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Stopping the Iran War w/ Emma Ashford | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The old world is dying.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The new world struggles to reborn.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: With those words from Gramsci, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the long predicted on this podcast, war with Ryan has started again.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is turning into something else that has long been predicted here as elsewhere, which is a wider regional war.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: that is engulfing, not just large fights of the Middle East, but you know, seems to be spiraling well outside the region with effects in Europe and Asia.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So to both talk about all this and perhaps think a little bit about where things could be going.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very happy to have on Emma Ashford.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and often writes on these subjects.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me, even if the situation is less than ideal.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, on this podcast that we always do deal with situations that are less than ideal.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think one thing, maybe you and I can agree on from what I've seen of your commentary is that one sparkling fact about this before is the complete lack of clarity of the war aims.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The older listeners might remember Colin Powell and his sort of rules war, one of which
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, whether the Trump has become a Neocon or not, certainly he is all of the Neocons in disregarding any advice from Colin Powell, can we agree all that?
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think there's a couple of things that are just worth pointing out about this war because they are just so absurd in many ways.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one is that nobody wants this.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you look at public polling, there is basically no support for this war.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He got the president got a little partisan bump after the bombing started, but even then it's at least six in 10 Americans disapprove.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: The second is that the administration hasn't spent any time articulating a rationale for it.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: As you say, there's this conflicting welter of maybe it's regime change, maybe it's nuclear weapons, maybe it's missiles, maybe it's enrichment facilities, maybe it's about freedom.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that contrasts with, you know, as you said Colin Powell had these rules for engagement, but even if we think about the run up to the war in Iraq, right, that there were months and months and months of building the case, and yet we had Trump give a state of the union literally just last week in which he talked about her bad around, wasn't it nothing to prepare the groundwork for this war.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, this, it did not come out of nowhere.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: The military build-up's been going for a while, but it's hard to see why it's happening now and what we're trying to do here.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, the lack of buildup and the lack of poppers have heard are actually very striking in contrast to the 2002-2003 preparation where, you know, it really was a kind of, you know, a very large-scale marketing campaign, a roll-out as they they called it.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this time, I mean, it's striking that like while the war in Afghanistan had 90 percent approval and the war, the 2003 war in Iraq had 70 percent approval.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is, you know, starting off with like 40 percent approval, which is strictly partisan.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not, you know, rally around the flag.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's rally around the Republican president, if you're a Republican, and I just want to flag that because I think that could have long-term implications as to how this proceeds.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not only was there no preparation or rationale before the war, but it's always the situations that can be even more confusing as the war progresses, that now you have some Republicans like the Speaker of the House Mike Johnson saying, this is not a war, you know, the refrigerator special operations, but Trump keeps on referring to it as a war.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have some people saying regime changes off the table, but you also have Trump against saying that he wants to have a say in selecting the next Supreme Leader of Iran.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: that Trump wants to see, you know, in the Council of Advisors in Iraq.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so, so, so, yeah, has the confusion only gotten worse as the war progress?
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, as somebody who's spent a lot of time last year's working on Ukraine, the administration saying it's not a war, it's a special military operation makes me feel like I might be going crazy a little bit.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we have heard these very conflicting reports from different members not just of sort of the broader Republican party, but even inside the administration.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are really interesting incident a couple of days ago where Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: came out and started talking about her basically.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We had to do this because Israel was going to attack with odours and then we knew the Iranians would respond.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, and this made it turn very much as if, you know, a Jerusalem at basically drowned the US into this.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he tried to backpedal that even just a couple of hours later.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump himself, as you said, has said different things from, you know, it's not regime change to, I'm glad the I told it's gone to, I want to choose Iran's new leader.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, I mean, I think we are seeing patterns in what the strikes are doing.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the people at the top themselves still don't seem to be clear about what it is that we're actually trying to achieve long term.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know, I don't, I think that's right.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of like the sort of like patterns, even there, I'm a little bit like unclear because there's on the one out of sort of like decapitation strike.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: get rid of the leader.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then Trump himself was sort of saying that Israel has killed some of the people that Trump might have wanted as a replacement.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So some of them, you know, I mean, it seems like the U.S. is then like a not fully coordinating with its like major ally in this and doesn't have a clear sense of
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: what that goal is, but then you'll also have, I guess, sort of, light skills, strikes on terrain, but then also this very confusing story about possibly bringing in Kurdish forces, which, you know, it's unclear whether that's even like a real or not, or but that's just a fiction that's being done as a distraction.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we've seen different messages again from different parts of the administration on the extent to which this campaign is a joint campaign with Israel where everybody agrees on you know goals and where it's about you know division of labor.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so, um, or whether it is sort of too separate, but parallel campaigns, de-conflicting, and so we saw Under Secretary of Defense, Albert Colby giving congressional testimony just the other day in which he basically, you know, was asked about, is this a regime change war?
