularly in NATO allies. A number of their economies are more exposed to the economic effects of this than we are, at least in some of direct effects, particularly around agricultural products, you know, things like that, global oil prices kind of affects everyone, although in theory they're

a little more vulnerable to that as well because they may not have the same availability of alternatives. United States has sort of cultivated, additional alternatives. But we really haven't seen much, but we've seen a limited willingness to engage around this issue. So you see McCron doing some specific diplomacy, targeted diplomacy, certainly was involved

in facilitating the MOU. We haven't seen much willingness on the European partners to engage in any sort of military activity yet. And that is an interesting departure. If you think about the hooties crisis of 2023, 2024, the Biden administration, you saw European

and other ally countries actively involved this effort. There are genuinely multinational efforts even though I would say the United States seen.

“I think they'll most of the kinetic work, particularly in terms of air strikes and things”

like that. Do we see space for that changing anytime soon? I mean, there are real reservations about their own conflict that I think are very valid and legitimate from policy, from legal perspectives. But the case for self-defense, at least legally against Iran, the national law gets stronger

the more Iran starts hitting more and more of these neighboring states. And then you have the economic impact. And then you have the fact that the original sin of the United States and Israeli intervention begins to fade as problems mount and the new Iranian regime is making all these decisions. So is there a point where you make, you see the Europeans more involved, which made

lend itself to a more complete military solution? Or is that something the United States is going to have to bear on its own for the foreseeable future? Unfortunately, the Europeans are trying to figure out what we've been talking about for

“the past, you know, however many minutes here, which is where is all of this going?”

What are the assumptions that have underpinned decades of policy on Iran that have been blown up by this whole conflict and the MOU and everything that has happened since, which is many assumptions? How do they navigate this situation where they have, you know, this is a conflict that is deeply unpopular with a lot of their domestic populations.

They're also, will come back to this in a bit. They're also trying to manage their intranetotentions with the United States. And at the same time, they're just trying to kind of figure out where their interests lie in Iran. And they cannot, for the first time, I think, in a really long time, they cannot really rely

on the United States to take those into account. And that is significantly different from where we've been before. And certainly, you know, we had tensions with Europeans on, you know, the return to JCPOA under divide administration, there were tensions going back a decade and a half about what the JCPOA should look like under the Obama administration.

But you've never had a situation in which they could not essentially count on the United

States to even consider or try to understand what their interests are, let alone try to actually advance some of those things in any kind of policy-making process of these of Iran.

“So, you know, I think they're just trying to navigate a lot of these things.”

And on some level, it's just created the situation where they can't really move forward because they're trying to understand where we all go collectively as an international community, where the dust settles, whether the ceasefire is back on or not. And what the situation in the street looks like, they have noted that there are discrete areas where they would be willing to work with the United States.

The freedom of navigation operations is the first and foremost, where they have said that there is precedent for this through various maritime security constructs that the Europeans have led in the past, that they would be engaged in trying to kind of, you know, keep the

the street. And they're willing to do some of that work. It's just a matter of, where do we land and, you know, what is the, where does the shooting stop and where does that sort of next phase begin?

“And there's too many questions I think for them to know where they're going from here.”

So, that is one of the main issues. And I think you know, to what Dan was saying and going back to this whole notion that all of our assumptions when it comes to Iran and on some level, the broader Middle East have been fundamentally just reshaped by this conflict. There's going to be a number of conversations, both in Europe and here on what our toolkit

actually looks like going forward with Iran, right? If this MOU in whatever way survives and if the sanctions end up being lifted because there is movement in that direction, then that is going to significantly reshaped the way we have dealt with Iran in the past and by the way Iran is not going to stop some of the behavior that had led to those sanctions that, you know, we've had the sanctions architecture.

So how are we going to respond going forward? And that is obviously going to be a question for US policy makers, which I'm not certain to Dan's point would just to kind of limit it bandwidth and limited attention span that they're actually doing that thinking.

“I think it's certainly also going to be a question for the Europeans going forward because”

they've had, you know, in some ways they've been able to kind of tag along with US policy for over a decade and a half at this point and that they don't have the luxury of doing that anymore. So before we move on to the next topic, do I want to circle back to you to put on your icy analyst hat a little bit on this?

You know, I am not a regional expert, but I've been following this stuff for 20 years, 15 years. It's a grad student, a little bit in government and the sort of other issues.

And I'll come like this is something that I think was always a background concern about

any sort of military action involving Iran. The scenario I heard the most discussed I think over the years is the more the concern of state collapse in Iran facilitating a failed state, but that the outcome was somewhat similar, which is that, well, then you have these small subnational actors that can present a very difficult to address threat on a lot of different dimensions to a lot of different interests

in the region, because Iran straddles such a significant, strategically significant, kind of corner of the region, but particularly the straight-of-formers being, for most among them. Anyways, what we see now is worse than that, because we see what looks like a regime that is still kind of in control of the state setting aside maybe there are some rogue cells

and things like that, but some sort of cohesive entity, at least within reach of restablishing control of the state, even if there is still some internal fighting going on, but that is in a position, feels like it's in a position to be able to level like these sorts of threats and then capitalize upon it much more strategically with much more significance. What lesson do you pull from that from the fact that the Trump administration pursued

this choice? Okay, this is not a surprise, this isn't outcome that was on the table, it think it's an outcome that was probably baked into most assessments that the president would have been presented with from at least the career intelligence analyst and career policy people, because it's been in the zeitgeist for 20 years.

What lesson do you take away from it? And what lessons do you think also others are taken away from it, whether it's rivals like China and Russia, whether it's allies in Europe, what are the big lessons that their intelligence

analysts are looking at this enterprise and saying here's what this comes out with, here's

what it tells us about the United States at this particular moment.