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, no, and was asked, you know, well, but the, I told us, Eddie, so that was the Israelis not us.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the targets, again, what we see on the
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: is that the Israelis seem to be mostly striking either regime targets, or G.C.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: targets, or the institutions that might be necessary to clamp down if you're the Iranian government on protesters, right?
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Supposedly stations, that kind of thing.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: American strikes seem predominantly to be going after ballistic missile launchers, military facilities, that kind of thing.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So again, it's impossible to tell at this point whether that's chosen division of labor or whether the two sites are genuinely trying to do different things.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in terms of these really, I mean, there's also you admitted my Korean comments, which almost it's just that the Israeli's first, the US's hand, and the US had to do this, because Israel was going to do this in any case.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's like some sort of, I mean, it's a weird way in which the treatment administration is basically taking the position that John Wearsheimer and Stephen Walt are correct, but it's a good thing that the Israel is directing a very good forward policy.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm afraid, of course, the thing is, but by mere time we're involved, the Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy, it does seem like an odd position to take that the Israel is driving American foreign policy, but we're happy to go along, like what is that all about?
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think this is why Rubio walked it back so quickly, because he suddenly realized afterwards that, you know, I mean, if you take it in isolation, yes, it sounds bad, it sounds like another country's director for in policy, and if you said about any other country, it would not create the same political firestorm, but Rubio, I think very quickly realized that this is going to unleash a bunch of anti-Semitism and all sorts of things and try to to walk it back.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there is, I think, a lot of evidence of the sort of the first version of that, the actual version of that, which is the Benjamin Netanyahu has been a really strong influence of voice and Donald Trump's ear coming to the White House repeatedly.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a New York Times story about this and the run up to the war.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: trying to persuade him that this was necessary that the time was now trying to sort of delegitimize other folks in the administration who are arguing against it.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, putting this pressure, this time pressure on the administration by saying, well, you know, you've got to, we have to go now.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you have to do it now.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now that doesn't excuse Donald Trump, right?
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is still his decision, right?
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: He chose to go along with this.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But definitely it's been the Israeli setting the tempo and the timing of everything.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, I think that's right.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the other aspect with Israel is some of the reporting that they were concerned like after the war started that the U.S. had some sort of back channel communication with the Iranians and that they were upset about this.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now again, that's used like a very curious thing to do if like, you know, this is your main ally in the war, like to, is that like a further indication that like, about everything is in sync?
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we're going to find out honestly pretty rapidly that the U.S. and Israel are not actually on the same page here.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think this is widely known and stated that the U.S. probably does not want to go as far in this war as Israel does.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we see some signs that there's rarely government or some, you know, some of this sort of more friendly.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: lobbying groups for Israel in Washington that they would actually be pretty happy to see even Iranian state collapse as a result of this war.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's definitely not an American interest.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This administration is not going to want oil prices to be through the roof for months or years at a time.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, we are, I think we've gone into this war under the assumption that we are working with the Israelis and everyone's talking about this partnership and how well the two sides are working together.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the angle is definitely different and that's going to make itself
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's actually maybe worth articulating the different sort of goals there, because I mean, as you suggested, and I think there's a lot of reporting backing this up.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a kind of Israeli goal or openness to the idea of regime collapse, kind of like a model of something like Libya or Syria, where like, you know, a once-cohesive polity, you know, like sort of falls apart.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that this, as you say, might be in Israel's
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: benefit or, you know, as seriously as conceived by Benjamin Netanyahu, but is there like anything further in terms of what is really here?