“Well, I think allies and partners are going to take American incoherence as a large part”

of the story. I know that the president has walked back his statement that he would impose a toll on the straight, but if there was one thing that the US superpower was supposed to do, it was to keep open the freedom of the seas. And if we adopt the Iranian theory of the straight, I don't know what's to prevent, for

example, Beijing from imposing its own toll on traffic in the Taiwan straight or for other middle powers to attempt to do that with their own contested bodies of waters. It has been a bedrock principle of the US that the freedom of the seas is invaluable. And so abandoning that takes away a real benefit that the US has provided to its allies and partners over the years.

I think that our adversaries have also learned from this episode that the way the US conducts itself in the conflict, where we escalate, then run out of endurance, look for an exit, and then can't even hold our position as our domestic political position collapses, is not a good playbook for the United States to maintain deterrence. Yeah, I want to stop what Julia is saying.

I think it's plausible to me at least that when we look back at the Spyritan years from now, the biggest legacy of all this may actually be on US relations with allies around the world.

Where those are really remarkable set of kind of statements where first there was no coordination

And this was happening even as the United States and Israel, these attacks were causing

a grave economic harm to many countries around the world. And at the same time, very bitter complaints that the allies weren't helping. And this of course comes in the context of things like Greenland and other what allies saw as kind of grave or fronts of sense that the United States was going to kind of recklessly involve them in unnecessary problems, and then be angry that the United States didn't help.

“And this I think is understandably pushing allies to think twice about US security guarantees”

to think twice about US relations. And even though many allies were not directly affected in the sense of none of their nationals were attacked, everyone has been affected economically. And the seaming chaos of the US approach where the end result is a United States kind of desperately

trying to get back to a status quo anti, but unsuccessfully doing so.

To me, many allies are going to look at the United States with questions and sometimes I will warn us to caveat to my own remarks. Often the middle of one particular crisis or another you think this is going to be or shaking. And then five years later it's kind of a barter of a question of what happened. But I do think that this really is a kind of sharp moment that takes existing trends that

we're very negative and probably reinforces them perhaps in ways that might be quite lasting. So I was traveling in Europe earlier this year in the late spring and all over local television

“were stories of farmers that were going to be unable to plant their spring crops this”

year because they couldn't afford the price of gas. And on local television, the analysts and then the government put the blame for that squarely on the shoulders of the United States. They pointed out that we started the war that we did not consult with them and now their own people would have to pay the price.

And so I fear that that kind of memory is going to stick with the populations of our allies and partners for some time. Do your current managed services really help run your operations or are they just running in circles? Running isn't enough anymore.

With PWC's managed services, your operations don't just run. They evolve continuously, powered by AI embedded directly into your workflows. So instead of maintaining yesterday's model, you're building tomorrow's advantage. PWC's managed services, we run your operations with tech and talent so you can run faster, scale smarter, lead stronger.

Speaking of those allies and partners, let us go to our second topic where they are at

center stage. I want to turn to you on this. You have been in Ankara. I'm assuming not by coincidence, over the course of this summit. Talk a little about what you saw there, what you, how much of these lessons and perceptions

that Dan and Julia have laid out about that sort of allies might be taking about Iran. And you can put other chapters in that same book as well Greenland being perhaps the biggest narrative arc or turning point.

“I think of the second administration lease for European so far, arguably at least before”

the Iran conflict. Talk to us about what you heard, what you learned about the state of NATO, and how it all feeds into this vision of this NATO 3.0 that the Secretary General has been putting forward in large part to satiate the demands of the Trump administration. I think at least most people perceive it that way.

Well, I would encourage folks to read this my latest column and law fair with my co-author John Drennan about NATO 3.0 and what it looks like, I'll provide some of the top lines. Let's start with just overall, I think the summit could have gone a lot worse, it could have gone a lot better as well. So we got some, we lost some, let's start with the tensions and what didn't go

particularly well, and we can start with where we left off, which is on Iran. Iran is obviously, you know, was not really supposed to be a big agenda item at the summit because it is not a thing that NATO is really designed to concern itself with, but it was everywhere. It was really overshadowing a lot of the discussions precisely because of what both

and Julia just brought up in the last piece of the Iran conversation, which is that the allies were not consulted with, they're still trying to figure out what the plan is here, how they fit into the plan, what comes next, and so there were so many conversations and I got so many questions from European colleagues asking me, how did you guys underestimate Iran's resilience, Iran's ability to respond, the, you know, straight closure prospects,

it wasn't out yet, but you know, essentially what has happened to the national security decision-making

“structure and processes, because that has a lot to do with why we did not anticipate some”

of the things that, you know, have occurred since then, or I should say, so people anticipated them, not the people, unfortunately, making the decisions. So the Iran piece was very much real, was very much overshadowing a lot of what was going

on in Ankara. The second thing, as Dan mentioned, Greenland is still looming, not the least,

because the president landed in within hours of his being underground, he was meeting in his bilateral meeting with President Erdogan and he brought up Greenland and prompted all these series of responses from the finish delegation, from the deans, of course, and so on and so forth. So Greenland is not resolved, and, you know, the European's keep reminding us that this is a really significant thing, that when you have the Danish Prime Minister have to come out

and say, we will defend every inch of NATO territory, including our own from the dominant ally, this is not an insignificant thing. The third piece is that there was so much time in bandwidth that was just spent overall managing the United States, and you could really see that at the official level, you could see it at the kind of unofficial level where people were constantly saying, "Thank you so much to the Trump administration for reminding us that we need

to grow up, and take care of our own security, and just trying to, like, really say the right things so that they would not blow up this process, because there were concerns ahead of the summit that we would end up with a summit that was cut short, even though they already shrunk the amount of time that would be spent in Ankara precisely to avoid that from happening. There were concerns that all of these tensions on Iran, on Greenland, and so on and so forth,

would essentially mean that the summit would become full of tension and not really lead to where it was supposed to lead." So there was a lot of time in bandwidth that was spent kind of managing the United States, and this is something that we're seeing beyond the summit as well, where all of this time that is spent on Greenland, we could actually be coordinating on how do we push back on Russian and Chinese security concerns, or security concerns that we have with

Russian and Chinese activities in the Arctic, instead we're spending all of this time talking about whether we're going to acquire Greenland or not. But putting all of these tensions aside,

there were a few good things that actually came out of the summit. First, we got a strong declaration,

a short one, but we got one that actually names the threats of Russia that actually reiterates commitment to Article 5, and overall just kind of does all the things you want a declaration like that

“to do. The second piece that I think was positive was that you had this defense industry forum,”

the first of its kind to happen, and evidently from what I was hearing on the ground from folks, it does need some tweaking. There's certainly room for improvement, but it is taking the conversation about burden sharing and defense spending to the next stage, and that is a positive thing. And if we're going to be doing more of integration and so on and so forth, these are precisely the kind of conversations that need to happen. Related to this, one thing that was very encouraging to me,

this is number three, is that there's all of these conversations about Europeanizing NATO, as a United States kind of takes a step back, and I was really encouraged by the kind of conversations that kinds of conversations that are happening in Europe, which is that they're not just talking about the fence spending, which is where the administration is still spending a lot of its time. They're taking it to the next step. They're talking about not just how do we turn that the

fence spending into capabilities, but beyond that, what are the effects we're trying to achieve, and how do we get there? And how do we make sure that there are no gaps that are left because we're all chasing the same few capabilities and leaving other things behind? How do we make sure that we're more integrated? So all of those are the right conversations that need to be happening, and I was glad to see that they're happening, whether or not the United States is lagging behind

as a separate conversation we can have. And finally, Ukraine. So on Ukraine, you know, there was

the bilateral meeting that the President had with Zelensky. It went mostly fine. He made some disparaging comments about the Ukrainians and the Russians being children fighting at a park in a park. But ultimately, he did say that he was going to sign off on licenses to build the patriots domestically in Ukraine. We can have a full conversation about what that actually looks like.

“There has been really interesting debates on this, I think, in the past few days with folks”

who are very reasonable, very knowledgeable on both sides of it. But nonetheless, there was a reiteration of support for Ukraine, and that was a positive thing. And the last thing I'll say also on the issue

support of our equipment of our aid to actually a provider, to actually a partner from whom we can learn a lot of lessons on innovation, on what they're doing on the counter-drome front, certainly, but even beyond that. And so as these adversaries around Russian, others are integrating, how do we learn those lessons and bring them back in to NATO? So that was a lengthy kind of description, but these are the kind of positives and the negatives of the summit.

“Now, I think it's incredibly useful. And it is one of these things where I think every time,”

when you hear there's a NATO summit, you never feel great about it, this president.

I always get, I get where you get the little anxious as to what exactly is going to come out of this. And net, it seemed to be kind of a non-event with a couple of little kerfuffles, but then kind of ending on a kind of nice tone, there are all these reports about some closed-door meeting that President Trump had with Kansas State, where he said, "As a token, we want to stay with you, we want to stay with his partnership, Yadiyada," which is,

you know, a conciliatory change of tone. But what it makes me think of is exactly this time last year. And exactly this time last year, I've talked about this podcast before. I was in Aspen, Colorado, for the Aspen Security Forum. And I sat down, recorded an episode, a lot for a daily, with Shoshang Joshi, who is the defense editor for the economist, I think, now he's actually based in DC. So Shoshang, look us up, drop us a line, if you're around town.

And we talked about what he was hearing, traveling around Europe, talking to, you know, military leaders around Europe. And he said, at the time, they felt pretty good about the Earth's relationship. They're like, "We looked at those rocky few months, right after the president came to the White House, we feel like since then he's saying the right things about Ukraine." We had had a pretty good NATO summit right before then, as I recall. That was really

conciliatory. People were happy that the progress they made towards a more, you know, more defense spending. Everything seemed pretty copicetic. And then we had Greenland come about in January. So, Julia, I want to come to you on that. The how has the European perspective towards the Trump administration changed over the last, it's a year or two years. I think Europeans and NATO allies, particularly, got used to the President Trump saying pretty

disparaging things about the alliance during the First Trump administration when he was out of

office, that's not new. And for a long time, they nodded in the direction of doing things like gas in part because some of them were sustainable, you know, longstanding U.S. demands like greater defense spending. But it was still seen as like, these are bumps on the road. The road is still there. And at least my sense of it is that the last year that has shifted. You're seeing much more serious consideration by Europeans of the idea of Europe without the United States.

And part of that is by driving some of the more cognitive conversations I hear are describing.

“I suspect because you have to take seriously the need for the independent capability to be willing”

to sink the political and actual real costs into developing it. Does that strike you, right? Julia? And like, what is, what is it that you think hangs over the sort of relationship? Is it, is it, is it Greenland the real pivotal moment? Is it around like, what is it that actually led to that break? And what does it mean for the relationship after Donald Trump? Is this something the United States can come back with? Is this a Trump problem? Or is this a

shift in how they view the United States even without Donald Trump in charge? I think they've at least went while Donald Trump is in charge. They've taken him seriously that this will be a transactional relationship that Trump wants allies loyalty and their money but to not count on the United States performing the alliance part of the alliance if push comes to shove. And so I think you do see a real effort in some countries in Europe to take those

defense spending requirements more seriously knowing that they can't count on the United States in all scenarios to defend them as they had in the past. So you see the United States treating our European allies as customers or vendors. And in some cases, they really did show up. So we had

announcements of Europe and Canada, investments up to 139 billion over the last year.