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it does also seem to have an element of sort of like a more diverse strategy like let's get rid of, you know, the leadership now to keep the enemy off their foot or, you know, like not able to respond.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: What else is sort of guiding is really thinking here.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think timing is part of it.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: We had the strikes the 12 day war last year in June and I believe Israeli intelligence assessed that the Iranians were getting back to the point where they were managing to build up stocks of interceptors, stocks of drones and missiles, again, that could potentially target Israel or perhaps more likely, you know, be used if Israel were to attack in future.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so this opportunity, this window, was open.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I don't think there is necessarily, again, total agreement inside these really government.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly not inside Israeli society about what the end goal of this is here.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think for Netanyahu and those around him, they have, as you sort of alluded to, they've had the sort of success in
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the last few years with weakening or at least taking advantage of the circumstances that we can't many of their neighbors in order to make themselves by far the most powerful military force in the region other than the US.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the collapse of Syria that they were able to quite effectively take advantage of, they've not even necessarily accepted the new city and government, right?
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: They've continued to do strikes inside city, even though the new government of city has actually willing to deal with Israel.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they're pursuing the strategy of sort of weakness on the part of all their neighbors, and for Netanyahu in those around him, right, a strong Iran and Iran that can fight back, even if it's an Iran that is less extremist, less Islamic, less, extreme than the Islamic public is, that doesn't really meet their interests, right?
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: They actually, I think, would probably prefer the chaos of a civil war inside Iran.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's very worrying for pretty much everybody else in the region.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I mean, there's a like sort of like this really point of view again because it seems like this sort of, you know, view up like, you know, chaos or, you know, civil war or enemies all weekend might be in their address like that seems like at least it's.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: theoretically, he's in conflict with the other goal, which is sort of integration with the region.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This sort of Abraham Accords agenda, getting the sort of Arab autocracies to accept Israel and have regional economic and political integration.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, can you actually pursue both goals or are you going to end up alienating a lot of the people that, you know, you're otherwise pursuing as as potential allies,
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been talking Israel, and I actually just read an editorial, I think it was in the times of Israel, basically saying that once Iran is not a problem anymore, that it will basically force or push the Arab Gulf states to finally make peace with Israel.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, a lot of this process already started with the Abraham Accords.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Saudis and the Israelis have been working together in formally for years and a number of things.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is some common ground, particularly on Iran as a threat.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but this notion that sort of, um, if Israel deals with Iran, then the rest of the region will just normalize with resolving the question of Gaza and of Palestine more broadly, I think is a really misleading one.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so if that is what is really policy makers are thinking, I'm pretty sure they're wrong.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, this seems like a sort of like long-standing delusion, both in Israel and among some of its allies in the US.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the first call for it there was a sort of slogan, the road to Jerusalem is too bad that we did the idea that if you get rid of Saddam Hussein that will make a settlement of the Palestine issue much easier because the Palestinians would have lost a major sponsor.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we could all safely say it did not work out that way.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I mean, this whole idea of like trying to deal with the Palestinian issue through a foreign policy through dealing with external sponsors or allies.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it hasn't actually had a long history of success, I would say.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a way of like not actually dealing with the Palestinian issue at all.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, after, I mean, after October 7th, there was a lot of talk about the Iranians as a sponsor of Amas of Palestinian Jihad, but that really obscured the fact that Iran is only a recent sponsor of those organizations and they were founded initially and received their support from mostly Arab.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: states mostly Sunni states with whom they actually share more of a religious tie and that changed over time but the fact is that the Palestinians are not going to suddenly that the issues that exist in the Israel-Palestine conflict are not going to go away because one source external support for Palestinian resistance collapses and I think we have seen that happen multiple
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in terms of that, I have to tell the sort of like, these are Israeli goals and what they're up to.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as very interested in what you had said earlier about how the divergence between the US agenda and what Israel is after is going to become more visible in the coming days and weeks.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, I just clarify about how like a collapse of a radio society is not something that even Donald Trump might be interested in.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, look, I can't say for sure what Donald Trump is thinking, but I do think it's pretty clear from the way that administration officials have been talking, I mean, even in the run up to the conflict, even if you look at what Steve Whitcroffer, Jared Kushner was saying when they came back from negotiations with the Iranians, this was always, I mean, it was about bringing it on to heal, it was about in the effects of capitulation of the Islamic regime, but it was not about regime change.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the sense of, you know, getting rid of the regime entirely.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it to be honest, strongly suspect that we may find out at some point that Fort Trump intended here was very similar to his strikes in Venezuela, right?