There was another announcement of $50 billion more and then there's a program called the drone

“edge of $40 billion for uncrewed systems over the next five years. And so I think that there is”

still a strong desire for American weapons and American technology but it's the alliance part of the alliance that is increasingly in doubt. So Dan, let me come to you on that point and I'll do this. I'm going to do this to you again. I'm going to come to you to say the predict the future question a little bit. Because we are, if we are, see Europeans taking this idea of an independent European defense capacity seriously. I suspect you do. I do see the signs and they're taking

it seriously. Maybe the political bill will won't go out. Maybe Macron will lose every other European official will lose and they just don't have the domestic will to do it. That's a real possibility. And arguably that's kind of what's happened over the last 40 years when you see him pushing this direction. But so far it seems like it's got legs. People are taking it seriously.

extent. What does that mean through a transatlantic alliance, 10, 15 years an hour when that capacity

“begins to ripen? In the past we've heard a lot of chatter about interdependent capabilities”

and building up. But usually it was all just code words for European alliance upon the United States. And notably that was actually a strategic posture of the United States. The United States part of U.S. security assistance policy is the tail. As the idea is that when you sell someone weapon system, they become relying upon you for parts and supplies. And that's part of seeing as an advantage of those sales. That's because that's leverage over them. This is deliberately

cutting that out, really. Not immediately, like in the long-term, the state of goal is Europe stands alone and it doesn't rely upon the United States. And that's meant you lose that leverage. How big a deal is that? What are the downsides of that and what are maybe the upsides of that? So if it happened in a way that was amicable, I would see it as largely positive.

And I would say so for two reasons. First, historically, and perhaps less today, but I'd

like to get back to historically. The United States and Europe have democracies share a lot of values. So in places where the Europeans have an ravine or have interests, the United States historically is often had similar interests and goals. And there are plenty of disagreements on the margins. Right? I mean, I don't want to make the sound like everything was very smooth, but in general, they kind of saw the world in similar ways with similar flows and had similar

objectives. So having greater European capacity would be a very good thing. And it would mean that the United States would have to do less. And if you believe the United States has responsibilities in interest in Asia, having Europe be able to handle Europe would be tremendously free. And

allow a lot more US capacity without as much US spending and sacrifice in the Pacific theater. So

to me, there could be tremendous pluses. But you want it done as part of a partnership, as opposed to go back to our Denmark example, you know, Denmark preparing for a two-front war, right? Denmark, you know, wanting to help guard the rest of Europe against Russia and concern that it's territory in agreement is going to be attacked. Right? You don't want it to be Europe developing capabilities that are focused on trying to guard against the United States as opposed to working with the

United States on certain kind of niche high end areas where maybe extra spending is just redundant. And you could get a lot of better serenities if the United States and Europe are working closely

“together. So I think you could easily lose some of those potential serenities, and thus have,”

you know, expensive spending on the same capabilities in ways that would not be necessary if there were a partnership. And you would lose certainly some US influence. If you look at, say the US intervention in Libya, the dependence of the Europeans on the United States militarily gave the United States more leverage, right? And there are plenty of examples like that. I'd be willing to give that up for greater European capacity, but what I worry about is it's being done

in the worst possible way. It's being done in part as a sense that the United States is going to act against European interests as opposed to the United States and Europe have shared values and therefore Europe stepping up can help serve both the US and European values. So I think looking ahead, there is a little bit of good news, bad news for the future of the Alliance coming

“out of this summit. You know, in the bad news category, I think the Pentagon is already planning”

and doing a six-month posture review, which could lead to the withdrawal of additional forces before the Europeans are ready. I think on the good news side of things was Ukraine surprisingly, the positive statements or the lack of negative statements in some cases. The President's announcement that he would be open to Ukraine, co-producing Patriot Missiles, was probably a positive signal. I personally have a hard time seeing how the Ukrainians could

possibly do that. Given the situation in a live war, I think the United States only currently has co-production agreements overseas for Patriots in Japan and Germany, and so it may be difficult for Ukraine to accept that assistance and they may be better off militarily focusing on more cost-effective asymmetric systems than trying to spend a lot of money on one of the world's most sophisticated strategic or defense systems. So I put a negative at the end of the positive.

Yeah, I can jump in a couple of things, one under kind of overall question of what happens now, right? Are the Europeans essentially just fighting their time waiting Trump out? And then we go back to normal in two and a half years. If we have, you know, somebody who is a non-Trump Republican, non-Mag or a Republican or a Democrat. And I think the Europeans, I mean, I think there

but I think the overwhelming sentiment that I hear from colleagues is that they tried the whole

let's go back to normal under Biden and that didn't work. Not at least because we just, you know, three years later, we ended up with Trump returning to office, but also because fundamentally the system that we have in the United States right now just doesn't offer any predictability for allies, right? We go back and forth now seemingly every four years, not even every eight years, between a president who threatens to take over Greenland and then one who comes back and says

allies and partners are at the center and at the heart of my national security and national defense strategies. And so if you're a Europe, how do you plan for this? It's just extremely hard to be a dependent variable to the United States when you don't know which way the United States is going to go. And Congress, which is supposed to provide that kind of, you know, at least a little bit of certainty and predictability is missing in action and maybe it will return to action