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was removed from any, removed the, the Ayatola.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: and then see if someone more moderate emerges with whom the US can work, do some strikes on ballistic missile facilities or nuclear facilities again, and then back away and hope that gets you more leverage at the negotiating table.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is, of course, I think what we have discovered of what probably should have been obvious up front is, for it on this really is existential now, and they are not willing to come back to the table.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been several reports
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: to get back to negotiations, the Iranians have robust them apparently.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I think, I mean, some of this might go to the sort of differences between Neil and Venezuela and Iran and I do actually think that in some ways the way that the way the war was sold to Trump and the way Trump imagined it is exactly what you indicated that he had seen in Venezuela what from his point of view was an easy success, which is you know, you kidnapped the leader and his wife and you bring in somebody else from under the regime.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, you just have a now a more survival regime that will follow American orders.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've heard his like Venezuela hostile to the US, but I mean the Iranian the social basis for the Iranian revolution is pretty wide.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're looking at the revolutionary guard and the people in the regime and it actually does seem like the
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: regime, the leaders of the regime had basically been prepared to be murdered, they had been prepared to die, and they had a process in place for a kind of dispersed opposition.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, like, some of what's at work here, just like a sort of like ignorance of, you know, the nature of a radiant society and what the regime is capable of.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we've seen this with this administration across the variety of issues.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: The following out of the national security council, the fact the administration doesn't really trust the intelligence community.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't talk as much to outsiders on foreign policy issues.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, basically, what you end up with is a very small set of senior decision makers around the president himself and a relatively small set of sort of foreign policy professionals trying to
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: handle all these different portfolios, everything from China, technology to Iran, to Ukraine, and onwards, and we've seen this in sort of the quality of the outcomes that they've been able to get.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if I can just pick on Ukraine for a moment because that's, I've done a lot of work on that in the last few years, Wittkov came into this negotiations and all credit to him for seeking peace in that conflict and I think he's doing the right thing, but he came in with very little knowledge
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it took maybe as much as six months for him and his team to really up to speed to understand like what the key issues on negotiation actually were.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: What were the Russians trying to get?
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: What did the Ukrainians need?
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It took so long.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I do think in this situation, there's probably almost certainly some element at the same thing going on, right?
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That the misjudged
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: because those who wanted to push the president towards intervention would not have wanted to explain the actual context that might make it go bad or explain the downsides and others maybe just didn't know.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a situation where like, you know, Marco Rubio's both secretary of state and national security adviser as you mentioned.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I believe also the head of the national art.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, he's the artist.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, he's very good a lot of hat.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like a small number of people.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then what do we just said also reminds me of a recent interview I read with very distinguished Iranian American historian Edward Abraham Abrahamine where he said,
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: that in some ways it's a situation similar to the cold, early cold war, where they'd been a purge of the experts on China.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the United States was going into the Korean war, and to China policy generally did not have the expertise on hand to deal with the region.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, it does seem like there's a real knowledge problem at work here.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and again, I don't think it is just confined to Iran.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's actually across the foreign policy portfolios.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you look at the gutting of the state department, if you look at the National Security Council, now I think National Security Council had become bloated, it needed reform.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was under Obama, it got up to like 450 people, which is kind of insane.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it is now down to, I mean, less than a few dozen people
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that is not enough, I think, to handle all of these different issues, even if all those people are doing is interfacing with the appropriate people in the agencies and saying, right, like, you know, CIA, who was your guy who knows the most about Iran or Afghanistan or whatever, bring them in, like, you need to do people to do that.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not, you know, it doesn't just happen automatically.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, I think that's right.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of, I mean, since you had mentioned Ukraine, I mean, I think the other sort of like major concern here is how many wars can the US be fighting?