“in a few months. But again, there's just no guarantee there. And I think it just makes it much more”

likely that we'll see Europeans continue to take the steps that they're taking, which is I'm not predicting that they're just going to decouple at this point. They can't, they don't want to, but certainly they'll take the steps that they need to gain that strategic autonomy that we hear so much about from certain European capitals. And we should also add there are regional differences within Europe on what that looks like, the French are much more forward leaning on this. They have

always been that will continue to be that can change and or that cannot become even more the case

in a few months if somebody like Le Pen ends up winning the presidency in France. I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point in the future. And then you have, you know, the Baltic States who are perhaps a bit more willing to stay close with the United States because they need to because that's right as right there next door. So there are also regional differences that

“that we should account for. On Julius point about the Patriots, this has been really fascinating”

actually because one of my first reactions coming out of the summit was, okay, well now the president has said he's going to be issuing these licenses. Number one, let's see if he actually does, that is a big if. But if that does happen, what does, what does that look like? Can Ukraine actually get, can it actually produce the Patriots domestically? And I've heard a lot of really interesting conversations on both sides of this folks who are very knowledgeable, who have very

different opinions on whether that is the case or not. Some people say, look, you know, if you'd ask me previously, I would have said no, but we've seen how much the Ukrainians are able to do in a complex when they're given just a little bit right over the past five years. And so they will make the most out of this. And, you know, this is coming from a very senior former officials who said it on the records, so I can name them Deborah Rosenblum, who over saw acquisitions the statement

in the Biden administration for DOD, General Cavoli yesterday said a similar thing on one of a program that we had at the council. And then on the other side of it, I've heard folks say, yeah, but these are very complicated systems. It is going to take a long time for the Ukrainians to be able to actually produce them domestically. And at that point, does it really matter? So it might be more of a political statement of, we are with you than it is, an actual kind of

no kidding defense capability advancement for the Ukrainians. I don't have any opinions either way, I'm not educated enough on the specifics of how you build a patriot missile, but it's just, it's been interesting to hear the different conversations on this one. Yeah, to go one point back to what you

“raised, are your point about Congress and the checks on President Trump. I really think it's at the”

heart of what I suspect a lot of Europeans are experienced here coming away from the last 18 months from and how it colors relation moving forward. Because there was this idea that President Trump

was rhetorically a problem in the first term threatened a lot of things didn't really do anything

to fundamentally disrupt the NATO alliance or the Transatlantic Alliance or a lot of other global alliances really mostly status quo and for the most part some issues in these days after other places, but not fundamentally undermining them. The sum to what that was going to be the same and that that reflected not only the fact that President Trump, maybe his heart wasn't in it behind his rhetoric, but also that maybe he the President alone couldn't do those sorts of things. It was

politically damaging their illegal barriers. I think somebody has convinced the Europeans in the last year that that's not the case and I suspect it's Greenland. I think I've said this on this podcast before. There is a moment where you just heard the Tanner change in Europeans voice and I mean like Europeans I talked to in person around Washington DC and was meeting with at the time where all of a sudden you had this timber of fear entering the voice around the Greenland debate.

This is the same moment where we got reporting too much later that Denmark started sending soldiers

That's not something you do when you think somebody's acting specifically rhetorically and I

“remain convinced that Europeans had some piece of intelligence or some sort of analysis that got”

too many of them that said the Trump is actually serious about this and they're preparing and perhaps they're preparing for it and it's not clear anything's going to stop them. And we don't know if they're wrong. That's the scary part of all this. Like I don't think Congress would have been thrilled about that but would you know enough members of Congress to actually vote it against it. Does anything to stop it? Could they have given that you would probably need a super majority

of an actual legislation in contrary to repeal appropriations or you'd have to wait for the next NDA or appropriations bill which at that point was months and months away. It's likely there are sort of checks there. So I'm not sure you can get that sort of stability back with your pens or other allies unless you do have a bit of a shift in this huge executive dominated US foreign policy that we've developed over the 20th century because that was okay

when you seem to have a president cabin by a lot of you know, a leadist opinions and institutional support and political checks but all those have kind of fallen by the wayside or at least they're not as strong as what they would. Once we're that's not clear what allies are supposed to look to to say what's really what's really keeping people within the lanes where are the guardrails. Congress can install guardrails but it's a heavy left and whether they're willing

to do so and take the political capital to do so if an opportunity may rise anytime soon. I mean that's a big question without it. It's hard to imagine those relationships returning to where they were you know just two years ago. Well in my mind.

“So yes, I fully agree that I think Greenland was kind of this you know moment of”

it wasn't just rhetoric from the perspective of the Europeans and Denmark specifically right as as you noted they were started they're doing contingency planning and that is a pretty serious thing for them to be doing but I think it's also the broader pattern that we're seeing is not just about Greenland. It's also the fact that a few weeks before or a few months before the president was talking about taking over Canada and making it a 51st state which you know we

forget and perhaps we dismiss as a I certainly am guilty of doing that because you know we just hear so many things from the White House these days that we have to dismiss otherwise we just

we will never stop but that was a very serious thing to say about or you know some of our closest

friends and neighbors and they're just kind of like living their lives and all of a sudden we're talking about taking over Canada as the 51st state and then there is the interference attempts into European elections with support for the far right movements and groups and parties in Europe that are seen so negatively in certain countries like Germany. France certainly there has been the tensions with you know the Italian Prime Minister Maloney so it's a pattern as well right I

think Greenland is the kind of shorthand and certainly has really snapped something but but there is so many different things that have been happening and that will continue to happen and that makes it really hard for Europeans and for for Canada so kind of dismiss things and say oh well this was a one off let's move on right there's all of the there's this pattern of actions and and words that are really forming a picture that is not it's not a pretty picture when it comes to

the US involvement in NATO and in Europe. Well speaking of key relationship and alliances let us turn to another one with our remaining time to us and that is this question of the US is really