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: at the same time.
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that there was just a report that the Pentagon is trying to buy interceptors from the Ukrainians to bring them to the Middle East.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know that there's a lot of concern in South Korea as well.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like what are like, and he thought some of the dangers of like a very overstretched empire at this point?
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it has become very clear that the U.S. does not have the depth in its arsenals, stockpiles of weapons, but also we don't necessarily have a big enough military to do everything we've been trying to do.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are people, plenty of people in Washington who would say, well, that's why we need a $1.5 trillion defense budget.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in some ways what we see is this real overstretch.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in the case of Ukraine, one of the arguments that many people made for seeking an end to the war myself among them was that the US does not necessarily have the stockpiles that we need to both supply Ukraine.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: and sustain deterrence in the Indo-Pacific when it comes to China and Taiwan, for example, to help protect other allies, that we just, there's not enough to go around, so we need to start thinking about the smartest way to ration that out.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ironically, part of that argument was that the stupidest possible thing we could do would be to use them all up in another Middle Eastern.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: war and people inside the current administration actually made that case.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I should know I think just to be clear the thing about buying from the Ukrainians.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not asylum receptors.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's drone interception capabilities.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: which actually the Ukrainians are well placed to provide and one could see, you know, the Gulf States of plenty of money, the Ukrainians have this knowledge that could be really beneficial for both sides if they do that.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the central point here is we are spending a ton of, you know, smart bombs and munitions, but more importantly, defensive systems and interceptors to protect
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Gulf States, particularly Israel, from Iranian retaliation, and once it's gone, it's gone.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: The companies that make it do not produce it fast, even if they increase production.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we can use it in another cloud, just like once it's gone.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, obviously that's implications both in Europe and Asia.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of, again, this sort of global impact, like it does seem like, in Asia, we're seeing
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: the sort of ripple effects in terms of economics and resources much more quickly than elsewhere in the world.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it seems like South Korea is being squeezed.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And frankly, if I were Taiwanese, I'd be a little bit worried about where things are going right now.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So these are like thoughts about the sort of these unintended economic consequences.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, so there are significant economic impacts right now being felt in Asian markets, which is partly because the biggest consumers of Gulf, crude oil, but particularly natural gas, are countries like Japan and South Korea.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there are also significant impacts in European markets because Europe already had this big natural gas problem after you know, instituting sanctions, cutting themselves off of Russian gas for the most part,
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now that they're basically facing a shortfall and LNG coming out of Qatar in the Gulf, there's just not enough to go around.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so gas prices haven't yet got back to where they were in like 2022 right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but they have risen, I mean at least 150 percent over the last five days.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oil prices, it's a little less of an urgent problem.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But basically everybody who watches traders who watch the oil market and who notice that the straight-up from news is still effectively closed, they're starting to get worried, right?
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're in day five heading for day six of this conflict, and I think most of the good analysts and most of the big banks have actually concluded that once we pass about the one week mark, the economic consequences are going to rise pretty dramatically.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: 20% in the last months is up about 35% since January, it's only at $82, that's not bad by historical standards.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: As it starts to rise towards $100, the barrel, I mean global markets are going to, I mean going to melt down.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really bad prospect.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I don't I mean, he's a speculation as to like what impact that could have on Washington like I do think one thing that we see in the sort of second Trump term is that maybe the the main sort of check and balance on him is the sort of stock market The bond market lay like in terms of once a market strike goes sour.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He tends to sort of pull back his horn on policies a little bit
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a report in Politico, I believe, just today saying that Susie Wiles is starting to raise concerns about the price of gas.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, I think, look, this is not yet affecting the American consumer.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, places that the pump are not particularly bad.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're up, and nobody's going to be happy about it, but it's not catastrophic.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The question will be again, if this goes for another several weeks,
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that price per barrel does take up.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: You will get to the point pretty quickly, flea, gasoline prices go up, fuels, prices go up, transport becomes more expensive, goods become more expensive, and you're back in an inflation and cost of living cycle.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Trump already had a problem with this issue.