“a relationship I think it's fair to say it's been a rough couple weeks for the US is really”

a relationship on top of a rough couple years even though we've seen court and military action against Iran twice now in the past year we've seen the Trump administration acquiesce to is really military

action on a number of fronts that's good on top of during the first Trump administration we saw

the US government of course move the embassy to Jerusalem acquiesce to Israeli annexation of the go on heights take another number of other steps kind of backed by the BB government we have seen this moment of tension rise around Lebanon and the ongoing hostilities there around the impending failure if not already actual failure of the Gaza peace plan that was such a signature action of the Trump administration early on in the second time termin office although frankly

it doesn't get discussed or raise much any more which may be telling and on top of that perhaps more fundamentally what that could be product of the unique policies and personalities of both governments at the moment we're seeing this real shift in elections and views and people being in office this list of primaries we've seen kind of rolling out in the United States last several weeks we've seen a number of candidates almost entirely on the left get elected who are

vocally critical of Israel in a way that would be really hard to square with mainstream

big d democratic party politics 15 years ago in places where it seems highly implausible like New York City

right's record of the Gaza conflict very discrete issues you can say and I think it's correct

to distinguish those from necessarily the broader relationship with Israel as a people as a country and I certainly distinguish those frankly in my personal views but I also think the tenor the political tenor that's rising to these candidates and giving them so much propulsion and ability to proceed with this not necessarily being a plank of their agenda but still partly part of their political identity is really telling about how the relationship with

Israel is viewed as a political matter between the two parties that seems inevitably going to

“feed into this particular election so Dan I want to come to you on this I think you have been a”

close watcher of the US's really relationship and a lot of dimension particularly this

great image of other dimensions as well frankly a lot deeper and a lot longer than I have

because my sense that we are at a nater at least in I think my natural life that I can think of at least I have to pay attention at this particular moment for that relationship and and what does that mean what are the drivers of that and how can they be ameliorated or do we want them to be ameliorated is it right that they be ameliorated or is this is this actually the reflecting realities that are just we have to deal with so I would say in terms of sentiment it's simply

add a nater I don't think it is in terms of actual cooperation there's still a huge amount of military cooperation across the board commercial ties are strong person the person ties are strong so if you kind of just could silence the rhetoric then you'd say oh it's a very strong

“go relationship but of course you can't silence the rhetoric and or nor should you and I think”

your your comments hit on a lot of points you know bb sold himself to these rally people I actually think accurately as you know someone who could go into the halls of power in Washington and the halls of power in the cremland and get things done for Israel right so a tiny country you have this leader who appears to have you know the biggest names in the world listening to them and this you know we would have said four or five months ago really reached a peak with cooperation

against Iran where Israel encouraged the United States to join in war in 2025 and then did so again in 2026 and really fought alongside the United States in a way that really hasn't been done in most other US military campaigns where there was you know relatively equal contributions by Israel and the United States certainly had intelligence aside but also just in terms of airplanes flying over Iran so you'll play in the significant role so it was at extremely high level and then comes

crashing down and it came crashing down for reasons that lots of other allies and partners around the world have discovered we talked about Trump being very short term so he's thinking walking this country or leader do for me today Trump believes you know very strongly in you know his interpretation of the US interests it doesn't really care much about the politics or interests of US allies and you have a big issue disjuncture where I would say you know the United States and Israel both

don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon but for Israel it's existential while for Iran for the United States it's much more simply of a negative foreign policy outcome for Israel around medium-range ballistic missiles are a tremendous concern not a real focus of the United States Lebanon something that Israel is tremendously concerned about not a focus of the United States but conversely freedom of navigation in the state of form of news is not something that Israel is particularly

focused on but is a tremendous concern to the United States so you have these very different priorities and as a result the policies go in very different directions as it's also because the United States

“has been pursuing a deal that I think Israelis rightly believe is very forgiving of Iran that”

gives Iran a lot more potential power in the long term if it is implemented and for Netanyahu personally this is a real blow he's someone who has campaigned as being there to to kind of destroy his Bala and bring security back to his railies so they can go home in the north but also honest ability to create outcomes that Israel wants and that isn't happening with the Trump administration and

we've of course seen the shift in the democratic party that's become much more critical of Israel

but the thing I would stress is it's also a demographic shift that yes there is a democrat versus Republican divide but there's a huge divide between younger Americans and older Americans so there's far more people in both parties being one crisis Israel and Trump has shown repeatedly to the point where I think there's any question about this that on every issue she can bring the Republican party with them that there will be some people who break with him there will be others who

criticize him there will others who are less enthusiastic but the bulk of Republicans will go along

country and as a result the Israelis are running much more scared they put all their chips on the Republican party and with Trump being much more of a question that bet is one that might not be paying off and might even be backfiring on them as opposed to the more historic approach where they were seeking bipartisan support and the shift in the democratic party you know we as we all know this is all primary based right so it's not the bulk of voters in either party it's a very

small select number of voters in each party that is determining the nominees and there's a part

of the democratic party that not only is critical of Israel but Caesar says an overwhelming

U.S. concern right where to me it's you know as someone who is interested in the kind of nature of American government to see people who are you know running from mayor talking about Israel Gaza right as if mayors of different cities are going to play a major role in this but nevertheless it is an issue in these campaigns in a way that is real even if people like me are at times chuckling over this and so this is something that has energized people just the way illegal immigration

was energizing people in parts of America that had almost no presence of illegal or for