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is again one of the reasons why this is such an inexplicable choice on the part of the Trump administration is, this is one of the very few things they could have done that will likely lead
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: if they can't bring it to a close soon.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, no.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: That seems to be...
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: likely scenario.
• 28:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's other sorts of possible checks.
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious on your thoughts on other countries in the Gulf.
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think Iranian strategy has been to target the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and seeing these sort of like a sort of soft underbelly with the idea that they will then complain to the US.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like is there, how effective do you think that strategy has been?
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And are there signs of tensions between the US and its Gulf allies?
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the Gulf state pressure is actually up there with, so if we think about like four different kinds of constraints that we could, that could be put on Trump rate, the markets is probably the most important one, the interceptors being another in terms of like, just practicality.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Congress is not a, not a constraint.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can talk about that if you, if you want, but they're, but the Gulf
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: All states one is interesting and if we look at the way that the Gulf states have behaved in the last few days since the started, I mean, they're in a very difficult position, right?
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're seeing strikes against not just military facilities on their territory, but against actual civilian targets.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: against infrastructure related to energy, against, there was one strike that took a power generation for a water-desalination plant that would be a worst case scenario for some of these states.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I actually attribute so the cutaries shut down gas production.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: because they can't export it, and so under the circumstances, I actually think they shut it down earlier than they probably needed to, and I suspect it was about sending a signal.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there is kind of this simmering anger all across the Gulf states that the US has dragged them into this conflict, and then in particular that they are receiving these missile diaries from Iran, and the US is not necessarily intercepting them.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: the U.S. is intercepting some of them, and the Gulf States have their own equipment, they're running out of interceptors, but the U.S. is still focused mostly on defending Israel.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the Gulf States have really borne the brunt of this, and they're in this incredibly difficult situation where they don't necessarily want to join this war against Iran, but at a certain point they're going to have to, if the damage keeps, keeps creeping up.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, you had mentioned sort of like Congress as a possible constraint.
• 31:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'd be like, and we could talk about this because I think it's especially among the sort of anyone who's involved with American politics, so it's on their server's stream.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: wanting a more restraining American foreign policy, I think the big, you know, missing part of the equation is Congress, which, you know, under the Constitution has the fire to declare war.
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And theoretically, it has the like of tremendous power to, like, influence policy in terms of the power of the first.
• 31:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, in this case, you know, the most cynical interpretation one can dig is that the Schumer and Jeffries, they push back
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: the data of our resolution to allow Trump to wage this war so that now Congress is in the situation where they have to decide on funding while American troops are in danger.
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And historically, like they will always continue funding the war.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So basically you have a situation where not only the Congress not exercise restraint, but like, you know, by cynical take on it would be that
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: The war powers resolution, which failed in the Senate, I don't believe has gone to vote in the House yet, but will probably fail there too.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it basically ended up falling out almost entirely on partisan liens, but as you say, there's this interesting question, right?
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've seen a number of Democratic lawmakers come out and say, well,
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We might well vote for a funding supplemental for the war.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: The war is insanely expensive.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Reports are that it's costing a billion dollars a day or more.
• 32:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you say, if the choice is between funding to keep the troops safe or sending a signal to Trump that he shouldn't be doing this, Congress is going to vote for the funding.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like many folks that want a more restraintress foreign policy, I would love it if Congress would actually assert themselves
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: but it's really apparent in this crisis that they just don't have any backbone at all on this question.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: They really are just some are happy something this attack is a good idea.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some can demo it, but just no one wants to spend down the political capital to try and oppose it.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even when the American public are, again, 60 to 70% opposed to this war, you cannot get Congress to
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: in our Congress and how do they think that foreign policy?
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it does seem like, from Congress, there's a, they're willing to go along with being sideline because they just do prefer this sort of imperial presidency system for whatever reason.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, I mean, as you said, I guess maybe the public is the,
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: other factor in this.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there is sort of widespread disapproval and one is sort of seeing a lot of these issues, particularly those sort of supportive Israel coming to the fore in the sort of Democratic Party.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at least it totally is retrusted.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's likely to, you know, start influencing the Republican Party if not now, maybe like, you know, in the coming years, because among younger Republicans, there's a lot of dissatisfaction.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like, do you see like sort of like public anger towards the war, which you know, like the kind of going to be talking about this war extending into September, right?