“that my illegal immigrants so these things are quite real and are quite powerful and I think we're likely”

to see it in not only the coming election but in elections in the future are let me come to you

with us but let me add a little twist to the question or expand a little bit you know what does

this trajectory if it does proved to be a political through line which is going to manifest unequally across parties in different contexts with dance right or seeing these candidates on the last we shouldn't know if there's also a big debate happening in the right that really splits the president's coalition around the US relationship with Israel and how far it should go and a lot of the rising figures in the Republican party jadevans among them are on the more skeptical side or at least

people around him were on the more skeptical side of at least certain aspects of that relationship so if this through line is true is through and continues what does that mean about the shape of this line to this relationship moving forward we know we have the MOU around security assistance

“getting renegotiated next year I think or the starting of the renegotiation next year we know”

we have a couple I know it's during Trump's term I can't remember exactly when you know that's like

one of these big pivotal moments there's other aspects of this relationship that aren't set on an auto timer but that inevitably flare back up and frankly when you have an administration other than the administration you're going to feel a lot pressure to more pressure to take action potentially on things like West Bank violence where we saw a sanctions regime that by administration stood up that this administration took down and to back off things like

the ICC and these other points so these points of continuity and common ground now are unique to this administration maybe to Republican administration but particularly the admins to it seems unique to this administration so what does that mean what does this really ship look like five or ten years from now yeah I grew a lot of what you said in what Dan said

“you know I think it is interesting that you do have that generational kind of shift right where”

but by I think you're also seeing it along the lines of kind of party affiliation breakdown where you have kind of normal Dems I would say sort of regular run of the mill Dems and run of the mill kind of traditional Republicans who are probably fairly aligned when it comes to the relationship with Israel and then you have the kind of two sides two extremes I don't mean it in a radical way but kind of the to the far the further left and further right that meet a

little bit in their skepticism of the relationship with Israel and some instances purely based on policy issues and some instances let's be honest because of anti-Semitism and other issues right but you do have I think you know you're seeing this in the elections throughout the country and especially more progressive sides of the political of the democratic party but also kind of the more parts of the mega world that are coming together in terms of really criticizing Israel it's

been really interesting watching some progressives go on Tucker Carlson's show for example they don't see I2I on anything but they see I2I on this particular issue so that it's making some interesting bad fellows here what it means for the future of U.S. Israel relations well one I think it's been interesting to see that Israel has essentially been insulated from a lot of Trump's tensions with close allies and partners over the past 10 years but that seems to be changing

so where the relationship is left off in two and a half years when the president leaves office is actually not you know if you'd ask me five years ago I would have said well you know we all know where it's going to be left off I'm not so sure anymore and the longer this conflict goes on with Iran the more tensions there are in the relationship and the more you know Trump might be

willing to do so where the relationship gets left off into in a half years is really fascinating

thing that we'll have to watch but I do think that fundamentally to dance point operationally there are still a lot of ties and a lot of benefits that night states gets from it's work with Israel whether it's intelligence sharing whether it's military to mill mill mill kind of channels there are a number of things where we are integrated with Israel we're continuing to be even more integrated with Israel and I don't see that

changing anytime soon even as strategically and in terms of political objectives and then just kind of domestic politics there's certainly tensions that that are happening and the

“Fisher's will I think keep deepening for for the foreseeable future well are you know are you”

anticipated the question I was going to bring to you Julia to close this as well but let me let me

build on what she said there are lots of valid grounds I think it's fair to say where for Americans to criticize Israel and Israeli policy a lot of them are deep seated and are not going away there's also however the other part of the relationship that often gets ignored which is this long history of cooperation real cultural ties real historical ties real mutual defense cooperation to mutual benefit among a variety of other benefits that that can't be overlooked I

don't think and that's easy to undersell because it doesn't have a vocal contingent supporting it in the current environment but it's real and that is motivating although in some cases perhaps

maybe exaggerated everything from frankly Joe Biden's kind of unique attachment that really informed

his approach to Israeli guys are conflict and sort of other issues to frankly lots of

“politicians of his generation how they think about it's true I think that's a big driver of this split”

is how you value those things from your perspective somebody who thinks about the U.S. security posture and interests today what are those core chunks of the relationship that are valuable and how do you navigate our relationship where you are likely to feel pressure and probably right-founded pressure in the eyes of many to criticize Israel to object Israel to potentially even trying to accept to constrain Israel around parts of their domestic policies other things they've

done that people think are foundationally wrong even as you have other areas where cooperation is so driven and often driven for very good reasons as a U.S. interests how do you balance that how do you navigate that moving forward yeah so I think this is actually at the heart of a really deep debate that is happening within the Democratic National Security establishment the Biden administration which I served in the senior director for strategy who wrote the National Security

Strategy Tom Wright is a friend of mine published a piece in the Atlantic about a week ago talked about this internal debate and really arranging debate is ongoing about whether the United States beginning in the Gaza war should have done more to condition assistance to Israel because we really did not not in any significant way and there is a live debate beyond what is in the primaries right now going forward about what is a different approach to Israel that might

look more like a normal security alliance that the U.S. has with other nations where we would show less deference to Jerusalem where our country's interest diverge and a stronger American tie to the reform Palestinian authority this is very much alive debate within the Democratic National Security circles that's unresolved but it is obviously emerging that a large group of Democrats are unwilling to return to the type of relationship that we have had in the past and incidents

like the detaining of a U.S. congressman that happened this last week in the West Bank by settlers is not going to help this more traditional approach within National Security circles to Israel. Now that gets me to your question about our security ties with the Israelis and now obviously we have a deep and long-standing security and intelligence relationship with the Israelis which

“I can't talk about here but needless to say I think in a new administration there will be a real”

look at conditioning some of that assistance on different Israeli approaches to things like the Palestinians and regional security where the United States has been put in a position where Israel has started wars and expected on flinching U.S. support and under the this administration we have come to their assistance and and at their urging we have joined broader regional wars but I think that a new Democratic administration is likely to impose much more conditionality on the relationship

Well there's a lot more to discuss in this vein of my great-to-conversation that's going to be with us

for many many years to come but for now we are out of time that's that this would not be rational security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week

“to come until we are back in your pod catcher Dan what did you bring for us today?”

So over the weekend my wife and I saw the movie the invite which I both recommend to everyone and strongly urge you to stay away from. It is well acted it is really almost like seeing a play you have four very good actors in a confined space and a good script and it's nice to see if someone who prefers movies where they invest in the script and the actors rather than the special effects this is you know quite impressive and my head is off to Olivia Wilde and others who

will be responsible for this offer really great work but it's very disturbing and anyone who is

or has been in a relationship I think will find aspects that are particularly disturbing and so you know well done but I'm not sure I came away happier having seen it fair a mixed suggestion I like it it's good maybe save it for the singles out there for folks to check out the conversation all right what did you bring for us this week? Well I'm going to watch the invite tomorrow I have already had book my ticket so you know we'll have to reconvene and and see how high

I feel about it okay I bring along the theme of Israel I bring a Israeli jazz musician

“Avashikon who just came out six weeks ago I think with his new album eternal child this is”

someone who's been in the kind of jazz on the jazz scene for the past 30 or so years has done really interesting work blending classical music and jazz various Middle Eastern traditions and jazz for this album he returns through his kind of jazz pure jazz roots and it's a fabulous album and I highly recommend it no reservations no split recommendation just go listen to it a great a great recommendation I was not on my radar that I was coming out but I'll have to check that out

for my object lesson I am going to do a brief in memoriam for someone who is a major foreign policy figure if I complicate one who passed away this week that is of course in our Lindsey Graham I met in the center of Lindsey Graham exactly once that I can recall I actually think I may have met him more than one time by interact with them substantially once at embassy Baghdad where we are both working out in the gym and he accused me of stealing his format for doing curls on which

I don't think I did but he was very exasperated that I appeared to have perloined his his floor mat of which were relatively short supply and that was the entire substance of our interaction which was not even that rude about he was just kind of a little disappointed in this young embassy employee that had it bad that had seen fit to not properly respect the etiquette of the gym environment and Lindsey Graham kind of has chased me my whole career in a weird way I think

if you were a national security head in the post 911 era if you were somebody who particularly your career does have extent for a couple years your whole life kind of centered around a rack policy uh Lindsey Graham was a major figure in those sorts of circles from his kind of pragmatist maverick roots with the sort of troika with uh John McCain and Joe Lieberman from back in the day all the way to his weird mega inflection he's taken out of these last 10 years

it is a crazy career arc uh and he's always somebody who was somebody who played the political

game aggressively and well if one way is you wouldn't always appreciate but also did have some really principal stand that he would use that leverage to advance some of which I profoundly disagree

“with but many of which you know you have to respect as somebody who stuck to their guns uh you”

crane is one of those notably uh I think his departure from the Senate along with Mitch McConnell and frankly a lot of the other retiring senators uh who were kind of the Ukraine lobby in the Senate um the Republican side who are retiring um it's gonna be a big loss for Ukraine uh after November or after January when the the new Senate sets. Regardless he's a complicated figure and I so I've been reading about to these even more than trying to say which one of these captures

this figure who I've kind of followed for a long time and taken interest one I think the one I read that I liked and I capture it it's relatively short which I recommend his Michael Warrens kind of piece looking back and title Lindsey Graham's tenacious pursuit of influence in the dispatch uh on July 12 so I'll make that my recommendation I think it captures the very odd career arc and frames it and kind of a personal note about what the perspective of this kind

of unique man is but I don't think I was he was kind of a lion of this issue set that we all follow and I do think we all have to acknowledge his uh his passing and uh the fact that it could prove quite consequential from on a number of fronts in the years to come without his voice there for good or for L with that Julia let me hand it over to you to bring us home what did you bring out for your object lesson yes so in the last week I recorded a podcast for Laugh Fair with Mike Feinberg

on the weaponization of the DNI and I filed a paper for Laugh Fair on how the White House broke the

the object lesson the lesson is that I did both from Hawaii where I'm from from my mom's porch

“and from within a hot tub on colai for audio let's say we're getting a video slideshow of”

the evidence of this you may be able to say so the object lesson for my fellow deep stateers out

there you know it's CIA we often think about leaving the government as a divorce but as seen in

these pictures I want you to know there is life after the skip there you go a lesson harder and I

“will say that is the best part about not being in government anymore is your ability to work from”

just about anywhere I will say for my experience so another I will double down on that object lesson from you Julia for now though 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 lafermedia.org for our show page

“for links to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other Laugh Fair contributors”

and for information on Laugh Fair's other phenomenal podcast series while you're at it be sure to follow Laugh Fair and social media wherever you socialize your media be sure to leave a rating or a view wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Laugh Fair on patreon for an ad feed version of this podcast among other special benefits for more information visit lafermedia.org/support our audio engineer producer this week was known as band of goat

rodeo and our music as always was performed by Sophia Yan and we were once again edited by the

wonderful gen patch a bath my guess already Dan and Julia I am Scott our Anderson and we will talk to you next week till then goodbye do your current managed services really help run your operations or are they just running in circles running isn't enough anymore with PWC's managed services your operations don't just run they evolve continuously powered by AI embedded directly into your workflows so instead of maintaining yesterday's model you're building tomorrow's advantage PWC's managed

services we run your operations with tech and talent so you can run faster scale smarter lead stronger