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's possible this could be having fighting like, you know, like, by election day even, like, you know, like, do you think that like public anger is going to like start changing some of these dynamics?
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: If we look at polling that's not specifically just on these strikes themselves, the Q did a poll last week where they asked basically, you know, are you in favor of doing the strikes, right?
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was only one in four Americans in favor.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was far less before the partisan bump.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: 53% of Americans, I think it was, just over 50% of Americans thought that the Trump administration is using too much military force.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, there's all of these signs that the American people are just really fed up with this sort of military heavy punitive expedition foreign policy and that they want something else.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that there's no obvious transmission chain between that anger and political outcomes.
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so we're not seeing people in the streets.
• 35:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, if the cost of living starts to spike in gas prices go up plus, you know, over $5 a hour, maybe we will see people in the streets.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I would say if there's like significant American casualty.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also true, yeah, there's been at least six or seven so far.
• 36:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I imagine there have been more we don't know about.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that again, that's very unpopular.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, but this might be something where the impact of this is fell at the midterms in terms of electing candidates that say that they don't want any more forever wars.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's not really going to change things right now so that the constraints are going to be much more about I think the, you know, the cost of living and markets question at least in the short term.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that sort of makes sense.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I also think a lot of your consequences of this are, yeah, I'll also have to keep them in mind because I think as we've seen with Iraq and Afghanistan, these things, they last three years and they also have ripple effects that extend far into the future.
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: To your generational point, though, I mean, I think it is very clear that this is a war that is largely supported by baby boomers by folks over 55, right?
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You will find yourself hard pressed to find young Republicans, even young Republican political operatives in Washington, who are actually in favor of this conflict.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so if nothing else, this may actually end up in bittering that generation even more.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: against this kind of conflict.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I mean, I think that's very likely sort of a consequence.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I honestly think it's always this is a war that's predominantly supported by people who remember in 1979 and the hostage crisis.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: If there's any political basis for the war, it is that sacred of the public, which is an ever-shrinking part of the public.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think we're coming here at the end of our time.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe in terms of sort of like longer-term impact, my final third question is, you know, like America sort of perceived in the world, because I think, you know, the European allies have been very divided, I think, and actually quite contradictory, like I think the Macron has sort of gone from saying you would like, you know, supporting you the war to now saying that it's illegal.
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, but any thoughts on how this is going to impact how the United States is sort of like seen across the world?
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The most visible contrast, I think, has been Mark Carney who gave the speech a Davos, barely a month ago, where he said, you know, America has become, America has become a bully, the liberal origin, his dead, middle powers have to get that together, we have to work together.
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he immediately after the attack came out in favour of it, saying, well, Iran is bad and Donald Trump should be able to attack if he wants.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, this is a real problem for, for Canada for the European members of NATO, they can't simultaneously claim that it's all about supporting a global liberal order, and then say, well, okay, but if America's doing it, it's fine.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now what I will say over the long term is part of the reason they're saying it is because they are still beholden to the US for their security.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't want that to go away in a hoodie.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: As allies in Europe and elsewhere become more capable, they will push back on this kind of thing.
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's good and healthy, frankly.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for now, we're basically seeing as the cost of this is what being a vassal.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: of the U.S. and relying on the U.S. for your security, this is what it means is you have to swallow this kind of utterly insane war that's going to sort of impact your economy, center, energy crisis, skyrocketing, you're going to have to deal with it.
• 39:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I think that's right.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think like whatever servility that we're now seeing, then long-term effect is gonna be in the opposite direction of making many people around the world.
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, aside from the Europeans, I would say, you know, the South Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese,
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: thinking more about the necessity of being independent of the U.S. Like to me, that seems almost inevitable.
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in any case, there's much more we could talk about, but we've covered a lot of ground.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to thank Emma Ashford for this very enlightening discussion.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Great to be here.